Two weeks later, after being made to endure nights sleeping in the forest, the road leading out of the mining village is now complete. And, of course, they can return home.
At night, when the villagers return home for the first time, along with the two refugee families who stayed behind to help rebuild the damage wrought by the uprising, they are treated to apple pie and cheese.
“Now that the road is completed, you will be paid the remaining salary owed before this open-air dinner begins!” Janick announces to the villagers.
The eyes of the villagers perk up when they hear about the salary. When they receive it for building the road, they line up for it, tax-free since the village remains tax-exempt. Once the payroll has been distributed, the two witches follow up with more announcements:
“Tomorrow is declared a holiday, and we’ll sell off lots of firewood in two days, excise-free” Seloniel announces to the villagers. “On this occasion, we’ll also hold our very first market here, in this village! And, in two days, you may go back to mining iron, or whatever your previous occupation was”
“As a follow-up to what Seloniel previously said, I announce that the Bank of the Frontier is now open for business!” Janick announces.
“A… bank?” Samka asks, surprised to even hear about the existence of banks. “What’s a bank?”
“Yeah, what does a bank do?” a lumberjack from the second refugee family asks the two witches. “Is it some witch invention?”
“No, it’s an institution that takes deposits of money as well lend money” Janick explains to the villagers while the apple pies are being cut.
The smell of apple pies is perhaps the only thing that makes the stench of using life magic to grow these apples more bearable to the villagers, at least until two days from now. In two days, the village will probably smell like metal, molten or not, more than it would cow manure.
I guess, making these magical iron items better be worth all these burns and the use of rubbing alcohol spells, Seloniel sighs, while eating her own slice of the apple pie.
“Tomorrow, I’ll go deliver the plow and sword of that guy who ordered a heavy plow from us” Janick makes her plan for the following day known. “And also announce that we now have lumber and firewood available for sale, and don’t forget about the Bank of the Frontier’s grand opening!”
“I’d say, we focus on selling magical iron implements, and I also advertise in the next village about us holding our very first market, tax-free, on top of everything you just mentioned”
“Now that’s what I call an apple pie, milady!” Kix compliments Janick on cooking the apple pie.
“Thank you”
Now that the road is complete, we should be expecting either iron or wood merchants to come through this road in the coming weeks. And then the Bank of the Frontier’s biggest clients, going forward, would be iron or wood merchants, Janick tries to imagine how the village will be transformed by mining. And she then reflects on why the Supreme Council made them rebuild the village with no seed money from them. It took longer than we would have liked, but now we can have the Supreme Council off our backs. To think that it was our reward for killing the electricity-stealing dragon! To think we had to pay back the debts Sir Chumzurk incurred specifically for that purpose! Luckily, the uprising left behind no debts; the last lord of the mine was at least able to balance the village’s budget. However, it seemed to be his only redeeming quality.
Then she beams with happiness upon seeing satisfied villagers who can finally go back to what they were doing before: mining and smelting iron. And, of course, enjoy the fruits of their labor tax-free, with a bank account to boot. Speaking of bank accounts, some of the villagers don’t have any idea of how a bank account would benefit them.
“I fail to see how would holding a bank account benefit me…” a puzzled Madritza is overheard talking about banking.
“It’s about keeping the money safe, and maybe earn interest whenever it can be paid, so I invite everyone in the village to open your account, and you will all be able to withdraw money free of charge” Janick makes her introductory offer. “Also, for those who open bank accounts, you will be paid your wages by direct deposit!”
But to pay interest to people holding accounts, one needed to receive interest from people to whom you lent money, or receive administration fees, Janick starts thinking about these aspects of banking she heard about in the marketplaces, albeit in passing only.
“Who uses banks anyway?” a miner asks her.
“Mostly wholesale merchants and the nobility” Janick explains to clueless miners.
Speaking of nobility, the population, especially on the frontier, doesn’t actually deal with it directly much. For so many, the role of nobility is mostly legal, both in lawmaking and in the administration of justice, Seloniel reflects on her dealings with the nobility.
“So you expect us to sell wholesale lumber or iron going forward?” the same miner asks her about the village’s economic future.
“Lumber and firewood, yes, iron we might have better chance selling it as finished, magical products, directly in retail, and made-to-order” Seloniel answers him.
“Magic? How does using magic for crafting differ from more traditional smelting?” a smelter, while having worked with a magical saw and a magical axe, has no idea otherwise.
“Using magic for metalworking allows the metal item to be made much more rapidly and without charcoal. Slag is separated at the same speed as the iron item is made. However, the main problem is that I can’t make a whole lot of items per day; there’s just not a whole lot of fire magic to go around” Seloniel explains to the smelters. “For items such as wheel strakes or hubs or barrel hoops, however, non-magical iron works just fine”
They spend all night answering questions about the village’s future direction, as well as where banking fits in it. And, of course, estimating the amount of wood she could make available for sale, either as firewood or as planks, knowing that milling wood has its own set of costs.
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The following day, at dawn, the two witches waste no time trying to move the plow to the carpet. However, Seloniel realizes that just because the plow might be movable by carpet doesn’t mean they are strong enough to move the plow on or off it.
“Are you sure the plow is not too heavy for me to fly it on a carpet?” Janick asks Seloniel, wondering if the plow wouldn’t make the carpet too heavy to safely fly. “You’re heavier and bulkier than I am, so if I can’t fly the carpet with the plow on it, you can’t either”
“I need help to get the plow on the carpet! And upside down please, since I don’t want the share or moldboard to damage the carpet!” Seloniel asks Kix for help putting the plow on the carpet for flying.
Once Kix becomes available for that part of the work, the trio turn the plow upside down and then slowly and delicately place it on the carpet. With the handles being between where Janick will sit when in flight. And the plow is also longer than the carpet.
With the plow now in position on the carpet, along with the flamberge, Janick sits right at the front of the carpet:
“And… go!” Janick signals the two to stand clear, while Seloniel is about to get to her besom to fly to the next village over to notify its residents of the next market day.
Because these two items weigh so much I can’t put my puncheon on the carpet, I wonder whether I can rent a butt or a port pipe for a day in town, which are respectively 1.5 and 2 puncheons in capacity, Janick seems to be worried about how she will be able to sell more magical wine upon arriving at Ertzheir once more. Casting lots of small spells might make sense if you have something else on hand that can balance out the recoil of the individual spell, but, with alcohol magic, I feel like I might be better served, given what happens on the marketplace, to cast a few big spells spaced an hour or two apart.
As she chugs along in the sky, going to the manor of the customer to drop off the magical heavy plow and the sword, she is forced to fly lower and slower than usual because of the great weight of the plow. When she lands in the courtyard of that customer:
“I didn’t expect the plow to arrive so quickly!” an astonished landowner yelps upon seeing the plow arrive by carpet freight. “At least you respected the main requirement of the plow being transportable by carpet! Everyone else seemed to make plows too heavy for carpets, or too small to cut deep into the soil!”
“Flying it by carpet is the easy part. That’s the largest plow we could make…” Janick explains herself, before she’s interrupted.
“What do you mean, we?”
“I needed some help to build a plow that size! While I can use my magic to get the moldboard and share done just right, the woodwork is not mine!” Janick implicitly refers to Seloniel for the woodwork part.
“Here’s your tip for the carpet freight service”
The landowner hands the alcohol witch 100 gold as a tip, before asking for assistance to get the plow off the carpet. Which Janick provides, along with a third person.
“On a sidenote, do you want to open a bank account with the Bank of the Frontier? You seem to be interested in additional business from us, and you can earn interest income tax-free”
“I’m willing to deposit the price I paid for these two items”
The landowner then hands her a bag full of gold coins, before Janick takes off for Erztheir, and set off for two purposes: marketing the grand opening of the Bank of the Frontier as well as selling her wares, which now include firewood by the cord, metallic implements on top of magical wine.
Upon arriving at Ertzheir, she goes directly to the nearest cooper to ask whether she can rent either a butt or port pipe for the day.
“Renting a big cask for a day? Are you planning a wedding or a funeral?” the cooper asks her, furrowing a brow.
“No. I am an alcohol witch, I had to deliver a plow by carpet…” Janick explains herself.
“Delivery a plow by carpet freight? Are you crazy?” a surprised cooper starts yelling at her.
“I had no room to fit a cask and a plow on my carpet!” Janick retorts, before being asked for the purpose of renting a cask.
“Can’t say I ever met an alcohol wizard in my lifetime! What do you need a cask for?”
“I am selling magical wine. Because of the amount of wine I feel I can sell, I need to rent either a butt or a port pipe for the day”
“I trust you understand how heavy these casks really are, even empty” the cooper is secretly questioning whether Janick can handle either cask by herself.
“What kind of wood is used in your work? Each cooper might be using a different kind of wood”
The puncheon I usually take to market, which is in pine, weighs about a hundred pounds, give or take. I might not be able to handle even an empty butt myself if it was made of some sort of hardwood, Janick is left wondering about both the rent for the cask and its weight.
“White birch”
“A butt then”
“That will be six gold” the cooper gives her a rent rate.
She pays the rent for the butt straight away. But Janick is struggling to just take the butt off the racking. Straining under its weight, she just rolls it around to her carpet, and she can then go to the marketplace with it once it’s upright on the carpet.
On the marketplace, she starts hollering about so many different things that people on the marketplace are wondering what she’s selling anyway. Some people might be wondering why is a bank selling magical wine, magical iron instruments or wood. To that she answers, prior to casting alcohol magic:
“It appears that all these industries are now the property of the Bank of the Frontier; they all defaulted on their loans!” Janick is lying about the BotF’s involvement in these areas, even though everyone in Laverton have accounts at that bank.
Not that the customers dealt with her before, nor is there any magical wine in her rental butt.
“The bank has put up for sale a first lot of fifty cords of raw pine wood along the road to Laverton! Milling is available for an extra fee” Janick announces her newest special.
“You said that you had magical wine for sale. How much is it, and how much do you have?” an alcohol merchant asks her.
“For your first question, two possibilities: financing and paying up front. As for the second, the lots come in butts, to the tune of fifty gold per gallon if you pay up front, for a total of six thousand gold per butt.
“What if I wanted to use financing?” the alcohol merchant asks her for the cost of the lot of magical wine.
“If you prefer to use financing, you need to pay a deposit of one thousand gold, and pay a thousand gold per month for the next six months per butt”
“I’ll think about it”
Then customers interested in the raw pine include a wainwright, who, lured by the promise of operating tax-exempt on the frontier, might even be willing to take out a mortgage to move his workshop to Laverton, along with his family. And put their Ertzheir home up for sale.
“Say I wanted to take out a mortgage to buy a house I can use as a workshop. How much is it going to cost me?” the wainwright asks about the loan.
While the wainwright tells her about what he wants out of a home, and the prices these tend to fetch on the frontier, the alcohol merchant comes back to her.
“I believe that we can get three lots of magical wine” the alcohol merchant announces to her.
“Just a bit of patience, will you?” Janick tells the wainwright, before turning to an ecstatic alcohol merchant. “I hope you have a wagon nearby”
As the alcohol witch gets to the alcohol merchant’s prairie schooner, she is shown the merchant’s empty butts. After that, she returns to her stall and the wainwright.
“Given the prices of housing on the frontier, I believe you only need to buy a few cords of milled wood, with financing. There’s no need to take out a mortgage provided you sell your current home first” Janick tells the wainwright, believing that house prices on the frontier are only a fraction of those in Ertzheir.
Diversifying the village’s economy beyond just producing the raw materials is better than nothing, be it through banking or cart-making, Janick She then gives him the payment terms for the cords of milled wood.
“Deal” the wainwright nods, before putting his home in Ertzheir for sale.
Shortly thereafter, she returns the rental butt to the cooper. Afterward, she goes back to the alcohol merchant’s prairie schooner and asks for the first 3,000 gold before she casts a series of magical wine spells, filling the merchant butts’ one by one.
Once that is done, she vomits between the wagon and the carpet, and she falls on her carpet. In addition, she loses coordination as well as consciousness.