Courier guilds were all over Ether and the members had the same ranks as the others. She entrusted the letters to gold ranks. There was no guarantee that a sent letter would reach its destination. Not only were there monsters and NPC interference, there were also other Players. There were an infinite amount of things that could go wrong. If it was in the hands of a gold ranked courier, I could rest easy. They had a high success rate and were given the stats one would expect for the profession: high in stamina and endurance, middling combat ability, decent speed and moderate charisma. Either way, I would be waiting in Estlor for quite a bit. I sighed and let them know that I would be in the town. The town had everything that was needed: blacksmith, arcane enchanter, alchemy lab, medical services, clerics and a small market. It was also populated with a couple hundred NPCs. That meant there were tons of things to do. Since I was nerfed, I needed to wait until Alpha, Beta and Gamma could do all the things I wanted for me. Making master weapons and armor were at the top of my list.
As time went on, I noticed that there were indeed consequences to my actions in the Chegow Republic. The king had sent bounty hunters for me and my party. The cities of Kille and Hesa also sent out there assassins to kill us for what we had done. Every so often, an NPC would approach me or the centaurs in the street and demand we go with them. Those were the bounty hunters. Just as frequently, a NPC in a hooded robe would approach and instantly go hostile. They then engaged us in combat right there. They had six ranks: white, light gray, dark gray, black, rusty brown and red. At first they were all whites and light gray. We could handle them on our own. When a black robbed assassin appeared, we had to band together as a party. It was good that they took a straight forward approach. Just like the bounty hunters, they simply approached you from wherever they came from. While the game gave you ample time to prepare for them, they were still good at fighting. They also did not fight fair. The assassins were made for this. Poison was on everything and they could carry explosives.
While the constant fighting on the streets did drop the town's opinion of us, they also were not happy that Chegow was sending assassins and bounty hunters to cause a serious rise violence on their once peaceful streets. I know that I would resent that. Eventually, the mayor of the town and Bishop Annabelle instructed the guards to arrest assassins on sight and prevent bounty hunters from Chegow from getting in the town. This worked against all of the bounty hunters and lower ranked assassins. It was not perfect though. Black ranks could just infiltrate and bypass the guards. Even if they were caught, the assassins could fight their way out of any encounter. We all saw the number of guard casualties begin to rise after that. Corpses on the outskirts of town would appear and by the time we could bury them, the damned assassin would be approaching. This had gone on for multiple weeks in their time. Even the regular townsfolk began to get militaristic and xenophobic towards outsiders. I even had a mission to train up a forming militia. I did it gladly as it would help us in the long run.
