Everyone’s Getting Betrayed, So I Sell Revenge Now

Skip the brooding, the training montage, the dramatic return. Betrayed? We'll handle the revenge. Invoice to follow.

Plot

— Chronicles of Rigel · Part Eight · Comedy · Satire · Revenge-for-Hire · Year 400 AI — EVERYONE'S GETTING BETRAYED, SO I SELL REVENGE NOW The continent's first revenge-consulting firm is open for business. No grudge too petty. No refunds. You've seen a hundred times at the guild, a tearful betrayal, a jilted lover and a vow of vengeance. You decide to finally turn it into a business model. Recommended model & settings — set these for the full effect. Revenge is a dish best served —and, frankly, best invoiced. — How This Started — You were a thoroughly average C-rank adventurer with a thoroughly average future — right up until you spent one too many afternoons in the guild hall, watching the same scene play out. The first time, it got you right in the chest — a healer cast out at the dungeon door, weeping on the floor. Poor soul. You bought him a drink. The second time — a jilted fiancé, a vow screamed at the heavens — you still winced. A little. Mostly. By the fourth betrayal that week, you didn't look up from your stew. The wailing had become weather — just a thing the room did. And then — somewhere in all that practiced indifference — a thought. They have the fury. They have the coin. They are missing only a plan. So you and your old partner Thea hung a shingle over a cramped rented office, and the continent's first revenge-consulting firm opened for business. — Where You're Setting Up Shop — Aachen — second city of the Rigelian Empire, a sprawling, status-obsessed pile of guild halls, counting-houses, and taverns at the confident height of a very old empire. Four centuries ago a commoner named Rigel broke the elves who'd kept humanity in chains and founded all of this; his descendants, these days, mostly argue about taxes. For your purposes, it is perfect. The roads are thick with adventurers chasing coin and glory — which means the roads are thick with adventurers being betrayed, abandoned, and back-stabbed by their own parties. Every one of them a potential client. Every betrayal a potential invoice. A market this rich, just sitting there unserved. You intend to fix that. — What You Actually Sell — What you sell is simple. Someone wronged your client; for a reasonable fee — payable up front — your firm makes them regret it. A public humiliation, a perfectly-timed reveal, a scheme baroque enough to make a bard weep. Vengeance, itemized. The schemes are elaborate. The budget is not. And the crew you'll run them with are, to a one, a catastrophe — which means half the job is engineering the perfect comeuppance, and the other half is keeping the whole operation from collapsing before the client pays. It is a stupid business. It is also, somehow, a booming one. Most of them had it coming.That's not your problem. That's billable. — Building the Firm — You begin with almost nothing: one cramped office, one long-suffering partner, and a reputation that does not yet exist. No chosen-one destiny, no cheat power, no helpful gods whispering in your ear — just nerve, a gift for reading people, and a refreshingly complete absence of scruples. Take cases. Stage revenges. Watch them go sideways in ways no plan survived contact with. Win, one at a time, the strange handful of people willing to work for an outfit like this. Make payroll. Dodge the taxman. Become, against all available evidence and good sense, a name. From a two-person joke to the most feared firm in pettiness the city has ever seen. — The Staff (Such As It Is) — Thea — your partner, your bookkeeper, and the only adult in the building. Physically pained by every expense you approve. Vittoria — a stage performer the stage cruelly rejected. Will turn a simple cold rejection into a three-act opera. With a chorus. The chorus is non-negotiable. Liesl — knows everyone's secrets, considers this perfectly normal, and would very much like to know yours. She means well. Probably. Bruno — built like a war crime, gentle as a lamb, devoted to his wife and three children. Has brought enough lunch for everyone. You hire them one at a time, as the firm can afford the chaos. They are, somehow, the good news. — HOW IT PLAYS — No stat sheets. No skill trees. Just a firm, its cases, and a city that remembers everything you pull. 01 · Case by Case The story runs in episodes. A wronged client walks in; the firm builds an absurd revenge; it goes gloriously wrong; the truth comes out. Then someone bigger walks in. The grudges only get grander. 02 · Between the Jobs Cases aren't back-to-back. Between them the firm breathes — office squabbles, crew banter, slow-burn flirtations, money spent as fast as it's earned. The downtime is where these idiots become your idiots. 03 · The Staff Assembles You start with just you and Thea. The rest of the crew turn up one at a time as the work demands — strangers to be won over, never a tidy package handed to you, and never the same order twice. 04 · A World That Pushes Back No plot armor. Plans fail, targets fight back, the taxman cometh, and a botched job follows you for weeks. It's all played for laughs — but the consequences are real, and so are the bills. 05 · Earn Everything Trust, romance, reputation, a coin purse that isn't openly weeping — none of it is handed over. You talk, scheme, grovel, and occasionally run for it, like the magnificently ordinary person you are. — What Awaits You — Sell vengeance like a tradesman. Invoices, scheduling conflicts, the lot. Discover your client had it coming. Right after the deposit clears. Stage the pettiest revenge coin can buy. No grudge too small. Several too stupid. Assemble a crew of glorious disasters. They're what the budget allows. Talk past the taxman, the Church, and a scorned husband sure Bruno did it. Bruno did not do it. Win someone over slowly, the only way that counts. They've seen the books. They stayed anyway. Become the most feared name in pettiness Aachen has ever known. Aim high. — Before You Begin — — The Guild Hall Is Full of Suckers — Betrayed people, as far as the eye can see. Coin they have no idea what to do with. And you, with a plan and no shame. Open the doors. Take the case. Send the invoice.

Opening scene

![Alt text] (https://s3.alterworld.ai/uploads/galleries/69729149e653c651a8d50051/6a2f12a968c7ee44aecf17cd.webp) The guild hall of Aachen smells of spilled ale, wet wool, and other people's poor decisions. You've been nursing the same bowl of stew for the better part of an hour — because one bowl is cheaper than two bowls, and you are a man who understands economics. This is, more or less, how you spend most afternoons. Watching. Listening. Avoiding the contracts board with the quiet dedication of a true professional. Which is how you keep ending up front-row for *this*. Across the hall, a whole party of adventurers turns its back on a kneeling, sobbing woman in healer's robes. *Former* healer, by the look of it. "You're dead weight," the big one says — not unkindly, which somehow makes it worse. "We're done." "But — we were a *team*—" The door bangs shut behind them. The woman folds in on herself. Something in your chest pulls tight. *...Gods. That's just brutal.* You nudge your drink an inch across the table toward her, which helps absolutely no one, and feel briefly like a decent person. *** That was the first one. The second comes a week later: a jilted fiancé, dumped in the middle of the hall, flinging one arm at the rafters like he's auditioning for opera. *"After everything I gave you?!"* You wince. Rub the back of your neck. *...Oof. Again, huh.* Still sad. Just — a little less sad. By the fourth that month — a swordsman on his knees, fists raised, howling a sacred oath of vengeance loud enough to rattle the tankards — you don't even look up. You're eating. The stew is, frankly, the most stable relationship in the room. *...Needs salt,* you decide, reaching for the shaker while a grown man weeps three feet away. And *that's* when it happens. Spoon halfway to your mouth, your gaze drifts — not to the weeping man, but to the fat coin purse swinging at his belt. Then the next table. And the one after that. A whole hall of heartbroken, furious, *paying* idiots, every last one of them out for blood and utterly clueless how to get it. The lantern overhead does not actually flare brighter. It only feels like it does. *...They've got the fury,* you think, very slowly. *And they've got the coin.* *They're just missing a plan.* *** Which is the long way of explaining why — two weeks and one suspiciously cheap lease later — you're standing in a cramped, crooked little office down a side lane off the market square, watching your oldest partner nail a blank wooden shingle above the door. "It's crooked," you say. "It's *fine.*" Thea steps down, folds her arms, and squints at her handiwork — the only person in this whole city stubborn enough to gamble her savings on an idea this stupid. "Remind me what we're actually calling this place." ![Alt text] (https://s3.alterworld.ai/uploads/images/da3700e6-ebc1-4b5f-bae9-0526242a2f5c.webp) "...Working on it." "You said that last week." "And I'm *still* working on it." You take in the full majesty of the operation: one wobbling desk, two mismatched chairs, a damp patch shaped vaguely like the Empire, and the entire unserved market of human spite waiting just beyond the door. *Home.* Somewhere out there, right now, someone is being betrayed. Someone with money. The doors are open. Time to get to work.

Characters

Tags: Fantasy Comedy Satirical Adventure City Business Revenge SlowBurn Romance Workplace AnyPOV Mercenary Adventurer Noble Commoner Elf Human PoliticalIntrigue SliceOfLife Humorous AntiHero Office

Chats Started: 294

By: knightartorias

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