After 3 hours of lengthy chat as well as waiting for our stomachs to digest the large amount of food. We paid our respective bills, as well give a big tip for the waitress who has the deal with our stuff. Michael and I of course covered for Tyler’s tip since he is a notorious cheapskate, and we then said our goodbyes to each other as Jaxon waves us off. It is roughly 7 o’clock here, with daylight still showing through and the Texas sun still bearing down on us. Michael and I slowly walk toward the 2 bedroom apartment that we share, trying to not let our early dinner bog us down too much. Along the way we stopped a liquor store to pick some beer, well I wanted to pick up some beer but Michael decided that we were going to get Four Lokos instead. Even after I heavily denied them, especially since the last time didn't go well for me, he convinced me by saying that it will create memories for when we graduate. I didn’t think it would, probably the opposite in fact, but I decided to just let him do what he wants. We made it out of the store with the horrid Four Lokos, and made our way back home.

We made it to our dodgy overpriced Apartment Complex, trying to rush up the stores to the 4th floor. Michael groaning after finishing a massive burger and a bucket full of fries, complaining that he will never eat this much again. I know that next week friday, he will make the same mistake again. We walk into the living room of our apartment, and throw the Four Lokos into the outdated fridge. We then went to our separate rooms, preparing our battlestations for a night full of expectations. Because I am a PC gaming addict, my PC consists of the best hardware money can buy(with internship and freelance programming money). My friend Michael prefers to keep his more grounded to standard, not that he needs top of the line stuff to run E.S.S anyway. MMOs these days tend to be well optimized, which of course helps to maintain consistent player base. We both start logging into our chat software where the rest of the guild awaits, loading into the game, grab a normal drink before the Four Lokos ruin everything, and begin a wasted night devoted entirely to childish fun.

Tonight wasn’t just a night devoted to raids and dungeons. It was also one of the days Former members of the guild meet up with current members to have a slight reunion in game. We also do IRL meetups, just that in game ones are so much easier for everyone to attend. The ingame meetups are much more relaxed and chill, and it makes some of the more socially unskilled be more open to talking. We meet in the guildhall of Chronicle, the best guildhall in the server(warning, previous statement may contain slight amounts of bias). It is a mass structure, with 4 100 meter tall marble-like arches meeting together in an X-shape in the middle. In the middle is a massive disk with a surrounding ring that is supported by the arches. The ring is connected to the disk by bridges in the cardinal directions. On the ring are statues of their player character and “sarcophagus” of the graduating members of the guild. Both on a plaque on the statue and on the headstones were the players names(both in game and real life), their time in the guild, and their “graduation” date. Every member has one built the moment they become a full member of Chronicle. Me and my friends have ours built already, though without the “death” date yet. I feel it is a bit creepy, but the founder said that it is supposed to represent how limited our time as a student really is. He wanted us to have this as a way to visualize our eventual departure from Chronicle, he thinks that having the ending planned makes the moments together all the more precious. The only part about that I like having is the player stats and feats that are displayed when you walk up to it and decide to inspect it. I think it is cool to think that some fledgling member of Chronicle can come up to my statue and see how many world first raid wins we accomplished, and marvel at my nearly flawless record in PVP.

Moving on from the ring, we go back to the disk, there is a garden area full of magical plants and colorful birds chirp with cheery songs, and healing water flows in tiny streams and ponds. There are marble benches dotting the area, this idyllic garden feels enchanted, like you want to pull out a long book and relax for a while. At the center of the garden is a large marble temple that is trimmed with a golden metal, the structural architecture makes you feel like you have entered an ancient Greek mythology book. In this temple there is a massive pillar,and around the edges of the round temple there are statue bases with 3 of them filled with large, ornate statues. These three statues are the 3 guildmaster of Chronicle, my 2 predecessors and myself each holding a tablet full of scriptures. These tablets of the records of the great things you have accomplished for the guild, which can be read move inspecting them as well. These are the statues for the guildmasters which function primarily the same as the ones in the ring, just far more grand and ornate. The founder's statue shows the wise and mysterious visage of a male [Grand Sage] Elf, with elegant mages robe billowing with arcane power. The Second Generation Statue is a large Female [Forge-lord] Goliath, dressed in heavy practical gear. It holds her tablet in one hand while slinging a brutal axe over her shoulder with the other. My statue is unique to all the others though, it is a collection of all the most played characters of mine each with some sort of contact with the tablet. Each of the Characters hold poses and facial expressions in accordance with the personalities I keep as my own personal “lore” for them. The reason I got this special treatment is because I am an addict and can’t stick to one character. I love this statue, because each of my characters together look like a fun party to be part of. I can almost imagine them bickering over the mechanics of a raid, or struggling to put their guild hall together. That is why I make so many playable characters, because I love crafting their looks and personality.

Moving on from the statues, we see right in the center of the guild is a large glowing marble pillar with incredibly intricate engravings all around it. Surrounding is curved bookshelves that surround the pillar in rings while leaving openings in the cardinal directions. The books here, and the massive pillar are the treasures of our guild. Pillar is a massive magical archive of all of the most precious information we have collected as a guild. It holds our secret recipes for crafting, our methods to obtaining secret and legendary jobs, skill books, secret resource locations, and our spell tomes. The books hold the info such as maps, scrolls, regular recipes, resource locations, raid info, leveling guides, and the more normal things to hold on to. Endless Story Saga is not a game that tells you where everything is, it is quite the opposite in fact. It expects players to find things on their own, to explore and create things unique to the world. They make everything open ended, so that players could really experience something special when they find or make something unique. This is what makes this game so special, it truly feels like you are exploring a fantasy world. So if you are a player who wants to use wikis and guides to use a meta-build, you are shit out of luck.

That is why the most powerful spell casters are the ones who craft their spells, the most powerful alchemists are the ones who brew their own potions, and the best warriors are the one who make their own combo sets. But if you suddenly found a new way to make a spell more powerful, would you share with the rest of the world? Of course you don’t! You keep a deeply guarded secret if you want to maintain your superiority. If you suddenly found a new job that has vastly superior stats and skills, you have to keep it a secret or sell the info to a powerful guild to make a ton of money. Since there is theft in the game, and guilds can raid other guilds, most guilds keep their secret info locked tight. There is also espionage, people will go into a guild pretending to be a member, waiting until they are trusted with important info and then harvest the info for profit. The amount of money you can make just by knowing a new job is outstanding, you can even (illegally of course) have it transferred into real cash. One of the big advantages to our guild is that since we are all connected IRL, you can't expect to steal our info without IRL consequences. No one is stupid enough to try that in our guild, especially with the connections offered in the adult world just by being a member. This is why our secrets are more valuable than most other guilds, it is essentially impossible to try to steal it peacefully. And since we have never lost in a guild siege, we have tons of knowledge that has never been shared before.

Another valuable treasure in our Guild is the vast amount of architecture, landscaping, art, and sculptures. This game has a thriving art market, people will pay unbelievable amounts of money to decorate their homes. Since the game has an incredibly powerful art creation tool, the truly great artists can make absolute bank. Our second Generation Guildmaster was an architect major, and she was the one who made our guild so outstanding. She was the one who led our guild to its golden age, during her rule we became one of best guilds in the server. She was pretty eccentric, she chose me as the guildmaster simply because of my face after all. The amount of guildhalls have been designed by her is pretty incredible, and she was damn expensive. She actually converted a lot of her in game cash into real U.S. dollars. Needless to say, she has no issues with school loans after her graduation. She still logs on to do contract work for us and other guilds, of course she still charges us even though she is a former member. Providing the budgets for that is rough, even after getting the discounts…

In the area below the arches, is our player homes and npc homes. In E.S.S. you can hire NPCs to do work for you or your guild, you can even level them up and upgrade their jobs to increase their work production. We have a good amount of Builders, Carpenters, and Architects npcs to help maintain our guildhall and defensive structures. We also have farmers, miners, and gatherers to collect raw resources for our crafting oriented members. We even have mills and magic factories to help mass produce crafting ingredients. We use farmland that surrounds our guild hall to grow our raw plant ingredients and food. Our farming Npcs maintain the fields, and during my “reign” we have a massive series of walls and magic towers to defend the fields. Seeing our high level npcs getting murdered or abducted by bandit guilds was getting annoying. And watching those bandits that raided us before get smashed by our defenses was refreshing to see. Also during my “reign”, we got the rights to a highly valuable mine by a duel instigated by a rival guild. That was a particularly juicy plunder, we even raided their knowledge vault and was able to steal the plans to complete a previous thought to be an impossible raid. Just imagining their faces when they saw Chronicle as the world’s first completion of the raid filled my black heart with joy.

Continuing on with the planned reunion, we prepared the Garden to be used as a reception room. We entered a proximity chat room, so that multiple conversations can happen without overlapping into each other. Almost all of the guests have arrived, and we began to chat and catch up with each other. We actually got all 3 guildmasters together for the first time in a while. Plus there are many influential Alumni here, I can already see some of my generation trying to carouse them into job connections. Better send Michael or Blake to tell them to cool it, this isn’t a job fair after all.

“AYY! Where is my favorite little Alex?” Yelled out a Female Goliath, the second generation guildmaster. She called out to me with the Founder next to her as well. I quickly walk up to them.

“Hey Marise, been a while since I have heard from you. Was work starting to get busy again?” I replied back, while also nodding towards Mr. First Generation.

“Aww, you worried about me? If you must know I got a client who wants plans for a new hotel in Dubai. They are really annoying to deal with, if they didn’t offer sooooo much cash I would have kicked them out.” Marise groaned, exasperated by supposed work troubles.

“That seems rough, I wonder who they think they are to give you trouble though. Couldn’t you just drop and get a new client? It should take you only a few days since you are so popular.” [Alex]

“These particularly annoying clients are the sons of major businessmen that have contracts with my company. They wanted an introduction to Marise, but I didn’t they would be so damn annoying.” Replied Curtis, the Guild Founder.

“That is the problem, If I deny these spoiled kids, they will turn to their daddies and cause Curt all sorts of trouble.” Marise added, with disgust emphasizing her words as she spoke.

“And here I was hoping that drama like that was left in highschool, sorry you guys are going through so much trouble. Especially since you guys will be married soon.” I replied.

That is right, the too most eccentric members in Chronicle’s history are actually a couple. They are a good story of how games can bring people together, especially since these 2 with their eccentricities really pair up well. Funny how our previous guildmaster are both so strange, though I wonder what that means about me…

“Ehh boyo, no need to worry! Just a slight annoyance is all, we will power through like we always have.” Stated curt, as he looks at his fiance’s avatar with what I could imagine as love in his eyes, I am sure this touching moment somehow but the fact he is trying to be romantic in-game is just kinda awkward.

“...yeah, I also think there is nothing that could stop as well…” I responded, trying to move past the slightly awkward situation.

“Speaking of which! You are in your final year as guildmaster! Have you already decided on your replacement? And how is the completion of your Guild Goal going along? OH! How is your capstone project going? Have you found something interesting to do yet? Also, have you finally got a new Girlfriend yet? It has been such a long time since your last relationship that I was worried about…” Marise began rapid firing loaded questions at me as Curtis looked at me with what I assume as sympathetic eyes. This is going to be a looong night…

[Michael POV]

We finally begin our strange little reunion. It is always weird to host this in-game, instead of IRL. Especially since there is no catering, or free booze. I follow next to Alex’s avatar, the little half-dark elf summoner he has been playing around with recently. We go around, slipping in between the different proximity chats to show our “faces” around. I noticed that some of our trial and new members are rudely soliciting the Alumni for some job connections. I glanced up at Alex, and he gave me a nodding gesture in game to signal for me to shut those idiots up. At least they will learn their lesson in game instead of IRL, we have had some members quit in shame when they embarrassed the hell out of themselves.

Almost feel like we should create a new commandment to get these people to stop treating this like a job fair. I hear a loud voice blaring through an overboosted mike, looking like Alex got trapped by Marise and Curt. The wonder couple will definitely keep him busy, looks like me and Blake gotta fill in and manage the reunion. I privately messaged Blake to begin the “cleanup,” secretly glad I bought the 4 Lokos. Gonna need the alcohol to survive the night.

After sweeping through all the groups and separating the naughty kids to scold them privately. Blake and I go to carouse with the Alumni, trying to get their moods back into it after the newbies bothered them. The number of trial members who do this is unbelievable, you would think regular people would realize how rude they were being. Alex is soft on them, he usually gives them a couple of strikes before kicking them out. It is also why we have a trial period, there are a surprising number of people that just can’t take a hint though. I grabbed a Four Loko out of the fridge to ready myself for more annoying tasks. Jaxon and his 2 sisters will log on later, they have to clean up the restaurant which can make them late to hangouts like these. With Jaxon around we can smooth over rough spots like these with no problems, that dude should seriously be a president or something. I sigh a little, and head over to a group of loners who aren’t speaking to anybody. Not that being alone is a problem, just weird that they would log in to the game and chat app only to be silent. Luckily, breaking through loners is my specialty, and honestly I like getting people to open up and be social. Maybe that is also the design of this guild, to get some of these exceptional loners a proper place to be social.

“Hey Rhyse! You and Armando doing ok here?” I asked.

“Hey Mike! Just chilling here, I was gonna talk to the older gen, but the newbies kinda soured things a bit…” Rhyse replied. Rhyse is a Sophomore who was well behaved but had a terrible case of social anxiety. Don’t know his full story, but after a year with us he has even joined us IRL to hang out. Of course as soon as things get stressful, he reverts to old habits.

“Yeah Mike...I am doing ok…” Armada replied to me weakly and a little indifferently, he is a new member recruited from the Freshman, he is the same as the old Rhyse though. But with Alex’s graduation coming up he decided he wanted to be nominated as the next Guildmaster. He pushed himself hard to be recognised, but even after significant effort he wasn’t chosen. He used to hang out with us at Jaxon’s, but now he doesn’t even log in much. He also doesn’t really talk to Alex much, seems like he is holding a bit of grudge.

“Hey I get it, some of those newbies can be annoying to deal with. If Alex didn’t need me to help out I would be avoiding those annoyances too. You mind if I hang out with you guys a bit, I need to talk to some normal people before I deal with assholes again.” I started with a slight complaint to Alex, Managers always delegate the hard jobs to his subordinates don’t they? They both replied positively to my request and we started to chat with each other. I know I was there to make them feel less awkward, but I wasn’t lying about needing time before I deal with assholes too. I am not as social as people make it out to be, I am just good at faking it. Hopefully these two can realize that they are part of the group, not the stragglers. That was Alex’s Goal as a guildmaster, to have the Guild reach its highest member count and finish a full 96 man legion raid.

“Hey Mike, do you think we will accomplish Alex's Goal this year? Kinda seems difficult since most of the newbies don’t seem all that promising.” Armando squeaked out, a little bit of a sneer hinted at the end of his words.

“Well, I can’t say I was all that promising when I started out. And Michael and Blake almost got kicked out together when they first started. Maybe we just need to give them a little time.” Rhyse replied, trying some self deprecating humor to mellow out Armando’s bitter attitude.

“Haha, yeah Blake and I got in a lot of trouble back then. We even got suspended from guild activities when we let some of our grades drop too. Though Blake has football as an excuse, I was just a lazy freshman” I laughed, thinking about the bitter memories of an embarrassing past.

The humor managed to loosen up Armando and Rhyse, and we talked for a while about our plans for the raid. Both of these guys, despite their difficult personalities, are foundations for the next Guildmaster to rely upon. I know Alex wouldn’t have made his first year if it were not the efforts for the precious upperclassmen helping. This is how Chronicle will prepare for the next generation, by building a solid foundation of support for them to construct a magnificent castle upon. Man is Alex lucky I give enough of a shit to do this for him, more than I can probably ever tell him unfortunately.

[Alex POV]

After 2 hours of agonizingly hard questions from Marise, we finally decide to wrap up our little reunion. The Alumni began 1 by 1 logging off while saying they will be there at the Winter Break IRL reunion. Marise and Curtis also began logging off, both happy with the progress of the guild they loved so much. Even though I haven’t done my Guild Goal yet...I am sure that we would be able to do it this year. That is one of the things we discussed at Jaxon’s afterall, how tonight's little training session with the trial members will go. Many of these members also don’t realize that the “reunion” was also a little test of ours. This dirty test was to check if they were just trying to use our guild for the connections, or if they had major character flaws that showed up when they talked with the Alumni. We are very strict with recruiting, and we use dirty tricks like this to see if you are worth the effort to incorporate into Chronicle. We can pretty much single out who is viable or not just by this little test, but we included a trial raid or dungeon run just to give them a chance to turn around our opinions of them. You would be surprised that actually a good amount manage to turn opinions around by the trial dungeon.

We split up into various groups with the newbies, tending to be groups of 6 or 7. With around 60 regulars of our guild, and the 18 trial members, we break into 11 teams to tackle a special dungeon. We had 11 of those newbies act poorly during the reunion, so I partied with 5 of them along with the “heir” to Chronicle, while Blake and Michael took 3 of each in their respective groups. The rest get spread around will our full members, one of their test conditions is just to see if they can properly group up with the regulars. It is not like we expect you to buddy up with us, we just want to see you aren’t an asshole about failing a dungeon. That is one thing I can’t stand, is the people who get frustrated in a video game and take it out on their teammates. That is why I chose a special dungeon, a hellish dungeon that uses status conditions and continuous poisons as the challenge.

The Gauntlet of the Wraith Queen, is the type of dungeon everyone hates. It has small cramped corridors as well as the ground, pockets in the air, and almost every enemy in the dungeon has a long lasting status effect or poison. It is a healer’s and tank’s worst nightmare, it is the notorious party killer and friendship ruiner. It also has good loot, but drops infuriatingly little of it. This contributes to further group tensions, and a large part of its awful reputation. Many consider this dungeon a trial, if you can complete it you will be considered a “true” player of the game. We like to use it as a character testing exercise, we don’t really expect for new people to suddenly party and clear with basically no prep. Though, since we have so many challengers we can expect a good haul from the loot drops anyway. I got stuck with the naughty kids because of my tardiness today, at least I can bring my [Summoner] character as an excuse to “test” their personalities.