Azure: Gunner

The Guild is run by the Guildmaster. Period. The Guildmaster has advisors, but is responsible for all final decisions. By tradition, if the advisors – known as the Council of Five – are unanimous in their objection to the Guildmaster’s decision, their advice should be heeded. However, this is merely tradition, not part of the Guild’s Charter.

The Guildmaster typically delegates most of the Guild’s day-to-day operations to their subordinates, freeing their time up for dealing with the most pressing needs of the Guild. These can be anything from politics to powerful monsters. The Guildmaster is not necessarily the highest-Level person in the Guild, but they are always one of the most powerful. Sometimes, they are referred to as the Guild’s Right Hand.

- Delver’s Guild Handbook, Section 16.2 – "Guild Organization”

It actually wasn’t as bad as I feared, once we got started, even if JJ was almost as loud as PAST. We rotated around different instructors for a couple rounds, then they split us into groups based on what type of weapon we were using. Most of the Mages chose to use their staffs or scepters as their melee weapons so they wouldn’t have to carry a backup on their belt. Having your backup in your Inventory was a big no-no. According to JJ, you’d be dead before you could get it out, and I believed him.

There were quite a few of us with shortswords, since it was a good choice for Archers, Arbalists, and Pistoleers alike. The lightweight blades were relatively easy to carry and didn’t get in the way too often. They were also the longest-reach weapons that worked with the Short Blades Skill. That left me working with Alex, the two Arbalists, Arlo, and the other Archer – who was Clarice’s obnoxious relative Marta.

In addition to the six of us, there were two Rangers, which I learned were a hybrid Class. They had both selected bows as their first Class Weapon, but they could also gain the Longsword Skill. None of us had shields though, since they were too bulky to carry around while using our primary weapons. Looking around, I counted twelve students in the staff group, and seven with scepter and shield combinations.

Among my group, I quickly learned that I was one of the three best with a blade. Sadly, the other good shortsword user was Marta, and I had to admit she was better than me. If she hadn’t been such a jerk yesterday, I would have liked to ask her about her training. The third was one of the rangers, a trainee who was even better than Marta.

Interestingly, Arlo – the last trainee in our group of mostly recruits – was just average with the blade. I remembered he’d grown up in a family known for selling guns, and he was clearly more fluid and skilled with his pistols than I was with my shotgun. He must have been shooting regularly for years before getting his Class, while only learning basic swordsmanship.

The rest of the class was mostly basic drills and fundamentals, but I was assured that we’d also be doing sparring in the future. The class went by quickly, and then it was time for our first Sprint. For that, we headed back to the range.

The instructors had us line up, with several people in each of the wide lanes and two in most of the narrower lanes, and we were instructed to simply shoot off our Spells or Skills as fast as possible. The idea was to just get reps in, in the hope that it would contribute to our Skill Levels. Better than having us go to lunch and then another lecture class with full mana.

I was assigned to one of the last rows, by myself, since my gun sent the expended shells flying off to my right every time I racked in a new one. It was a ton of fun to just blast away at the targets, mixing up my shots between my BB and 4BK rounds. I also varied my choke setting, but stayed away from using my infusion mod. It would just burn more mana without helping train any of my Skills very much.

After that, it was lunchtime, where I enjoyed my daily Jet Cola thanks to my buddy Mage Zaire. Then, freshly energized, I set off to the classrooms again.

When Tara, Jayce, and I arrived at the Leadership class, we found it was quite a small group. I was very happy to not see Yuri or anyone I recognized as one of his friends there. The instructor for the class was someone I hadn’t talked to yet, though I remembered from when all the Squads had assembled in the square. Identify.