[NR] Looking For A Quest - Chapter 761

Courtney continues to go on about the proper foundation for a town, right until the group reach the merchant’s guild. Though they don’t enter the front door, instead going around to the side. And it isn’t hard to find where they need to go.

A small line is gathered by a large garage door. And it is exactly a garage door as the trio had seen in documentaries and down in the farms around the arcology. Though instead of sheet metal, the panels seem to be crafted from wood. And next to the large garage door is a smaller door with a shelf and window. Which is what the line has formed on.

The group joins the line, but don’t have to wait long. There is a guild employee stationed at the window and accepting drop-off tickets and then directing the people efficiently. So soon enough, they’re up at the window and handing off the ticket given to them by Helina when they originally set out.

The bored man behind the window grabs the paper slip and sets it under what looks like a desk lamp. “Mmmkay, a delivery of essence. Bit early, but I can’t fault them for using a cheaper option. Head through the door and follow the green line on the floor. We want the materials dropped off on the green and blue striped pallets. Oh, and don’t try anything funny. There are cameras watching.

“Next!”

The group is practically pushed away from the window. Not that they want to linger and so they enter the building and follow the green line, drop off the essence, and leave. No reason to linger. The rewards were already deposited into their adventurers guild account. 

Though picking up the rewards could wait for later. They still needed to get a place to stay. Not something hard to do in such a busy place, but still important.

Once the rooms were acquired, though, they were free to go and collect their rewards. More pressing, however, was figuring out what they wanted to do tomorrow. Thankfully, both could be solved at the same location, and so they made their way over to the adventurers guild. Though not without Courtney grumbling about where it was located.

Seems that was also a mistake on the part of the town as well. The two organizations should be placed within a block or two of one another. Not just because the members tended to work closely together, adventurers acting as guards for the merchants. But also because they could become like petty tyrants over where they stand, and only the presence of the other restrains them. So yeah, the merchant district and adventurers district would become their own little fiefdoms in town. Not the end of the world, but certainly frustrating for whoever has to run the place.

Courtney points to a few places near the guild, “And you can already see it happening. That inn is directly owned by the guild. Those shops only take guild members. And the apartment block there is specifically for guild employees. Given a decade or so more and the adventurers guild will own every building within a decent distance of their main building.”

Rosha nods, “And it won’t be our problem. Let’s go in and collect our cash then look for a quest. They must have something for us to do.”

Jason, “Or at least be able to direct us to a nearby settlement that does need our help.”

The group joins the steady, if sparse, flow of people entering the guild. And once inside, they find themselves in familiar territory.

Rosha shakes her head as they get in line. “Still weird that they’ve gone and done every guild up to look like copies of one another.”

Courtney, “It’s a show of power. Irl, we can stamp out exact duplicates of stuff easy and so it doesn’t seem as special. In NeoRealm? They’re still handcrafting everything to some extent, and so making near identical copies of something instead represents a high degree of skill. Especially for something as large as a building.”

And with that, the group quiets down. Not the room though. Which is honestly part of why they stop talking. It is more than a bit rowdy and they can’t really hear anything. Though when they get to the receptionists desk, the noise falls away. And going by the fact they heard the lady call them as next in line, the guild must have been running a nice one-way sound bubble.

The human receptionist gets right to the point, asking for their purpose and id, pulls up their records, and cashes out their quest reward within moments. “Here’s the 90 gold each for transporting the goods.” And motions them to the side.

As in, the receptionist motions and the group is gently shifted to the side and out of the way for the next person in line. It is more than a little disconcerting. Though it does keep the line moving which they already benefited from, so they can’t complain. It just looks a lot less disturbing from the outside.

Anyway, they need to check on what is available, quest-wise, so they take a short walk over to the quest board and begin to read.

Right off the bat, over three-fourths of the quests are knocked off. What with them being escort and caravan guard quests. They’re perfectly fine quests, the group was just looking to stick around town for a while.

Once they’ve all had a chance to skim over everything and read the quests they personally found interesting, they back away and grab a table to go over what they’ve seen.

“Which is a lot of nothing.”, Jason sighs, “Most of the quests that are for sticking around the area are either temporary guard duty for various warehouses or manual labor. Not that we can’t manage those, we just don’t want to.”

Rosha nods, “I think we might need to ask about the nearby farming settlements. They’re the most likely locations to need our specific type of expertise.”

Courtney, “Except they are also the type of places that aren’t going to be able to afford us and given how the town is set up, their Lord isn’t going to be funding it either.”

They all sigh.