Tridor Plaza, Meteo Town

Even after leaving Town Hall and crossing the plaza, I don't feel like relaxing any, in spite of how relieved I am to put some distance - no matter how insignificant - between myself and my unwanted new government-assigned babysitter. I'm balancing on a knife's edge and I can feel it digging into my heels with each step I take.

Metaphorically speaking.

Plus, I can all but guarantee that he's set someone to keep an eye on me in his absence. Count Hiolh, much like another Count I ran afoul of recently, strikes me as the controlling type. It won't be enough for me to be in easy reach, he'll want to know absolutely everything about me, about what I'm doing and what I plan to do. It goes without saying then, that I won't be openly discussing the matter with the City Core even after the ink has dried on the Oathpaper.

'Before I forget,' I try to focus on Jannis from within my mind, 'Thank you for your help.'

Silence is the only response I get, but I don't doubt she heard me. I was originally planning on asking her about the changes that are set to occur on patch day after getting online, but I guess I'll just have to wait a month before we can have that conversation. Operating on the assumption that she'd notice anything or be able to tell me, sure, but Jannis is still one of my best leads for figuring out what the hell is going on with all this.

Her behaviour is still strange, though. I spent close to a year of in-game time living with her while training, so I ought to be able to say I have a good grasp of what Jannis is like. The best explanation I can come up with through my throbbing headache is that she was more thorough in her digging through my memories than she admitted to, and what she saw in the process changed her. Except...that doesn't explain her taking the initiative to chip off a piece of her Authority prior.

I don't want to doubt her motives, exactly, but I cannot help but wonder.

Fander Street, West Residential District, Meteo Town

"Welcome back, Silver," Angelus waves in greeting as I approach the gate, stood next to a crowd of strangers being corralled by Windy.

"A friendlier welcome than the one I just received," I smile tiredly, "Where is everyone? I only see Windy."

"Olrica logged off a while ago," Angelus presses down a finger, then another, "Morn went to fetch what the Pioneers' Alliance owe us about an hour ago so she'll be back any minute. Jupiter must've wandered off somewhere just now and you know better than I would about Grand and Jade."

"I see," nodding, I rub my sore neck  and walk by to approach Windy, "Come on, then, let's get everyone started."

The crowd contains about two dozen people, all told, and eclectic mix they are at that. I don't recognise any faces, but from the chatter, they all appear to be players. Windy, a little exasperated, perks up once she finally notices my appearance, "Oh! Hey, boss! L-long time no see! H-h-how are you?"

She seems anxious for some reason, but I don't feel up to digging into why right this second, "Not great, to be blunt, but I'm still feeling better for anticipation of the event at hand. Is everything ready for the conversion?"

"Just about," Windy licks her lips nervously, "Sent Jupiter off to hurry up the courier bringing around the uhh...what was it called...the Brinkstone Bricks we ordered in. Me an' Ange have the rest of the materials for the Headquarters part - but we're still waiting on a couple things from the Pioneers' Alliance for the Training Hall that Morn is checking in on."

"So I'm told," I smile, noting the sudden quiet as all the people behind me staring holes into my back, "Well, we can catch up once the process is done, anything I can do now?"

"Erm, there's a lot of people that want a word with you," Windy flicks her chin to the crowd, "Should have seen this earlier. Street was almost packed full."

"They're not all Architects, I take it?"

"Nope. Mainly some gawkers left that heard what was going down," Windy fumbles through her inventory then brings out some paper bundles and a few odd crystalline blocks, dumping them into my arms, "This is the paperwork, the Architectural Blueprint, the Security Core and the Control Keys - Master and Security. You need to sign off on the construction and imprint the rest."

Helpless, I smile, "I should point out that I only have two arms, and I can't very well carry them and write at the same time, so I don't know why you just handed it all over at once..."

After squaring away my responsibilities as Guildmaster...Leader - Still have yet to figure out what title to stick to for the foreseeable future but anything I come up with sounds silly and overly self-aggrandising. I have to settle on something soon though, even if it makes me sound like an arrogant dorky teen.

Anyway, after a few minutes spent handling the formalities, the Architects set to work cordoning off the building with a mixture of rope, metal bars and powders. As opposed to constructing a Guild Headquarters from scratch, converting an already existing building is accomplished with something more akin to a ritual spell as the basis.

A Guild Headquarters from that point on, ceases to be a mundane building and becomes partially disjointed from the dimensional plane in a manner reminiscent of a dungeon. Not that it becomes larger on the inside or a truly 'instanced' area, but Architects with the appropriate permissions are henceforth able to reshuffle and modify the contents with the appropriate skill levels, materiel and Blueprints - within certain constraints. For example, moving one bedroom on the second floor to swap places with an office on the third is possible, but you can't put it in the basement or move a Training Hall into a place that lacks the space to accommodate it.

It's like playing Tetris with architecture.

The exterior of the building will be largely unchanged, unless a window gets shuffled around with the attached room, for better or worse, but breaking in will require a fair bit effort despite appearances. Renovating the building and expanding it are on the docket for the future, but I think mostly I just want to get rid of that tacky headless stone wolf above the front door. Wolves as a motif are incredibly overplayed and I don't share my predecessor's obsession with canines.

Symbology for Truthseekers will rightly be its own instead of derivative of House Fander, and is something I've been pondering for a while. I've already filled a sketchbook with ideas while travelling to and from Paris, but I'll wait to decide on our heraldry until we meet the Fame requirements.

All in all, the process takes at least two to three hours, time which I spend mostly in quiet contemplation and recovering from my confrontation with Count Hiolh. Weighing costs and benefits to one tactic over another when I inevitably have to meet him again and suppressing the aftereffects of his Charisma.

I reckon a hidden advantage of getting this all done before Rise of the Adventurers means the process is vastly simplified and requires absolutely no technical knowledge from the workers whatsoever. Afterwards, Architects are going to need to be a great deal more hands-on with their creations and the Blueprints less forgiving. Ordinarily, there'd be a 'foreman' who consumes the Blueprint and either does the work alone or directs other Architects - marking the one and only exemption to the Project Collaborator Talent requirement in the crafting system I know of - to perform specific tasks, and the process can take days to months or years.

As is, the Architectural Blueprint is on loan from the Empire so we'll need to send it back to them soon. The same goes for the Training Hall and Employment Bureau we borrowed through a deal with the Pioneers' Alliance. We paid a heavy price, damn near every last Stone Gold we had to get all the rights and materials, but here I stand, next to my colleagues as the seconds tick down to completion.