As the new Guildmaster, Lars discovers that the Guild's operating model has left it with a massive backlog and that most of the Guild's profits go to support the mindless husks of hundreds of former Singers. In addition there are far too few active Singers to keep the Guild viable, and the perils of Crystal Singing mean that new applicants are few and far between. A new medic on Ballybran introduces a method of hypnotizing mindless Singers to recover coordinates where Crystal can be found. Killashandra finds this new method unethical, but it proves highly profitable, though there are still too few active Singers to fully take advantage of it.