Imperial Guild of Adventurers

The Imperial Guild of Adventurers is an attempt to extend the imperial control over something that's on the most basic level uncontrollable. As a result its entire existence is marred with compromises and things that are simply left alone over nobody knowing how to tackle them.
The Guild was established to somehow incorporate the 'private' sector in the general strategy of dealing with the Lost Lands. It has worked well - too well, in fact. The numbers of the Guild continued to balloon with speed proportional to the speed with which the entire society grew stagnant. The adventurehood has at some point become the best - and in fact pretty much the only - way for the poor commoners (or even slaves) to become part of the higher society.
But the Lost Lands are merciless, deadly and utterly unpredictable. As a result, the mortality rate is high, despite the Guild's attempts to at least somehow regulate the business and stop people from trying to do things that they aren't ready for. What's more, trying to maintain overwatch over millions of ambitious - and armed - people who routinely spend weeks outside of the jurisdiction of the laws of physics is simply impossible, resulting - among other things - with the way the adventurers are treated by the society today.
Despite all of that, the Guild of Adventures continues to operate, providing necessary manpower (and cannonfodder) to the Grand Empire of Karadia, resources for the Imperial Ministry of Production, and a meager feeling of safety to the people in the borderlands.

Structure

The Guild of Adventurers is a bit similar to the Imperial Census in that it lacks clearly defined ranks and instead has just a handful of roles (that you can get promoted through). Unlike the Census, however, it is extremely widespread and decentralized, with every town and city having at least a single facility. They typically are created by the local governments, often on the grounds belonging to temples or shrines of Audacia.
Each such local bureau is tasked with maintaining the list of active adventurers in the area, being the middle-man when it comes to their commissions (that are also graded when it comes to estimated difficulty level), keeping track of the events (and potential threats) in the nearby Lost Lands, and maintain the overwatch over the behaviour of the adventurers. The last bit tends to be the most troublesome one - it's hard to know exactly what happens in the Lost Lands, meaning that it's quite easy for an adventurers to murder, rape or rob their teammate and simply have them disappear forever in the Lost Lands together with all the evidence.
There are also regional headquarters in every diocesis and the general headquarters in Falonia, who are supposed to maintain backups of absolutely everything, cross-reference events to get a picture of the greater-scale changes in the Lost Lands, and so on.

History

First and Second Empire

Adventurers existed for as long as the Empire did, whether the name itself was used to describe them or not. The concept of trying to earn yourself a better life by taking up a sword and facing the dangers out there is a traditional thing in Karadia. Sure, the standard demographic for them and the threats they waged has greatly changed in the meantime, but the basics stayed the same. And so did the deity that looked over them, Audacia, the Exarch of Bravery.
During the First Era it was done mostly by the wealthy that wanted to gain some fame and recognition - the supernatural wasn't as pronounced throughout Karadia back then, making the number much smaller and the entire profession being closer to an overglorified hunting. It was still a temporary vocation that included both armed people and the supernatural.
During the Second Era the threats has mostly stopped being threats. Those that remained threats did so by being so bad that it was the best idea to simply leave them alone and hope that they wouldn't try anything funny. Still, there were adventurers, even if they were mostly doing their work as public stunts (Audacia is technically also a deity of performers who are doing dangerous performance).

Third Empire

The Imperial Guild of Adventurers was established early during the Third Era, when it become apparent just how dangerous the Lost Lands were - neither the vassal states nor the Empire itself was ready to risk their soldiers (that they had to pay to equip and train) en masse in day-to-day operations with the Lost Lands. It was something as deadly that only greed and ambition could truly motivate someone to deal with that.
People began to sneak into the Lost Lands to gather useful resources almost right from the start of their existence. Rather than trying to fight against that, the Empire has simply decided to legalize and regulate the issue to the best of its ability. That was the birth of the Imperial Guild of Adventurers in its modern form, although the modern number of registered adventurers has certainly went way past the initial estimations.

Military

Combat Units

Mortals

Black-Badges - Black Badges are the first of three primary categories of the adventurers registered in the Guild (the name, naturally, comes from the colour of their dog-tag). They are, in short, amateurs. As badge-bearers they have a right to legally enter the Lost Lands, but most of them will either not do that (and instead hunt the creatures occasionally popping up in the normal lands) or will merely skim through the outskirts.
They are scavengers, sometimes lacking significant combat skills. Often they end up being used as porters by the more competent crews, but in most cases they will end up doing the ugly and mundane works - it isn't unheard of them to end up as little better than labour slaves in some more permanent outposts of the adventurers in the Lost Lands. As one can imagine, they are the least respected group of already barely respected profession.
The best outcome they can hope for is picking enough practical skills to get promoted (rare), be extremely lucky and find some treasure large enough to retire (very rare) or gain enough Lost Lands' smarts to end as watchmen in some forgotten villages at the border.
White-Badges - White-Badges are the regular, competent and actually useful adventurers. They hail from many sources. Some are trained to be adventurers in the dedicated training schools that imbue orphans, slaves and some volunteers with the necessary (if basic) skills, others hail from various imperial organizations. They can be martial artists, magicians or priests of Audacia (they consider it their calling).
The White-Badges are numerous and do the bulk of the Guild's job. The best of them get higher by the Grand Empire to work directly for it - as permanent imperial auxilliaries, doing the reconaissance work. Unfortunately, the competence and achievements aren't mutually exclusive with bad character, resulting in many of those folks having troublesome hobbies (or sources of money).
Many of them manages to either switch to another, much safer and profitable forms of slavery (for the contract slaves), or retire with enough money to open some business or buy a few pieces of land. Sometimes they even strike big and retire with much better living arrangements.
Gold-Badges - The irregularities. Powerful members of other imperial organizations, martial school elders, sometimes even a newly picked Chosen One - the reasoning for their abandonment of prior life or career is EXTREMELY varied. They are incredibly powerful - if scarce - sometimes veering into the field of being one man-armies. They are the people that prosecute the offensive-side of the eternal war between the Grand Empire and the forces dwelling in the Lost Lands.
Gold-Badges are the people you call-in when you need to face an archdaemon - or even a demigod, although even they'll have to be numerous. Some of them gather enough fame with their exploits that they end up retiring by amassing an army of adventurers under their banner and - with some imperial support on the fields of logistics and equipment - march deep into the Lost Lands and attempt to carve a domain on their own. Most of such realms collapse within a decade, some conquerors however are so successful that their domains end up joining the empire as a new province (although praesidial one in most cases).
Even 'normal' gold-badges - if they survive until retirement - will typically end up as members of some local elites, sometimes starting a completely new noble houses. Unlike the other adventurers they also possess quite a large degree of respect - while they are still peregrini, it's rare for someone to actually look down on them when in front of those living killing machines.

Type: Faction.
Allegiance: Grand Empire of Karadia
Imperial Council: Yes.
Organization Ranks:
N/A

Combat Strength
Black Badges: Approx. 5 000 000.
White Badges: Approx. 4 000 000.
Gold Badges: Approx. 35 000.