What’s in a Guild? [Chapter dated: 30 November 2011]
Having spent the better part of a day running around getting the paperwork done (and protecting them from random attacks in transit), Satziki finally got herself initiated into the Illuminated Bavarian Seers of Rhodesia.
There was one problem…
She couldn’t find anything else to do in the guild. All she had was a little guild badge which looked more like a bottle cap, and a one-page bulletin about the guild. (Half of it was taken up by an application form.) She visited the common grounds and watched other heroes cluster together in discussion, and felt terribly left out and alone.
Hoping that all her trouble was not done in vain, Satziki went to consult the guild physician, for the Illuminated Bavarian Seers of Rhodesia apparently had employed a local doctor even if they weren’t to be found anywhere in this town.
The address on the guild bulletin led her to an aged-looking stone building, which, despite being three stories tall, managed to look squat and dejected. She knocked on the door, and noted with a little frown the flakes of paint that stuck onto her knuckles.
“Hello?” Satziki said cautiously, and waited. A minute passed, and she started to wonder if she had come to the wrong place. But it couldn’t have been – she had stopped to ask almost half a dozen people on the way, after all. It really wasn’t very convenient to join a guild in a place you weren’t familiar with, she thought and sighed. She had started to nudge at the door with her toe when it suddenly swung open, and she nearly fell in. She was lucky that she hadn’t, because right inside was the hairiest beard she had ever seen.
“Wha’ d’you want?” said the beard: actually, a wrinkled little man with a tiny head and very large whiskers.
Satziki coughed, and hoped that she had not lost too much dignity. “I’m here to get myself fixed up, doctor—you’re the doctor here for the Illuminated Bavarian Seers of Rhodesia, aren’t you?”
“That I yam,” said the doctor. “C’min.”
Satziki was presently patched up, even though the doctor refused to give her any idea of where her other guildmates were or how frequently they came by. “Patient confid’tiality, y’understand,” he said very seriously. And that was all he would offer.
Finally, armed with a fresh supply of emergency bandages, she turned to go. “Two hun’red golds, missy,” said the doctor.
Satziki’s eyebrows shot up in surprise. “Aren’t you the guild doc—”
“Eh, newbs don’t git freebies, y’understand? Two hun’red.” There was rather sour breath coming out of that beard.
Later, realising that she didn’t have enough gold for a new pair of gauntlets, Satziki decided that she should just look for a new guild. Or maybe it was also her Omnipotent One’s unsubtle meddling with her diary. No, she must make her own decisions and believe in herself. As well as her Goddess, of course, but still.