Then come the ones that developed from the explorers originally to become something of their own. They were all explorers, but not all explorers were considered adventurers, as that group came into being once the quest system was up and running, as it as there were now players who were using it now. The adventurers were those who took on the quests of others, as there were numerous quests, from fetch quests to escort quests. Those who use the system to create a quest could have it carried out by anyone willing to take it, though everyone was able to make a quest whenever they wanted. That did not mean that everyone was able to do it at the same rate and level, though. The quest system of The Decagon was just like how requests normally worked outside of the game in the real world. It was that one person would ask for something, and the other would get something in return. What that something is depends on what the requester gives and/or is asking to give to the one carrying it out. Getting nothing tangible would be possible, however, as a result of this being the case. While everyone can give something, that does not mean they have to; after all, it is the player's choice, and so that is where Guild comes in within this game. There is the main Guild, which was built to handle quests and is the original one that was built by the developers for the game itself. Like everything else in the game, it was left to the player to decide how it would be run. There are ten main guilds for all ten starting areas that there for players can use to ensure the at least base level functioning of the quest system. While there is a main Guild, smaller ones are still possible, but they have to run everything themselves rather than just using the system that developers created and left it to them to be used of as they see fit.
Being a small independent guild means literally doing everything yourself, as doing everything the system normally does would then fall onto the player who decided to become an independent guild master. Although The Decagon was devoid of NPCs of all kinds, and anything that was not allowing for players to have true and complete freedom of choice for good or bad. The point of this game, at least from the players' point of view who decided to stay within the game, was not that they left out the NPCs and other things that were not present in the game because they did not want to make them. They were left out because they made a claim about everything being player choice, and since all choices have a positive and a negative to them. They were dealing with the negatives, as that was clearly stated and confirmed to them that they were taking the bad with the good of having complete player choice.
Were all those who started an independent guild successful? No, they were not, as not everyone was fit to be a guild master that truly and fully ran a guild either on their own or with help. This was done seemingly to prevent there from being countless guilds, where they were either dead guilds or just guilds of a few people only. The guild would live and die by its players in this game, as an inactive guild would become a non existent guild. A guild of just a handful of players, or even a single player, could exist as long as they met the requirements for them to be able to call themselves a guild, after all. One of the biggest requirements was having a place for the guild to call their base that the player owns themselves. This capped the number of possible guilds that could exist, at least in the starting area. After all, there were only a finite number of places that could be owned within the starting area for players.
Some players figured out that they could claim ownership of the building within the starting area, be it within the residential section, the business section, or even the government section. All it took was for a player to find the deed to the property and claim it as their own. From that point onward, it was within their personal inventory, which was slightly different from the normal inventory everyone had. The difference between the two was something that was not known by all players at the moment.
Also, unlike all inactive or non performing to standard guilds, they were wiped out and could no longer exist. The same was not true for inactive accounts, as all ten thousand and nine players that had a player account would always remain active, as there was nothing the system could do to remove a player's account on their end. This was truly and fully a player driven game; the fate of the accounts themselves would fall onto the players. Guilds, however, were different in that they would be subject to the system, as if you create something and do not manage it properly, then no longer existing would be the consequence of that action.
The ten starting areas were not the only places in this world that were human settlements, just the largest ones from the start. The world of The Decagon was a big place, after all, so there was way more of it to see than what was visible to them from even a full day's journey away from the starting area. Just like there were dungeons, castles, and other places that were ripe for exploring for the sake of exploring them. To discover hidden and long forgotten treasure within them, as these were the only places that had things like chests and loot to find easily, at least just lying out in the open.
Other human settlements were present in the game, ranging from small villages to towns, to cities, to massively large central hubs like the starting area. However, they were required to literally travel to, and there was no fast travel...at least to be discovered yet. As those who continued playing the game learn that this was not a dead blank world, it was just an empty one where they had everything and anything they could need. It was just that they wanted to look and claim it all themselves; that was the issue and the question.