To be fair it’s not really a democracy, there’s probably a better term for it but I guess you’d call it a mix between a republic and a monarchy where the members choose their own successors, that’s why this (one time) vote is so big

And through pawn she could also serve as a link to the ants

There is a problem that legally most of the hive “doesn’t exist”

He was the one who led the warriors through the city every day, and is a also a hero of the siege of liscor, other than klbch he’s probably the most famous ant in the city

Using the Liscor army loophole for governance systems likely wouldn’t work well. You still would have to act as that class to keep it. This works for the army, because officers are still soldiers, and still do the fighting. There are also somewhat defined minimums and maximums for subordinates per officer class; you usually can’t have a sergeant with only 1 or 2 soldiers (you’d fold them into another team), nor could you usually have a sergeant overseeing more than about 20 or so. This is true of pretty much every level of command.

Governing a territory doesn’t usually work that way. You’d not only have much larger minimums, but way, way higher maximums, neither of which would be as easily defined.

You’d also have to deal with way too many petty people with this kind of idea. Look at some stories of HOA’s here on Earth, and then imagine that multiplied by hundreds. You’d have all your [Good Citizens] turning into [Violent Territorial Tyrants] in a few months.

Also, if you tried to do this with something like Senators, all of those Senators would have to act like Senators. They’d have to be involved in the actual governance of the territory, which would take them away from doing whatever other jobs they might want to have. Their benefits to the populace is probably minor enough – if they get any at all – that taking them away from actual, productive jobs wouldn’t be worthwhile.

Considering some of the Merchant skills we’ve seen so far, it likely does exactly what it says: makes someone state a price for something that otherwise wouldn’t have one, or that they don’t want to sell.

A fair portion of that money probably went to reimbursing the adventurers for potions and other consumable items used during the big dungeon hullabaloo.

The potions the gold ranks use I believe were mentioned to be multiple gold each, and on many of their runs into the dungeon they were using enough per person to make themselves sick, which seems to be around 4 or 5 of each type. That’s probably an easy 10-20 gold per adventurer, and there was somewhere around 30 gold ranks total, between all the teams. Silver ranks would likely use cheaper potions, but there were probably around triple the number of them compared to gold ranks.

In other words, just for potions alone, the major pushes into the dungeon were probably costing over 1,000 gold each time. The end fight against the Rhaskgar probably used around as much if not more, considering how many people were involved.

Other consumables such as arrows, alchemist brews and tools, etc. would likely be less expensive, but still cost a decent chunk of money due to the sheer number of adventurers active. If the city/guild has to.pay for broken weapons, armor, and artifacts, then that’s even more money spent.

I could see that 40,000 gold being drained pretty fast. But, even if they still had some of that, it is likely earmarked for only certain uses, not just general guild functions. Thus, it likely can’t be used to expand the guild, hire more receptionists/functionaries, etc.