A Necromancer's Guide to Clearing a Game Like Tower

The folder sat in front of James with the guarantee page open.

He didn’t look at the number again.

He turned back two pages instead, to the clauses Kavanagh’s pen had found, and put his finger on the first one.

"If I sign this," he said, "can Team Zero still negotiate a sportswear partnership with another company?"

The director didn’t pretend the question was strange.

"Under that clause, we’d hold first-negotiation rights over any sportswear agreement involving a team or guild you belong to. And matching rights if a rival offer came in." She folded her hands. "We can’t invest at this level in your international image, Mr Ganner, and then watch a competitor build their flagship campaign around a Team Zero that has you standing in the middle of it."

James closed the folder.

"Then this isn’t only an offer for me."

"No," the director said. "It isn’t."

At least she didn’t dress it up.

"Candidly — you’re the reason we want early access to Team Zero’s future sportswear rights. Our research says your public value rises faster than anyone else on the team. The age. The Legendary class. The audience that’s watched you since Floor 1. The scythe." A small shrug. "We’d rather own a piece of that future than bid against it later."

"Commercially, that reasoning is sound," Kavanagh said. "Legally, it’s overreach. Team sponsorship and individual endorsement are separate rights. Mr Ganner can sell his own image. He cannot — and will not — grant control over a collective identity that five people own through a personal contract."

"Then perhaps—"

"Then perhaps two positions," Maeve said.

James glanced at her. He’d been halfway to a flat refusal, and she’d seen it coming and stepped in front of it.

"Prepare both for comparison," Maeve went on. "Your original offer, with the team priority clauses. And a lower personal-only offer — his image, his appearances, his products, his channels. Nothing that touches the other four."

The director looked at her legal affairs man.

"We won’t renegotiate clause by clause in this room," he said. "Take the documents. Written counterproposal within seven business days."

"Agreed," Kavanagh said.

Nobody signed anything. Nobody verbally accepted anything. The meeting ended with handshakes and two folders in Kavanagh’s case, and that was exactly as much as either side gave.

At the lift, Kavanagh stopped James with one more thing.

"Before we go further — I act for Team Zero’s collective interests. All five of you. If your personal money and the team’s sponsorship rights ever pull in different directions, I can’t be standing on both sides of it."

"Meaning?"

"Meaning your individual deal gets reviewed by a colleague of mine, Conor Dunne, behind a formal wall — he doesn’t see my files, I don’t see his. If that can’t be run cleanly, you retain your own independent solicitor." She pressed the lift button. "It’s not drama. It’s plumbing. Good firms build it before the leak."

They sat in the parked car for a while before anyone drove anywhere.

Rain started on the windscreen. Nobody moved to turn the engine on.

"Question," Maeve said, turned around in the front seat. "Forget the clauses. If the deal was clean — just you, none of us in it — do you actually want it?"

James looked out the window at the glass building.

"Yeah," he said. "I do."

He let it sit there, plainly, without dressing it down.

"The money matters. I’m not pretending it doesn’t — I’ve seen what money does when it’s missing. But it’s not just that." He turned back. "Right now, the whole world outside Ireland knows me as a Tower report. A stream clip. An argument in a comment section. That deal is advertising on three continents and a line with my name on it. People would know me through something I chose. I want that."

"Good," Maeve said.

James blinked. "Good?"

"You said it out loud without apologizing for it. That’s the version of you that should be in these rooms." She faced forward again. "And for the record — taking an individual endorsement isn’t betraying anyone. I had contracts before Team Zero. Finn has the Hale name. You’re allowed to have something that belongs to you."

"Take the deal if it’s good," Finn said from beside him.

He nodded at the case with the folders in it.

"Just don’t sell the rest of us with it."

Finn’s strategy room, that evening. All five, and the two folders open on the table.

James walked Ronan and Cillian through both versions himself. The team campaign. The individual offer. The original guarantee, and the rights the company wanted in exchange for it.

Cillian read the guarantee page.

Then he read it again, slower, as if the number might behave differently under supervision.

"That’s what one Necromancer costs?"

"That’s what they claim I’m worth," James said. "The claim comes with handcuffs."

Cillian put the page down. He was quiet for a moment, and the quiet didn’t have a joke loading behind it, which everyone at that table had learned to notice.

"I’ll say it once, straight," he said. "It stings. Three weeks ago their campaign didn’t have room for me and Ronan in the photograph. Now there’s a page saying one of us is worth more than the whole shoot." He looked at James. "I’m not angry they want you. I’m angry they think buying you means they get the rest of us cheaply."

Nobody rushed to smooth it over.

James held his eyes. "That’s fair."

"I know it’s fair. I said it." Cillian leaned back. "Right. Done being sincere. It’s exhausting."

Ronan hadn’t touched either folder.

"What do you want, James?" he said. "Not what’s fair, not what’s loyal. What do you want the lawyers to build?"

James had had the answer since the parked car.

"I’ll sign a deal for me. I won’t sign one that decides what Team Zero can do."

Ronan nodded slowly. "Then that’s the rule, isn’t it. Not just for this deal. For all of them."

"It’s the first rule," Maeve said, and opened a shared document on the wall screen. "Let’s write the rest while we mean it."

The first three took actual arguing.

Personal sponsorships belong to the individual member — nobody fought that one until Cillian asked whether a "personal" deal could feature two members, and it got amended: then it’s not personal, it’s collective, different rules.

Individual appearance fees stay with whoever does the work. Finn wanted it flat; Maeve made him say out loud that this meant Cillian keeping every cent of a solo appearance, and Finn said "obviously," and it went in.

And the load-bearing one: no personal agreement may licence the Team Zero name, crest, or collective story. Ever. Any use of the team identity takes all five signatures.

"That’s the fence," James said. "Everything else is gates."

The rest went in as Maeve typed. No individual sponsor controlling team uniforms, equipment, campaigns, or future guild partnerships. Team licensing money separate from personal appearance money. Independent legal review on every collective contract. No claiming products they hadn’t tested or didn’t use. Clear disclosure on every commercial post.

Cillian’s hand came up at the last one.

"The disclosure thing. If they pay me to post about a shoe, but I genuinely like the shoe—"

"It means you can’t pretend you woke up loving a shoe they paid you to wear," Maeve said.

"What if I genuinely love the shoe?"