The Sleeping Guard

The Sleeping Guard is a tavern, inn, and adventurer's guild located in the city of Vircris on corner of the Raincrest, Pacemarch, and Glasspoint districts.

History
Founded in 18496 by then member of the Vircris Council and adventuring moonlighter, Akra Delmirev. Initially a mere a tavern and inn with an unusually prone to adventuring clientele, the adventuring guild was formally created in 18497 shortly before the Five Cities Pact was formed, after which Delmirev transitioned to the more administrative role of Director in keeping with her growing duties as a senator.

The guild has risen in prominence over the years, famously thwarting an assassination attempt on senatorial candidate Kozki Roanwill before the 18499 elections, returning the long lost throne of King Thardorlum to the fortress city of Havelstone in 18502, charting a new trade route to Kohimoor through the Marshlands in 18503 and delivering critical aid to Tombarum when it came under the assault of a duergar offensive later that year.

The Sleeping Guard is known to offer powerful and versatile aid across the V.I.R. and beyond its borders, though typically with some sort of equivalent price.

Operation
Though the Sleeping Guard was originally an independent tavern and inn, those functions have largely been subsumed into supporting the adventurer's guild aspect of the establishment, providing temporary or long-term housing and provisions to guild agents and clients, on top of a healthy supply of alcohol.

The guild takes quests of all varieties from clients. Clients provide a description of their problem, the terms of their quest, and the reward they will offer adventurers on completion, as well as a processing fee dependent on the nature and danger of the quest. The guild then typically produces a quest notice which may be claimed by a party of certified guild adventurers who then provision with a guild officer before embarking on the quest. Success or failure, the guild offers adventurers an insured reward, based on the processing fee and expected danger or labor of the quest. The adventurers are then debriefed and in some cases a guild investigator will attempt to confirm quest completion and client satisfaction and a new party may be sent out if the quest was not completed and is still capable of completion. If the adventurers fail to return to or check in with the guild as agreed during the completion of the quest, the guild also promises members that a party will be sent to rescue and/or recover the original party and if possible complete the quest.

Clients may request specific guild members, who will be directly asked to take the quest, but are not guaranteed to receive them. If a quest is not claimed within an appropriate time frame, guild management will appoint an idle, but available party to take the quest, often with a higher insured reward. The processing fee is sometimes waived, and a quest notice may even be established without client if the guild deems there to be sufficient public interest in the task's completion. If a client arrives in person or sends a suitable representative, they may negotiate the details of their quest notice and their agreement with the party taking it.

Though the standard quest filing method is well advertised, interested contractors may engage the guild in more complicated requests, such as the recovery of lost artifacts over time, typically in return for a more complicated form of support or payment to the guild itself. Though the guild is largely opaque about finances, it is suspected by many members that these arrangements constitute most of the guild's serious revenue alongside the patronage of its own adventurers looking to be equipped and supported by the guild.

The Sleeping Guard is notoriously secretive about their deeper inner workings, even to their own members, with unclear hierarchies of management and equally unclear mechanisms of progression. To the public it is even more mysterious, typically hiding the true identities and histories of its agents. Director Delmirev has been cited as claiming this protects the guild from much outside influence and possible persecution.

The guild also operates open quest and notice boards for public use, though quests posted here are not insured by the guild in any way, and the parties that pursue them are likewise not necessarily certified vetted guild members. The guild still offers support of "freelancers" as these individuals are often recruited into the guild after their abilities are attested to by freelancing guild agents.

The Sleeping Guard provides equipment and services to adventurers, further offering free packed provisions and reasonably priced transport and magical or customized equipment to guild members.

Notable Guild Members
The Sleeping Guard maintains a wide variety of skilled individuals and groups among the guild, but its secretive nature precludes a thorough counting of its powerful roster.

Public Perception
The guild adventurers may have a general reputation for heroism and feats of awesome and powerful benevolence, but many believe them to be money-grubbing, power-hungry interlopers who inject themselves into private affairs of people with little concern for the widespread consequences of their actions. Director Delmirev has publicly commented on this attitude stating, "They're always glad to see an adventurer when they have a problem, to see them walk down the street, to know know an adventurer lives in their neighborhood, but they never want to find them in their backyard, they don't want adventurers to knock on their door uninvited. People like that only want heroes when they're the ones who need saving."

Though their public reception has been broadly positive, detractors like Senator Onyx have argued to great public reception that the Sleeping Guard is an unchecked power in the young nation, beholden only to the whims of a single senator and her cohorts. They further questions the motives and identities of individual guild members, suggesting that agents of greed could be turned against the people at a critical junction and that some of the powers possessed by some of its members hint at a nefarious past. Onyx in particular has suggested that the guild is in fact a machine to empower individuals that Delmirev and her cabal approve of while simultaneously accruing an elite army and a wealth of secrets and power that will allow them to bend the world to their will.