World Building #6 - Goroesgi's Guild

 

This week's World Building Chapter describes the Guild faction.  Like most fantasy anime and game worlds, the Guild is intended to serve as the main source of quests and missions in the game I would like to make.  In the world I have set up so far, it is also one of the primary societal factions aboard the Great Ark.  So to me it makes sense to explore the Guild in more detail, describing how it works and how it is structured so that when I eventually create a game or set a story in my world, I can use the Guild and it's system to maintain consistency.

Next week's chapter will discuss the Academy, another of the key factions in the world.

Thanks for reading!

The Guild

The Guild has existed for as long as the Ark has existed, its primary purpose was always to provide work to the people that live aboard the Ark, from simple labouring and farming, through to appointing governors and leaders of the settlements on the various levels of the structure.

Originally, the Guild was overseen by the teams of people working for the Architects, providing the jobs required to do the work of sustaining the population and maintaining the structure of the Ark. Following the death of the Architects, and the teams of people working for them, the people that were left maintained the Guild, appointing new leaders, and continuing the tradition of distributing jobs throughout society. However, the specific tasks in maintaining the structure of the Ark drifted out of knowledge and purpose for the people aboard the Ark because, with little understanding of the structure remaining in society, those jobs that were previously done to maintain the structure were not understood to be required, or have any perceived benefit to the people now living aboard the Ark when compared to farming, hunting and gathering materials.

To this day, the Guild is still the primary institution for those in need of work, or with a desire to change their professions. As people have started to develop the abilities once only used by the Demons, and with many of these abilities having a use in combat, and with the encroachment of Demons and Beasts upon the Ark and the people that live there, the Guild has become the primary organisation that can repel the advancement of the Demons and Beasts.

The nature of the jobs offered by the Guild has always included the communication of singular, one time, jobs that would allow people to contribute to life aboard the Ark, even if they have no long term profession, but the main intent of the organisation was to assist people in finding long term professions that could both sustain them and the wider society of the Ark. Presently however, with the greater need for combat related jobs, the Guild now primarily offers singular jobs, while still assisting others with finding permanent professions.

With the nature of the combat related tasks being to defend the settlements aboard the Ark, explore the various Dungeons that form the inter-connective tissue of the Ark, and the extermination of the Demons and Beasts aboard the Ark, members of the Guild that sign up to repeatedly handle these singular jobs have become known as Adventurers.

Adventurers working for the Guild are not able to choose work that the Guild considers to be outside of their capabilities to complete however. The Guild manages this through a ranking system where the lowest ranks are open to almost anyone that can perform manual labour. As Adventurers prove their capabilities through the completion of the jobs available to their rank, the Guild allows for Adventurers to increase their rank, giving them access to higher ranked, and higher risk, jobs. The highest ranks obtainable by Adventurers also require tests of competency and capability beyond the completion of a number of jobs for their current rank. Due to the risks involved for jobs of the highest ranks, the Guild aims to ensure that any Adventurers given the highest ranks have the ability to complete these jobs as their completion is almost always necessary to reduce the chances of a great loss of life aboard the Ark, and they can have a drastic influence on the people living aboard the Ark.

This segregation of jobs and Adventurers allows the Guild to ensure that Adventurers can be given at least a fair chance for survival, even when taking on the most important and most deadly jobs that need to be completed. This also leads to a system where the Adventurers with the most skill and most powerful abilities advance to the highest ranks of the Guild, while an otherwise normal person might never advance from the lowest ranks. The job and ranking system together allow for work to be distributed in a way that ensures normal everyday jobs are available to almost every Adventurer, while restricting access to the deadly combat oriented jobs to those Adventurers of sufficient rank and ability to complete the job.

When starting out, every Adventurer starts at the lowest rank, F Rank, only being able to advance in rank after completing a defined number of jobs for that rank. The ranks themselves go from F Rank to A Rank for normal rankings, beyond this are the Special, S Ranks. Ranks F through D are generally referred to as the Low Ranks. The jobs assigned to these ranks are normally comprised of everyday work, such as labouring, farming assistance, pest control, and the gathering of common materials and non-farmed food and ingredients. At D Rank, Adventurers also begin to assist with combat jobs and, in some cases, are able to take on combat jobs of the lowest risk level themselves.

Ranks C and B are considered as the Middle Ranks and generally lean more into combat and exploration oriented jobs. The combat jobs can include escort and protection jobs, low risk extermination jobs, scouting jobs, exploration jobs, and supporting higher risk combat jobs. The scouting and exploration jobs are generally aimed at gathering information for the Guild to be able to risk assess future jobs to be issued by the Guild and while they come with an unknown initial risk, any Adventurers taking on these jobs must be able to assess their own risks, and when to retreat from these jobs.

Rank A and the special S Rank adventurers, normally considered as the High Ranks, are provided with the riskiest and most deadly jobs. Obtaining these ranks within the Guild is exceeding difficult, and only Adventurers who have shown their worth to the Guild by advancing through the ranking system, and by completing tests by the Guild to ensure the Adventurers possess the abilities and strength to qualify for the High Ranks. The special S Ranks, which can be obtained through the normal methods of advancement, can also be assigned outside of the normal advancement criteria. This is only ever assigned to individuals of unique skill and great strength, and the decision to assign an S Rank to an Adventurer is only ever made by the leaders of the Guild, and only when those individuals have shown themselves to possess such prowess, great strength, and prudence, that their membership to the Guild is of such importance to the Guild to warrant their advancement outside of the normal system. This allows such Adventurers to be used effectively by the Guild without the need to wait for them to progress through the ranks normally. The Guild’s direct influence on the High Ranks also extends beyond those of lower ranks where, while every Adventurer can be drafted by the Guild to deal with disasters or large field combat, Adventurers with a High Rank can be directly issued jobs with no option to decline them given to the Adventurers. As Adventurers with High Ranks would have the capability to destroy or otherwise directly harm the Guild, this action is only ever taken in the most serious of situations, and the Adventurers given the jobs to resolve these situations are normally included in their planning, reducing the risk of a High Rank Adventurer declining to take on the job, and of the Guild exploiting these Adventurers and turning them against the Guild.

As an institution of such authority on the Ark, the Guild operates in every settled town and even some of the larger villages on the Ark. These Guild Halls operate as meeting spaces for Adventurers and the locations where jobs can be requested and assigned. Every Guild Hall has a Guild Master, the leader and primary decision maker for that Guild Hall. Jobs are requested and issued through Guild Receptionists who manage the day to day activities within the Guild Halls. The Guild itself is lead by a committee comprised of all of the Guild Masters, and while each Guild Hall operates individually, the Guild Committee exists to ensure each Guild Hall works to common practices and to allow each Guild Hall to work together when needed.