I politely asked the merchant to wait until tomorrow for negotiations for the next year. After all, who knows what new problems might arise after this discussion with the Baron. I did, however, make sure that we got all the merchant's supplies that we had previously ordered sorted to their destinations.
The elf patiently waited for me to finish my work with the merchant before speaking up themself, again in a language I didn't understand and hadn't heard before. For what it's worth, I'm actually quite impressed that Shasta speaks as many languages as she does. I've noticed a distinct lack of the two goblins I sent with her, but now isn't the time to bring that issue up. As I wrapped my own thoughts up, Shasta began her translation for the elf.
"Greetings Zakarus of Kembora, I am Elora Elloetta representative of Elloetta, one of the five Great Matriarchs of the elven lands. I myself am here to establish relations on behalf of our Matriarch, after we received quite the interesting recounting of events that unfolded here a few years ago. However, it seems that we should hold off on negotiations until you've handled this apparent dispute with Rathland. A word of advice, humans, and Besmond III especially, are notoriously underhanded."
"Thank you for the advice, and I'm looking forward to discussing matters with you soon." I reply.
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When invited into the meeting space in the city hall, the Baron of Compfur insisted that he had at least four guards with him in the room. It didn't directly bother me, because after all, we are demons. Zaka, Zeb, and Shasta joined us for the meeting as well. The Baron launched into another long winded speech, making more eye contact with Shasta and his own guards than with Zeb, Zaka, or myself. As he finished talking, he passed a parchment down the table.
"As I'm sure you're aware, by the ancient treaties of defense, if demons invade a territory of any allied nations, the other nations are to aid in the repulsion of the demons. However, Besmond is a generous king, and comes with an offer. Return all the land that has been stolen, and submit yourselves as servants to Rathland. King Besmond promises fair treatment should you immediately comply."
Before I get a chance to respond, Shasta retorts in the human tongue. I cautiously observe, and see the Baron's eye twitch and he speaks again.
"I'm certain Kao won't stand for this. I retorted to the Baron, 'Surely you are aware that at least one of these islands is now under dwarven control. Do you intend to have us return that land as well?'" Shasta pauses before continuing, "The Baron replied, 'Yes, at some point we would expect that land to be returned to us, or negotiated for, however, that isn't relevant right now. What I'm here for is the demons' response, not some representative of Kao Ostark's.'"
I turned to start discussions with our side, "I'm opposed to this, but there is some weight behind the idea of some continent wide treaties being invoked. I doubt many countries would respond, but honestly, the weight of more than one nation would be hard for us to take on, and that's assuming that Kao holds his end of the bargain up."
Shasta interjects, "Kao talked big before about the ability to hold you ransom, but he's a man of his word, if an outside force really did want to take these islands, he'd fight tooth and nail. I recall him making vague threats before, but that was mostly as a deterrent for betrayal. Speaking of, suddenly submitting yourself to a foreign power might just classify as that..."
"So we're stuck in a bad situation." Zeb pauses for a moment, "If we give in, we make an enemy of Kao, and if we don't give in, we're making an enemy of the kingdom of Rathland."
"If its a choice between freedom and servitude, I think it's obvious." Zaka says.
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I'm inclined to agree. Plus, I don't even know how legitimate this claim is.
"Yes, I suppose it is obvious." I say and turn to face the Baron, "We reject your offer. We have no reason to believe that any of this is valid, and further, your attitude plus your vagueness makes you seem untrustworthy. You may continue to stay here until the caravan leaves, but at that point, you're no longer invited to stay here."
"So be it. I told the King it was a waste of time to try to negotiate with savage demons."
With that, the Baron stood up and left the room with his guards.
"I have a bad feeling this was his goal from the start." Shasta says.
"Oh? What makes you think that?" I reply.
"As the representative of Elloetta said, Rathland is a pretty shady country. In all likelihood, they probably want the land for the metal you've found, and would rather there be no demons here at all. I'm guessing if you agreed to submit, they'd make the terms so unreasonable that you'd have no choice but to fight back later anyway. Either that or you'd all be slaves until all the metal was mined, and then they'd either abandon or kill all of you. Either way, they have a pretty bad reputation. What you need to be concerned about now is what their scheme is moving forward."
"Well, we should probably try to gain favor with Elloetta at least then, to stem whatever potential damages might come from this." I respond as we leave the meeting room.
As we began walking back to our respective sleeping quarters, I noticed a shadow up by the steam cannons. As I approached, the shadow darted off into the woods. Yeah, that's probably going to be an issue too. Someone's already collecting intel on us.
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Thankfully, by the next morning it didn't seem like anything had been sabotaged. Whoever was skulking about didn't seem to break or damage anything. When I met up with Shasta and the elven diplomat in the early morning, I let Shasta know that someone was investigating the steam cannons, and likely other things in the night.
She didn't seem that surprised by the information, stating that "Given we're dealing with Rathland, we're lucky if that's all they did."
Shortly after, Shasta, Zeb, Zaka, myself, and the elven diplomat and two of her guards entered city hall and returned to the meeting room that many of us had been in the night before.
"Sorry for the delay in having this meeting, yesterday was a bit hectic but you have our full attention now." I said, accentuated with a slight nod at the end of my introduction.
"Yes, Rathland always does have a way of making everyone else's affairs more tedious." Elora agreed. "The matter at hand for the Elloetta Matriarchy was initially planned to just be some basic greetings and diplomatic relations, as our territory is an entire continent away, across the inland sea, but now that Rathland is involved, I'm already going to have to be careful with how we handle this."
"Then I suppose, in the spirit of cooperation, I should tell you that we rejected Rathland's offer. Although, it really was more of a demand than an offer."
"I appreciate the information, as that should at least make our relationship more clear. As always, politics on the continent are such a bother. I was looking forward to this being a simple, no strings attached sort of diplomatic meeting, but that's no longer possible. We elves prefer to keep things simple and peaceful, so when we heard that the demons on this island seemed more interested in keeping to themselves than taking any aggressive actions, we thought it would be a good opportunity. To us, most of the other races always seem a bit too busy fighting over minor things. I remember when Rathland was a quaint country along the inland coast a few hundred years ago, but those days are long gone. Now they're the third largest human country, and dominate a majority of the inland coast. Oh, but I should pause for our translator to keep up."
The elf paused and waited for Shasta to translate. Shasta was seemingly keeping notes on a piece of parchment, and she had a few more, but I thought it might be a good opportunity, so after she translated, I excused myself and quickly ran to the academy where I was storing some of the paper our mill had made. I returned after only a few minutes with a stack of 20 sheets of paper, and handed them to Shasta.
"Wow, you guys really have been busy. Paper's a nice commodity, but it's a bit of a pain to transport over the water, so the only place that I've used it is in Korsask. Who taught you how to make it?" Shasta asks.
"Oh, I had to come up with it." A half-truth, as my knowledge from earth gave me the gist of the process, but I had to rediscover a lot of the specifics.
"Incredible..." She said almost imperceptibly.
"Sorry, please continue." I nodded.