With a shrug, Isaac began leading Lanek to the west. Although, he did take a moment to say that he wasn’t sure if the structure would even be there. In addition, he raised the possibility that the Guild may have also changed locations, so even if the garrison had been completed, there was a better than even chance that they wouldn’t be able to find it.
“I understand, Isaac. The potential reward is just too good to pass up. If there is gear, it will greatly increase the odds of the people at the river surviving the gaunts. Hell, even the building alone would be useful since we could potentially use it for training or shelter while we try to figure out a way around the rats.” Lanek explained. “Besides, this is the last stop before I head back to the river. If we didn’t need weapons so badly, I would just head back now.”
“Do you think you’ll have time?” Isaac asked.
“No idea, but based on the feelings I’m getting from Sanguineus, the gaunts haven’t entered the forest yet. I’m guessing the constant harassment from Sanguineus and Kazuma is making them more cautious than normal. Speaking of the gaunts, do you think they’ve tried breaking into the ratmen’s territory? Or underground at all?”
Isaac considered the question for a moment before responding. “I’d say it’s about a 50/50 chance. If they were intelligent or had one of their ‘masters’ that you mentioned, then they would be completely mad to invade the world while ignoring the subterranean races. It’s not just rats and dwarves after all, there are signs of other ancient civilizations and gods only know what else dwelling down there. On the other hand, if they sent predominantly mindless killing machines, then they could easily have overlooked the rats, dwarves, and all the rest underground.”
“Fair enough. I do wonder how the rats would fare against a horde of gaunts. It would be a bloodbath regardless of who won.” Lanek said.
While they rode on in relative silence, Lanek tried to come up with some way to pit the rats and gaunts against one another. However, no matter how he looked at it, the idea seemed unlikely to bear fruit. The rats weren’t going to follow him into the forest and the gaunts would need to go through his people on the river to reach the hills.
The only option he could see would be to get his people out of the forest without the gaunts knowing and somehow make them believe everyone went into the hills. He thought that it might provide a distraction for them to reach the mountains, but realized that the hills would take days to cross. On top of that, he had seen hordes of gaunts in the past, but nothing close to the numbers of rats Lanek had faced the day before. To make matters even worse, Isaac assured him that the force they encountered was likely only a small fraction of their numbers, so the ratmen wouldn’t be occupied with the gaunts for too long.
As they rode to the west, the forest began gradually thinning out over the course of the next several hours. They would frequently break free from the forest into a large meadow with the forest continuing on the other side. It was in one of these meadows that Isaac claimed was the proposed location of the Guild garrison.
“Hey, Isaac? Why would they build the garrison in the forest instead of the open hills to the north or the plains to the south? It would make it more self-sufficient with farming and give them open sight lines.” Lanek asked.
“While that may be true, the guild likes these places to play to their strengths. If a garrison were to be attacked by a large horde of monsters or an organized military force in an open plain, they would fall fairly quickly. Even the biggest concentrations of adventurers wouldn’t be anywhere near the size of a city’s garrison or military. Also, in the open like that, the advantage would go to an organized army instead of the adventures even if numbers were even as adventurers don’t exactly train for or have experience fighting cooperatively in formation or utilizing large scale tactics.” Isaac explained.
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Isaac continued. “On the other hand, the average adventurer will often be more dangerous individually than the average soldier. So, by building in an area surrounded by forest, the adventurers would be able to harry and ambush the invading horde or army while the forest itself disrupted and separated the soldiers. Add to that the fact that many individuals in the guild would be rangers, assassins, rogues, and other classes that thrive in these environments, and any invader is in for a costly and painful time.”
“Did that happen? From what I’ve learned since coming here, the Adventurer’s Guild was mostly beneficial. Was it just paranoia?” Lanek asked.
“No, it wasn’t just paranoia. There have been organizations from kingdoms to massive bandit groups that have attacked the guild. It’s usually because of the rumors of wealth and artifacts stored within the guild halls. These rumors spread because of the guild’s influence and the fact that they manage the dungeons and only pay a relatively small percentage to the local government entity.”
“So how did the guild make money? Did they charge people to enter the dungeon?” Lanek inquired.
“No, entering the dungeon was free. However, the guild always maintained that their biggest source of income was from the fees they charged for quests to be posted. Every quest posted needed to be approved before it was presented to the guild members to ensure that a proper reward was offered for the difficulty of the task and to determine how much the poster would be charged to simply put up the quest. If no one took the quest, the poster was out of luck and the guild would keep the money.”
“I’m assuming the fees were massive?” Lanek asked.
“It depends. The guild wasn’t evil or anything. One of the factors in posting a quest would depend on the means of the poster. If both a king and a peasant were to post the exact same quest, the peasant may only have to offer a few copper or possibly nothing while the king would be charged a lot of gold or platinum. Of course, this rarely happened as any minor issue that the king had would be taken care of by his own soldiers.”
“Sounds like it could be easily manipulated. What’s to stop someone from hiring a third-party to post the quest in order to get charged a lower fee? For that matter, what’s to stop the king from hiring the adventurers directly and cutting the guild out?” Lanek said.
“Sure, that was an option, but it wasn’t worth the risk. If the guild discovered that the poster was being deceptive about their identity, their quest would be invalidated and they would receive a fine proportional to their status. They could not request any aid from the guild until the fine was paid. If this happened a second time, you would permanently lose access to the guild and their people. This is why every guild hall has either a spell caster or artifact, often both, that can detect lies. As for cutting the guild out, while the guild was nice and polite, their punishments were very harsh. If adventurers were bypassing the guild for quests, they would be firmly reminded of their obligations for the first infraction. Do it again, and you would end up on the wrong end of a guild war declaration. That’s why rivals to the guild rarely popped up.”
“Damn, that’s nasty. I understand the need, though.” Lanek said.
“Yeah, it makes sense. However, the guild also made money in other ways, namely by requiring two things from every dungeon delver. First, ten percent of any coinage or reward stones needed to be given to the guild upon leaving the dungeon. This was done quite easily as there would usually be a small outpost of the guild near a dungeon entrance to keep an eye out dungeon breaks and to keep people from wandering in. Second, the guild required that any artifacts found in the dungeons could only be sold to the guild. There was no penalty for keeping the artifacts for yourself, but if you wanted to get rid of something that didn’t work for your class, the guild was your only option. The downside is that you couldn’t shop around for the best price, but the guild did pay well for the artifacts. As before, the risk of bypassing these rules were extremely harsh. Anyway, the sold artifacts are then marked up in price and sold to interest parties, both inside and outside of the guild. However, the mark up was removed for guild members and there were no rules about selling the item yourself to fellow guild members in the future.”
Lanek felt himself feeling giddy about the thought of raiding a guild hall’s vaults. The one in Caelis was empty, but surely there are some that didn’t get a chance to empty the vaults before they fell to the gaunts, right? Ooh, maybe this garrison hasn’t been emptied out!
Lanek grinned widely, his inner loot goblin momentarily taking control of his thought processes.