Anyone with money could hire a team from The Adventurer’s Guild, from kings to farmers. While everyone had an image of adventurers fighting dragons and rescuing maidens, there was no specific guideline for what type of job was appropriate for the Guild. This meant that people often seeked help from the Guild for any problem they didn’t know how to solve, from lost pets to the aforementioned dragons.

In the minds of both clients and adventurers, the system seemed to operate on its own. People came with problems, and adventurers solved them. No one ever questioned who actually ensured that rookie heroes weren’t battling giants or that veterans weren’t pulling weeds.

This task fell to Marian Merrick, the Guild’s receptionist. Technically, it wasn’t part of her official duties, but she had worked for the Guild for so long that she was a fundamental part of it. In fact, it could be said that she held more power than the council who ostensibly ran the Guild. Marian controlled the rank and reputation of every party. She controlled which new rules were put into place. She even controlled the opinions that other groups in the city held of the Guild, through carefully placed rumor and gossip.

For as long as anyone could remember, Marian and a rotating group of assistants, never more than two at a time, had handled all of the Guild’s administrative work. She registered every adventurer and party, she recorded every job request, and she decided which of each was matched up. She could give a team multiple high-profile jobs to improve their reputation, or she could let them languish with miserable jobs like cleaning out sewers for the city or collecting herbs for alchemists. It was not a good idea to get on Marian’s bad side.

Andra had gotten on Marian’s bad side. The young woman’s impatient, huffy attitude when she had registered a new party named, of all things, Lady von Ekko’s Glorious Adventurer Brigade, had quickly worn down Marian’s nerves. Worse, her party seemed to be made of the worst adventurers in the entire Guild. All four members had been kicked off of multiple teams, forcing Marian to repeatedly perform the tedious paperwork of registering and unregistering each of them. Still, she had to give Andra a job. After all, if a team went too long without one they came to Marian to complain and that was too much of a nuisance for the receptionist to handle. 

It didn’t take long for her to find the perfect job. A merchant arrived the very next day, demanding a team of adventurers to clear giant spiders out of his warehouse. He took on a condescending attitude when Marian explained that he couldn’t immediately walk out with a group of hand-picked adventurers, and started talking to Marian’s assistant instead. This put him on Marian’s bad side, too. She only hoped that Lady von Ekko’s Glorious Adventurer Brigade destroyed every piece of merchandise in that warehouse.