Spring had barely begun but the sun shined fiercely upon the summer kingdom of Argus. A farmer of Gwenael, the continent’s bread basket, toiled away tending to his field. A plot of land he rented from his lord.
He stopped mid-way through, using a rag to wipe the sweat and dirt from his brow. Reaching for the waterskin that hung at his side. He spotted his neighbor, doing the same, also on a break.
The two chatted, exchanging talk of town, asking about how they thought this year's harvest would go. Talking of loved ones, of marriages and deaths. Nothing too personal or deep just shallow talk to pass the time.
Eventually the conversation turned to talk of the local heroes. The local powerhouses and practitioners. The rising and falling stars that the common folk simultaneously loved, loathed and feared.
In the Nereida the original home of the EITC, where the biggest and oldest guild houses lay, a bunch of old merchants sat in a circle smoking hashish. Amiably hinting at deals that could come later when the time for more serious talks arrived.
Laughing at the misadventures and antics of friends that were currently absent or had possibly made their exit from this world. Bitterly bemoaning losses and bragging about gains. Blaming either bad luck or loss of favor from the gods if they were on the losing side and doing the opposite if they were winning.
Placing odds and considerations, that were both real and imaginary on the backs of the powerful supermen that thought themselves rulers of the world.
In a certain Bordello in Berk, the city in Meallan with the biggest slave markets and the best brothels, a group of slightly drunk young nobles wandered through the door.
The hostess recognized them and they were seated in the usual place. The usual mixture of beautiful young men and women were sent over to see to their needs. The young scions ribbed each other, trading friendly insults.
A bet was made as to whether one of the youths would leave the place conscious. This lead to the suggestion that one of the other youths’ parents were some kind of farmstock. Eventually things settled down and conversation turned to family fairs and talk of scintillating scandal.
People who were up to no good. People who didn’t know their place. People who’d had just a tad too much fun and had been sent away to focus on their futures.
This in turn would lead to talk of their own futures and talk of future meant speaking of the ones who shaped their present. Men and women who could literally sculpt mountains with their hands. People that they wanted to meet, people that they wanted to be.
*****
Despite the diversity between the nations and the races of Monde, there were three constants that would always be true no matter where you were on the planet.
The first was the simple, undeniable fact, that no matter who you were, or who you knew, there was always, always going to be something or someone, willing and able to swallow you bones and all.
The second was the generally knowledge that the strongest currency wasn’t the denarii or the aether rich moon dollars of the practitioners. True wealth came in the form of power and prestige.
Its purchasing ability, undaunted and unchanged, standing strong against the ages and the tests of time. Uninfluenced by the markets because it was the mighty who decided how the winds of fortune blew for everyone else.
Finally there was the third truth, a common understanding that if you took any two Mondians and sat them down together, so long as they held no grudges, they would almost immediately begin to gossip.
*****
The topics of the conversations would vary between class and culture and age and of course each month always brought new flavors. The Children spoke like children. The old men spoke like old men. The clerics and kings proselytized and schemed.
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Invariably it’d be some mixture of the weather, sex, politics, and then finally current events. However if you were talking about current events you couldn’t not talk about the practitioners and the groups and circles they ran in.
Their fights and their feuds, so forceful and earth shaking that the consequences of a battle between powerhouses from one side of the continent could be felt on the other.
For the past six months there were two topics that had remained on everyone’s lips. Frequently appearing in idle conversations. The first had been the impending fall of Jelani and what it would mean for Meallan, its markets and its people.
The second topic was entirely focused on the city’s inexplicable and miraculous survival. With everyone questioning how it happened and who was responsible. Some wondered whether the city’s young mayor managed to get aid from some powerful sect or wandering expert.
Others quietly wondered if the failure of the prophecy was sign of some issue on the side of the Church. Some of the church’s opponents and rivals quietly whispering of how very interesting it was that the Mayor of Jelani only got to hear of the prophecy once it was much too late for the city to be saved.
With Church proponents saying that the opposite was true and that Jelani’s leadership had in fact known all along and had instead been negligent and slow to act.
By now the names of everyone who was present in that subjugation force was already known and very few of them were notable. It was mostly old dogs who’d refused to quietly go into that good night and young pups risking themselves for a juicy bone and a chance at the good life.
All that remained was the mystery of whose hand had changed Jelani’s fate and which group’s’ shadow was ultimately responsible for it all.
In other news and on a less notable scale, a certain brand of healing potions and camping charms was quietly growing in popularity. The healing potions were cheap enough for normal soldiers to buy but could help a practitioner recover from grievous harm.
The camping charms, were simple things that you tossed into the fire. Allowing one to trust that the flame would burn till the sun came up, keep the demonbeasts away and then properly extinguish itself on its own. A small but impactful convenience. Charming enough, in more ways than one, leading to a certain name being spread by word of mouth.
This and a few other little magic devices had brought a certain small company to the attention of a fair number of merchants and sorcerers who operated in the south and on the coasts.
*****
The Bone Tree Company was diversifying, entering markets other than those of the Adventurer and Mercenary paths. They’d recently begun selling products that made the wanderer lifestyles a little easier.
It was nothing groundbreaking, mostly charms and potions of the sort that were already on the market. Things like self-maintained ward fires. Affordable twelve packs of potions that either helped one recover health, stamina, or aether. A slightly more reliable, more organized versions of the storage spells that were inscribed within the coding of most high-end cell phones.
Their biggest seller was a ward that let you use the restroom and bathe in peace. Creating a short lived pocket-reality that peeping toms, raiders and monsters wouldn’t be able to enter.
This particular charm was a big hit with the solitary wanderers of Monde. With the KOG offices having recently directly bought out a large portion of the season’s stock so they could be the ones to sell it to their Adventurers.
Funnily enough all this was just a consequence of one William Maddoc’s knew creative schtick. His new body came with expanded mental faculties and suddenly he found himself with all these ideas that he kind of wanted to see actualized and made real.
Most of them didn’t work out on account of this particular universe’s law of conservation for energy and matter. A frightening amount of those that “did” workout were scrapped halfway through their creation. Either displaying worrisome effects or slowly becoming semi-animate.
With a tendency for the omnicidal and qualities that warranted their immediate disposal. Probably saying more about what kind of being Billy used to be, than he’d ever be willing to address.
There “were” some safe successes, and even a few that would be okay to release to the public. As to how they ended up actually declaring themselves an atelier and selling the magic tools that was simple.
On paper and placed side by side, your average practitioner elite would always be wealthy compared to normal folk. In reality the truth was much different. While a single bronze dollar, the smallest denomination of the practitioner currency was worth one hundred thousand denarii they weren’t worth much in the practitioner economy.
Practitioners tended to eat through their funds. This was both a literal truth and a figurative one. Literal because moon dollars were originally meant to be supplements. They were alchemically created disks of materialized aether, that could be used to further one’s cultivation better than simple meditation could.
Which was how they got the grades; bronze, silver and gold, in the first place. As well as why they were the main currency for cultivators all across the world.
Beyond this there was also the fact that being a practitioner simply wasn’t cheap at all. Until one’s cultivation was high enough that one’s biology could be sustained on simple aether, dietary needs would explode. With a king-ranked practitioner needing many more calories than a normal person just to keep from starving.
Spells, medicines, stimulants, weapons and training, could cost the average practitioner thousands of gold. Not to mention standard equipment and equipment upkeep. One quickly realized that the path of aetheric cultivation was roughly as expensive as running a private super solider program “would” be.
It was only natural for the two chief executives of the bone tree company to scramble when they found themselves needing to pay their annual guild fees while they only had a few dozen coppers to rub together. The taxes that were claimed by the city, completely cleaning them out.
Eating up their savings. What was even more natural was what came next, when they found themselves with a severe lack of funds and a surplus of magical items.