Kaius slowed to a halt at the edge of the treeline, staring at a bustling square of men and women armed to the teeth. There were hundreds of them, all flowing in and out of

massive stone buildings that lined three sides of the paved ground in a large horseshoe.

The numbers were surprising — they hadn’t passed anywhere near enough people on the path in to explain this many.

The buildings themselves were squat compared to the towering things they'd passed in Workingman’s Plaza. Utilitarian halls, made of the same blocky stone that had been used in Deadacre’s construction, all pulsing with palpable magic. There were no lovingly wrought engravings of trees or flowers, and no vines that had been allowed to clamber over their exterior. Just simple, rough-cut masonry and an imposing weight of tradition.

One which included drunken debauchery. Kaius immediately honed in on the sound of cheering from the building closest to their left. Wide open windows revealed a ground floor that had been converted into a drinking hall, filled to the brim with rows of benches and tables. It was half packed, the sound of a flute and lyre half swallowed by the roar of the crowd as a constant trickle of people flowed from their tables to the back of the hall. Bottles were shelved to the roof, and Kaius could definitely smell the spilled ale.

Impressive, considering it was barely past midday.

The sight blunted some of the lingering tension he felt over the confrontation they just left at the gates. It wouldn’t be a guildhall without a pub — though it seemed Baanswell was more than large enough that they’d separated it away from the official functions.

“Anyone see the reception?” he asked, scanning the other two buildings.

The building dead ahead of them had multiple sets of massive doors that were flung wide open, and all of them looked promising. Teams roved into them in groups, with focused expressions on their faces, and there were plenty of people roving between what looked like job-boards. If it was anything like Deadacre, that seemed like a good enough bet.

“Doubt we’ll find it in the tavern, and that one looks like it’s mostly for back office work,” Kenva replied, nodding towards the third floor windows of the final building on their right.

Even through that little sliver, Kaius could spot a dozen different bookshelves laden to the bursting. The archives?

“Let’s just go check out over there,” Kaius said, nodding towards the open doors across the square. “We can always ask for directions if we get lost.”

They walked into the crowd, and immediately started drawing eyes as soon as they left the sanctuary of the treeline. Some were freshfaced and young, drowning in too-big chainmail as they watched with wide-eyed awe, while others watched with simple curiosity.

It seemed that even if Baanswell was large and powerful enough for the strong to gather, the presence of Silvers was not so common as to have become mundane.

Picking one of the doors at random, Kaius stepped into an open hall — one lined with familiar notice boards on every wall. They were bursting at the seams with tickets — though unlike Deadacre, the boards had been colour-coded black, grey, and white. There were far less of the former than the later. His gut said it was some way of prioritising the jobs, either by danger or urgency, but it was hard to tell at a glance.

He didn’t see any indication of the rank of the boards though, which was odd. And no reception either. The delvers here were young too.

“Uh,” a timid voice said from behind him. Kaius turned, seeing a lanky, brownhaired man in a dark grey mage’s robe watching him and his team nervously. “This is the Bronze hall — did you need directions?”

“Yes, actually,” Ianmus said, “We’re looking for the reception. We’re new in town.”

The novice mage slumped in relief. “Oh good, I was worried you were looking for the Silver hall. I know it’s upstairs, but that’s it. You must have come from the Plaza?”

They nodded.

“Most people come from the other side — the Reception faces that way. You just need to circle ‘round the building.”

Kaius grinned, clapping the man on the shoulder, something that made him jump nearly a stride in the air. “Thanks.”

Following the directions, they found the main entrance immediately — and realised that there were plenty of others circling the building, which should have been a dead give-away. On the opposite side, a set of double doors sat front and centre. They stretched twelve strides high, inlaid with the guild’s emblem in silver. Another path led winding back into the trees, towards the alternate entrance the novice mage had mentioned. It was packed — a constant flow of people entering and leaving the compound, though only a few head for the reception itself.

They headed straight in, greeted by the soft rustle of a small legion of administrators leafing through, filling out, and filing paperwork. Six men and women manned the counter, filtering through lines of delvers who were waiting with job slips in hand, or to cash in on completed ones.

Deep in the back office, a man perked up as she spotted them entering. North of middle aged, he was clean cut, wearing a simple black suit. He rushed over, hurrying out of the door that sat at the side of the counter.

“You’re here!” he said loudly, drawing curious looks from those waiting in line, and the receptionists both. Stopping in front of them, he thrust out his hand towards Kaius.

“Oswald, manager of this branch. We thought you’d arrive weeks ago!”

The enthusiasm was almost enough to put Kaius off balance. The man was the picture of a stern guild official, completely at odds with his beaming smile.

“You knew we were coming?”

“Oh yes, Guildmaster Rieker sent a missive that you intended to move this way. I assume you’re here to talk to Guildmaster Hkralnog — Guilewind? He should be free.”

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Before Kaius got a chance to nod, or question the guildmaster’s mouthful of a name, the man turned back towards the office — right in time for an inexplicable gust to rush through the room. Papers rustled in the hands of frowning administrators, and a large, prominent placard on the wall flipped over, displaying a bold ‘YES’.

“Perfect!” Oswald said, clapping his hands.

Without saying another word, the man took off — heading for a set of stairs that were tucked in the corner of the room. Kaius blinked, watching him go.

“I suppose we should follow?” Kenva suggested, her brow raised.

….

Guilewind’s office was on the fourth and highest floor of the branch. Without Oswald’s help, it would have been a nightmare to find. Baanswell was as much of a mazelike warren as Deadacre’s branch had been, if not more so. At the very least, the halls were wide and tall enough for Porkchop to fit comfortably, built to accommodate a wide variety of races.

Oswald pushed open the door, waving them in with a silent smile.

“Thank you, Oswald,” an oddly smooth baritone voice said within.

The man left a moment later, leaving them to make their entrance alone. It was a large office, with a plaster ceiling that had a moulded stag at its centre that grabbed Kaius’s attention immediately. The rest of the place was no less interesting. Bookshelves lined the walls, but books themselves were conspicuously absent — bones took their place. Clawed fingers as long as his arm, sat next to a set of curved horns and a triplicate of strangely red femurs. There was even the skull of an ogre sitting in the middle of the closest bookcase, large enough that one shelf had to be removed to accommodate its height.

The desk at the far end of the room was empty. Instead, Guilewind leaned against the edge of one of the windows behind it, staring out towards the Workingman’s Plaza. One of his fingers was idly tracing through a floor to ceiling blue velvet curtain.

A clawed finger.

The Baanswell guildmaster was not what he expected. He was short, for one — a bare five and a half strides. He was also green, with skin that looked closer to rough leather than anything else, and his ears curled into tight hooked points that each had a bone earring dangling from the tip.

“Come, sit,” Guilewind said, turning to reveal his dark red eyes that had a horizontally slit pupil. Combined with his jagged, exaggerated features, he almost looked like a goblin. Only in the vaguest, most superficial sense, but the similarity was enough to set Kaius’s teeth a little on edge.

The guildmaster waved to the chairs in front of his desk.

Kaius approached, doing his best not to stare. He’d never seen, nor heard of whatever people the guildmaster hailed from, but that wasn’t so strange. The higher races were numerous, and few were as populous or widespread as humans.

The man’s aura of strength was far more notable than the circumstances of his birth. Guilewind was Platinum.

Taking a seat, Kaius started a little as a gust of wind shoved one of the chairs to the side of the room — making a conspicuous space suitable for the largest member of their party.

“Guildmaster Hkralnog,” Kaius said politely, doing his best with the first syllable that seemed determined to cause him to choke. It was…disturbingly similar to some of the psuedo-speech he’d heard the goblins use in his first delve.

“Guilewind, please. Few have the larynx to avoid butchering my name. You’ve seen goblins before,” Guilewind said, looking straight at Kaius. It wasn’t a question.

It made him want to shrivel up into a ball — had he been cursed? Two confrontations in the same day, and now he’d gone and offended the one man who was supposed to be his backing in this city?

“A Depth’s biome,” he explained. “Some sort of overrun dwarven city.”

Guilewind nodded, taking a seat at his desk. “I’m far too old to be offended, you didn’t even scream or pull a knife —

it’s just always obvious when someone has. Goblins are something of a distant, much maligned cousin we avoid mentioning in polite company. I’m an uruk, one of the deepfolk of the Drozag’s. Or at least, we were, before the dwarven pogroms drove us away a few millennia ago. Most of us have joined the Hiwiann tribes now.”

Pogroms? Likely because of their surface level similarities to the dwarves hated foe — hells.

“True enough, though I've mostly seen your folk with the eastern clans.” Kenva confirmed, giving the guildmaster a polite smile.

Guilewind watched them silently for a moment, while Kaius desperately wanted to bury his head in his hands. The man could say he wasn’t offended all he wanted, but Kaius knew he’d just stuck his head into a meat grinder of a social faux pas.

“That…encounter you had in the plaza. You were heavy handed — but diplomatic all the same. A passable attempt for one who has not had to deal with the shackles of power for long.” Guilewind explained, giving them a surprisingly warm smile.

“If you were watching, couldn’t you have done something directly? Even just spoken to them?”

“The situation in Baanswell is…delicate. It is almost everywhere — no surprise, given the Guild has all but attacked the foundations of power for every Dynasty on the continent,” Guilewind said, swivelling in his chair to scowl out the window in the direction of the palace that rose out of the city. “If I move prematurely, or without iron-clad cause, I give the Duke of Flowers casus belli to move to full censure. Even using my magic to gather the pages could be enough for an accusation of active involvement.”

He swivelled back to them, looking right at Kaius.

“You were right though — this is a pissing contest. One, that if I leave it well enough alone, will go away all on its own in a few months. The Skills and Honours were released from every hall at once, and the former isn’t even limited to members. The troll has thoroughly broken its chains with this one, we just have to wait.”

“It still feels a little ridiculous that they’re going to this length out of simple spite,” Porkchop grumbled.

“It is, but that’s dealing with the nobility, itsn’t it?” Ianmus replied.

Guilewind grinned. “It certainly is, young mage. Though it is not simple spite — they’re buying time as they look for a way to spin this in their favour. Be that as it may, my one hope is that the four of you can avoid inciting any incidents while you are in my city. As I said, the situation is delicate.”

Kaius couldn’t help but wince, the image of Galiead’s bloody face coming to mind.

Guilewind sighed, giving them a flat look. “What happened, and who do I need to pay off.”

“Hopefully no one,” Kaius replied, before he dove into a quick explanation of their encounter with Lord Kel and his men at the gate to the city, and their later clash with the head of the man’s retainers.

Guilewind listened silently, though a bottle of mana-rich amber liquor floated soundlessly out from his desk and into his hand.

The guildmaster took a deep drink.

“On the bloody day of the parade, no less,” he muttered. “I’m not sure if you are loved by the System and its Fates, or scorned by it. You should be fine. The manner in which you handled it was…passable. It wouldn’t have worked if you were anyone else, but Lord Frostbloom is notoriously pragmatic, and it would take him all of an hour to connect you to the rumours that are flowing out of Deadacre. More concerning is that he is a member of the Marquess of Traxling’s party — that man is a viper in human skin, one of the Duke’s sons, and he and his team are…capable.”

Guilewind paused, giving them a pointed look. “They’ve just returned from their first major delve as Silvers and managed quite the jump in levels beyond that. The Duke has also announced that not only have they gathered an unknown number of Honours over an unknown period of time, but that they finished all their Aspects before they advanced as well.”

Well, wasn’t that just bloody great.