She hated the city with a passion. She was just glad her guild badge was still valid. The way that guard leader was looking at her, she almost had to physically restrain the two wolves with her. As it was they were in an even more foul mood than they would normally be in a city. Memory and Hope were stalking behind her with their hackles up. On several occasions when someone got to close they were actually growling, which they almost never did unless there was a real threat. It was putting her on edge.
She just wished she knew why she had received an urgent guild summons. She took a job last year and shouldn’t have to deal with this for another year at least. It must be because she let slip that she wasn’t stalled out like they thought. She never should have let herself drink even if Sed and her crew were friends. If they ratted her out and she started getting advancement pressure again they would never get alchemical herbs from her again.
She stalked into the Guild Hall with Hope and Memory behind her. She paused only long enough for one of the attendants to acknowledge the glowing guild badge she held up before she marched down the hall and up to the top floor. She walked all the way to the end of the hall before she got a hold of herself and calmed down. It wouldn’t do to see a guild leader looking for a fight. After a second she knocked.
A voice came through the door, “Come in Amanda.”
She stepped in and at a gesture sat in one of the overstuffed chairs across from the desk which dominated the room. At the desk sat the local guild leader, or more specifically Deputy Guild Master Pence Farthing. Nobody knew his real name, or if they did they weren’t talking. The man looked like an accountant, tidy white blouse under a conservative vest and sinch bands on his sleeves. This was not helped by his ever present ledger. It was hard to remember that the man was a tier fourteen awakened and over two hundred years old. Rumor said he was a combination of a scribe and a mage but again nobody living knew for sure. The one thing she did know was that she didn’t like the way he was looking at her.
“So what was so urgent you used my badge to summon me?” I asked when I couldn’t take him staring any longer.
“I have a mission for you,” he said, “and before you refuse, you should know that you almost lost your guild member status twice over the last five years. One more lapse or incident and you will be kicked from the rolls. Even if you have taken a single job every two years the guild won’t shelter someone of your talent indefinitely if you aren’t going to contribute.”
“I have complied with every guild regulation,” I replied with a nervous snap.
“You have done the literal bare minimum since your third year in the guild,” he said before he checked something in his ledger. “The S’Dandirk incident. We understand that the betrayal of your party was hard for you so we gave you some slack. We have also seen Lord S’Dandirk suitably chastised. We made it clear that in addition to him being banned from ever hiring adventurers or accessing guild controlled dungeons again, we would give the same punishment to any family who formed a bond of marriage with his house.”
She was a bit surprised about this. It was as ironic as the dark hells too. Her former party had been induced to leave the adventurers guild for Lord S’Dandirk’s service at the end of a job. When she refused it turned out that the bastard's son had developed an unhealthy interest in her. Wanted to force her into marriage and her former party were fine with it as long as she didn’t screw up their comfy new gig. If she hadn’t had that spell to rot the wooden shutters she wouldn’t have escaped.
“I didn’t know it had been taken that far?” I said inquiringly.
“Oh yes, no one is allowed to mess with guild members so blatantly. It would be one thing if you had gone there on your own and something happened, but you were there on guild business for his house. Every few decades the nobles need to be reminded that we are not servants and chattel. Last I heard the older son, the one that gave you problems, died in a duel after touching another man's wife. The younger son joined a sect. Of the five daughters, one wed a merchant and another three are spinsters. There is a reason our contracts are seen as ironclad” he said it all in the bland tone of someone talking about the last year’s grain harvest. “Which brings us back to the job I have for you.”
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She winced at the sense of inevitability that statement gave her as he continued, “A new dungeon has been discovered up in the mountains. The local lord, a baron who managed to revive an old imperial fief, has contracted with us to manage it. I am sending you up with the evaluation team, the Evans’ and Tika as the [Artificer]. You are to act as a scout on the trip and to evaluate the local area for logistics and threat afterwards. The lord said he is building an outpost near the dungeon but I got the feeling he didn’t have much to start with in terms of people. If the evaluation team finds less than twenty floors you are going to be staying up there to head the local branch and be our liaison for the time being.”
When she managed to get her jaw off the floor she asked, “Why me sir, I mean I’m flattered but I’m not exactly a people person?”
“I politely disagree, but there are three main reasons,” he said with the slightest of smiles. “First I know you are comfortable roughing it. Most of those who can be trusted to run something like this are either too high of a tier to benefit from a young dungeon or wouldn’t put up with a back country outpost for long. You may say you are not a people person but a lot of your younger guildmates have stayed with you on their way to the north to deal with the orcish problem. They all like you and more importantly respect you. You may not know this but the ones you have given forestry advice to have been singing your praises. Apparently that double hole stealth firepit actually saved one party from an ambush last year. They’ll listen if you tell them something. The other reason is that the dungeon is a beast dungeon that is populated with wolves. No matter what else you can say, you are the foremost expert on wolves in this part of the world.”
“What’s the reason you didn’t list?” she asked suspiciously when he didn’t go on.
“I need someone who is willing to handle the noble.” he said. “He didn’t seem the bad sort, he keeps an imperial codex of law in his storage ring, but I want you to distract him from Tika without getting him too interested.”
“What?!” she almost shouted, Memory and Hope instantly coming alert behind her.
“It’s not like that,” he said, “it is just that Tika is coming into heat and you know how she can get. I wouldn’t be concerned except the Baron came to our meeting with a girl on each arm and his own bard. Tika is one of only three [Artificers] we have on this side of the old empire. If she pairbonds with this noble…”
“She’ll leave the guild,” Amanda said with a sigh. “So to keep a resource like her in the guild you are willing to throw me to the mercies of a noble?”
“No, I am trusting you to be able to distract him from Tika if she makes a move without getting yourself entangled,” Farthing said. “It is unlikely it will come to another S’Dandrik situation. The Baron seemed fair minded and doesn’t have the power to pull it off if he wanted to. Beyond that, as a Guild Liaison you cannot enter into a non guild contract, such as a marriage, without yielding your position. To do so you would first have to return to the safety of the guild. Should I hear of you entering his service or his house, I will be bringing a full cohort of upper tier members to extract you and reeducate the young man.”
She let out a sigh of relief and stroked Memory’s ruff to calm him down. Hope leaned into her other side to lend support. Once she was ready she nodded to the guild leader and he continued, “Ideally this dungeon is only about five to ten floors, you will take charge of guild administration up there and help advise the adventurers who are diving on how to handle the wolves and the environment. If it is deeper than twenty-five floors you will still take charge temporarily but I will be sending a fifth tier to take over wrangling the bigger bulls. I’d still want you to stay on to advise the younger members. In either case you will be paid your standard non combat rate plus two vela a day. I will also be giving you guild credits enough that you can gain access to your path manual once you have tiered up again.”
It was an exceedingly generous offer. Amanda knew that she was being roped into the guild again. She had spent too much time on the fringes and her skill set was too much in demand. The qualifications for a ranger path were hard to start with, requiring you to hunt monsters alone in the wilderness. Having a high enough compatibility to follow the basic path, let alone her grade seven variant, was becoming rarer and rarer. The solitude and self-reliance was antithetical to most nobles while the independent decision making was hard for most of the peasantry after generations under the yoke. They weren’t as rare as [Artificers] but most rangers were dragged into the service of some lord or other, whether they wanted to or not.
The Guild wanted her back in the fold and if she wanted to keep the Guild protections she would need to come back. It looked like she was going back to the mountains.