Thunder Reforged
Copyright© 2026 by FozzieBare
Chapter 4: Guild, Reforged.
Elias had made some progress reducing the backlog of signups before finally taking a couple of hours to catch up on his sleep deficit. When he woke, he went back at it with a vengeance. He had also found a temporary solution to the lack of clocks in the Training Center. He propped his phone against the monitor with a clock app running. Every ninety minutes, an alarm went off, reminding him to stretch, get up, maybe find more caffeine, and walk around long enough for his protesting muscles to forgive him.
While Elias worked through the applications, Adrian helped him sort the pile. Adrian was blunt about their odds.
“We’re probably not going to find many superstar pilots through an open signup link. Figure roughly a quarter of these people are star-chasers. They want to be able to say they joined the exciting new guild with ThunderRoad in it.”
Elias glanced at the list. “Useful?”
“Some of them. But their loyalty is going to be shallow at first. If something shinier comes along, they may leave just as fast.”
Adrian continued. “Another quarter will be spies from other guilds, trolls, thieves, or people with some other bright idea about how they can take advantage of us. Those are the ones who can hurt us fastest.”
Elias looked toward the guild-storage records. “Limited access.”
“Very limited. Honestly, I’d keep an alt at the home base and have leadership issue materials as needed. Nobody gets unrestricted storage access until we know exactly who they are.”
Elias made another note. Adrian had now eliminated half the applicants without opening a single application.
“The third quarter sees ‘new guild’ and thinks, ‘Excellent, I can be Deputy Guild Leader by next month.’”
Elias looked up. “That specific?”
“You’ll meet them.”
Adrian sighed. “Some of them will actually be good pilots. That makes them worse.”
“Worse?”
“Because they know they’re good. Usually a little better than they actually are. Within three days they’ll be explaining how we should change the rules. Within a week they’ll be telling you which officers shouldn’t be officers.” He tapped the desk. “And every time you give in just to keep them happy, they spread like termites through the foundation.”
Elias winced. “Our three rules.”
“Exactly.”
Adrian leaned back. “Then there’s the last quarter. People who don’t fit anywhere else.”
Elias stared at him. “That sounds suspiciously like us.”
Adrian smiled. “That’s why they’re the interesting quarter.”
He held up a finger. “If we’re lucky, they’re oddballs.”
Another. “If we’re unlucky, they’re terrible pilots.”
A third. “If we’re really unlucky, they’re terrible pilots and toxic.”
Elias groaned.
Adrian wasn’t finished. “Those are the ones who get you into wars. They join Tuesday, spend Wednesday bragging in public chat about how nobody better mess with our guild because ThunderRoad will come destroy them, and by Thursday you’re getting diplomatic messages from three guilds you’ve never heard of.”
Elias stared at the signup list. “So your estimate is that one hundred percent of the applicants are problems.”
Adrian considered. “Pretty much.”
“Then who are we looking for?”
Adrian smiled.
“The rounding error.”
Adrian moved on to the second part of his argument. “Until we build more barracks on planets we control, formal guild membership is going to be limited. But we can’t just build more barracks because we want more people. They have to be the right people.”
Elias nodded.
“I strongly suggest we make it clear from the start that formal guild spots are limited. We’ll run mock battles and figure out where people fit, or whether they fit at all.” Adrian leaned back. “For most of them, if they don’t measure up right away, we don’t say, ‘Sorry, you don’t meet our needs. Goodbye. Good luck.’ That just builds resentment and gives them a reason to bad-mouth us.”
“So what do we tell them?”
“That they’re on the list. When we can bring them in without stretching our resources too far, we will. If they want to join another guild that has room in the meantime, we understand.”
Adrian glanced toward the roster. “Right now, there are only three people guaranteed spots.”
“You. Me. Amy.”
“Exactly.” He shrugged. “It’s not fun, but until we have the roster space, that’s how we have to handle it.”
Adrian’s expression hardened slightly. “And we are not bringing in somebody who doesn’t fit our three rules just because they have a pile of credits or a WarMAC we desperately need.”
Elias looked at him. “Even if the machine fills a hole in the roster?”
“Especially then.”
Adrian tapped the desk. “We don’t take an unsuitable candidate because they have a suitable WarMAC. It works the other way around.” He smiled slightly. “I’d rather help somebody who fits us build a better WarMAC than spend six months trying to repair somebody’s attitude.”
“And that gets us to the third part of the problem. People aren’t going to want to join a guild and work hard for it if doing so means taking all the personal risk.”
Elias frowned.
Adrian gestured toward the resource reports. “We’ve done pretty well getting a couple of drone mining sites running. That gives us raw material. But raw material isn’t a WarMAC.”
He started counting the steps off. “We need to refine it. Turn the refined material into components. Turn those components into armor, actuators, weapons, electronics, and everything else that goes into a machine. Then we need the facilities to assemble those parts into WarMACs.”
“And repair them.”
“Exactly.”
Adrian leaned back. “Until we have that entire cycle operating, anybody who fights for us is risking their machine for our guild.”
Elias understood the problem immediately. “If Amy loses a leg right now, we can repair it.”
“Probably.”
“If six people lose legs?”
“We start having an interesting conversation about who gets to walk.”
Elias grimaced. “That’s not an interesting conversation.”
“Not the fun kind.”
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