That day there were wo gatherings.

In the great hall there were the highest leaders seated around the quarter moon table on the platform.

Then there was the first circle, the ones seated at the tables closest to the leadership. They were either the strongest, vice leaders or heads of certain important groups within the guild.

The second circle consisted of higher ranking officers with important duties entrusted to them.

Finally the third circle held experts on certain topics, tacticians, merchants and other advisors.

With them the great hall was full. Roughly half of those in the hall had reached divinity, while most of the others were not far from that point. Exceptions were among the advisors with special knowledge, like three real world military commanders and a general who, though they lacked time to play and level up, were regarded highly within the guild.

The guild itself had thousands of members, with roughly one quarter having spent most of their in game time in the guild and having a truly high level, while half were between the middle tier of the high levels and the high tier of the middle level, those who joined after the guild had already become fairly strong a several years before.

Those groups were fairly stable.

However... the last quarter were somewhere between level one and level 500, the low and middle levels. Roughly three quarters of these lower level players had joined within the last four months when it had become obvious that the guild was taking the top spot but wouldn't allow any players above level 200 into the guild to prevent any sabotage by spies. Most adults interested in Skyforge had started playing long ago and did not wish to erase their character for a guild membership so most of those players were fairly young, teens between twelve and eighteen.

With nearly twenty thousand members that meant that they had about 4000 teenagers who neither had a place in the guard barracks as active fighters for the guild yet due to their low level nor had they been affluent enough to buy houses like the remaining 1000 people in that lower leveled group. In game being homeless was not a problem. 

But now?

Guardian switched the video crystal off.

"This is our most urgent problem." He declared. "And before the discussion begins please let me remind you that saying we shouldn't have accepted these kids now is a moot point."

Our guild leader stood fully behind that statement, as well. "Anyone saying anything like that will be kicked out of the hall and cannot be part of the discussion any longer. We need solutions find a place for these kids. Also, in case you have not noticed yet...Guardian, show a couple pictures." Rattle waved towards the video crystal.

The first picture floated above the stage. It looked like a wood elf, but either they had tuned the face to make it as childlike as possible or...

The second picture showed an orc. The orc looked weirdly adorable, without any protruding teeth.

The next was a pimply human face, very obviously a teenager.

More of them came, but it was very obvious that somehow this weird transition had turned back time for the game characters played by teenagers. We literally had thousands of newly orphaned, homeless children on our hands. Children who were no stronger or at least not much stronger than NPCs in some cases.

Leveling up was the last thing on their mind right now I would bet.

"We have to find foster families for those who wish for it first." I said to break the thoughtful silence in the room. "We have a lot of territories that came with us, right? There have to be NPCs there who would be willing to help."

"You can't call them NPCs. Those are real people!" Somebody interjected from the back. A look told me that it was our psych advisor. He was Aurelie's friend from University, a psychology assistant professor. "Using the term NPC will cause us to hold certain prejudices and subco sciously prevent us from seeing them as real people. We have to eradicate the use of this word right now, otherwise we will end up with a lot of problems later on."

All of us became quiet for a moment. Calling somebody an NPC...I had not thought about what kind of idea I had in mind whenever I said it, but he was right.

Rattle nodded decisively. "Then our first rule will be this. How should it be spelled out to avoid giving a faulty image?"

Our law expert got up this time. "I suggest the following: Each individual capable of independent thought shall be a full citizen of the country if he or she so wishes and fulfills the requirements of citizenship. Each citizen is equal with guaranteed human rights. Requirements for citizenship at this point should be that the person came from Skyforge and is either from the guild or our country. Further rules regarding new citizens would have to be discussed later. They are not the priority right now."

"All in agreement?" Guardian called out. A lot of voices agreed.

"Anyone against it? We'll go over the exact words when we discuss our laws again so please, no arguing over details right now!"

Fortunately nobody said anything stupid like 'they are only NPCs' or 'we should be the only ones with human rights!'. Then again, we had been together for years and any assholes had long been kicked out in this inner circle. Idiots there were plenty, but no sociopathic or downright evil people.

"Uhm...about the kids..." I tried to get back on topic. "So...there should be people in our country who would like to forster them. At least the youngest, those younger than 16, can't become part of our military or anything like that. That would be inhuman." 

"We can't send those low level kids to random people in the kingdom just because they want them. We're not even from the same world." Part of my proposal was shot down, but...they were kind of right, too. Separating the children from the only connection to the past they had was just as bad as military service.

"We could make an apprentice system. In light novels people always say that a master for a day is a father for life, so people should take them as apprentices and become their parent substitute without outright replacing their real family!" That was Donny. There was a reason why Donny was Knightleader, after all. He was not always an idiot. Though I kind of wished he hadn't used such an otaku way to give his argument credibility. 

Thinking about it properly...if we sent them off and they didn't learn any proper knowledge for real life in our world they would be in trouble no matter where they were. They needed to go to a proper school. We had plenty of smart people who could teach the kids both game and real world things. "I think Donny is right. But it should be the children's choice who they want as their master."

"What if we don't want to be somebody's master? I'm only 19 myself, you guys can't expect me to take care of a teenager." A dark skinned young human from the third circle called out, but he did not lookmlike an ass who did not want to help, more like, well, an insecure 19 year old.

"Young adults are not mature enough to look after teens. Somebody taking an apprentice like that should be at least around 30. If a kid wants to be adopted for real we'll need volunteers for that, as well."

"Okay, so, kids younger than 16 have to get a master or apply for adoption. If nobody wants to adopt them they have to get a master either way. Said master has to provide all necessities and raise the kid. If someone was asked by a kid and wants to refuse... then our psych advisor will have to take care of the problem." Rattle summarised our decision.

"So, what about the kids over 16 and all other homeless guild members?" Somebody called out. 

Cassandra to my left got up to get people's attention, flaring her leathery wings. I did wonder why she had come in her Vamp Lord form. "The low levelled ones are almost always noobs. We need some kind of training facility. They should also be allowed to ask people to become their mentor, but it should not be mandatory for the mentor to accept in this case!" 

Ah, she said mentor, not master. That was smart, I thought as I nodded to show my support. "I am the headmistress of an academy not far from here. We could build a couple more buildings and integrate the low levelled ones into the general population while also teaching the...uh...the Skyforge natives more about science or whatever else we can think of! If some people would agree to teach there that is."

"With a mixed Academy we could help prevent future discrimination. Student exchanges are an important element to strengthen friendships between nations, so it should work for our case, too." Aurelie helped me push my idea forward, which was nice.

In the end everybody agreed, though for some reason the master-apprentice pairs were going to move to my academy, too. At least that way the teacher problem could be solved at the same time without further trouble. 

After that there were lots of boring discussions about investments and trading agreements, but that stuff had nothing to do with me. Well, maybe it had since sometimes the names of my territories came out, but I had already forced myself to get an MBA in the real world and come to the conclusion that I rather disliked the business world. So why would I involve myself when the merchants were happily making plans on their own?

The only things I did get were that though our country needed a bunch of new regulations it was going to be fine as well as that the info about the outside world was going to be discussed next. Finally!