“Whoever fights monsters should see to it that in the process he does not become a monster. And if you gaze long enough into an abyss, the abyss will gaze back into you.”
– Friedrich Nietzsche, Head PTSD Psychologist for Guild Adventurers
Adventurers Guild
A hallmark of any fantasy world is the existence of Adventurers – people who make a living by hunting monsters and responding to crises like natural disasters. They are people who put their lives on the line every day either by subjugating dangerous monsters that threaten human populations, exploring ruins to loot artifacts and valuables, and providing escort services for merchant caravans. Adventurers live a life of danger but demand just compensation – that’s the kind of people they are, and the organization that regulates them is called the Adventurers Guild.
Sometimes called the Hunters’ Guild or more colloquially referred to as just the Guild, it is an international commerce organization that regulates and protects adventurers while ensuring a market for monster goods. Think of it like a union for adventurers. In exchange for an initial registration fee, the Guild will issue identification and a skill ranking to an person that will allow them to accept jobs from the Guild. On occasion, the Guild will issue requests directly to an adventurer or a group of adventurers, but generally, requests come from third parties.
For example, let’s assume the local lord wants to repair a damaged part of the city wall. The lord could submit the request to the guild hoping for some number of adventurers to accept and come help for a limited time. Of course, the lord would have to pay a fee to the guild to have a request issued, and the lord would have to deposit the reward with the guild commensurate with the number of adventurers and labor required. Once that is done, the guild would investigate the request to determine if there were any hazards to or special requirements necessary of the adventurers who would ultimately take up the job. That information, along with compensation schedule – usually a fixed daily payment until job completion – would be posted on the request board in the Guild lobby. Once posted, any interested adventurer could inquire about the job and decide to accept it.
For a request like repairing a damaged section of wall, there might not be any special skills required either from the standpoint of the issuing party or the Guild. However, a job can be issued with special requirements like the need for a level 3 water mage or an advanced swordsman or a person with superb tracking skills. Requests that have restrictions like these increase the necessary skill level of any who would accept it. The Guild would therefore deny any adventurer from accepting a job that they were not qualified to accept. A mage who can only control the fire element would never be able to accept a request that needed a water mage for example.
While the Guild does accept requests of almost any kind, the vast majority are for monster subjugation. When a monster or a population of monsters pose a threat to human habitation, it falls to adventurers who accept subjugation requests to kill the monsters and bring back proof to the Guild that the threat has been eliminated. Proof usually takes the form of some body part (e.g. the ears for goblins, the tusks for ogres). Subjugation requests vary from low risk and constantly available to high risk and rare. A low risk monster like a demon rabbit that is local to an area and is known to ravage fields would be a good example of a constantly available low risk request. No matter how many or how often they are culled, the population of demon rabbits always returns. On the other end of the spectrum you would have a once in a decade disaster class subjugation request for a monster on the scale of a dragon.
The higher risk a request is, the higher the skill required of the adventurer or party of adventurers that accept it. Skill levels are usually laid out by the guild in a categorical fashion ranging from the lowest to the highest skill levels of F, E, D, C, B, A, S, SS respectively. The upper rankings – S and above – are so rare and difficult to gauge that often times they are all grouped as S. As an analogy, if you imagine you can only measure things in millimeters then the difference between a centimeter and a meter is something that can be perceived, but the difference between 100 kilometers and a centimeter is so vastly different that it is almost unfathomable. That is the kind of gap between adventurers of non-S rank and those of S rank and above – a truly godly realm of skill and power.
The adventurers are also considered war potential that can be temporarily conscripted by nations that host guild branches in the event of disasters or conflicts where the interest of the guild are not in jeopardy. A continent wide war against the rise of a Demon Lord would be a case where adventurers might be temporarily pressed into service. The vast array of skills and experience they can bring to bear could turn the tide in a battle, but there are drawbacks. Adventurers are not regular soldiers. They work well in small groups but are little more than a disorderly mob in a large scale battle. Nation states recognize the war potential of adventurers but do not see them as a replacement for an organized regular army.
The Guild has branches all across the world, usually one in every major city and medium sized town. It is relatively easy for an adventurer to be active in one town and then transfer their base of operations to another village or town. In the absence of radio communication, the guild makes use of horseback messengers and long distance magic communication to coordinate various administrative tasks across its many branches. Each branch has a guild master who oversees the hiring of staff, provisioning of high difficulty requests, training programs for novice adventurers, and disciplinary actions against those who violate the guild’s regulations.
