Heroes’ Guild

"Hikari, the Heroes' Guild is a home to me..." - Hovernyan

Heroes' Guild or the Guild of Heroes is an organisation of mystical warriors. Here, this is where Haruki was trained.

Founding
Following the collapse of the Old Kingdom, the remaining population of Albion fell into isolation. Distance bred suspicion, which grew into bloodshed. Soon, villagers were doing unspeakable things for freshwater, food, or even women of child-bearing age. Whilst mercenaries lived quite happily, selling their sword to the vast paranoid sea of vindictive people. Albion was brought to its knees, edging very close to extinction. Then, out of the East, hope arrived in the most unusual of forms - a bandit, by the name of Nostro.

In his youth, Nostro was a bandit and mercenary, driven by an ambition to leave his mark on the world. He was a giant of a man, who was not at ease without a sword in his iron grip. However, he was not without a sense of decency but didn't reach full potential until he met a wise old man named Scythe. He seemed to appear out of nowhere and took a profound interest in Nostro - for he saw something in Nostro, something more than a mere bandit. Nostro, unknowingly, possessed the power that all the Archon's descendants shared. So, Scythe hatched a plan: if he could properly guide Nostro, this bandit could achieve great things. He might even once again unite Albion and undo the damage done by the first Archon's children. And so Scythe began to tutor Nostro in how to be a leader of men.

Under Nostro
Following Scythe's counsel, Nostro set about returning security and prosperity to Albion. First, he gathered men and women throughout Albion and established the Guild, where they could train to become real Heroes. Meanwhile, Scythe tutored Nostro in the ways of Will. Using his newfound power, along with Scythe's sage counsel, Nostro forced peace on the warring people of Albion. Thus, the Guild of Heroes was born. For a time, it seemed that Albion might return to its former greatness, but those hopes were in vain.

Despite Scythe's teachings, Nostro increasingly fell under the sway of a power-hungry courtesan named Magdalena. In time, she corrupted Nostro to the point where the Arena, intended to be a venue in which anyone could settle disputes in public, was debased into a source of popular entertainment and the Heroes' Guild became nothing more than a house of mercenaries driven by the lust for profit and fame. These developments disgusted Scythe, who could only watch as Nostro and the Guild fell into disrepute. Finally, he vanished, leaving Nostro to his fate.

Near the end of his life, Nostro could finally see how power had corrupted him, and how far short he had fallen from his youthful ideals. By then his followers and even his wife had long since abandoned him. Isolated, he was easy prey for an assassin who slipped poison into his food. Nostro knew that he was dying. He called out for Scythe, and his old mentor came to sit vigil with him in his final hours. Scythe with warm affection told him of the good things Nostro had done in his life. Finally, at peace with himself, Nostro died with the dawn's first light and was then buried in Lychfield Graveyard. Scythe disappeared shortly thereafter.

Even with the death of its first leader, however, the Guild continued to thrive and lived on, expanding in both structure and members.

Weaver's rebellion
Not much is known of the Guild's history between the time of Nostro and Weaver, but it is known that in his youth Weaver, together with a cluster of Heroes, Maze among them, rebelled against the previous Guild regime, and its resolution of offering only virtuous Quests. Much blood was spilled in this short revolt in the name of freedom, leaving the number of Heroes, already rare in a world of diminishing Will presence, at its lowest for centuries. Once again Scythe reappeared and proposed Weaver as the new Guildmaster, seeing in him the serene and impartial man he would become. Someone who would leave the moral destiny of all future acolytes in their own hands. Under his leadership, Heroes were free to align themselves however they wished.

Hero of Oakvale
Time went on and new Heroes came and went, and the people of Albion lived in relative peace - that is until the evil being Jack of Blades reappeared. His ultimate goal was to regain the Sword of Aeons, which was stored within the Guild. He used Maze (who was in debt to Jack for saving his life) to extract information about the sword. It was soon discovered that in order to acquire the sword one needed an artifact called the 'Septimal Key' and blood from the royal blood-line of the Old Kingdom. Jack told Maze to organize a raid against the small town of Oakvale, where members of the blood-line could be found. There, the woodcutter, Brom Maruyama, was slain by Jack himself, the former Heroine and Arena Champion Scarlet Robe was kidnapped by Jack and taken to Bargate Prison. Her daughter, Theresa Maruyama, was blinded and left in the woods, only to be adopted by bandits. However, Haruki Maruyama survived the raid and was undiscovered until Maze found him and saved his life from the bandits. In Haruki, Maze saw a way to confront Jack and maybe stop the evil he had been twisted into once and for all.

As Maze sees great potential in Haruki, he teleports himself and Haruki to the Guild and convinces the Guildmaster to allow him to join the Heroes' Guild, where he would be trained for many years to become a Hero - the greatest of them all. The Hero leaves the guild for the first time since childhood and is given a Guild Seal by the Guildmaster. He then embarks on a journey to discover the reason behind his village's destruction, discovering his destiny, and the true fate of his family along the way. He was accompanied by Hovernyan during the journey. Thus, the Birth of the Nyight would begin.

Fall of the Guild of Heroes
After the threat posed by Jack was now gone forever, the Guild now thrived and grew once more. At some unknown date, Haruki and Emily dies. Over time, the Heroes that the Guild trained became more arrogant and selfish, breeding resentment from the common folk. Since Jack was slain, the people began to believe there was no more need for Heroes. This sentiment eventually gave rise to organised movements such as the Anti-Hero League of Oakvale. One day a mob of villagers from nearby Bowerstone attacked the Guild. With the element of surprise, superior numbers, the newly invented guns from Samarkand, and the hesitation of most Heroes to attack the people they had sworn to protect, they managed to successfully destroy the Guild. The surviving Heroes fled into the woods and the Guild was no more.

Through the passage of time, what was left of the Guild sank into the ground and was buried beneath what would become known as Bower Lake. The Guild Cave would lie untouched, save for a few explorers who never unearthed its secrets, most notably Hovernyan who kept his treasure there. This continued until the Hovernyan again, after training for ten years in the Gypsy Camp under the guidance of Theresa, came in search of the Chamber of Fate. It was at the time accessible from a shrine-like entrance on a small island unlockable with a Guild Seal, and later from a Cullis Gate on a hill called Hero Hill. It was in the Chamber that two meetings were held with the first two heroes recruited, who were Grandmaster Claire and Blooming Tiff.

50 years later both entrances are now cut off. The shrine has been demolished and is replaced with a white gazebo with a white bridge leading to the shore. The spiral path of Hero Hill had been sliced so the top is inaccessible and the region is now known as Millfields. Hovernyan... AGAIN... as a Monarch had a choice of either Reaver's request of draining the lake or Page's request of protecting it. He chooses to protect it.

Chamber of Fate
In the Birth of the Nyight, the Chamber of Fate serves a number of purposes. We first see it when Haruki graduates his Guild Training and receives his Guild Seal, along with Whisper. As the story processes, you will see frescoes of his important accomplishments on the walls of the Chamber of Fate. From there, the Chamber is unused until the Battle Jack of Blades quest, where the Haruki and Hovernyan battles Jack of Blades and Queen of Blades in their human form. After Jack and Queen is defeated, a swirling vortex appears at the highest elevation of the floor.

In The Relic, the Chamber of Fate lies in the depths of the Old Tomb in the middle of Bower Lake. It is but a ghost of its former self with much of the floor missing and the walls crumbling down due to the centuries that had passed. It can be reached by traversing the Guild Cave from the entrance to the Old Tomb. The paintings along the wall tell the tale of Haruki Maruyama. When Hovernyan with his friends first encounters it, Theresa shows them how to use their Will powers. Many other quests require Hovernyan to come back here in order to meet the other Heroes in their quest to fight Lucien Fairfax.