Stock One Off Quests

1. Call for Shields

A Call for Shields is when the guild contract is calling for the defense of a specific site, almost always a settlement, but sometimes a mine, a mill, or more swords and shields for a keep. This isn't war, its usually to defend against raiders, greenskins, aggressive monsters, and the like. This is generally unpopular work because it involves spending a good deal of time quartered in place, and often earning the ire of the locals, and getting drawn into local disputes and feuds.

2. Clearing the Field

A call for clearing the field is when there is an interest and charter to found a new settlement. This is usually from a large city, a guild interest, or a noble interest. The desired area has to be scouted out and then the often hostile locals will have to be driven out or slain. This is the goblin hunting and troll-driving from common folk stories.

3. Suspected Imposter

There is concern that a person of importance in a settlement is not who they appear to be. The most common issue is the appearance of a doppelganger or mimic. Other times it is literally an imposter or someone using guile or magic to be someone they are not. This is almost always a person of importance, because no one bodysnatches a peasant. This can be a difficult job because the interloper is likely to be well dug in and prepared for others to come hunting them and their charade. Spirit possession also falls into the category.

4. Bandit Hunting

The powers that be, those paying the contract, have information on where a group of pirates, raiders, brigands, etc, have set up base and the adventurers upon return are tasked with hunting down this semi-organized groups of criminals and put them to the blade. They are not interested in prisoners, live capture, or interrogations.

5. Mark Hunting

The difference between a mark and bandit hunting is that a mark could under other circumstances themselves be a member of the guild. Bandits and raiders are low level foes, with numbers, but limited abilities. Marks are accomplished warriors, magic users, beast masters, etc and are a much more dangerous foe, and they may have their own band following them.

6. Resettling

A follow up to Clearing the Field, Resettling has the guild providing protection and support for a group of settlers moving into the new settlement. This job includes protecting the settlers as they start building, hunting to protect livestock, and even applying their skills where useful. This can be where a cooking skill, or woodworking, or other tertiary non-combat skill can be allowed to shine. This is a longer term assignment and generally lasts a season.

7. Kidnapping

Banditry is an issue and kidnapping travelers and family members is a less violent plan that some groups use to extort money from villages and towns rather than resorting to pillaging. You can sheer a sheep a dozen times, but you can only skin it once. The guild sends a group to find the missing person, rescue them, and end the bandits who orchestrated the kidnapping. This can also be a missing VIP, and the guild has groups out looking for said person.

8. Greenskins

Greenskin is a derogatory term given to orc and goblinkind, regardless of their skin color, and there is a group of greenskins who are threatening a settlement and need to be dealt with. The guild has been contracted to convince them to move on, move out, or leave them for the crows.

9. Walkers

No one says the Z word, they are walkers, shamblers, ghouls, ghasts, etc, never zombies. A community is under threat from the undead, and the guild has been contracted to send a group to clear out the shamblers. This can become exciting as there can be greater undead, ghosts, and local issues when the heroes loot the undead and then the family wants the funeral goods of their loved ones returned.

10. Call to Arms

The opposite of Call for Shields, a threat has been identified and rather than defending a community, the guild has decided to go on the offensive. This is an aggressive action, where the guild goes in and takes care of business in a highly aggressive fashion. The contract has guild forces going into an area with the intent of seek and destroy all greenskins, raiders, undead, or settlers from another nation not allied with the guild.

11. Retrieval

There are relics from hundreds of years of magical artifice and history scattered across the land, lost keeps, overgrown villages, dungeons, and so forth. The guild is more than willing to engage in a little scavenger hunting, magic items, magic weapons, wondrous items like anvils used to make magic items, items with sentimental value, and so forth.

12. Potions

The guild always has a need for healing and mana potions, so on a regular basis. A band of adventurers upon return can expect a decent payout for procuring said potions, or the raw materials to make said potions and bringing them to the guild hall where a guild alchemist can use them to make the needed potions.

13. Guild Matters

The Guild of Adventurers-Upon-Return survives maintaining a monopoly over heroes for hire. There are other groups who would put their own heroes for hire into the field and the Guild has decided to eliminate the competition. Most of the time, this is facing more monstrous groups of heroes, such as greenskin heroes, and bands of adventurers from other general alignments, ala the black clad lawful evil guys, the neutral earth tones forest and mountain guys, and so forth. This can be a morally sticky situation because the opponent isnt always villainous, evil, or even opposed to the guild.

14. Guild Cache

Guild caches represent stockpiles of materials valuable to the guild, typically consumables like potions and magic scrolls, but also valuable books, and some basic magical equipment. For a group of heroes who are in bad shape, finding a cache can be a great relief, with healing potions, and cloaks of protection, or a scroll of sanctuary or teleportation. This job can involved putting a cache in place, recovering a cache in a vulnerable location, checking on the status of one, or finding out who has been using caches without being part of the guild.

15. Guild Business

The guild has contacts across the continents, and people who work for it in other guilds, and in social circles. These people require regular meetings with representatives from the guild, so they can work as couriers, taking missives to an from the chapterhouse. This is a subtle task and not one requiring fighting in or out, and the group might be required to complete the job without their arms or armor.

16. Library Work

Books and scrolls are valuable, and the more the guild has, the happier they are. Guild groups are routinely selected to find the ruins of archives, book depositories, or raid the laboratories and sanctums of magic users who are not allied with the guild, or are in the lawful evil/outside position to the guild. Like Guild Matters, this can be a morally difficult issue because the subject of library work might not be willing to part with their work, or have their own reasons for not being involved with the guild.

17. Treasure Hunt

Far from stealing a dragon's hoard or looting a great treasure, the contract is to recover a specific item and can be a weapon, a cache or personal valuables like coins or jewels, spell components, wondrous items, or the like. The item itself should function as a mcguffin, so that the heroes don't decide that the treasure is more valuable than the reward. While these jobs might not bring a large payout, they could have a corresponding reward in guild reputation.

18. Rogue Monster

The Rogue Monster is a creature that was created by artificial means, typically a mad scientist like wizard, and has given a fee to the guild to see that the creature is slain before running amok. Most of the time this is a kill and bring back proof, but some contracts might posit the return of the entire carcass for research purposes. As with some other non-arc quests, these can be morally questionable as some of the creatures might be sentient or neither chaotic or evil in alignment.

19. Training Mission

The training mission will generally overlap with another basic mission, like Call for Shields or Call to Swords, but the guild has gathered a few veteran heroes to guide and help initiates get their first experience in the field. The main contract is for the heroes to make sure the initiates dont get killed early on in their careers. These tend to be shorter missions.

20. Repair the Pylons

Many magic users and the guild itself maintain a series of pylons and unmanned towers that are used for a variety of magical and mundane purposes, and can range from magical communications, monitoring, projecting magical protections like scrying wards, repelling undead, preventing teleportation, or even active defense towers that protect contested areas (tower defense game inspiration). These towers can be damaged, or require replacement of sigils and refreshing of charms that power it. If the group of heroes lacks a personal with the skills required for this task, it can become an escort mission where a mage is the companion to be protected.

21. Gladiator Match

Heroes are good at fighting, and the crowds like a good fight. The heroes are contracted to fight, willingly, in gladiatorial matches. This can be exhibition matches, or choreographed reenactments, and other 'battle ballet'. In less savory circles this can be fighting dangerous animals for gambling profits, executing criminals, and the like. These are rarely to the death unless the heroes in question have run afoul of betting and political groups.

22. Guild Confiscation and Abduction

The guild has dues that it is owed, and the advantages of the guild networks, caches, and so forth are not for free. Individuals who take too much, forget their dues, and generally abuse the good will of the guld can find themselves on the wrong side of it. The guild doesnt go for blood first thing, so it is more common for a band of heroes to be sent to recover missing goods, guild owned items, or to simply take the offender into guild custody so that

23. Animal Handling

Animals are a commodity, and horses, hawks, and hounds are at the top of the list. These animals, being valuable, can be the target of thieves, rival groups, and poachers. The heroes from the guild have been employed to collect and deliver the animals in question to their destination unharmed. A variant of the animal handling task can be used for delivering exotic animals, petite pets, or rolling the dice on an Operation Dumbo Drop where the mission is to deliver a massive and unusual, but not violent creature to a new home.

24. Outsiders Inside

Sometimes abominations, aberrations, and other things that should not be can appear without being part of a prophecy or massive story arc. A horrific shit monster is present in a specific location, or there is a rumor of one. The guild has a contract to go in and destroy it before something worse happens. This can be a middle to high range threat.

25. Ambush Season

Sometimes a large number of foes cannot be handled in a Call to Swords or Call for Shields mission, so the answer is to set an ambush and draw the enemies into predetermined location for a massed guild versus battle. This can be an excuse for a large battle full of heroes without having apocalyptic wars or world ending prophecies. Planning can happen long before the battle, and the battle itself can be intense but the guild will have set itself up to have the high ground and other suitable advantages.

26. Call for Cavalry

The Call for Cavalry mission involves the guild moving into an existing conflict, and that the heroes hired have a tight timeframe to reach the destination in a set amount of time to enter into a battle already in motion. This can be assisting in breaking a siege, interrupting a route in progress, or even slowing down a maruading force long enough for regular conscripts, knights, and similar mundane forces to be brought to bear. There isn't time for doing background research, interviews,just time to come in at a run with weapons drawn and shields ready.

27. Gods and Tithes

The Guild likes to stay on good terms with the dominant faith of whatever region it is operating in. The guild works in a non-denomnational fashion, and doesnt espouse any one god or pantheon, but will pay lip service and coin to whomever is the top dog in their region. Gods and tithes work general duty for the local religious authority and its generally just bringing funds for the tithe, a little bodygaurd work, and the like. Anything beyond goodwill work requires a contract through the guild. Most heroes aren't keen on this general type of job, since it is a lot of glad-handing with the religious types, moral and ethical issues, and lots of being on best behavior.

28. Groundskeeping

Magic is a real and vibrant thing, and magic flows through the most things, like water. The flow of magic, again like water, can be fouled or polluted and the mages; those of the guild, mages who keep their own guild, and independent alike, are aware of it. This results in a guild contract being issued and a group of heroes being sent to investigate the source of the problem, and deal with it. Common sources of magical pollution include rogue magic users, undead infestations, manifestations of infernal powers, and intrusions from outsiders entities. This can be messy and dangerous work, but mages pay well.

29. Black Hand

Working Black Hand are contracts that involve the Thieves or Assassins guilds. This work is seldom on the up and up, and the Guild of Adventurers-Upon-Return is working as hired muscle. Discretion is key, and this work keeps tensions between the adventurers and the thieves guild manageable or even cordial. At times when the guild encounters work outside of their expertise they are willing to subcontract out to the thieves or even the assassins.

30. Test Run

Mages, armorsmiths, and weapon makers are always making new things, and they have to be tested out. To this end, the heroes are contracted to equip the test gear and put it through the wringer. Time to take this new gear, which might or might not work, and take it into deliberately dangerous places.