1        Soul Bound

1.3      Making a Splash

1.3.2    An Allotropic Realignment

1.3.2.6  Ghetto mentality

She flicked back to group chat and glanced around. They were walking along a road which her overview map listed as “Hob Row”. Despite being twenty meters wide, it was filled from side to side with carts loaded with timbers or bales of wool, stalls hawking a bewildering variety of workshop samples, from brass buckles and bone bobbins to bubbling beer and bound books, and teeming pedestrians flowing indiscriminately between them, searching for bargains or possibly just the meaning of life. Harlequin was in the lead, chatting with Alderney and Bulgaria, while Bungo and Wellington eyed the goods and architecture as they passed. Tomsk, a reassuring presence walking steadily by her side, was the first to notice as she came alert.

Tomsk: {Welcome back, Kafana. Happy with your skills?}

Kafana: {They’re looking good. One or two I want to give priority to improving. I’ve made some memos and Minion will add them to the event queue and shared documents. What have I missed?}

Bungo: {Some great bargains. All this stuff is locally made. Oh, and Harlequin’s been telling anecdotes to Bulgaria about people being slaughtered. History stuff; I haven’t paid attention. I learned my lesson when I got trapped by Bartola. NPCs in this game are primed to drone on for hours, spewing quest prompts at you, if you give the least sign of listening.}

Bulgaria looked pained, and stepped back to walk beside her. In a dry voice he said: {I’ll summarise.}

Bulgaria: “When Torello was smaller, livestock were slaughtered near the Necropolis, and a few butchers and tanners set up nearby, outside the walls. The first permanent residents of the area were metalworkers from the north, who couldn’t get permits to build their massive foundries inside the city. They set up instead by the encampment where the guards kept and trained their horses, and the resulting slag pits ensured nobody else wanted to live nearby.”

Kafana: “Let me guess. ‘Ghetto’ means ‘foundry’ in their language? So what happened to make people settle here despite that?”

Bulgaria: “Religion. When the mages failed to stop the Alpinus incursion, the priests of Cov gained influence. A bunch of fanatics created a theocracy, the Burgundish Benevolence, and started a crusade against the undead, necromancers, followers of Rac, and pretty much everyone who wasn’t a strict law-and-order Covian. So when caravans of Sassari refugees arrived, who placed emphasis upon the hospitality aspect of Cov, Torello’s priests told them ‘Know your place in life. You may not set foot inside our walls ‘twixt dusk and dawn. Torello’s food and shelter is not for the likes of you. Go live on the slag, for all we care.’ ”

Kafana: “Charming. Sounds like something Fra Nerone Drago would say.”

Bulgaria: “Eventually the Age of Priests was followed by the Age of Merchants, and a new wall was built that included the Ghetto within the protections of the city. But, by then, everything smelly, dangerous, or suspected of heresy, had been forced into the area. Every business and every person.”

Wellington: “They were fools. Those immigrants brought new skills and ideas, new opportunities. Inevitably rural folk in the surrounding villages heard the Ghetto had jobs that didn’t need qualifications and would reward their labour better than farming. Supply and demand. This is now the fastest growing part of the city.”

Kafana: “So that’s why this area feels so crowded? The new wall acted like the lid of a pressure cooker, stopping the Ghetto expanding in response to the added residents?”

Bulgaria: “Not entirely. Being outside the city also came with a couple of benefits. No taxes and no limits on what you could write or say. An eccentric poet named Petrarca became interested in comparative linguistics. He didn’t want narrow-minded priests to burn the manuscripts he collected on his wanderings, so he built a hall to store them beyond the wall. It turned into an academy and a center of Bembism.”

Bungo: “See? See?”

Bulgaria: “I assure you, this is the short version.”

Kafana: “Suor Isabella mentioned Bembo, I think, when she told me how rare it was to be able to talk directly to deities and have them answer. He was the Holy Knight of Cov who had a revelation and then started writing song lyrics, wasn’t he?”

Bulgaria: “He claimed that all civilised people were equal in the eyes of Cov, no matter their wealth or gender, no matter their level or region of origin, no matter if their blood were not noble or even not pure Covadan. Very controversial, but he was big on education and gained a lot of followers - ended up as Torello’s Grand Ambassador and a strategic advisor to the Marquis.”

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Far ahead down the crowded road, she could see an archway in the walls of the Barracks controlled by alert sentries, where merchants were showing their enchanted pass discs and paying fees for each wagon permitted past the open gates. A dozen horsemen in the green and black livery of Lord Pazzi were nodded through without being stopped. Even using the zoom icon tattooed on her hand, she couldn’t see much at this range, but she guessed they were heading out to patrol the Basso district.

Kafana: “I can see why that would appeal to refugees and immigrants from other cities and regions. Is it all like this?” She waved her arm, to indicate the barred windows and closed shutters of the buildings facing the big road, so different from the rear-view presented to the courtyard they’d started off from.

Bulgaria: “No, each parish inside the Ghetto has its own industries and culture, its own accent, food, clothing and architecture. Originally this parish, Gobwell, was where bulk grain, timber and fibers were delivered, ready to be brewed or milled, woven into rugs and cloth or turned into coaches and cottages. Those who couldn’t hide not being pure Covadan had already been shoved into the Ghetto, along with the other ‘undesirables’, but after the Marquis appointed a half-Krevadan mercenary as Colonel of the Watches, on Bembo’s advice, a new tradition of tolerance was started in the city guard, and those facing prejudice even from other outcasts, found themselves a new home in the shelter of the Barracks.”

Harlequin: “They called us goblyns, lumped anyone not pure Covadan in the same group as monsters and Beladan. Half the original inhabitants of this parish moved out, rather than draw water from the same well as us.” He set his cap at a jaunty angle on his head and put a bit of swagger into his walk.

Harlequin: “So we made it our own. And we’re not going to give it up without a fight, no matter what changes Bruno and Trinci made to the Guard.”

He dropped the line into the conversation with the disguised care of a fisherman lightly landing his fly upon the water. Tomsk bit.

Tomsk: “Changes?”

Harlequin: “Oh yes, Captain Tomsk. Changes. Did your dear friend Lelio Pantalone not mention them before offering you status as an honorary officer?”

Tomsk: “What changes?”

Harlequin: “About ten years ago, Lord Bruno wanted a particular noble to be appointed Captain. Ungol Zeno. A strong man, oh a very strong man. A natural, some said. Just what the watch needs - a breath of fresh air, not a stodgy old traditionalist. You’ve heard of him?”

Tomsk: “I think Lelio mentioned him, but he didn’t say much. Should he have?”

Harlequin: “Oh possibly not, possibly not. Why would he think it important that under his predecessor all the goblyns were gradually kicked out of the guard? Improper uniform. Too old. Impertinence to a superior. Certainly Lord Trinci didn’t think it important, when he decided to back Bruno’s nominee. Or, at least not as important as what he got in return.”

Harlequin’s usually lilting voice didn’t have an edge to it now, so much as a finely honed point - one as sharp as a rogue’s stiletto, designed to pierce even the finest chain mail, straight into a warrior’s heart. Bulgaria intercepted it.

Bulgaria: “What did Lord Trinci get in return?”

Harlequin relented and stepped back a bit, reverting to his normal carefree manner.

Harlequin: “Ah, now that is a very good question. I don’t know the answer, and I very much would like to. Do let me know if you find out, hmm?”

[Quest “The Changing of the Guard” available. Discover the truth behind Harlequin’s suspicions. Difficulty rank E]

She started to instinctively decline the quest, then hesitated.

Kafana: {Bungo, do we accept the quest?}

Bungo: {Some people are completionists, who hate missing out and want to finish every quest. But that’s not actually possible. No matter how much you do, there are always more quests available - XperiSense procedurally generates them. When I left Morob to come here, I had more than a thousand quests listed as uncompleted on my active list. You get used to it. The trick is to filter the list to show only the ones in your current area, or that you’ve marked as being most worth spending time pursuing. The rest you only bother about when something happens to make them more relevant.}

Bulgaria: {So you’d accept it?}

Bungo: {In a heartbeat. There’s no downside, unless we end up spending time pursuing it instead of something else we’d rather do. We can leave it on the list, and if we ever get to talk to Bruno or Trinci and happen to discover the answer, it will serve as a reminder that we should go tell Harlequin.}

Alderney: {Are you sure accepting it won’t trigger the game into steering certain encounters in our direction? What if it gets Tomsk into trouble with Lelio?}

Tomsk: {I’m ok with taking the risk. I’d like to know what’s going on.}

Wellington: {We could make it an experiment. Accept it, do nothing, and see if an unusually high number of Guard related encounters happen.}

Kafana: {Bungo, you’re the one wearing the Games Master hat; you get to decide or, if you prefer, decide how we decide.}

[Quest “The Changing of the Guard” accepted.]

A few minutes later Harlequin left them, promising he’d be around, as they arrived at the door to the foundry.