The guildhall hasn't changed; it's even the same half-orc manning it: Aldamen. She has her nose buried in a book as Roger approaches.

  The halfling gets right to it, “Hello, I need to register the destruction and re-seeding of a dungeon.”

  The green-skinned woman with yellow eyes looks up from her book, “Sure.” She sets the book down and gets up, adding, “Follow me.”

  She leads our party leader through a door in the back to the guild records. I don't follow, but I do listen.

  “So where was this?”

  “We wrote it down. Here….”

  “I'm not familiar with this one, let me check….” I hear papers rustling for a bit, “Huh. It's not listed… hmm… where are these coordinates…” More papers, “... okay, my maps don't go that far out. Who in their right minds would build that far away from support?”

  “It's was apparently the brain child of two people: Lord Srid Fmeflow and his advisor Chard Wuodrazed. They were building a….”

  The guildmaster does not let him finish, “Woudrazed? Are you sure?”

  “It's the name he was using. A gnome, cast some very high end spells, was doing some rather bad things. Why do you….”

  “He's supposed to be dead.” She pauses, “And you are WAY too low ranked to be able to fight that demon in mortal flesh at all. How'd you survive?”

  “That's… why we killed the dungeon. One of our number escaped getting mind-whammied, ran away as fast as he could, and broke the dungeon to free the rest of us. After that… well, what's a wizard without a dungeon?”

  “Angry… also cranky… and easy prey.” She considers, “Please tell me you killed him.”

  “Yes, but…”

  “Please don't say what I think you're going to say.”

  “Sorry. We have it on good authority that he'd pnned for that, and it didn't stick.”

  “Do I want to know whose?”

  “Probably not, no.”

  “Hmm. Fair enough then.” The half-orc sighs, “Well… I'll message the Council about the need for another Guildhouse. There's usually someone who wants to retire… how's the associated town faring?”

  “Ah…” the halfling pauses, “That's complicated. There's about sixty-ish permanent residents, about thirty thousand temporary workers building a castle and curtain wall for the town, and several thousand supporting priestesses keeping everyone fed during construction.”

  Which reminds me… I need to repce them soon. With fourth level spells I can get stronger summons, which means more magic power, better skills, and such. I suppose there's no rush, though… they're going to get the job done.

  “They're feeding everyone off the dungeon?”

  “We've been cleaning it every week, the town doesn't have the big buildup of minor spells and items that make the heavy drain on rger towns, and there's a rapidly growing storehouse of mundane dry rations in case we need to reset the dungeon again. It's fine.”

  “All right… so they'll need to contact Lord Srid Fmeflow, then?”

  “He died with Woudrazed. There's a town council, headed by Richard Swiftbde, that handles the permanent residents.”

  “The ‘permanent residents’...who manages the workers?”

  “One of my team. We bought the nd to give the council some cash, brought in the workers, and started building the castle and curtain wall.”

  There's a pause, “What's your team's rating, again?”

  “We might be due for re-evaluation. We were rated at copper.”

  “Hmm… all right; I'll need to test everyone.” I hear some scribbling, seems the guildmaster is writing something down. “Okay, we can start with you; you're listed as the trapper, so…” I watch as they walk back into the main room, “...I'll have you hit the lock sets…” and off to the fighting room.

  After about ten minutes of listening to metal lightly scrape metal, they come back out, Aldamen taking some notes in a book, “all right… who's next?”

  Bearcw heads in with the guildmaster… I hear some smashing and cracking rock for a while, then the two half-orcs come back out, again with the guildmaster writing things down.

  Wesley's next, I listen as he casts spells… he's apparently capping off at 2nd circle spells. Huh. Odd… I'm up to third before the trick that's getting me fourths a little early. Why isn't he….

  “Eldritch abomination summoner, you're up!” The guildmaster derails my train of thought.

  “Coming….” I follow her, bringing Last Shadow with me, dismissing the spell keeping her down to the size of a big dog as I go. The combat hall is much as I remember it; a rack of rattan weapons off to the side.

  “Okay…” she begins, “...I'd rather not have another explosion in here….”

  “Understandable,” I nod.

  “So I'd like to focus on your Wildshape…” she pauses, “Can you, first off?”

  Shapechange can do anything Wild Shape can do, so close enough, “Yes, easily. What would you like?”

  “Give me the smallest animal you can manage, please.”

  Hmm… I don't want to seem too strong…. I shift into an Owl.

  The guildmaster nods, “Good… and can you still cast like that?”

  I hoot and idly cast Summon Monster IV, getting a Celestial Lion.

  At the brief frown on her face, I realize my mistake, “Wait… you're didn't cast that… and Druids don't do Celestial animals…” I watch her grab a gold holy symbol (The Blessed Mother version), cast Glimpse of Truth, and look around.

  The guildmaster's frown deepens, “Okay, wherever you're hiding, cheating on the tests just gets people killed.”

  Hmm… Glimpse of Truth just sts six seconds….but nah, that's the easy way out. I shift back to my normal form, “You caught me… I'm not actually a Druid,” I begin, “I'm skilled at hiding my casting, so you can't easily tell that I used a Beast Shape spell or Summon Monster. I can heal, though, and do have a companion. It's just a lot easier to say I'm a Druid, especially when I can't talk about what I actually am due to oaths.” I'm still lying, but I'm reasonably skilled at that.

  “Then you're also casting without other verbal or somatic components…” the guildmaster pauses, “...have you at least come clean to your party mates?”

  I consider, “I haven't told them all the details - oaths, after all - but they know I'm not a Druid, exactly, and are okay with that.” The Oath part is a lie, but the rest is true enough.

  “That's… sufficient, I suppose.” She pauses, “A fourth circle spell, while hiding that you are casting at all, and faster than should be possible…” she shakes her head, “...fine. I have what I need, I suppose…” she starts taking notes and walks back i to the great hall. I follow, st Shadow accompanying.

  The female half-orc gives her verdict, “So, collectively, I can upgrade your group to a Gold rating. But…” she pauses as my party mates’ eyes shoot up, “I have reservations. You're lopsided. Three of you are individually rated as silvers, one of you is at least ptinum…” she's staring at me, “...and it's bad when everything hinges on one person… but it's valid. Let's update your ptes….”

  Despite the names of the ranks, the ID ptes themselves are still steel: She's just adding an imprint with the updated ratings via a press. From Copper for absolute beginners, to Bronze, then Silver, Gold, Ptinum (most guildmasters), Pearl, Sapphire, Ruby, Emerald, and finally Diamond for those few who manage to get that good. For each category of adventurer they have a set of recommended benchmarks. For casters it can be reasonably concrete: Most benchmarks are based on the circle of spell the individual can pull off, which corresponds very closely with the "level" from Mom's biology bools, at least for the main casting csses. For trappers, they have a series of reference challenges (locks, traps, perception tests, a few other things) to solve which have a lot more swing to them, but still roughly correspond to level. Martial types are usually asked to fight or break something. For all that, however, exactly how to rank folks is up to the individual guildmaster, to a limit of the guildmaster's own rank… because it's used to figure out what jobs they can take retively safely, and just because someone can cast third circle spells doesn't always mean they can pull their weight in a gold-rated dungeon. All that to say Aldamen was well within her rights to bel us as Silver, instead.

  And yes, she stamps mine with Ptinum.

  After, she's done with the formalities, “So… who do you have watching the dungeon while you're here? The trip is like a month each way.”

  “Our ride is a bit faster than that,” Roger shrugs, “we have a couple days to sell stuff off and purchase crafting materials before we need to head back for the next scheduled cleaning.”

  “You have a crafter?” The guildmaster raises an eyebrow.

  “A right good one,” my party leader brags, “He makes our gear harder for others to use if they steal it AND gets us some good discounts at the same time. So yeah… we sell gear and buy materials.”

  Aldamen considers, “Does he take commissions?”

  The guildmaster doesn't miss the gnce Roger gives me, but I nod anyway, and so the party leader smiles, “Depends on what you're willing to pay…” and they get down to haggling.