Wayfarer Guild Headquarters

Dashmiel

Mr. Nobody
Administrator
Nexus GM
Pronouns
He/Him
The Wayfarer’s Guild Headquarters

Situated at the heart of Wayfarer’s Point, the Wayfarer’s Guild Headquarters is a sprawling, otherworldly complex where the Nexus’ granted stability and dimensions converge. Its architecture reflects the diversity of its origins, seamlessly blending high fantasy, science fiction, and everything in between. The headquarters serves as a hub of inter-dimensional activity, with shifting interiors and countless portals forming gateways to the various halls within.

The Guild operates as both peacekeepers and explorers, categorizing rifts, assisting displaced peoples, and maintaining order within the ever-shifting multiverse. The Headquarters is equipped with advanced technology, arcane defenses, and entities like The Liminal Host to aid in its mission. Whether as a gathering place for Wayfarer characters, a setting for planning epic quests, or a backdrop for inter-dimensional intrigue, the Wayfarer’s Guild Headquarters stands as a bastion of stability and collaboration in the chaos of the Nexus.
 
An obstruction occupied the center of the hallway leading towards one of the Wayfarer's Guild briefing rooms, right off the main operations wing. Despite the fact that passing analysts, agents, and administrators opted to smoothly flow around it rather than engage with it, the nature of the obstruction wasn't intangible or metaphorical—things that normally didn't literally impede progress elsewhere (but it paid to not make assumptions within Nexus space)—but quite tangibly corporeal in the form of seven feet of actively surly-disposed man flesh.

Once upon a time, Ragenard's looks would have done the work of traffic control for him, but the unblemished and fresh-faced youth didn't inspire much in the realm of abject-fear-at-a-glance anymore and hadn't for nearly a century and a half at this point. He had been a peer to those around him for longer than he'd ever been alive in his original world, to say nothing of how far removed he was from the vagaries lived back in his native Lutetia.

It really said a lot about how shitty life in Lutetia's criminal underworld was that becoming an interdimensional peacekeeping-humanitarian-bounty-hunter-problem-solver-thing—with a specialty in being dumped solo into all manner of inhospitable environments with nothing but a 'good luck champ, carve us a safe path back'—had actually more than doubled Ragenard's life expectancy.

At least going by the actuarial tables that used to be one of the many barriers to stability he grew up surrounded by.

Barriers missing from the quasi ad-hoc and beleaguered Wayfarer's organization—a matter he found endlessly amusing. He even got dental benefits, despite the absurdity of him ever using such. It was his reputation for sometimes having every tooth in his mouth spontaneously erupt and either fall out or merge rapidly into dagger-sized enameled weapons—with a monstrous even taller body to match—in a burst of charged emotion whenever certain circumstances were met, that led to Ragenard's coworkers giving him a wide berth.

That wasn't to say he was known as volatile to his peers, no. Ragenard had long since mastered almost all aspects of his self-control as they pertained to his dual natures. He'd been born a werewolf and had been one for forty years before that bit of complexity in his life had been turned up a notch.

It turned out that eating an immortal wizard turned accursed vampire did very strange things to the digestion of a lycanthrope of Ragenard's ilk, and Ragenard spent another thirty years thinking he was developing the slowest and weirdest personality disorder ever—before said immortal gathered enough of his wits from within Ragenard to try to wrestle control and/or kill him.

Thanks to great coffee, a genie's wish, and therapy, however, this arrangement proved temporary, and Ragenard only had to spend another twenty years or so with his mental guest. In that period, they'd come to a semblance of understanding, and things finally seemed to be looking up—until Ragenard managed to misuse his leased magical sword to cut himself out of the fabric of his world and land upon the Nexus.

He'd landed alone and enjoyed a few months of quiet as he ambled around the Nexus like every other newcomer, in search of the next stage in what would henceforth be an altogether stranger life in this strange non-place. Then he'd gotten a job with the Wayfarer's Guild, where he'd gone and stupidly proven himself capable enough to somehow always find his way back to the Nexus—despite his many attempts to alter the destination—with his sword, while also being all-around survivable. And wouldn't you know it, suddenly he was a "long-term expedition specialist."

A bit of solitude never bothered him, but the job didn’t even entail that, thanks to how the guild did things. Field agents were paired with intelligence analysts and logistical support, and communication was done via a special connection maintained between the analyst team member and the field agent. It was important for both parties to form a cohesive team with some shared values, as the connection wasn’t metaphorical, and matching viability was critical.

This was because a great number of guild members in the analysis team were already dead, and another sizeable component had never had a body to begin with. Incorporeality had a lot of drawbacks associated with it, but it also came with plenty of upsides, generally speaking. This was true regardless of the form said incorporeality took. Like death, for instance.

Sure, it could be argued that being a ghost meant there was some sort of moving on being neglected, and there was the only-dying-once thing, but it also made it really easy to safely relay messages or perform espionage. In most workplaces, hauntings wouldn’t be conducive to productivity, but luckily for the WG, they had the Liminal Host.

The fact that the boss of the ghosts had been there ahead of the guild and thus couldn’t be said to be a machination by Wayfarer leadership—part of which turned out to be composed of Ragenard’s one-time-sometimes-therapist-stand-in—was a bit of serendipity Ragenard might have welcomed, were it not for how the Liminal Host functioned.

Most of it went right over Ragenard’s head—something about meta-cognition seeking and energy preservation. He understood the LH was technically also a discrete entity, but it didn’t usually chime in directly. Instead, it floated on through all the data they needed via their Waystones. The problem arose for Ragenard in the fact that the LH worked by channeling and manifesting the analyst entities its innate power was... well, hosting. Ragenard would have been more than okay working with anyone else, but of course, the vagaries of fate had other ideas. Ragenard hadn’t fallen onto the Nexus alone, after all. They’d been—blessedly—separated, but thanks to the Liminal Host, the taciturn shapeshifter had to endure the worst coworker experience a person could face—even above working with an old roommate...

"It don’t much matter that you’re not on the duty roster, lad," the voice chimed in Ragenard’s mind and ears both as he clutched his Waystone tightly. He couldn’t hear it anymore, but Ragenard swore he could feel it laughing if he concentrated.

According to the Liminal Host, only a 99.9% connection-match could sometimes bridge across realms. It was partially the fact that there was an analyst/agent combo that had that quotient that got Ragenard his job, as much as it was the fact that he could endure a lot. Enduring being the key word Ragenard had to focus on when it came to dealing with the ghost of Manannán mac Lir—the erstwhile wizard-vampire monster that had lived within Ragenard’s mind for decades following the shapeshifter’s avenging of his late wife’s death.

"Fuck you, Manny. I am not doing a piddling tier four bount—" Ragenard started, before being interrupted.

"—Oh now you’re too good to go beat on the small guys, well too bad it comes from—" his analyst retorted haughtily, before Ragenard cut him off.

"—I don’t care that it comes from Man, he... he, uh, can—"

"It’s okay, pup, you can hide the fact your balls retreated alongside your ugly mug by going, as the request comes from the other figure you won’t—"

"No," Ragenard said flatly.

"No?" Manny asked.

"It’s a fucking trick then. That prick wouldn’t request me specifically unless he was bored and wanted to try his little pitch again. No."

To Ragenard’s surprise, Manny’s tone and features—the Waystone connection carried the analyst’s mental image projected alongside it—softened.

"That’s what I’m trying to tell you, lad. It’s my day off too, so of course, I immediately tried rejecting the request when I saw who the poster was. Then next thing I know, Man is dialing me and telling me why we have to go," the ghost explained.

"So you’re trying to piss me off in the middle of the hall by burying the lede then? You fu—"

"—It’s your brother, apparently."

Ragenard’s words died alongside his aborted half-breath, as his limbs slowly hunched back down and his posture downshifted to a more calm demeanor. People began to walk closer now as they made their way around him, prompting Ragenard to step off to the side out of traffic’s flow. He closed his eyes tightly, as if the act of deliberately shutting out the world would change the maelstrom of images through his mind. It had been centuries since he’d arrived in Nexus, and he’d had... the events of his previous world to carry around to boot.

"He’s dead. Whoever that is isn’t my brother, but another version," Ragenard whispered under his breath. There wasn’t a need for him to actually vocalize his message whilst holding the Waystone. And while not exactly friends, he and Manny were certainly closer than most lovers would ever get to be.

So when Manny didn’t immediately reply but rather did the ghostly equivalent of taking a sheepish half-turn sideways...

No fucking way. Absofuckinglutely not possible. You’re joking?! Ragenard thought as he tried to avoid the emotional whiplash. He’d long since given up hope that James—his version—would turn up and share that it had all been a misunderstanding. That the explosion had sent him out of their world and into the aether, beyond their reach for all those years. But Manny’s reaction didn’t lend itself to buoying Ragenard’s spirits in that regard.

He’d grown up with one brother, yes. It was a difficult upbringing in a chaotic, criminal world that saw their kind relegated to second-class citizens. But he didn’t leave that world without some knowledge he never expected to fall into relevance. Ragenard had had plenty of reasons to hate his father, but the one he learned shortly before his interdimensional "accident" took the cake.

There had been this one piece of shit in the shape of a person that he used to know. A problem since grade school, in fact. A figure with whom Ragenard and his brother Baron would be doomed to clash time and time again until Ragenard finally had enough and killed him himself.

In many ways, it was that killing that broke the barriers in his mind and led to him nearly being subsumed by Manannán—which was part of why the ghost was so quiet. Even immortal pricks could learn some shame and humility, such as to not bring attention to those mutually antagonistic days. It wasn’t the killing itself, as that was an act Ragenard had been pushed to many times before then and certainly since. No, the weakening had come thanks to magic’s bullshit, because there was a special power in a familial bond, even if unknown.

Ragenard had once unwittingly become a fratricide, and if he was forced to be honest with himself, chances were good he would do so again: Rowan Alastar was just that much of a dick, in his estimation.

"Ell-Aitch," Ragenard said as he gripped his Waystone. Manny’s form fuzzed in Ragenard’s mind, and a sense of mild vertigo—a drawback of such a strong connection to Manny—came upon him as the image in his mind shifted. A brief flurry of floating geographic shapes suffused his world with meaning beyond his corporeality before the image fuzzed once more and was replaced by a vaguely humanoid shape. Ragenard’s mind insisted the figure was made of either cotton candy or fog, but he understood that was the best approximation he could summon, and thus all that the Liminal Host had to work with within him.

"Wayfarer," replied the Liminal Host as it turned its 'head' fractionally to the side and with a slight angling down towards Ragenard.

The entity was famously not one to use two words where one might suffice, but for a creature that lacked corporeality, it was agreed upon that its nonverbals were unmatched. It came with the fact it could read your mind, he supposed.

"I’ll take the accursed job, and would like to lodge another formal complaint."

"Your request is understandable, but the material facts of the alliance haven’t changed... I have received acknowledgment," replied the ghost-amongst-ghosts with an upturned eyebrow. Ragenard was also surprised; he wasn’t expecting a response. "A bonus has been offered by their All Mother and authorized by the Guildmaster," the LH added.

Ragenard was surprised, but not shocked. It was just like the Va’nyrians to acknowledge their faults and to dazzle one with restitution instead of apologies or whatever the hell they worshipped-forbid, introspection.

"Fine, whatever," Ragenard mumbled before clearing his throat and coaching his tone to be more official. "Wayfarer requesting activation, ID: Baron-Bloodstone-Alpha."

"Authorization Granted. Toolkit unlocked. Forge us a path, Wayfarer... Stand-by for analyst-entity," chimed the LH before fuzzing into Manny’s figure in Ragenard’s mind’s eye once more. The still-ornery shapeshifter simply sent him a warning look before stuffing his Waystone in his pocket and making his way on towards the Leaky Servo wordlessly.
 
Back
Top