Guild of Merchants

The Guild of Merchants (also colloquially referred to as the GM, or sarcastically as the Gilded Merchants) is a consortium of merchants and craftsmen seeking to extend their fortunes and trade network across the lands. The GM manages contracts with individuals or other organizations and offers bounties to adventurers for completing these contracts.

Background
The ruling council is a group of powerful individuals who are granted the title Guildmaster, while the body itself is called the Golden Ministry. The Guildmasters come from all nations, but they are not necessarily neutral.

Contracts
The field agents or adventurers are sometimes called "silver swords" because of their mercenary nature.

Retrieve
Retrieval missions fall into two types:
 * Liberate / Rescue - Retrieve a person from a secured location, which may need to be discovered first.
 * Recovery - Retrieve the objective by searching an area or looting it from a target. This goal is like the Rescue, except the victim is an inanimate object. This item may be an artifact, a paper containing evidence against a character or patron, an antidote needed to save someone, or just some item of sentimental value -- an item which one NPC hires the characters to steal from another NPC.

Kill

 * Assassination - Take out a specific target. This target is usually tough, well-guarded, or both.
 * Cull - Thin out the numbers of a population. This can mean hunting a number of wild beasts, or taking care of groups of bandits that terrorize travelers on the road.
 * Destroy / Sabotage - Cripple the target's operations by destroying or sabotaging a critical component, whether it's important information, a vital location, or some sort of keystone.

Defend

 * Escort - Help transport the objective (whether an item, a person, some data, or a stationary point or location) from point A to B.
 * Guard - Defend the objective from incoming hostiles.
 * Protect - One or more NPCs are in danger, and the characters must protect them. They might be doing this for a reward, or because one or more of the NPCs is a friend or relative of the character. The characters provide protection to NPCs for a variety of reasons. The NPC might be a wealthy or powerful person being sought by assassins or kidnappers. The NPC might be a whole village of peasants who are being terrorized by a bandit chieftain.

Collect

 * Collect - Procure a number of a specified item or being for the client.
 * Create - Successfully build a desired item or summon the desired being.

Discover

 * Investigate - Look into a situation or person.
 * Explore - The heroes are hired or convinced to enter an unmapped area and explore it. They may be making a map; they may be trying to find someone who disappeared into this area in the past; they may be following legends that tell of treasure in the unexplored interior.
 * Survival - The characters could end up in a hostile environment which they must cross -- a desert, a jungle, or other hostile setting. In the course of the adventure they'll need to find food and water, resist the elements, and perhaps fight off attacks of the natives.
 * Escape - Early in the adventure, the heroes are captured. The remainder of the adventure consists of them learning enough so that they can escape. They have to get to know their fellow prisoners, learn the prison's routine, inventory their possessions, acquire other possessions they need, plan an escape, and execute it.