The Adventurers Guild of Krakonia - AGK - The Hook

The Adventurer's Guild of Krakonia, AGK for short, is one of the guilds created after the founding of The Kingdom of Krakonia as part of the new Guild System designed to regulate and enhance every socio-political aspect of the kingdom. The AGK focuses on enhancing the lives of the kingdom's true lifeblood: the brave adventurers willing to travel the unknown reaches of Requerm to bring back riches and information to the nation. As such, this is, in fact, the most relevant guild in the campaign, as every PC is required to join this guild as part of their backstory.

The AGK HQ is located inside The Hook, a fancy tavern inside The Heart of the Kraken (Krakonia Castle designed to cater to adventurers' greatest desires: food, drink, dance, music, and rumormongering. Garth Splicer is the man to see for most of these attractions, as he is the Head Bartender, holding an honorary position in the AGK despite not actually being involved in AGK-specific work. The tavern itself has a long history predating the founding of the kingdom, and is delicately maintained by the king's personal staff in order to preserve this history, a task that can be difficult at times due to a bunch of drunk, unpredictable adventurers always making trouble inside the facility. On top of that, The Behest Board is found at the center of the tavern, managed by a team of behest managers and led by Cassandra Greenpath , the Behest Master. This is where adventurers go to actually do their work, registering for behests, forming adventuring parties, and turning in their completed work for rewards. All paperwork involving the AGK is conducted at this location as well, including obtaining provisional licenses, upgrading those provisional licenses to full licenses, and filling out surveys about behests. Needless to say, patrons are not allowed to bring their open mugs of ale over to the Behest Board, lest they incur the wrath of an overworked Cassandra Greenpath.

While Krakonia Castle is considered the Heart of the Kraken, and by extension, the entire city, The Hook is widely considered the heart of the castle itself, as well as the heart of the entire kingdom. There would be no Krakonia City without The Hook, and without Krakonia City, there would be no Kingdom of Krakonia, so to say that The Hook is important to the kingdom would be an understatement. The Hook is essentially a national landmark, one that the entire kingdom protects, should true harm ever befall it.

In ages past, according to historians, The Hook was originally a tavern for adventurers in The First Civilization before the entire civilization up and disappeared one day. Some time after The Dawn , the The Harbingers of the Rising Dawn discovered the ruins of this ancient tavern and, inspired by its history, decided to restore it to its former glory in an attempt to bring like-minded adventurers together to discover the mysteries of The Dawn and The First Civilization. This effort eventually brought refugees from the conflicts ravaging Requerm in every direction, and over time, resulted in the construction of Silver Gull Castle, and eventually Krakonia City, to accommodate for all the newfound traffic. During all of this time, The Hook continued to serve its purpose as a beacon for adventurers, it simply extended its reach so that normal civilians could request help from adventurers for personal quests that had nothing to do with The Dawn.

These requests eventually became so frequent that the Harbingers had no choice but to abandon their main objective and form a military to fight back against the waves of criminals, warmongers, and Great Beasts threatening their peaceful city. This became the beginning of The Unification Wars , which would lead to the founding of the Kingdom of Krakonia. After the Kingdom was founded, those in charge deemed it necessary to contruct various societal projects to represent the many different aspects of the kingdom's culture, economy, and military. As part of these efforts, the AGK was founded, and Cassandra Greenpath put in charge of managing the entire adventurer system, a significantly more advanced system than necessary for something that essentially boils down to the kingdom hiring mercenaries to do mercenary things. It is believed that the AGK is as highly funded as it is due to the founders of the kingdom all being adventurers themselves back in the day, so they simply want to give back to the community that they once thrived in. Others believe that this is a means for the kingdom to regulate aspects of society that are typically harder to control, since mercenaries are typically freelancers with the freedom to act however they wish within the confines of everyday law.

Regardless of the intentions behind the creation of the AGK, one cannot deny the benefits attached to being an official member. Licensed adventurers are the first to receive access to any behest on the Behest Board, giving them some fairly lucrative work opportunities funded by the kingdom's treasury itself. This is considered the main benefit, since without it, adventurers would need to work significantly harder to find good, steady work on their own. This is far from the only benefit, however.

When licensed adventurers are at The Hook, they receive one free meal every day, paid for by the guild. In addition to this, when filling out paperwork pertaining to the particulars of any behest, the guild offers free rations based on the estimated length of the trip. This requires a party of adventurers to plan ahead of time, taking into account who their slowest party members are, if they intend on using vehicles, horses, and/or teleportation circles, etc. Being a licensed adventurer also gives adventurers a 10% discount on basic adventurer gear (mundane, non-magical items, such as rope, tents, backpacks, flagons, soap, etc) at shops within Krakonia City (Ask the GM if you do not know if the discount applies). Licensed adventurers are also given access to all teleportation circles inside Krakonia City for free (circles leading outside of the city are not included). The AGK also has a team of mentors at the ready, willing to assist licensed adventurers when training in the city. This includes retraining, although the monetary cost of retraining must still come out of the adventurer's pocket. The AGK is also meant to act as a mediator in the event that a client and an adventurer do not agree on terms, typically involving payment due. Most behests that go through the AGK in the first place have been vetted and the price agreed upon before the adventurer ever gets involved, but this is far from a perfect system, especially if an adventurer does extra work on the side.

In addition to all of this, each and every single licensed adventurer can apply to receive a dormitory-style room, located in the AGK, free of charge. Each dorm room holds up to two adventurers and can hold any amount of gear, equipment, clothes, etc (The space is not technically unlimited, but for the purposes of keeping mechanics simple, we're using video game logic here). For each adventurer in the dorm room, a single bunk bed is provided, with the bed above a desk for adventurers to complete their paperwork in peace. In addition, a chest is located by the edge of each bed for storage, as well as a single weapon rack, armor rack, and dresser. The size of the room, as well as some of the furniture, depends on the race of the adventurer. A larger race, such as an Orc , is going to have larger furniture than a Lalafell , and therefore a larger room. Adventurers can request a fellow adventurer to share the room with, or the AGK can assign one themselves if the applicant is applying by themselves. This rarely becomes an issue, since adventurers rarely ever even see their assigned roommates, since they're always out exploring Requerm at different times anyway. It's fairly common for an adventurer to come back to the city only to find some random new guy has moved into their dorm after the last one was reported dead a week earlier. Circumstances such as this are the main reason why adventurers are encouraged to label their belongings and keep them separated from their roommates' belongings, so AGK officials can clear out the half of the room that needs to be cleared out without requiring the input of the remaining, alive adventurer.

All of these benefits only come to fully licensed adventurers, not provisional adventurers. In order to officially join the guild, adventurers must first apply for the position, citing previous work, references, and their particular skills. This does not need to be a lengthy list, it simply needs to show that the adventurer will not be a complete liability to the guild. Examples of past work can be as simple as graduating from a school with an emphasis on adventurer-related skillsets, or doing some basic freelance work in a field related to the adventurer's skillset, such as being a bodyguard for a citizen, a scribe for a wizard, a soldier for the military, a nurse for a hospital, or anything else that can reasonably be useful to a party of adventurers out in the field. For the purposes of the campaign, player characters have already submitted these applications, and have gotten them approved. It is up to the player to determine what exactly qualified them for this position in their backstory.

Once an adventurer's application is accepted, they become a provisional adventurer. As a provisional adventurer, the only benefit they gain access to is the guild's Behest Board, and even then, they cannot actually accept any of the behests on the Behest Board until joining a party with at least one fully licensed adventurer. After completing each behest, the fully-licensed adventurer must fill out a survey explaining what exactly the provisional adventurer did to assist in the behest. While there is no penalty for the licensed adventurer to give a false report, since this is all based on opinion, the adventurers that fill out these surveys tend to be honest anyway since they don't want some greenhorn ruining a future party's efforts down the line, especially in a life or death situation. The AGK then reviews the survey and either approves or disapproves it. A disapproved survey has no negative ramifications, but does not progress a provisional license either. An approved survey counts as progress towards a full license. Once a provisional adventurer receives three approved surveys from different behests, they became an officially licensed adventurer, at which point they receive all of the benefits mentioned above.

Once a full member of the AGK, an adventurer remains a full member indefinitely, unless one of the following occurs: The adventurer does not complete any official behests for one year, or the adventurer does not pay a fee to remain in the guild. Adventurers can choose to leave the AGK at any time if they no longer wish to pay the fee or do any behests, and they are allowed to rejoin again at a later time by paying the fee, skipping the process of being a provisional adventurer. The fee to remain in the AGK without doing any work for a year is 1,000gp. Since adventurers tend to get paid pretty lucratively for their work, it's not uncommon for them to simply pay the 1,000gp fee for several years on the off-chance that a good behest they actually want to do crops up. Adventurers can also petition the guild ahead of time if they think they won't be able to complete any behests in less than a year, such as if they plan on exploring some region that's far, far away from the city.

In addition to the status of being a licensed adventurer, there is also a ranking system that is used to describe adventurers that are trusted to complete more dire, dangerous behests. Most behests can be done by anyone, but if the AGK determines that a behest will likely be quite dangerous, such as taking down a Great Beast that the AGK knows to be significantly powerful, they may limit the availability of the behest to solely adventurers that have reached a certain rank within the guild. In order to rank up as an adventurer, detailed descriptions must be turned in after every quest pertaining to how exactly a behest was completed, at which point the AGK will review the descriptions and determine if any particular adventurer is qualified to rank up. Upon a successful review, a Behest Manager will give the adventurer looking to rank up a choice of special "Rank Up Behests" that they must complete with an official AGK proctor in the party to observe them on the quest. Completion of this behest, with the adventurer in question contributing enough to satisfy the proctor, will earn the adventurer the new rank. Generally speaking, as long as one adventurer in the party is of the required rank, anyone else in the party is allowed to participate in the behest, but limits may be made depending on the severity of the behest. These ranks can be used as titles, similar to the ranking system within The Kraken's Reach, with the difference being more cultural than anything else. In the Kraken's Reach, your title is your identity, and you are generally addressed as such at all times while on the job. Adventurer titles, on the other hand, are more casually used, with Guild officials typically being the only people who actually address adventurers as such. Other uses of the titles are generally reserved for boasting rights or conversational quirks. Whenever an adventurer achieves a new rank, they obtain a new badge associated with it. The badge depicts an adventurer walking down a path, with the number of paths on the badge being equal to the numerical rank of the adventurer.

The official ranking system, with its titles, is as follows (The minimum Challenge Rating (CR) is provided to give a metagame understanding of the danger assessment that the AGK uses when assigning ranks to a behest. These numbers are based on in-game knowledge that the NPCs at the AGK have on hand, and can very easily vary out in the field):

Newcomer (Provisional Adventurer) (Rank 0): "Newcomer" is the official title given to provisional adventurers. Provisional adventurers are outlined above in more detail.
Follower (Rank 1) [CR1+]: Followers are the bulk of the Guild, and most kingdom behests are available to them, despite them being the lowest true rank. In order to become a Follower, a Newcomer must complete a minimum of three rank 1 behests under the guidance of a rank 1 or higher guild member, who then must report the Newcomer's potential in an official report for each behest completed.
Wanderer (Rank 2) [CR4+]: Wanderers are the first step of guild members interested in gaining access to more dangerous, but more rewarding work. Wanderers are the lowest rank of adventurers that are legally allowed to take on behests pertaining to the hunting of Great Beasts, which is the easiest metric for determining how dangerous the behests available to an adventurer are. The stronger the Great Beast, the higher the required rank. In order to become a Wanderer, a Newcomer must complete at least six additional rank 1 behests (excluding the ones completed to become Newcomers in the first place), and then complete an assigned Rank Up Behest.
Explorer (Rank 3) [CR8+]: Explorers are considered the first tier of adventurers that are experienced enough to handle serious problems, and earn a certain level of prestige and admiration from commonfolk. In order to become an Explorer, a Wanderer must complete at least nine additional behests, with at least six of them being Rank 2, and then complete an assigned Rank Up Behest.
Trailblazer (Rank 4) [CR12+]: Trailblazers are expert adventurers that the Guild can rely on to tackle extremely dangerous and/or delicate situations as needed. In order to become a Trailblazer, an Explorer must complete at least nine additional behests, with at least seven of them being at least Rank 2, and at least five of them being Rank 3, then complete an assigned Rank Up Behest.
Leader (Rank 5) [CR16+]: Leaders are adventurers that are skilled enough to take on just about any behest thrown their way. Leaders realistically never need to work, having been paid more than enough to live on for the rest of their life, but these types of individuals rarely reach this level of prestige without a passion for both adventure and danger. In order to become a Leader, a Trailblazer must complete at least nine additional behests, with all of them being at least Rank 2, seven of them being at least Rank 3, and five of them being at least Rank 4, then complete an assigned Rank Up Behest.
Exemplar (Rank 6) [CR19+]: The highest rank of adventurer, Exemplars are the paragons of the Guild meant to be beacons of hope and change for those working under them, as well as citizens looking for heroes to worship. Those wishing to reach the legendary heights of the original Harbingers of the Rising Dawn all have their sights set on this rank, but due to the relatively recent creation of the AGK, none have been able to actually reach it yet, in part due to the difficulty, but more in part due to the lack of challenging enough behests available close to the kingdom's borders. In order to become an Exemplar, a Leader must complete at least six additional behests, all of which must be Rank 5, then complete an assigned Rank Up Behest.

Below is a list of characters associated with the AGK:

AGK Staff:

Cassandra Greenpath - The Behest Master of the AGK, which is another way of saying the leader.
Garth Splicer - Head Bartender of The Hook and honorary member of the AGK.
Gillian Williamson - Behest Manager of the AGK.

Wanderers (Rank 2):

Berry the Rock Smasher - A big human that smashes his opponents with giant rocks.
Hunter - A fully armored man of few words who specializes in dealing massive damage with his hammer.
Kormental Ethsudol - A tiefling that uses magic to enhance his swordplay.
Sister Miraya - A paladin from The Order of the Burning Heart that specializes in using full plate armor and a longsword to get up close and personal, tanking damage and supporting her allies with magic.

Followers (Rank 1):

Ash of the Crooked Branch - A pterasit psychic that specializes in manipulating animals both magically and charismatically.
Joe Shmoe - A human that specializes in sword and shield melee combat.

Newcomers (Rank 0):

Artemis, "The Hexed" - An aasimar fighter that uses finesse to catch melee opponents off-guard.
Bofilandr Grustlebarge - A roegadyn warlord that specializes in hand-to-hand combat.
Braxford Hopeheart - A pyrgona magus that fights in melee combat and blasts enemies with magic.
Drewan - A catfolk bard with a focus on scholarly pursuits and exploration.
Juniper of the Crooked Branch - A pterasit slayer that studies and hunts her targets from afar.
Khaldun - A shabti ranger with a special talent for exploration.
Ko R'vara - An Au Ra shifter that specializes in draconic aspects.
Nadé R'vara - An Au Ra hunter that specializes in close-quarters combat with her tiger, Syla.
Neoma - A human? bard with a focus on enchantment magic.
Nyveria R'vara - An Au Ra oracle with an emphasis on the healing arts, both mundane and magical.
Obsidian Flint - A dwarf cleric with a love and worship of crafting.
Sister Lucia - An aasimar harbinger that brings destruction and chaos to the battlefield.
Wheezer McGeezer - An old gnome illusionist.