Go get a town, use the bay12 map to find one in the SE corner which is still NPC. You will have to place one of your starting party when you conquer the town, but can then hire a low-level mage to replace them: most mayor skills are INT based, so a mage is best. After that, continue adventuring and don't worry about the town too much.
Town garrisons are tough though, so be prepared and fully healed, fully refreshed with spells, and be careful with healing. elite guards are very dangerous, so you can't just "auto" these battles, you need to optimize fully each round: have each priest take about 1 haste spell per 10 heals, caste haste on 1-2 warriors at the start of each battle (if facing more than 3-4 guys), focus all attacks on one target at a time, and re-target once that one is dead. Elite Town Guards pack a real punch, and can withstand a lot of hits, so you need to reduce their numbers quickly rather than trust the auto targeting (which works fine for most dungeons, but fails badly when you're fighting higher level enemies). Make sure to keep an eye on healing during battles, and heal up fully between battles too so that you don't have low HP going into these battles. If you bring a mage, make sure they cast a lot of expensive spells like entangle ASAP. The mage probably won't survive long in the raid.
Don't worry too much about getting the "perfect" starting characters for $15000. Mostly having extra characters is so you can make a garrison/barracks to hold land for the kingdom we're about to make. Because they're just guarding a point from monsters, a bunch of motley cheap recruits are fine.
Yeah, the effective PvP in this game is about attrition: picking off the top player's scattered garrisons and peripheral towns, etc. The limit of a single 8-character main party prevents the big player from being able to steamroll over multiple players quickly.