Terri didn't actually burn her clothes when she made it to the bathhouses that Gravenhall provided for its initiates. Her current financial situation couldn’t justify such a brazen display of waste, so she was forced to settle for scrubbing everything thoroughly in the bath after she’d finished using it. The young cleric did her best to remove the buildup of filth from her clothes but before long exhaustion from the ordeal in the graveyard began to creep up on her. Soon it was all Terri could do to stumble back to her tiny room and collapse into a dreamless sleep.

The accommodation for initiates at Gravenhall could best be described as 'sufficient' and at worst as 'a claustrophobic jail cell'. The rooms were extremely small, barely eight feet square and contained only a single bed, chair and a very small table. There were no windows in the initiate's cells so the light level had been magically set to mimic the current state of the world outside. This level of illumination was normally enough to wake Terri at a reasonable hour but after the experience of the night before she slept until almost noon. When the young cleric finally did awake, her thoughts were dominated initially by hunger but then by excitement.

The reasons for being hungry were obvious, and the excitement was due to both her official status as a cleric and the fact that waiting for her in the arena would be a list of the new level one adventure groups. Guild members were not allowed to choose their own groups until they reached level two, and the level one teams were assigned as soon as all of the initiation tests had taken place. Terri's test had been scheduled for the last day of initiations and so the lists would already be posted in the arena. Forgetting all thought of food for the moment, the young cleric pulled on her clothes and ran through the halls to reach the arena.

The enormous training ground would have been a surging mass of initiates at nine in the morning when the groups were first posted, but by the time Terri got there it was almost empty. Breathing heavily from her headlong sprint to the arena, Terri fast walked the rest of the way across the open expanse and began searching the lists adorning the main noticeboard for her name. When she found it in the third group from the bottom the young cleric laughed in delight. Out of all the initiates at Gravenhall, somehow Aggy had been assigned to the mage role in her four person team. Thanking Avandar for this good fortune Terri read the names of the rogue and warrior that would be her other two teammates but didn't recognise them. Terri Tillerson, Agnes Thunderhammer, Flemming DeLyse and Thisss.

The last name was most interesting and not just because of the unusual repetition of the letter 's'. Terri had thought that all initiates were required to provide a surname when enrolling at Gravenhall, even if they didn't have one before. When Terri had pointed out to the enrollment officer that she didn't actually have a last name, the clerk had scribbled ‘Tillerson’ on the form before Terri could object. ‘Tillerson’ was one of a few standard surnames given to peasants if they ever found themselves in the position of needing one. Pondering these latest developments and still buoyed up by having Aggy in her team, Terri headed off towards the initiates' mess hall thinking that this would be one of the last times she ever ate there. The young cleric barely made it through the door of the mess before she heard Aggy's voice booming out from across the chamber, "Ahoy there lassie, come and sit your shapely carcass down over here."

Terri deftly navigated her way between tables of dining initiates until she reached the booth in the corner of the room where Aggy was sitting. Next to the dwarf was someone Terri had never met before, an elf with long black hair and skin the colour of tanned leather.

"Sit down Terri and meet one of our new teammates, his name is Flemming DeLyse." Aggy slid along the bench to make room for Terri to sit. "He's been studying the roguish arts for the past twelve months and is without a doubt the most serious person I've ever met."

Terri smiled at the elf and held out her hand. "Nice to meet you Flemming. I hope Aggy hasn't been hassling you too badly? While she may have a tendency towards being excessively honest, and incorrectly thinks she's the gods' gift to comedy, I can assure you that she’s the best friend you could possibly make at Gravenhall."

Flemming took Terri's hand and shook it briefly. "Aggy's been very kind and very welcoming. Oh, and please call me Flem."

"Right," interrupted Aggy, "now that the introductions are out of the way we're all ready for the harrowing tale of your encounter in the graveyard last night. Although please leave out any description of the smells involved, my nose still trembles at the thought of it."

"No problem," Terri replied, "but first I'm going to grab something to eat or all you'll be hearing from me is the rumbling of my stomach. I'm also a bit surprised that you're not more excited about being put in the same team as me. I thought you'd be bouncing around like a dwarvish jack-in-the-box."

"Well, there is a very good reason for my abundance of composure," Aggy replied, "but that explanation is going to wait until after you finish your story or I'm going to burst apart from anticipation."

So after filling a bowl with thick pea soup and grabbing a handful of bread rolls Terri returned to the table and gave her teammates a quick recap of her adventures the night before. When she came to the part about the skeleton's ruby ring Aggy exclaimed in disbelief, "You put it back! You got the thing all the way off the dead bugger's finger, nothing bad happened, and then you put it back on! Gods above, I admire the way you're devoted to Avandar's principles but sometimes you might want to think about one of our most common dwarven sayings, 'Ogden helps those who help themselves'."

Flem agreed with Aggy. "The rogues guild would have expected you to not only take the ring but the clothes he was wearing and if possible the lid of the sarcophagus as well."

"I have to admit," Terri replied, "I am somewhat starting to doubt my decision. I'd love to move out of my tiny little Gravenhall room but I've no idea how I'm going to afford to pay rent any time soon. From what I've heard, the level one tasks don't offer the same opportunities to increase your finances that the higher level tasks do."

Terri's information was one hundred percent correct. The tasks were designed as a revenue raising system for Gravenhall, not the guild members themselves. To lodge a task, customers of Gravenhall would come to the sales department, explain the nature of the task they needed done and then pay the service fee. This information was passed on to the accounts department who assigned the task a level and then posted the description on the appropriate task board. The description then remained on the task board until a group of Gravenhall adventurers completed it. The adventurers received no money for completing the task, instead they were given a token that counted towards their next level of instruction at Gravenhall. Most adventurers greatly valued the little wooden tokens even though they were largely symbolic. The accounts department kept meticulous records of tasks completed and tokens awarded in order to prevent fraud, but most guild members preferred to receive something physical rather than just a small mark in a long column in an enormous ledger. When an adventurer completed enough tasks and therefore collected enough tokens, they returned to Gravenhall for the six weeks of instruction that would take them to their next level of advancement.

Initiates frequently complained about how the first level of training took twelve months instead of six weeks but the reasons for this were straightforward. Firstly, the institute of Gravenhall wanted to be sure that any student, regardless of previous experience, had a fair chance of reaching the required standard by the time of the initiation tests. Secondly, the long duration helped to sort out the wheat from the chaff with only committed students making it through a full year of cramped quarters, constant instruction and repeated meals of pea soup.

After they completed their initiation students could remain in their cramped Gravenhall accommodations for free as long as they completed at least one task per week, but most eventually managed to scrape together enough extra income to move out into one of the boarding houses or taverns in Providence. Guild members were allowed to keep anything of value that they acquired during their tasks (as long as it didn't belong to the task requester) but this source of income was irregular and required significant saving before it could be relied upon for necessities like food and shelter. Low level students who failed to carefully manage their finances inevitably found themselves returning to the windowless rooms and pea based cuisine of Gravenhall.