Adventurers
Sellswords, Heroes, and Nuisances
Adventurers are exactly what they sound like-- fighters (or people with other combat-compatible skills) who travel around, exploring, doing quests, and seeking thrills, typically in small groups called teams, or 'parties'. Usually they work as hired swords, when small-scale quests like 'finding this villager's six runaway chickens' (or what most people would just call 'odd jobs' rather than 'quests') isn't quite enough to pay their room and board. The two main things that set adventurers apart from common mercenaries is this variety of questing, and the fact that they tend to have grander ideals of fame and glory. They can be found travelling and questing all over Gilden, but are most common in The Warlands, which is where the vast majority of suitable work for adventurers can be found.
The kinds of quests adventurers take usually involve some kind of monster hunting, or breaking into the lair of and slaying some evil mage in the area, or finding and retrieving some treasure or valuable artifact, and of course the usual escort/protection jobs and fetch quests.
Typical Adventuring Party Organization
Parties tend to be made up of four to seven adventurers on average. Four is considered the minimum for a succesful group, because at least one person is needed to fill each of four key roles: martial, caster, ranger, and rogue. 'Martial' refers to someone who is primarily a melee fighter of any sort, though there is range to different martial's fighting styles. This includes brawlers, duelists, and soldiers, from inelegant amateur combatants, to more polished, trained fighters. Most parties have more than one martial, and they're the most common class of adventurer by far. 'Caster' means any kind of spellcaster, usually either a mage or cleric. Both are extremely sought after for adventuring parties, both having different sets of highly valuable skills-- a skilled battle mage can almost guarantee the party the upper hand in most combat cases, and clerics are known mainly for healing magic, something indispensiple in this line of work. Ideally, most people would prefer to have both a cleric and mage on their team, but skilled clerics and mages are equally rare, so most parties end up with one designated spellcaster, if they're lucky.
'Ranger' means a ranged fighter, generally an archer. They're usually the party's scout, tracker, and survivalist, often having backgrounds as huntsmen. If the party doesn't have a cleric, first aid is likely to be their responsibility as well, though there should be no expectation for miracles. The 'rogue' of the party, also sometimes referred to as the 'thief', 'sneak', or 'assassin', is the one whose skills are geared towards stealth. Their job is mainly to pick locks and disarm traps, ambush and sneak attacks, and sometimes some light espionage. In the Warlands, where there are plenty of old ruins (some more plundered than others, some still unexplored) but few proper, full 'dungeons', most parties don't prioritize having a rogue as much as their melee fighters and casters. Up in the Monsterlands, though, where there are lots of dungeons, it's a different story, but Monsterlands-based adventurers are simultaneously far fewer, and far more elite.
There are some larger parties of ten or more people, but those aren't common. The average number of members for one adventuring group caps off at about seven because more than that many people becomes harder to manage, and there's a higher chance of interfighting and drama.
Career Adventurers
Lots of adventurers in the Warlands are amateurs with either big dreams of heroism or overinflated self-confidence, or both. Plenty still are fairly experienced, though, and some do accrue some reputation or renown. Adventurers don't exactly walk around with resumes detailing their qualifications or lists of reliable references to vouch for their competence, so the only way for any adventurer to prove their salt, if they don't have a word of mouth reputation already, is by just proving it.
There is an official adventurer's guild in the Warlands, commonly referred to just as 'the adventurer's guild', but its actual name is 'the Knights of Terith'. There aren't any real knights anywhere in the Warlands, but tales of noble knights from the northeast kingdom of Solril are very popular there and embody a fantastical ideal of what it means to be a noble warrior, so the word is used in the organization's name to evoke a sense of valour and honour. The guild has existed for less than a decade, and only been properly operational for just over five years, but it has been growing in members and in influence rapidly since. At this point, somewhere between a third and a half of Warlands adventurers are actually part of the guild, but as the guild's reputation for quality of skill, responsibility, and reliability spreads, adventurers who are certified members are starting to be viewed more favourably than those who aren't. Membership of the guild comes with not just reputation by association, but access to important resources and connections, too.
Adventuring can be expensive. It requires standard travelling equipment and supplies, rations and water, money for room and board if ever there is any, as well as gear-- armour, weapons, good quality boots (the first piece of advice any seasoned adventurer will give to a new one is to invest in a good pair of boots ASAP, because travelling and hiking and fighting in poor quality footwear will leave you worse off than a knife to the gut) as well as things like rope, lockpicking tools, spellcasting materials, medicine, and potions and elixirs. A large portion of guild dues go towards funding and supplying all those equipment and goods. Then, there's the networking aspect. Going through the guild is the best and easiest way to meet other adventurers to team up with. Sure, the Warlands has adventurers aplenty and it's not hard to meet any in general, but finding people that you are actually compatible with to form a sustainable, successful team is a lot harder.
Comments