I have a tendency to go back and modify my last post as I am working on the OP, so you might have missed the offer in my last one...
I mined the following from one of Tamren's old threads, and wanted to store it here for reference:
Guild representatives:
Guild reps act as a sort of union representative for the workers in your fortress and also make demands specific to thier field of work. Depending on the size of the fortress and how many workers of each type you have, multiple representatives may show up, all effects stack. With a guild rep around, all jobs related to that field have a slight xp bonus, this lasts untill dwarves reach a certain level of skill after which they will gain xp from jobs normally. Every now and then the rep will talk to the mayor and demand that a specific amount of work be given to those workers to keep them practiced. These jobs can be done by any worker in that field or may be specified to one job, such as weaving thread. The frequency of these requests depend on the total amount of workers assigned a particular job and the average overall skill level. Legendary workers do not figure into these calculations. These will be within reason, a House fer representative will not demand you train 4 war dogs if you have no dogs to begin with. In general having a guild rep around will also speed production and increase quality a bit.
In addition, through the representatives of each guild you can also put out the call for immigrants with specific skills. If you found that you were lacking herbalists you could petition House Berite. The message goes out with the next dwarven caravan, so you will never see any effects untill the caravan reports back to the mountainhomes. You have 2 choices in this regard:
1. Need worker: In this case you will have an increased chance of getting a worker of the type you want in the next wave of immigrations. This can be of any type, trapper, craftsdwarf, grower ect. Note that this is in addition to the random sampling you get every year.
2. Need specific skill: If you request a specific skill such as milling or bone carving then the house rep will put out a call for a worker with that skill. This request is harder to complete but the chance of that worker immigrating to your fortress increases every year. Instead of arriving with a few novice level skills the dwarf will have an increased level in the skill you requested.
You can also do the opposite and let the mountainhomes know that for now at least you do not need workers with some skills. In general you would not want to do this because extra workers can be turned into recruits. If however your fortress is struggling to deal with overpopulation or something then you could put immigration on hold for seperate worker types. If you tell the house berite rep that you do not need growers, any growers that would have showed up in the next wave of immigrants will simply not show leading to smaller groups of immigrants. These declarations last a year.
However, workers of that type will still show up if they are married to another immigrant
What you have to do to make the guild rep show up varies a lot. Mostly all you need to do is keep an active workforce and they will show up eventually.
Some of them have boring names so i invented a few on a lark.
House Berite (farming): This dwarf deals with farming and all of the plant/food related jobs. Once he shows up you will be able to see more specific facts about how your farms are running, stuff like how fertile a field is and the areas of a flooded field that recieve the most sediment and thus, nutrients. With him around you can get farmers to automatically plow fields into certain areas every year, and switch crops as the season goes by. When caravans roll around he will let you request a greater selection of seeds and rare plants.
House Ferite (animals): This noble is responsible for the training and caretaking of animals. With him around war animals are slightly more effective. Animals will also produce litters at an increased rate if you ask him to oversee breeding programs. House Fer's domain also ecompasses hunters and combat against flesh and blood animals in general.
House Rashis (death): This dwarf acts as a sort of priest/graveyard keeper. He will demand that you have a coffin for every dwarf in your fortress. Should angry spirits or ghosts show up he can communicate with them and direct you on how to appease them. He will also console the relatives of dead dwarves and make your dwarves less unhappy about death in general. On maps tagged as EVIL the house rash representative will prevent most corpses from reanimating. On any map with skeletal or zombie wildlife he will show up automatically in the second year.
House Terras (masonry/engraving): This dwarf is responsible for all masons and engravers in your fortress as well as large architectural projects that are constructed with stone. Having him around will increase the maximum size of such projects and speed work a bit. If you have at least 4 engravers you can talk to the House Terras representative to commission large murals or engravings about specific events instead of having them only drawing stuff that has recently happened.
House Exrac: (mining): This dwarf is responsible for your entire mining corps. He will regularly inspect newly excavated areas and current work. He will warn you of any structural problems and dangers such as miners nearing a water source or magma vein. If the miners are getting close to danger he will halt work automatically. One VERY useful ability is that he can also prospect areas and report on what may be contained in areas yet to be excavated.
House Kariah (wood/stone crafting): This dwarf is responsible for all craftdwarves who work with wood and stone, with him around novice crafters will produce crafts with a higher quality than thier "average" far more often. Having him around also enables work on highly detailed or intricate projects.
House Lurze (bone/shell crafting): Same as above, only different materials.
House Seriqu (carpentry): Domain includes all wood furniture and architecture. Under his supervision woodworkers will use wood more efficiently leaving more scrap wood/woodchips and sawdust that can be recycled by burning them as fuel instead of whole logs. If you were wondering, wood scrap are spare pieces of wood not large enough to be used for furniture, they can still be used for wood crafts. Wood chips are what wood scrap becomes after your wood cutters are done with some anger management, they are used for fuel. A bit of sawdust is generated whenever wood is shaped or cut, it can also be used as fuel although you need quite a bit of it.
House Maonn (metal crafts/jewlery): Domain includes all metal crafts and unadorned jewlery, coinage in particular. This rep is required for the production of platinum coins. His presence at your fortress also speeds up the production of coins and small metal items such as rings. This rep would also enable the use of plaster molds and other such items if they were implemented in the future.
House Tirar (Gemcutting/Gemsetting): When this rep shows up he brings with him a bag of special gemcutting dust, this is needed to cut and shape the harder gems such as diamond and slightly improves the quality of lesser gems. Very little is needed per gem, so you will probably never run out unless you attempt to cut every single gem in the mountain or your bag of precious dust is lost somehow. You can make your own in small amounts or order another bag from the dwarf caravan but it will cost you over 4 legs and arms.
House Haevil (bowyery/fletchery): Domain includes crossbows, more conventional bows, arrows and bolts. Having him around will allow greater control over the ammo supply in your fortress. You can set the minimum amount of ammo you want to have in your fortress. Idealy this should be at least enough to load each soldier up twice, and about 4 stacks worth of ammo per soldier to supply training ammo. You can also order your fletchers to take apart arrows and reconfigure them, switching out cheap components for more expensive, but deadlier ones. He will also enable the production of metal bolt/arrow shafts, stone bolts and other special items.
House Eriqan (Armour), House Kyrran (Weaponry): Unlike the other representatives, both of these guys will show up in the spring of your 3rd year without fail, if for some reason you have lost you anvil at this point, dont fear they will also bring one with them. The Eriqan representative will allow the production of platemail. The Kyrran rep will allow the production of 2 handed weapons. They also allow the tempering of equipment from either types in a furnace, this strengthens the material but requires extra fuel which may be scarce.
House Govin (siege weaponry): Domain includes all siege weapons. At the moment all we have are catapults and balistae, but im sure later on we would have more, or at least variants. Siege weapons harness a LOT of potential energy with each shot, if this is not released in a controlled fashion the siege weapon could break and hurt people around it. THis will never happen to a machine that is not specifically damaged in some way, dwarven engineering being what it is. The House Govin rep will spend most of his time inspecting your machines to make sure this never happens. He may request you replace or repair various machines and it is in your best interest to send an engineer RIGHT AWAY. In addition to maintenance, this domain also includes siege ammo. With him around you can carve catapult stones shaped in such a way to be more effective in certain ways, damage and range come to mind. More exotic items include flaming ammo, or possibly magic ammo. He can also manage stocks of siege ammo the same way the representative from House Haevil manages regular ammo giving you far more control over supplies.
House Temperil (mechanics): The guild of mechanics is a very important one in dwarf society. Having this rep around will provide access to a host of various useful items. Large scale engineering would need this guy around, stuff like 8 tile wide retracting gates and mine cart systems.
House Forean (Traps): Forean covers traps of all types and Animal Trappers. Having a member of House Forean in your fortress will grant you access to advanced and elaborate trap designs and speed work. This rep will also help to re-bait traps.
House Kaboom (Alchemy): Alchemy is a very dangerous career. To make this guy show up all you need a working alchemy shop and a few alchemy components. Once he arrives you can start training dwarves to be an alchemist. Alchemists create a lot of stuff, up to and including explosives. Other items include poisons, less exotic stuff like oils to help maintain metal equipment, spices and sauces to enhance cooking. They can also make supercharged booze . If the head alchemist dies for whatever reason work should halt IMMEDIATLY because only with him around does the work form some semblance of "safe". On a related note, it is a good idea to place any and all alchemist shops in an enclosed but large open area free of debrit, with a high ceiling that can also be flooded with water on command. You know, just in case *shifty eyes*
Military Order Representatives: These guys are pretty much really really badass drill sargeants. Depending on how many soldiers and recruits you have trained, multiple reps of each type will show up at your fortress. They are responsible for all soldiers who use thier preffered weapon. Every now and then they will request that you construct or upgrade equipment, mostly weapons but armour as well. These are requests and not demands but they give you a good idea of how your military is doing and what needs attention.
What they do all day is single out soldiers in your fortress and train them. A order of the spear representative for example will never inflict damage on the person he is training. However the noob fighter on the other end of the practice mat can hardly say the same thing! To that end each rep will request that you construct for him a special set of trainers armour of each material. Namely, leather, chain and plate. The completed suits are massively protective and require extra material to make, only a very hard blow will phase the person wearing it. The reason you would not want to use this in combat though, is that it is VERY heavy, ridiculously heavy even. It is perfect for sparring in a training circle, but not for chasing after child snatchers.
In addition the representative from each order (with the exception of the missile orders) will request that you produce at least 4 training weapons per rep. Only 2 of them are actually needed for training, one in the hand of the trainer and another in the trainee. The minimum of 4 is there to allow for breakage but you would be wise to produce a lot more as raw recruits with high attributes will break many. Training weapons are made from stone and wood OR metal. They are heavily dulled but are balanced just like a real one, and weighed to build up strength. Training done this way is highly accelerated but controlled. To advance after a certain point dwarves must spar with other dwarves without training equipment or participate in actual combat. The exception is missile weapons, as all you need is a target to hone your skill.
Reps of each order can also be assigned to lead squads of soldiers in combat, or temporarily ceded to the royal or fortress guard in order to train those warriors as well.
In order to have one of these reps show up you need to maintain a large armoury and have soldiers trained to use each weapon. The specific representatives are:
Order of the Fist: This dwarf handles unarmed combat and various grappling weapons such as claws and garrotes. Since every dwarf in your fortress can make good use of grappling skills this dwarf will be very busy. Since this order representative does not require that you have a large armoury he will show up very soon. In addition this order is the most likely to have multiple representatives.
Order of the Hand: Skirmishers are the domain of this order. Skirmishing weapons include all light missile weapons. Stuff like slings, throwing axes/hammers and the deadly bolas. The sling is a favored toy of children and many older dwarves. Instead of lounging around dwarves will often grab a sling and practice with it on thier own break time. You way want to keep them away from children because they do not have enough sense to use them outside. Small melee weapons such as daggers and small hammers, shortswords and the like also fall under this category.
Order of the Sword
Order of the Mace
Order of the Spear
Order of the Hammer
Order of the Axe: All 5 orders here are pretty much the same, they use the weapon preffered by thier order, this also includes 2 handed versions.
Order of the Bolt: Handles crossbows of all types. If a dwarf armed with a crossbow is forced into melee he will use the xbow to bash his opponent. His success at this depends on his skill with crossbows, NOT his hammer skill. This is because a hammerdwarf might be deadly in combat, but he would have no clue about how bash with a crossbow without damaging critical components.
Order of the Arrow: Handles more conventional bows such as longbows and shortbows. Regular bows are much more effective than crossbows outdoors because bows can be fired on the move whereas a marksdwarf must stop in order to re-cock a crossbow. Arrows are better for hunting small game because they leave the target pretty much intact. A crossbow on the other hand would probably annihilate a small animal like a rabbit.
Order of the Shadow: This dwarf handles stealth, instead of requiring a large armoury or standing army he will show up if your fortress has an active hunting cadre.
Order of the Shield: Domain includes all types of shields. Will not train dwarves unless you arm them with a shield.
Order of the Tower: This dwarf teaches your dwarves how to deal with the burden of armour and when to rely on it to absorb a blow instead of dodging.
Order of the Wind: The order of the wind teaches dwarves how to dodge. Like the order of the fist members of this order are very common and may show up at your fortress even if you have no soldiers at all.