In many ways the wayfinder's guild is like any of the other guilds of the city - a collection of specialists providing a specific service. What distinguishes it is, of course, how unique the service it provides is, and how significant its monopoly on it is. Given this, the meteoric nature of its rise to significance in the city is perhaps unsurprising, and its history and rise are already established parts of the city's history in the wake of the Upheaval.
The guild has around 300 Wayfinders on its books, of which over half are “apprentices” in their art - though this term is perhaps misleading, as even these are perfectly capable of navigating a route to almost anywhere this side of the desert. The guild is notorious for not having a fixed price-list for services, preferring to allow their assessors to gauge how much a customer can pay, but hiring an apprentice Wayfinder is expensive but likely within the means of anyone putting together a trading caravan. The Guild divides the rest of its staff into Adepts and Masters, though it is understood that adept is a fairly wide band with significant variation within it, while the number of masters is thought to be barely out of the single digits. Hiring these tends to be significantly more expensive when done directly through the guild, though staff are permitted to take some private commissions in between guild assignments if they wish, and savvy employers sometimes gain major bargains through discrete private advertisements.
The guild actually employs more non-Wayfinder staff - guards, accountants, builders, armourers and sundry other roles. These provide a whole variety of the functions that the guild needs for success, notably ensuring that its Wayfinders are well equipped and, once they are promoted beyond apprentice, protected, and making the best use of the guild's prodigious finances.
All of those within the guild with the rank of master form an advisory council at the top, but the guild has a single leader - Vincta Terrec, a driven man in his thirties who helped to found the guild, and rose to prominence among the founders by taking the lead on negotiations with the city for essential services. Unlike some of the more established guilds, the Wayfinder's has yet to complete a formal internal charter, and Vincta's continued prominence is currently dependant upon the favour of its members. Whether to adopt a formal charter, and what precisely should be in it, is thought to be an ongoing item of debate in the guild council. What role, if any, non-Wayfinder members should be allowed to play (especially those who helped to fund and found the guild) is a particularly contentious point at all levels of the guild hierarchy.
The guild maintains a huge guildhouse in a prime part of Acryn, purchased from the Spicer's guild during a “restructuring” in the latter shortly after the Upheaval. This acts as its primary base of operations, but it also has reasonably sized offices in all the cities on Acryn's side of the desert, as well as upon the isle of Thys. In most sizable towns, the guild has a deal with a local tavern to provide lodgings to passing guild members.
Other cities have Wayfinder collectives of their own, but none are as large or as organised as the guild, and it also pays better than most, meaning that many bright talents travel to Acryn to sign up rather than working locally. The guild also tries to encourage loyalty to its services among the other guilds of Acryn - those that have hired non-guild wayfinders, be they unaligned locals or from groups in other cities, have often found the prices the guild charges them increasing sharply.
As far as anyone outside it is aware, the guild has no presence in the Serradic Empire, but reports from Junnes suggest that those few messengers from the other side that have traversed the desert have definitely had what looked like wayfinders accompanying them.