Anna and Jorn looked at Astaria with widened eyes as their minds spun thinking about the ease such functions could bring. Bringing up her menu, Astaria navigated to the new [Guild] tab that had become accessible as she continued to speak.
“Those are just some of the initial features that a guild has access to. If the guild levels up, and that is possible through a large number of activities, it can access more features such as small buffs to its member's attributes, limited access to instant mass summoning of members, and at particularly high levels a guild can recruit the locals of this world, however, there are a lot of requirements that go alongside that.”
As Astaria spoke, she could see the hint of interest in the couple's eyes. However, Jorn was the one to voice the clear questions they had.
“So how does it work for people like us then? How many of the features do we get access to if we were to join a guild?”
“Well, that would entirely depend on the guild you join, and what the guild gives you access to. For example, if you joined a combat-based guild, you would likely not gain access to much since you don’t fight and would bring limited contributions. You might be able to put things into the storage but not take them out, but the main aspect that you would be able to benefit from, the communication, would also be limited since you would only be able to speak to people who fight.”
The couple nodded along as Astaria continued her explanation.
“Now, if you joined a large mercantile guild, that would be far different. The main benefit would be through the facilitation of trade through the guild itself. The communication side of things would allow for easy organisation of long-distance trade with other members, as well as having guild-approved Immortal Warriors to speed up the transport of goods.”
Astaria took another sip from her water as she focused on her explanation.
“That is also dependent on the mercantile guild you join since each one will have different businesses as members or operate in different regions. But as you can imagine, there is a lot of potential, especially for advertisement.”
The couple nodded in contemplation while Anna spoke this time.
“So, what about you?”
Astaria tilted her head slightly as she tried to get clarification on what Anna meant.
“Do you mean what my guild will be doing?”
Anna nodded as she put down her cutlery, nearly finished with her meal.
“Yes, your group last night was quite varied, so I imagine you have plans for getting involved in multiple areas?”
Astaria gave a bright smile as she spoke, happy as this would be a perfect chance for her to help DemonicGold in spreading the word about her guild amongst the local businesses.
“Correct. It’s a little complicated, but in our world, we have a lot of resources that will allow us to facilitate Expansion into various fields. So, as you know, we have the combat side of the guild, those who will go around slaying monsters, retrieving items from highly dangerous areas, protecting assets and that sort of thing. Then we have the infrastructural branch that will be working on civil and military constructions, the trade and commerce branch working like a mercantile guild that I mentioned earlier, and the crafting branch which will be focused on the guild's own production of various products.”
Anna and Jorn’s faces showed clear surprise and a hint of awe as they started to understand that Astaria was more of a bigshot than they first gave her credit for. After all, their first impression of her was a bloody mess that was nearly unresponsive, not indicative of someone wealthy with big plans.
“Then could we join your guild when locals like us are able to join?”
The author's tale has been misappropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.
Astaria gave another bright smile as she heard Anna’s words, mentally making a note to remember to contact the couple at the time.
“Yes, of course! There will be a vetting process you will need to go through, but you will pass it with no trouble. It is mainly to prevent problematic people from joining.”
Anna’s expression became overjoyed as she thought of how she could keep in contact with Astaria when she was away, while Jorn next to her had a more subdued expression thinking about the potential future growth of their inn.
Their conversation continued while Astaria started to create ranks within the guild system, specifying the permissions each one had.
The guild system in Caelus Online was quite flexible in comparison to the games that came before. Astaria could create as many ranks as she liked and the permission options were extensive. Additionally, she could freely form a structured hierarchy that would look like a family tree where she could allocate people to the positions shown.
This freedom allowed guilds to be more than just a list of names but instead allowed for easier organisation and structure that members could also see.
Jorn had left partway through their conversation to start preparing food for breakfast, so it was just Astaria and Anna who sat talking until the first few faces of their guild turned up. DemonicGold and CinderFlare were the first to appear, needing to get up early for the busy day ahead, soon followed by Connor and Ash.
Connor, as the Vice Guild Master, would be in charge of all of the guild’s activities today. Since it was the official first day of the game, there would be a massive influx of new players, meaning that being the only established guild they effectively had a monopoly on recruiting new members. While some of those members may end up leaving for elsewhere, Astaria’s guild would have the first chance to recruit many of those who had the potential to become loyal members, putting her guild at a massive advantage.
As part of her earlier preparations, she had hired a large number of people into Augurium Esports which was the newly created Esports branch of the Branford Group to help handle the massive influx of new members while they were getting the guild organised.
She had also spoken to many of her old school friends, online friends from her time gaming, as well as some personnel from within the Branford Group to act as officers within the guild. She wanted to have people she personally knew and could trust handle the guild’s initial recruitment and activities since she could brief them in advance as knew they would be reliable, unlike the potential new members who might not be.
They would be responsible for leading various informative sessions, guild activities, and generally directing the influx of new members. Even if members leave later on, everything the guild will be doing for the new players now will generate goodwill amongst the player base, and that will help them later on.
So as Vice Guild Master, Connor would be directing the current 80 employed staff of Augurium Esports while starting to organise the guild. Ash however was going to be joining Astaria on her trip over the border of the kingdom, so like her, he needed to be up early to buy supplies before they left the city.
Anna left the table to start her work getting drinks for the group and serving the table their food, while the 4 new arrivals sat at the table. Astaria remained working on the guild despite the new arrivals, and Connor and DemonicGold were the first to help her in this task.
They were both given their ranks of Vice Guild Master and Minister of Commerce respectively, both receiving permissions to create ranks and form the structure of their respective areas of influence within the guild. Connor started helping Astaria directly while DemonicGold started to organise the structure of his trading branch.
After receiving drinks to help with their hangovers, CinderFlare started assisting DemonicGold with her rank of Vice Minister of Commerce while Ash with the rank of Head Quartermaster created a new chat channel within the guild chat and started to write a basic guide on collecting materials.
Within a guild chat, those with permission could create separate channels for members to use. Using this function Ash created a separate text channel to post his guide, making it so that members could read but not post. In this way, the text channel became the start of what would eventually grow to become a massive database where members could access a vast variety of information.
By the time their food had arrived, some of the other members of the guild had joined them for breakfast, and the conversation between them was limited as they all worked on getting the guild organised.
While eating Astaria had created the ranks with their permissions for everyone in leadership positions which would allow them to each set up their respective branches or perform their roles within the guild. With this important time-sensitive task now completed, she was able to leave the inn to make her preparations for the trip out of the Alennos Kingdom. She unloaded all the unneeded loot in her inventory to DemonicGold to either sell or hold on to for later use by the guild and after a bittersweet farewell with Anna who Astaria was still no closer to understanding why the woman had become so attached to her, she left the inn, wishing her friends good luck for the busy day.