Broka 27th 10,391

“So. How do we become more?” Six asked the question to the gathered warriors who awaited his answer. “By working together. By becoming a machine. I was wrong to live separate while using this place for the things I could not provide myself, I was using you and taking valuable resources away for myself. Yes I traded for them but I refused responsibility to the community that was supporting me. I can't help but feel you would have fought for me too.”

Six steepled his fingers and looked down in consternation.

“Everyone is different, not all of us can endure the pain of battle. I am willing to fight. I understand that life is conflict, and while life can be unforgiving and ruthless it is the only thing we can do to fight against it. Eh? I refuse to force anyone to fight but I ask you join me in trying to fucking survive, together. If you do not wish to fight, to grow. I say that I will not hold it against you if you leave now. Everyone is different.”

He paused but no one left.

He nodded in appreciation. “Thank you. Now, what was the hierarchy of command?”

No one said anything until Charles spoke up. “Alison never really created a command structure beyond herself.”

“Ok. Does anyone have any formal command experience or training?”

Only Charles raised his hand. Six could see Tavi almost lift her hand but she thought better of it and dropped it. Fallen nobles.

“Aight, Charles, you’re number two. Anybody have a problem with that?” No one spoke up. “Good. Now, we have only a few hundred people here and that doesn’t give us much to work with in terms of scaling our power with sheer numbers so the next option is increasing the personal power of each person. This strategy at its most base means gaining levels, but I plan to explore any and all avenues of increasing all of our personal power, to that end I am planning on training apprentice enchanters. I am capable of making much myself but I too must grow and won’t be able to enchant constantly.”

“I volunteer to learn enchantment,” Charles said.

Tavi broke in immediately. “I wish to learn enchantment as well.”

Six nodded to Tavi and internally questioned if Charles had the time to invest but didn’t call the lad out in front of his new command. It was alot of responsibility and Six couldn’t undermine him right at the start.

“Good, but we need equipment to enchant, so I plan on building a more industrial minded smithy and surveying for a mine as well as. All I can say is that I plan to have whoever’s fighting for our defence, in our best. That will come in time, until then we must leverage what we have.

We will be making ten teams that will be based around a Ley Champion who has focused on improving their durability. I don’t care how Alison distributed the buff but we need our most durable to lead from the vanguard and keep the damage off the teams Charles will be forming. Focusing the damage on to Ley Champions will be how we can continue our patrols consistently, they will be able to recover extremely quickly and the whole team will be able to return to patrol perhaps completing multiple encounters per day.”

No one argued with this simple logic.

“Another thing I want to do is test affinities. How is that done?”

“Why would you need to test affinities?” Tavi asked, her arms crossed.

“I want to test for life magic affinity in our population, we need healing magic.”

“You would need permission from the Imperial Mages Guild for that, they are also the ones who can test for affinities although the process can be quite expensive depending on the number of skills you are testing for.”

Six blew a raspberry and waved the thought away. “This isn’t an Imperial settlement, I really don’t care about those regulations. Empire’s dead anyways.”

You could be reading stolen content. Head to the original site for the genuine story.

At that last comment Tavi’s face scrunched in anger but she quickly took on a more neutral expression.

Six didn’t care about imperial regulations, he wasn’t about to sacrifice himself for those. “Most importantly we need the ability to heal our people. We need it. Also, if we have someone who can test for affinities we can find more people who are talented in testing for affinities, and be able to scale the ability to test. Do we have anyone capable of it?”

Tavi looked uncomfortable but nodded. “Celine can do it. My friend, she works for Gatbark but if you ask she will probably do it.”

Six nodded. “We need healers, we need to know our affinities.” Growth and recovery were what Six sought for his people.

For the rest of the meeting Six had Charles compile some simple information about the warriors of the village, their strengths, styles and levels, and who was willing to volunteer to be a Ley Champion.

Six reflected on the foundation he was creating here. Feudal societies were essentially in many cases a military ruling class exerting power over the production class. He would have to be careful to avoid that while still promoting a healthy standing military force.

He went and grabbed as much food as Min and Jebbedo could spare as he would need it for the next part.

Six waited for Charles to finish with the administration before having him and four of the village guards follow him to the ley complex. Nibbler around his neck, and Poh Doh at his back.

Charles smiled at the, “oohs,” and “aahs,” of the village guards as they entered the complex for the first time.

Six stopped and addressed them as they stood in front of the door to the residential area. “These people attacked you and while I see it fit to give them a second chance. That's all I have to give, if they do anything violent to any of us, it's death.”

They nodded in understanding, almost yearning.

He turned and opened the door, to the gathered faces of Amog’s bandits, now his prisoners. It was silent as they regarded him. Six walked in and stood with the guards at his back and Charles at his side, Poh Doh’s form blocked the way out.

It was silent “Your term for the crime of organized banditry is five years.”

The murmurs began then, a ripple of discontent and worry went through the assembled crowd.

One took a step forward, a human woman with dark hair, she wore a well kept robe and sneered at him. “Five years? For a bit of thieving?”

“People died.”

“I didn’t kill anybody, Amog was trying to preserve life.”

“Funny way to preserve life. Anyways, you helped. You participated and that makes it enough for me to take five years of your life.”

A grumble between the gathered began to grow but Six cut it off with a raised hand.

“This is not a negotiation. You have no more chances. If you want your time reduced then contribute back to the people you wronged. You can gather or make things, I’ll even allow you to fight. All I care about is contribution. Contribute enough and you can reduce your sentence by half.”

“And how can we contribute if we don’t have the skills or tools to create what you want?” the woman asked.

“I will provide it.”

“This still isn’t fair, many of us weren’t bandits by choice.” Her statement was echoed by those in the crowd.

Six exhaled slowly, and gestured with his steepled hands. “I can believe that some of you were coerced, but it is impossible for me to verify any of your stories. It is unfortunate for those among you that participated out of fear but I am not perfect and life is not perfect. This is the best I can do for those of you that participated in the attack on the village.”

The woman slumped and sighed, she nodded. “I guess I’ll fight then.”

“Good. Well, you’ll answer to the boy.” Six said pointing at Charles.

Charles looked spooked and surprised but quickly nodded his confirmation.

“Understand?” Six asked the woman?

She looked surprised but nodded with no complaint.

“Alrighty then. We will return tomorrow until then-” Six dumped the few barrels of water he picked up in town along with the food. “Distribute this equally amongst yourselves.” Six turned to leave but stopped to add one last thing. “Know this, you have no more chances. If I learn of any reason to end you, I will.”

Six sealed the door closed again and experimented with giving Charles control over the doors of the complex which was pretty simple once he mentally communicated his intent to the actual doors.

“I’m just supposed to exert authority over those bandits?” Charles asked with a bit of frustration in his voice.

“Yes,” Six replied.

“I know some of them are stronger than me. I lost to them.”

“Yes.”

Charles looked frustrated for a moment before grumbling, “I don’t see how I’m going to control them.”

“To start, you will rely on me to give you standing and authority. Soon, I’m confident you will grow past most of them. You are willing and full of drive. You have education and talent, you have already grown much.”

Charles sighed. “Thanks I suppose.”

“No problem. Thanks for taking on the responsibility.” Six pointed at the other guards that were pretending to not listen. “That goes for you too. Thank you.”

From there Six sent Charles back to the village with the others, he would join them later on.

Instead, Six took his time walking back to his cave.

It was a comfort to see the lush garden beds and charred firepit. He pulled each plant and deposited it into his storage.

Inside, he gathered the items he had been collecting. His bedroll, lamp and books. The weight bar and weights he took from the complex. There really wasn’t much. He placed all those back into his spatial and grabbed the last item.

Six picked up his terrarium and beheld it carefully. His little rollie pollie guys were still in there, he couldn’t see many but he saw one or two munching on the leaves he’d strewn in there. He added more leaves from the blood branch and made some more shade for the bugs.

They were pretty neat.

Six wanted to stay in his cave but it wouldn’t be the most responsible. No, he should be closer to the village, stay there as much as he could and cut down on response times for incidents. It would allow him to be more visible and exert more relevancy in the minds of the villagers.

Also, Ravna wouldn’t want to live in a cave… probably… if they ever moved in together.

Not that he and her were a thing or anything, but, change could be good.