007

The Guild, the closest thing there was to Ouranos' own Familia in the absence of him actually putting a Falna on anyone, wasn't quite the well greased cog in the machine of Orario that it was by the time canon rolled around. However, it also wasn't a newly rolled out innovation that had only just begun figuring out everything from the first principles either. Under the centuries in which the Zeus and Hera Familias had reigned dominant over Orario and kept everything running fairly smoothly there, the Guild had more or less sorted out the regular needs and methods for their day to day business of supporting and, at least in theory, regulating the actions of Familia and their Adventurers.

There was only so much regulation that could be done, of course, when you were a group of ordinary people that were supposed to ride herd on a number of superhumans that were frankly only going to get more superhuman as time went by. But... this was a point where the Guild had yet to truly internalize that there wasn't actually anything they could do about it if a Familia of high level Adventurers decided to go rogue. They could censure them, and they could refuse them service at the Guild exchange stations, and they could place rewards to encourage other Familias to back them up on making life more difficult and annoying for the offending party, but... They didn't actually have any power over the Familias and couldn't really do anything if, say, a group with Level Sixes at their beck and call decided that they didn't really want to pay taxes, or if they wanted to beat to death a civilian that gave them a dirty look on the street.

They had yet to realize that Adventurers had to be self-regulating to at least some degree, that they couldn't really prevent any individual Adventurer from doing whatever they pleased, and that the law and rules only applied to a more powerful Familia to the point that they let it apply. They were still of a mindset that they served an important and indispensable function to the operation of Orario as a society!

And they were. Just... neither as important nor as indispensable as they thought. They were an extremely convenient service for Adventurers. Like Starbucks. But you could always learn to make your own coffee. The metaphor had gotten away from him a bit.

"So, Mister Jaguar. Stars and underground depths, I see. Dare I ask your intentions for starting a Familia from Orario?" the human guild worker said, dry humor in his tone.

"Well, filing the forms seemed like the thing to do, now that I'm here." Jaguar responded breezily. "Make sure everything is aboveboard and orderly."

"I'm sure. But for classification purposes, the general aim of your Familia?" the guild worker pressed. "Dungeon delving, some area of commerce, gambling, magical studies? You don't need to pick only one, many Familias divide their attention between two or more areas."

"For now, mark it down as 'Exploration'." Jaguar suggested.

"Very good. Dungeon Exploration it is..." the man agreed.

"No no. Just 'Exploration'." Jaguar insisted. "I'm interested in finding new places, eating interesting food, meeting interesting people, collecting curiosities, going about my way afterwards... that sort of thing. I imagine some of the children that I find might wind up exploring their way into the Dungeon, and I would hardly prevent that, but I don't want to give the impression that they have no choice but to strap on some armor and start poking a sword into the place either."

The guild worker hummed, mood visibly but only slightly dampened. It was clearly to be expected, though, given that mining the Magic Stones out of the chests of monsters in the dungeon was the primary purpose for Adventurers and the Guild to begin with... but it couldn't be helped. Jaguar required a little more flexibility in things than to sit in Orario in a place where everyone could find him and knew where he was and was supposed to be at all times. Given that he fully intended to come and go as he pleased... not being available at the place where people expected him to be was going to raise either eyebrows or alarms depending on the situation. He couldn't afford to be tied down in one place, even in one place as interesting as Orario, if he wanted things to work.

Thus. Explorer. Vagrants. Adventurers, but not in the sense of the renamed Mercenaries that now near exclusively focused their adventuring in the direction of the Dungeon's heart. The sort of fickle, wandering god that came and went with no guarantee of where he would be, when, or if.

Of course, that did mean that...

"If you don't intend to place a focus on Dungeon Exploration, then why come to Orario? There's no actual requirement for a God to come and register if their Familia isn't living here to explore the Dungeon." the guild worker asked, visibly confused.

"Isn't it polite?" Jaguar asked back. "Besides, I'm not exactly well known. Better to let people know I exist, in case anyone decides that the lifestyle doesn't suit them so well. Oh and... it's a little..."

Jaguar made sure to act abashed about the situation, rubbing the back of his neck as he grinned cheekily.

"... I might not have been paying much attention about how to apply the Falna." Jaguar 'admitted'.

The guild worker didn't seem to know what to make of that, so it was something he hadn't seen before.

But, as Jaguar had assumed, it wasn't something that Ouranos had not seen before. At a confused meeting, the god didn't even ask. Just sighed and essentially psychically slammed the procedure to apply a Falna into Jaguar's brain, without saying a single word or looking at him twice. Jaguar wasn't sure if the Arcanum was involved in that at all, but it was probably an allowed use if it was.

And that was that. The big reason to come to the setting, done. There were others, of course. Certain persons of interest. Hephaestus, Bell and Hestia, Lili, Tione and Tiona, Makoto...

Waifu bait. The remaining matters of interest were potential lovers. Oh, he could look into more basic steel-smithing, builders, what farming knowledge and technology was available to be appropriated, but with the big matter of the Falna creation technique sorted, what remained in the setting was mostly the potential canon sex partners. That being said, most of them wouldn't even be born, or descend, for hundreds of years yet.

Leaving him plenty of time to prepare. Often, it would be easier to steal a march before there was any relationship, after all, but parts of the world were a little... exclusionary, or hard to travel.

The land of Amazons, for example... Well, men could go there. They were welcome to go there, even. They would be damn fools to actually do so, or even travel too close, but they could. They would never be allowed to leave, but they could go in. Probably in the hope of being taken as love slaves. That being said, the Amazons had no compunctions about taking people as worked-to-death labor slaves as well. Either way, the man probably ended up dead.

Then there was 'The Far East', where Amaterasu lived and ran things like she was the Empress in her own game of real-time Nobunaga's Ambition. He imagined that they would, just like the historical Japan, be either isolationist or highly expansionist, were it not for the fact that the region was also thick with monsters that nobody could be bothered to exterminate, at least by canon times.

Jaguar would have to plan out how to come and go from various places, whether it was an open or discreet matter. It would be easier to act in a different country at a critical time if he was already anticipated to be around sometimes, after all.

... What he'd forgotten was that Ares, the god of war, was openly playing about outside of Orario. Gathering up soldiers with Falna to empower them, collecting other gods that didn't have any backing in order to make them handle inscribing and updating Falna for secondhand underlings so that he didn't have to stretch himself as far to keep an army up and running... that sort of thing.

Jaguar had forgotten about him because the narrative had taken great pains to treat him like an inconsequential bitch as the occupants of Orario went out to dick around with his army, sell them things, and basically refused to acknowledge even the slightest possibility that the Ares Army could be considered a threat as they laid a laughable siege to Orario.

Those people, however, were level five or so adventurers, playing with the massed forces of level One and Two's like adults toying with toddlers.

It was a bit different of a story when you were a wandering god with no Adventurers at all to defend you, Jaguar quickly discovered.

Three days after wandering out of Orario, looking to explore and figure out ways to get where he needed to be at the times that he needed to be there, Jaguar had been captured by a roving band of hunters looking to curry favor with Ares by delivering a fresh God with no support into his gracious and generous keeping.

It was a little frustrating. ... More than a little, if Jaguar was being honest. That being said, being tied up and thrown in the back of a cart by figures who made sure to make absolutely sure they never showed their faces, only masks? It was a learning experience.

Jaguar was learning that he did not like being kidnapped.

They were about to learn that it was very hard to keep Jaguar imprisoned, when he could just...

In the dead of night, Jaguar discorporated into a cluster of starry motes of light and transitioned back to his own demi-plane, where he irritably cut the ropes and threw them away. Then he took a deep breath.

Lessons learned! He would want a little self-defense skill and probably a strong bodyguard before he went wandering the Danmachi landscape again.

Two pillars currently stood in a travel plaza, each keyed to a different world. Danmachi, and that of El Dorado. It would take a little while for a blank pillar finished forming, ready to be keyed to another world and allow him to travel there... but if nothing else, he had plenty of time to patiently wait. Even if he was kidnapped by someone, as long as he was awake he could just... leave. The ropes had come with him, mostly, but if they were tied down to something then he suspected they would have been left behind.

That being said, he didn't exactly know where the travel would spit him back out, when he went back to Danmachi, so... it was probably best to leave it for a day or two. Let the confused kidnappers search for traces of what had happened, spread out, find nothing, and then move along before he popped back in to do anything. Maybe head back to Orario with a fun story of how he had escaped.

... Hm, or not. Jaguar couldn't forget that the gods over there heard lies as they were spoken, and he couldn't immediately recall if that also applied to other gods. And, of course, if challenged to demonstrate all he could show was the ability to leave the world entirely. Which would raise more questions than it answered, if anyone caught on to exactly what he was doing. Or approximately, at least.

It would be good for him to work out a more... short range method of that. Something he could demonstrate, declare to be ordinary magic that any mortal could do if they knew how, and then refuse to explain how to any mortals because why would he? They should work it out on their own. It was something that should be possible for him to do, and then even if he was seen coming or going there would be no questions really asked about it, and he wouldn't have to explain.

Whenever possible, it was best to let people draw their own conclusions and then just... not correct them, after all. Much superior to trying to sell a lie, because then people would just convince themselves and you didn't have to lift a finger.

Either way, Jaguar had been away for a few days and that was probably long enough to sell the idea that he'd been rushing and working hard to find a solution. Better yet, he would be coming back with a solution. Always a plus. It would be interesting to see who Chief Tannabok had rustled up in the time being to serve as a sample of Jaguar Warriors.

He took a moment to stretch, then approached the correct pillar and returned to El Dorado, where he was immediately greeted by Tulio and Miguel playing with Altivo.

Oh, he had forgotten about the funny, surprisingly clever horse. Well. He could think of something to work that into the narrative if he had a moment.

Jaguar spent that moment standing off to one side, smirking, as he waited for the Spaniards to notice he was there.