We entered the Tier 0 guild, walking into a small reception hall. The outside had seemed relatively boring, and the inside wasn’t exactly making a strong case. The walls were made from the same type of sandstone, which wasn’t surprising, yet the fact that there were exactly zero decorations of any kind threw me for a bit of a loop. The reception area was little more than a big room, size-wise, with the only remarkable things being a small desk, a closed door leading out the back, and an elevator platform nestled into a corner. The desk was unmanned and completely empty aside from a supposedly magical bell, if the sign next to it was to be believed.
“We’re a somewhat small guild, so having the front desk be manned at all times isn’t viable,” Liam said upon noticing my curious look. “There’s also a hidden camera, so if somebody rings the bell that we don’t want to talk to, we can just ignore them.”
“Right…” I couldn’t help but chuckle a bit.
“Anyway, the guildmaster’s office is on the third floor,” Liam gestured toward the elevator. “Probably won’t be in there, though. I’ll drop you off and fetch him.”
“That won’t take too long, I hope?” We stepped on the platform, which started moving once Liam tapped on a hidden panel on the wall.
“Shouldn’t,” Liam waved away my concerns. “Probably lounging around on the second floor, that’s where most of our housing is.”
“That’s good, then,” I breathed a sigh of relief. I wasn’t too keen on getting locked into an empty office for hours when there was a whole new planet and society to explore. In the first place, while I was interested in the guild due to its nature, I wasn’t too sure about committing this early.
The elevator ride only took a few seconds, letting us out into a more interesting area of the house at last. After seeing the reception area, I had been afraid that the entire building was completely utilitarian in nature, but I was glad to be proven wrong. A red carpet lined the hallway, accompanied by an almost ludicrous amount of plant-life. Aside from potted plants, there were vines of all colors crawling around the place, small trees bearing fruit, and even some decorative shrubs. There was so much, in fact, that I had to wonder how we’d get through without damaging any of the plants.
I couldn’t help but stare as we started walking down the hall, and the plantlife parted ways to let us through.
“One of our members is quite gifted with plants,” Liam explained as we walked. “The guildmaster doesn’t mind and lets her run wild. And I like it too, to be honest. There’s not enough green in our hub.”
“Fascinating,” I said as I watched a tiny flower run after a fly and eat it.
“The plants take care of the pests as well, as you can see,” Liam said in a way that was a bit too amused, leading me to suspect that uninvited flies weren’t the only thing that got attacked.
We made our way down the hallway, ignoring the few branching offshoots we passed, until we got to an unassuming door. After getting no response from knocking, Liam waltzed in like he owned the place.
“As I thought,” Liam said with his hands on his hips. “He’s not here. Just sit down anywhere, I’ll go get him.”
“Alright?”
I switched places with Liam and took a look around, ultimately deciding to keep standing on my tentacles, lest I got mucus all over the furniture. In a stark contrast with the hallways, the office was more geared toward business, although a few decorative plants had managed to sneak their way in regardless. To the left of the door sat a spacious desk, but instead of a chair, a horizontal bar was suspended from the ceiling, making me wonder what kind of monster the guildmaster was. To the right, a conference table dominated the room, yet no chairs were arranged around it. Instead, a collection of differently sized and shaped chairs were shoved into a corner, probably for guests to pick and choose. To cap things off, a big window dominated the right wall, giving a nice view of the city.
I went over to the window to take it all in, taking advantage of being left alone for a while so I could take stock of my current situation. I had been fighting for so long, all with the singular goal of completing the main quest and leaving that damned planet. Yet, now that I had finally achieved it, I felt a bit aimless. Things had been hectic the moment I arrived, so I didn’t have too much time to think about it, but what was it that I actually wanted to do that I was here? I couldn’t help but stare at the moving mountain in the distance, wondering what my future would look like.
My ruminations were cut short as the door opened once again, admitting a big, red bird. It looked to be about two meters tall, and its plumage seemed to be on fire, a soft crackle emanating at all times. Yet, as I met its eyes, I felt like I was looking into the depths of space, like whole galaxies were contained behind those black orbs. I was so absorbed in the odd sensation that I barely registered the bird hopping over to the desk, and then up to the horizontal bar behind it.
“Gary, I presume?” The bird asked, a surprisingly normal, male voice coming from it. One that sounded like it was about to sell me a vacuum cleaner over the phone. “My name is Polly, and I’m the guildmaster of Tier 0. Why don’t you take a seat?”
“Oh… uhhh… I got, like, very poisonous mucus, wouldn’t want to ruin the furniture…” I said lamely, shaking off the fascination I felt while looking into Polly’s eyes, retroactively noting that the name was a tad ironic.
“Not a problem,” Polly replied, and one of the chairs dislodged itself from the pile, arriving in front of the desk. “That one’s made out of gillex, really easy to clean, and nothing gets absorbed.”
“Cool.. thanks,” I said, waddling my way over to the chair and trying to settle into it. It was a tad too small, so I switched to my smaller adult form to fit better.
I looked back at Polly, who was watching me curiously, and I couldn’t help but wonder whether he gave me a chair that was slightly too small to see how I’d deal with it. Not letting this distract me too much, I simply sat there, waiting for Polly to open the dialogue. He was currently busy looking me over, probably judging me, so I did the same. A cheeky use of the archive returned a result I hadn’t encountered so far. An error message.
“Careful there,” Polly somehow managed to smile with a beak. “Some high-tier folks can detect the use of skills like that. It’s widely considered rude to use them without asking.”
“Noted…” I shrank back like a kid getting caught with its hand in the cookie jar. “Still new to this whole… society thing.”
“Learning the dos and don’ts of a new society can be a bit much, that is true, something new travelers struggle with routinely.” Polly nodded sagely, seemingly taking no offense at my attempt. “That makes me wonder, though. How did you manage to reach tier eight without being recruited? Most new travelers get recruited before they arrive here.”
“I’ve only briefly met other travelers, and the circumstances were never really… conducive to a proper talk about the future,” I said carefully, keeping things vague on purpose. “I’ve learned some things about the travelers, but let’s just assume they were anecdotal at best, and baseless rumors at worst.”
“That is rare, but like with all things in the expanse, rare things happen quite often,” Polly seemed to sense my reluctance to open up and didn’t press further. “It’s a bit place, after all.”
“So I’ve heard.”
“Now then, let us skip the pleasantries and talk about why you’re actually here,” Polly seemed to recognize that I wanted to move on, revealing a very perceptive nature. Not surprising, considering the kind of eyes he was sporting. “Am I to believe that you have some interest in joining our guild?”
I looked at Polly for a while, thinking about how to phrase my answer without coming across as too rude. “That may be a bit of an overstatement…”
“Oh?” Polly adjusted his wings a bit, clearly taken off guard. “Then why did you come to us today?”
“It’s just… the moment I got here, I was swarmed by a whole bunch of people wanting to recruit me to their guilds. It was a rather… overwhelming first impression,” I said slowly, remembering the mass of people and monsters stumbling over each other to get to me first. “I figured that agreeing to talk with one of them was the easiest way to get the others to back off, and your guild name caught my eye.”
“Because you started out as a tier zero, yourself,” Polly nodded. “Liam told me about that.”
“Exactly,” I chuckled awkwardly. “I’m sorry, I’ve been here for less than half an hour, and I have no clue what is going on, really. I don’t even know if I should join a guild at this point, or if I’d be better off continuing solo and getting a better look at my options before committing to a guild.”
“I’m sure Liam has told you this already, but we’d be happy to have you,” Polly used a wing to gesture to the window behind me. “And so would every single other guild in the hub. So, even if you simply used us to get out of a dicey situation, please know that getting to talk to you first is already a big opportunity for us. And, you may not realize this yet, but this is a big opportunity for you as well.”
“I understand,” I playfully rolled my eyes. “This is where you tell me how great and fantastic your guild is in an attempt to recruit me.”
“It is,” Polly nodded with a smile. “But let me assure you, my sales pitch is not just empty bluster. Tier 0 actually is one of the top guilds on this hub, led by me, one of the Nineteen.”
I watched as Polly puffed up and struck a pose when he said that, confident in the coolness of his statement. I turned my eyes to look out of the window, seeing Awotwi moving around in the distance, and then back to Polly, whose first impression was that he was a big bird with exceptional eyes.
“You’ll have to forgive me, but I don’t know what that means,” I sighed, hoping that Polly was more willing to explain this to me than Liam was. “I’d love to learn, though.”
“Oh… yes… of course, you wouldn’t,” Polly deflated, obviously used to having more sway due to his status as one of the Nineteen. “That’s okay, though, I’d be happy to tell you! You’ll see that being in the guild of one brings a lot of benefits. So, it’s like this…”
Polly was interrupted by a soft chime, deflating again as his enthusiasm petered out. Along with the chime, a projection of a screen appeared above his desk. I couldn’t see what it said, shielded from my curious eyes as it was, but he was clearly annoyed.
“Didn’t I tell you that I wasn’t to be disturbed? This better be important,” Polly spoke while looking at the screen.
“Sorry, but this IS important,” another male voice answered. “A bunch of Remnants guys just showed up in the lobby, and they’re very adamant about getting to sit in on your meeting.”
“Did you tell them to fuck off and wait their turn?” Polly asked, shooting me an apologetic smile. With his beak. Then again, I had several tentacles and mouths, so who was I to judge if a supposedly rigid beak didn’t conform to my preconceived norms. “There are rules in place for things like this.”
“Of course I did!” The voice answered, offended. “Several times, in fact. But then they started throwing legal mambo-jumbo at me until I couldn’t be sure they weren’t casting a curse on me, at which point I decided that I was getting too old for this shit, and escalated to you. They’re your problem now.”
“They can posture all they want. In the end, it is up to Gary whether he wants to see them or not. This has a very easy solution,” Polly looked back at me with the biggest, friendliest smile he could muster. “Gary, there are some other people who would like to see you about a recruitment offer. Do not get intimidated, though; they have to wait their turn like everybody else. All you have to say is that you’d like to meet with them later, or not at all, and they will have to leave and wait.”
“Actually…” I saw Polly deflate for the third time in as many minutes, but this felt like an opportunity for me. I was still not fully trusting Polly to tell me the truth about everything without presenting his own guild as the greatest thing since sliced bread. If I could get a third party to sit in, I should be able to play them off of each other and get a clearer picture.
“Why don’t you invite them up? I’d love to hear what they have to say.”