Rainnewt Conspiracy and Exploration Guild Crisis

The Rainnewt Conspiracy and Exploration Guild Crisis is the turning point in which a failed kidnapping reveals that the Exploration Guild itself may have been compromised. What first appears to be an isolated attack by six cervid mercenaries becomes a coordinated betrayal: Mister Rainnewt had accepted Broccoli Bunch into the guild outside the proper channels, arranged her missions, and assigned her as Amaryllis’s partner. When Rainnewt disappears, the guild responds not by immediately protecting Broccoli, but by treating her as a liability. The resulting crisis exposes the guild’s administrative weakness, forces Amaryllis to defend both her own account and Broccoli’s legitimacy, and sends the two companions onward aboard the Shady Lady.

The Kidnapping and Its Moral Cost

The crisis begins with the ambush on a bridge, where six armed cervid using false names attempted to kidnap Amaryllis. The attackers were equipped like soldiers rather than ordinary bandits, making the assault look targeted and organized. Broccoli Bunch and her allies fought back, and the system confirmed that Broccoli had killed Titan, a level-twelve Wind Runner with the Wind Tear class, and Rex, a level-ten Flaming Lancer. Because Broccoli was not the primary combatant, her reward was reduced, but the mechanical reduction did nothing to lessen the human consequence: Titan and Rex would not return to their families, friends, or homes.

Broccoli experienced the deaths as a personal moral catastrophe even though the attackers had initiated the kidnapping. While the skeletons moved in a wedge behind her and deliberately gave the cervid time to prepare for another attack, she tried to bury what she had caused deeply enough to continue functioning. She mourned two men whose names she knew but whose faces she had never seen. The scene makes the crisis more than a tactical victory: the system treats the killings as experience-worthy combat, while Broccoli interprets them as an irreversible theft of other people’s lives.

Her guilt follows her into the reunion with Amaryllis. Broccoli finally tells her friend, in a rush of disordered explanation, that she killed people. Amaryllis initially understands that she means the kidnappers and answers with blunt practicality: they were mercenaries who had tried to abduct her, and killing them was like removing weeds. She even points out that Broccoli gained a level from the act. Broccoli rejects that justification, insisting that the attackers’ wrongdoing cannot make killing acceptable. Amaryllis then embraces her, calls her an idiot for compromising herself on behalf of someone like Amaryllis, and appears to sob slightly while holding her. The embrace does not erase Broccoli’s grief, but it gives her enough stability to return to Green Hold.

From Suspicious Assignment to Guild Crisis

The institutional implications become clear after the pair returns. Amaryllis apologizes for losing her temper the previous night, then explains that the kidnapping could not have been ordered by her family, which would not have sent cervid after her. She narrows the possible sources of the information: the guild and the bank could have known where she was, but only the guild knew where she would be in advance. That distinction turns the attack into evidence of an internal leak rather than a random roadside crime.

Broccoli identifies Mister Rainnewt as especially suspicious because he was the person who assigned her to Amaryllis. She does not claim certainty; she remembers that Rainnewt seemed nice and hopes the connection is an accident, but she also adopts a cautious principle of trusting people while verifying their actions. The suspicion is therefore tied to a concrete administrative act. Rainnewt did not merely belong to the guild in the background: he controlled Broccoli’s entry and shaped the partnership at the center of the conspiracy.

Amaryllis brings the matter before the guild. She states that the attackers were not bandits but six kidnappers in military equipment, all cervid operating under false names. The declaration changes the atmosphere of the room, drawing the attention of people who had initially been absorbed in cigars and quiet conversation. Mathide responds by moving the discussion to her office with Amaryllis and Gabriel, while ordering Abraham to keep Broccoli outside because Broccoli might be complicit. The guild’s first institutional reflex is suspicion toward the newest member, even though Broccoli was also one of the people who helped stop the attack.

Expulsion, Disappearance, and Exposure

The guild’s distrust becomes explicit when Mathide orders Gabriel to give Broccoli a coin-purse containing standard mission pay and show her out. Broccoli wonders whether the decision concerns her unpaid membership fee, since Mister Rainnewt had told her that payment could wait until her return. Mathide rejects that explanation and identifies Broccoli as a liability who should never have been admitted. The accusation transforms Rainnewt’s irregular acceptance of Broccoli from a personal administrative shortcut into a possible breach with serious consequences.

Amaryllis refuses to let the decision stand. She explains that Rainnewt has disappeared, that he accepted Broccoli without using the proper channels, and that he arranged all of Broccoli’s missions. Mathide suspects him of being a troublemaker; Amaryllis goes further, believing he should be hanged for attempting to have her kidnapped. She also condemns the proposed solution of expelling Broccoli, arguing that Broccoli has done more to repair the guild’s own mistakes than anyone else involved. Her defense binds the two parts of the crisis together: the same official who created Broccoli’s dubious membership may have endangered Amaryllis, yet the guild is prepared to punish the person caught inside his arrangement rather than first confronting him.

Mathide then acknowledges the central possibility: the guild may have had a spy in its midst. Rainnewt’s absence becomes meaningful because it follows the exposure of the kidnapping and because no one in the room can say where he is. Her recognition does not resolve the conspiracy, but it changes the matter from an argument over Broccoli’s paperwork into an investigation of guild infiltration. The crisis reveals that the guild’s uncertainty is not only procedural. Its chain of trust has broken, and the missing administrator sits at the point where membership, assignments, and access to mission information meet.

Departure and Narrative Consequences

The immediate institutional outcome is not a formal resolution but a forced transition. Abraham announces that the Shady Lady will be ready to depart first thing in the morning and tells the two women to find it by asking around. The guild crisis therefore pushes Broccoli and Amaryllis out of the compromised setting and toward another adventure before Rainnewt’s role can be fully established. Broccoli remains shaken by the guild’s suspicion, but Amaryllis’s decision to stand beside her makes the departure feel less like abandonment than a continuation of their partnership under pressure.

The event also changes the meaning of Broccoli’s place in the guild. She entered through Rainnewt’s unauthorized intervention, and that irregular beginning leaves her vulnerable when his disappearance exposes the arrangement. Yet her actions during the kidnapping give the guild evidence of both courage and danger: she helped defeat the attackers, but she also carries the psychological burden of killing Titan and Rex. The guild sees a liability where Amaryllis sees a friend who acted in a crisis and then suffered for it.

In narrative terms, the conspiracy joins external danger to internal doubt. The bridge attack threatens Amaryllis’s body; the guild hearing threatens Broccoli’s belonging; Broccoli’s confession and Amaryllis’s embrace protect their emotional bond from the institutional fracture. The event’s ending is consequently provisional rather than conclusive. Rainnewt is missing, the suspected spy has not been found, and the guild has not repaired its damaged credibility, but Broccoli and Amaryllis leave together aboard the Shady Lady, carrying unresolved suspicion into the next stage of their journey.