A Necromancer's Guide to Clearing a Game Like Tower

Chapter 207: Chapter 207 — Guild Zero II

Kavanagh recorded it.

James Ganner — Guild Master and Managing Director. Finn Hale — Deputy Guild Master and Raid Captain. Maeve Callahan — Commercial Director, with a board seat and the formal commercial authority she’d priced into her fifteen percent.

"And us?" Cillian asked.

"Founding shareholders and senior Challengers," Kavanagh said. "No invented titles."

"Thank Christ," Cillian said. "I was braced for Vice President of Standing Near James."

Ronan just nodded, visibly relieved on the same point.

There was work coming for both of them all the same — Kavanagh sketched it without inflating it. Ronan, when recruitment began: defensive assessments, formation discipline, Guardian training. Cillian: combat trials, applicant evaluations. Real jobs, when the guild was real enough to need them.

"Which it can’t be," Maeve said, "with five active Challengers and nobody else. The day we announce, this stops being manageable from a group chat forever. We’ll need an actual administrator. Lawyers and accountants on retainer. A company secretary — that’s a legal requirement, not a luxury. Security personnel. Floor analysts. Equipment staff, medical support, recruitment staff, trainers, media people." She looked around. "Not all on day one. But we hire professionals, or we become five famous people drowning in paperwork between raids."

Kavanagh confirmed the shape of it.

Registered name: Guild Zero Limited. Public name: Guild Zero. Founding raid team: Team Zero. The shares belonged to the five founders; the company, once incorporated, became its own legal person — directors and secretary recorded, subscribers listed, share allocations filed.

Then the names themselves.

"Last structural question," Kavanagh said. "The Guild Zero and Team Zero identities. Who owns them?"

"The company," James said. "Not any of us."

He counted the reasons on his fingers, and every finger pointed at a real danger they’d already met.

"If I own it, my sportswear sponsor is one clever clause away from the team identity. If Finn owns it, it can be argued into Emerald Spire the day anything happens to him. If Maeve owns it, her personal management deals touch it. If either of you owns it and leaves, the name walks out the door with you." He put his hand flat on the table. "The company owns both names. Any commercial use runs through the founders’ agreement and the protected votes. Nobody’s sponsor, nobody’s father, nobody’s exit takes it."

Five yes votes. The first unanimous decision of Guild Zero, spent on protecting Team Zero.

Kavanagh started the machine that same night.

Founders’ agreement drafted. Incorporation filing prepared, directors and secretary recorded. A company bank account opened. Name and trademark clearance searches run — and separate trademark applications prepared for Guild Zero, Team Zero, and the future logos, because registering the company protected nothing about the brand. The marks were their own applications, their own examinations, their own fight.

Two evenings later, the transfers went through.

James’s deposit landed first, the largest. Finn’s second. Maeve’s third. Then Ronan’s, then Cillian’s.

Kavanagh forwarded the account confirmation to the group chat, and the five of them looked at the same screen in five different houses.

One number. All of their names behind it.

Finn replied with a thumbs-up, which for Finn was euphoria. Ronan wrote no going back now. Cillian wrote technically I own 7.5% of that number and then, a minute later, lads. we have a guild.

James sat at his kitchen table looking at the balance for a long moment.

Nyra, doing her reading beside him, looked at the screen, then at his face.

"Is it a good number?"

"It’s a beginning number," James said.

The next session opened with a question nobody had thought to put on any list.

"Where does Guild Zero exist?" Kavanagh asked. "Physically. You’re an incorporated company with a funded bank account and no address. Staff need somewhere to work. A guild licence needs premises. So — where?"

The five of them looked at each other.

"Short term," James said, "could we run out of Hale Estate? The strategy room’s already—"

"No." Finn didn’t let the sentence finish. "Think about the photograph. Guild Zero, announced to the world, operating out of the Hale family property. The documents can say independent in every paragraph. The industry will read one thing: Marcus built himself a second guild and put his son’s friends in it."

"He’s right," Maeve said. "Sponsors would price us as a Spire subsidiary. Reporters would write it. Other guilds would believe it. Perception is the asset we’re protecting."

"So we buy our own ground," James said.

Kavanagh brought in a property adviser from her firm’s commercial side, and the requirements list built itself out of everything they now knew they were.

Secure briefing and strategy rooms. Training halls rated for Challenger abilities — reinforced, shielded, insured. Equipment storage and a proper vault. Offices for the professionals Maeve was going to hire. Medical and recovery space. Analysis and server rooms. Controlled access, security checkpoints, private entrances away from lenses. And empty space — room for the recruits who didn’t exist yet.

"Build from scratch?" Ronan asked.

"Two years, optimistically," the adviser said. "Design, planning permission, construction, certification."

"Dead idea," Finn said. "Next."

"Then we look at buildings that were already guild halls," Maeve said. "Guilds dissolve. They merge, they shrink, they go bankrupt like anything else. Somewhere out there is a headquarters that lost its guild."

James set a fixed property budget — a number, on paper, signed.

"That’s the envelope," he told the adviser. "Find what fits inside it. The envelope doesn’t stretch because I answer the phone politely."

The larger property funding would come from James, Finn, and Maeve in line with their positions. Ronan and Cillian’s capital stayed in the general startup fund, and nobody suggested otherwise.

The adviser came back within the week with a shortlist, and the shortlist taught them what they actually needed by being mostly wrong.

The first property sat two streets from a major guild’s compound — impressive, available, and permanently observed. "We’d be training in their car park," Finn said. Rejected.

The second had beautiful offices and a training hall that wouldn’t survive one of Cillian’s warm-ups. Rejected.

The third was cheap, and cheap the way a hollow tooth is cheap. Stripped to the walls; everything would need rebuilding. Rejected.

The fourth had the space and the bones — forty minutes too far from Dublin Tower for a team that might need to reach a gate at speed. Rejected.

"And then there’s this," the adviser said.

The fifth was a former mid-tier guild headquarters, dissolved eighteen months ago, close enough to Dublin Tower for operations, far enough out to control its own gates.

Existing training halls. Briefing rooms and offices. Equipment storage. A medical section. A rear private entrance the previous guild had used to move members past the press. A residential wing, neglected but standing. Unused floors waiting for a future.

No connection to Emerald Spire, or to anyone.

Then the honest column. Damage across part of the training floor. Vault security a generation out of date. A server system older than that. Water damage through the residential wing. Renovation costs unconfirmed, and a building that had sat empty long enough to need structural and security inspections before anyone trusted a wall of it.

"It’s promising," James said, and then, before the feeling in the room could inflate: "Promising. Nobody says ours. Not until the reports exist."

They authorized Kavanagh to put it under a conditional purchase agreement, and the conditions went in like formation rules.

Structural inspection. Security assessment. Renovation estimates. Guild-licensing requirements confirmed. Final approval by the founders. And the right to walk away whole if anything major crawled out of the walls.

"Where does that leave us tonight?" Ronan asked.

Kavanagh read the state of the world off her list.

"Guild Zero Limited — incorporated. Founding shares — allocated, five names. Company account — funded, all five contributions received. Trademark applications — in preparation. One property — under conditional agreement, pending inspection." She looked up. "And no public announcement of any of it."

"Keep it that way," Maeve said. "We don’t announce a guild until we know what that building needs, when a licence can actually issue, and who our first hires are. Announcing early buys us nothing except questions we can’t answer on camera."

Nobody disagreed. The meeting broke up quietly, the way meetings do when the work has stopped being talk.

The adviser’s message arrived just before midnight, to all five of them.

First internal footage. Walkthrough attached. Formal inspection can be booked for Thursday.

James opened the video at his kitchen table with the house asleep above him.

The camera came up the front steps in torchlight. Above the entrance, a guild emblem had been unbolted and taken away, and its shape stayed behind anyway — a pale ghost of a crest burned into weathered stone, some other team’s years of mattering, outlined in dirt.

Inside, the beam crossed an empty reception. Dust lay on the desk in an even grey blanket. A directory board still listed departments for a guild that no longer existed.

The training floor came next. Half of it was fine. The other half was cratered and scorch-marked where somebody’s last sessions had outgrown the room’s rating, barriers long since powered down.

Then the vault corridor, and the camera held on the control panel beside the door.

Amber text blinked on a screen two security generations old.

SYSTEM STATUS: UNSUPPORTED — SERVICE DISCONTINUED

The group chat lit up under the video as they all watched it separately, together.

Finn: training floor’s a full rebuild on the north half. vault’s a joke. residential wing will be worse than the video shows. months of work minimum

Finn: good bones though

James typed his answer looking at the frozen last frame — the empty reception, the dust, the outline of someone else’s crest above a door that could carry theirs.

It wasn’t Hale ground, and it wasn’t Spire ground. It wouldn’t be rented, or borrowed, or conditional on anyone’s family or anyone’s percentage.

It would be theirs, if the walls held.

James: book Thursday. full structural and security inspection.

James: if it passes, that’s home.

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