Delver's Guild
For the last five years, the Delver’s Guild has grown in influence, becoming both popular to join and wealthy. The Delver’s Guild offers its members information about job opportunities and events pertaining to the exploration of regions below Ptolus. The guild also maintains the city’s most extensive collection of maps of the underground realm and an impressive library for research.
Members receive passwords that allow them to access secret chambers within the underground regions. These secret chambers, called waystations, are stocked with food and simple supplies. High-ranking members gain retrieval insurance, which guarantees that, if they should die while exploring, guild members will retrieve their bodies and have them raised if possible (retrieval and raising paid for out of a special guild account funded by the insured).
The guild’s membership hovers around eight hundred. In addition, there are said to exist at least four hundred delvers not affiliated with the guild. At any given time, about one-fifth of this total (about two hundred fifty people) is exploring the Dungeon.
It is estimated that for every ten delvers who go down each week, one does not come back. About one hundred new adventurers come to Ptolus and some twenty-five are raised from the dead every week. Since the Delver’s Guild began keeping records three years ago, approximately eight thousand adventures died permanently while exploring the Dungeon. Another two hundred thirty have permanently retired, either in the city or elsewhere.
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Despite the fact that the Delver’s Guild has existed for just over three years, it is already one of the most powerful and prominent guilds in the city. It offers its members information about job opportunities and events pertaining to the exploration of regions below Ptolus, which many call the Dungeon. The Delver’s Guild also maintains the city’s most extensive collection of maps of the underground areas and an impressive library for research. Most active adventurers in the city belong to the Delver’s Guild, at least for the discount at Ebbert’s Outfitters and access to the maps and library.
Members not only have access to this information, they also receive passwords that allow them into secret chambers within the underground regions. These secret chambers, called waystations, are stocked with food and simple supplies. High-ranking members gain retrieval insurance, which guarantees them that, if they should die while exploring, guild members will retrieve their bodies and have them raised if at all possible (retrieval and raising paid for out of a special guild account funded by the insured).
The guild’s membership hovers around eight hundred. There are said to be at least four hundred delvers not affiliated with the guild. At any given time, about one-fifth of this number is exploring the Dungeon (about two hundred fifty). The Guildmaster Delver, Sorum Dandubal (male human expert4/fighter4), is quickly becoming one of the most powerful and influential people on the City Council.
Membership Levels
There are four levels of Delver’s Guild membership.
- 1. Associate Guildsman. Open to anyone. Dues: 10 gp per year (payable upon admission). Benefits: Access to guild information, 10 percent discount at Ebbert’s Outfitters.
- 2. Guildsman. Open to anyone. Dues: 20 gp per year (payable upon admission). Benefits: As associate, plus access to guild library, maproom, and waystations.
- 3. Master Delver. Open to guildsmen after at least one year’s membership. Dues: 500 gp per year. Benefits: As guildsman, plus voting privileges and retrieval insurance.
- 4. Grand Master. Open to master delvers with at least three year’s membership. Title held by all founding members (18 total). Dues: 5,000 gp per year. Benefits: As master delver, plus claim staking.
Guild Information: The Delver’s Guild compiles reports of what their membership encounters below the city in terms of dangers and treasures. The guild keeps track of monsters, inhabitants, traps, hazards, and other factors of note. It then rates each area on a scale of 1 to 20 based on difficulty and reward—typically, the higher the difficulty, the higher the reward.
Guild Library and Maproom: The Delver’s Guild Library and Maproom is located in Oldtown, despite the fact that the main headquarters of the Guild is located just off the Undercity Market, below Midtown. The Guild librarian is a kindly fiftyish man named Shad Livbovic (male human expert8). Guild maps are not free. Access to the library and maproom costs 1 gp, and copying a map costs between 50 to 200 gp, depending on the map. Guild maps always show waystations, if any.
Guild Waystations: Each waystation contains 3d6 days’ worth of iron rations and water, 1d3–1 doses of antitoxin, 3d6 torches, flint and steel, a healer’s kit, 1d2–1 potions of cure light wounds, 1d6 sacks, 1d4 daggers, 50 feet of rope, and some miscellaneous simple tools. About 10 percent of the time, however, a waystation is completely empty. Most waystations are protected in areas sealed with voice-activated magical locks. All waystation locks open to a single password communicated to the entire membership of guildsman rank and above. The passwords change weekly. Members using a waystation’s supplies are expected to return and restock them, but in reality this only happens about 25 percent of the time. The rest of the time, if possible, the guild pays for teams to restock waystations.
Retrieval Insurance: If a master delver dies while exploring the Dungeon, the Delver’s Guild guarantees that it will attempt divinations to find him, and—if successful—send someone down to recover the body so it can be raised. The master delver must put aside sufficient money in a special fund (held in trust by the guild) to pay for the spells and to recompense those who go down and retrieve the body. Typically, this amount would be at least 6,730 gp (280 gp for a divination spell, 5,450 gp for raise dead, and 1,000 gp to pay a retrieval team), but to play it safe, many master delvers deposit 11,650 gp (1,200 gp for discern location, 5,450 gp for raise dead, 5,000 gp to pay an extremely competent retrieval team, including two teleport spells), or still more for a resurrection or true resurrection. Some adventurers make their living doing nothing but working as a part of a retrieval team.
Voting Privileges: The Guild operates as a democracy of a sort, with all master delvers getting a vote regarding guild actions and the election of the Guildmaster Delver, who represents them on the City Council and leads the guild for a two-year renewable term. Grand master votes count as five votes.
Claim Staking: Grand master delvers are allowed to stake a claim on a certain area of the Dungeon, either to ensure that no one else besides them can explore it, or to use it as a base of operations or residence. The claim must be approved by a majority of the existing grand masters. When a claim is posted, no guild members may enter the claimed territory without permission, or they immediately lose their membership and are fined 1,000 gp. In fact, the guild pays up to five associate guildsmen to serve as guards (such a job usually pays 20 gp per month) if the grand master with the claim wishes it (and, of course, he can hire more on his own).