Hi! It's Pigeone again. About Steph, how's her relationship to her guild? What does she think about her job, since it involves killing?
Oooh, well, this is gonna have to cover the intricacies of guild life, so I can't take too much credit for this. Props goes to our Dungeon Master, Denzel, for creating the backdrop of this highly-political world.
Guilds within the City of Verdane are the pillars of society. There are a couple umbrella guilds that cover many aspects of life, which for the purposes of this response, were created by the government. The Outcasts, however, was not! The Outcast umbrella guild was created out of necessity after a masked rogue threatened the lives of the first ever Council and exposing their corruption. The Outcasts are a decentralized "underground" guild that basically everyone knows exists. They exist to be the proverbial check and balance to the powerful leaders of the city. The idea is that you can't be too power hungry if you're at knifepoint at every waking moment.
Those ideals are how Stephanie interface with her "job". She believes in the good that she's exacting, even if it goes against the law. In her mind, it's a necessary step to keeping her friends, and by proxy, the city, safe. This tugs and pulls on her, however, because on an ideals standpoint, many actual criminals take solace within the shadows of the Outcast label, which dilutes the intent and goals the guild was set up for. It also tears at her on the day-to-day because of the missions she and her party go to. Many times, she has to abstain her blade not only because she is not contracted to kill just anyone, but also because one wrong move, and that's one dead individual who might have been integral to various aspects of the system that is the city.
This plays out in a funny way, mechanically, too. I end up playing combat as our "objective" person--grabbing key items, harassing key targets, but almost never killing unless necessary. Because when even just one of my attacks hit: Best case scenario? The target's HP is chunked. Most of the time? They just die. Don't even get me started on crits.
There are also sub-guilds under the umbrella guilds. The one Steph happens to be a part of is the Brotherhood of Cloak and Dagger. They have immense structure and rituals around who gets to eliminate Marks, and when. One of the key things is denouncing all guild affiliations before taking a job.