029 - WHEN FRONTIER JUSTICE RETURNS HOME
“This place,” Conrad said, “It isn’t what I expected. When we passed through the barrier of the node even Karno was surprised.”
Barrett smiled, “Our little community has come a long way. Order’s nodes form wherever sufficient power congregates for long enough, and our population has grown such that we’ve finally been blessed with one of our own.”
The way Barrett spoke was like a politician, not a warlord. He had pride in what he was doing with Great Pines.
If what Karno had said about this place was all true, then this man was dangerous. But something about the situation as he had accepted it from Karno felt off. Everything was just less sinister than he had expected it to be. He had to take a chance, hear the story from another perspective. After all, Barrett had invited him to ask questions so that was what he would do.
“You admitted that Karno and the other ‘crews’ are out in the countryside on your orders,” Conrad began.
“Admitted?” Barret said, raising an eyebrow.
“Karno said that they had no other option. They’re not men simply joining your group and following orders, they were coerced,” Conrad said, holding the older man’s gaze, “I’ve got a bit of a soft spot for people acting against their own will.”
Barrett sighed and looked down his nose at Conrad, “And these same coerced men that you have a soft spot for, was it by your hand that they met their fate?”
Conrad didn’t know how Barrett knew Dirk and Paul, but if he wanted the truth all he had to do was ask Karno. Barrett used to be an adventurer though, he knew how the Chaos Lands worked. When men fought, sometimes they died, and he had been sending them into dangerous situations. Conrad took a deep breath before returning his gaze to meet Barrett’s hard brown eyes.
“Killing them wasn’t my intention. Things got… out of hand.”
“Yes they often do out in the wilds,” Barrett said with a wan smile. He noted something on a new sheet of paper before continuing, “And as for Karno and the men you killed having been forced to be out there, have you never heard of a man ‘forced’ to make choices outside of his idealized vision of his own life in order to survive?
“It’s true I have men searching for items and material to give to the dungeon, and its also true that some of them would prefer work of a different nature, I make no secret of this fact. But Order’s ugliest jobs are also often the most necessary.
“How do you think we grow this place? I don’t mean the material, I mean the people. People arrive day after day, often escorted by my own men. We don’t just send thieves into the Chaos Lands, we send recruiters.”
Conrad tilted his head in confusion, “The people I’ve spoken with never mentioned any recruiting.”
“A sore point between Karno and I. He’s one of those independent types, doesn’t think the price of progress is worth paying. Give that man a shack and a few acres of monster infested land and he’ll be happy - and thinks you’re lying if you say otherwise. Of course he isn’t recruiting,” Barrett said.
Conrad was reminded of Trish the Brewer, whose mistrust of institutions ran so deep she preferred to live and work far from the modest comforts of any sort of government and especially what came with it - taxes. He hadn’t realized Karno was of a similar mind.
“Obviously it’s working, the growth of this place speaks for itself but… how?” Conrad asked, incredulous but also genuinely curious, “You mean to tell me you rob people blind and then invite them to come and join you?”
“I think of it as putting a finger on the scales,” Barrett said with a small smile, “Leave nothing to hold onto, provide something new to make their own, and voila, I have new townspeople, most of whom are skilled professionals.”
“And if they’re still raw about the deal, well, the Arena isn’t going to grow itself,” Conrad said, leaving it up to Barrett to understand the implication.
The older adventurer didn’t disappoint, “You’re implying I’m feeding people to the dungeon, that I use the threat of it to maintain a reign of terror over my subjects and to a certain extent that is true. But is the threat of death not present in every town and city, in every place where Order’s path is followed?”
The question confused Conrad, “What do you mean? Of course not.”
“Not if you follow the rules,” Barrett said, “But what fate would await Karno if you took him to Edge?”
It struck Conrad then what the man was saying as he nodded and replied, “Hanging.”
“In Edge, they hang men who do not follow the rules. But do you know who else they hang? Thieves. Debtors. Contract breakers. I’ve even been to places where they hang adulterers. Out here things are not so different, it is only the scale - for now - which is different. It feels personal when one of my men herds a malcontent into the dungeon, but in a place like Edge it simply feels like justice.”
He continued, warming to his argument, “But further, here when a man or woman is taken to the Arena it is not with the same certainty of death as the hangman’s noose. They not only have the chance to survive, but to come out with the treasure to pay their debt to society.”
Sarcasm oozed from Conrad’s voice, “Do they though?”
The older adventurer shrugged, “Most don’t. But offer a man the Arena or the hangman’s noose and I guarantee you, he will choose the Arena every time. What’s more, it is such a tremendous waste to execute a person outside a dungeon. A lifetime of accumulated knowledge and experience simply… annihilated. A death in the Arena, on the other hand, is not merely a punishment of the guilty - it is a further payment of their debt in coin that only the Arena can accept. No matter which way it goes, Great Pines always wins.”
It was not without some grudging respect that Conrad acknowledged the point. Punishment in the larger cities was only that, but out here maybe it could serve a purpose - and if men came out of the Arena wealthy enough to not just pay off their debts, but perhaps to make a new life? What better reform could there be? He knew which choice he would take if he found himself in trouble.
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“Then all crimes here come with a chance to pay off your debt to society by challenging the Arena?”
“For now,” Barrett said.
“This place has its own rules,” Conrad said, “I can accept that. But stealing from the people out in the Chaos Lands? My parents did nothing to have their shop looted in order to grow your dungeon. How can you justify that?”
“I have no need to justify it,” Barrett said, “Do you justify the killing of monsters, the looting of treasure? It is there for the taking. There are no laws in the Chaos Lands. Homesteaders accept that. And they put out quests to get freelancers, mercenaries like yourself, to come and handle the dirty work they’re not capable of handling themselves. Which, coincidentally is how you’ve found your way here.”
“And all the monsters around town? You escort new 'recruits’ in but they can’t really leave. Just another finger on the scales?” Conrad asked.
Barret smiled again, “It’s good you’ve begun to see how we do things out here, Conrad. I have just one final question before we conclude our business here today.”
Barrett leaned in across his desk, voice intense, “Tell me, what do you think of my Arena?”
Conrad thought a moment before saying, “I haven’t seen it ye–”
Barrett waived away his words, “No. But you’ve heard of what it is, yes? Heard of what makes it different?”
Taking a breath, Conrad nodded.
“Then tell me what you think of it,” Barrett commanded. His voice was intense, passionate, a man eager to share his excitement with somebody he sensed had the capacity to understand. And the Merchant in Conrad did understand. It understood with more zeros than he had words to put a number to.
“I think it’s the greatest opportunity for profit and spectacle I’ve ever heard of,” Conrad said.
Barrett nodded, gravely, “And that is exactly the sort of vision that guides my hands here. The greatest show in all of Nexus, a dungeon drawing in not just adventurers, but spectators, travelers! This hamlet, Conrad, Great Pines? In twenty years it will rival glorious Confluence itself!”
The vision of it nearly swept Conrad away. Screaming crowds of thousands watching the greatest adventurers live, battling to the death against the forces of Chaos, spawned for the express purpose of violent spectacle. The dungeon spewing out endless streams of gold, jewels, enchanted weapons and armor beyond imagining. The cycle of life and death and glory and triumph in an endless pattern of perpetual growth and upward momentum.
He could picture himself out there on the sands of the Arena, arms raised high in triumph as the cheers rose around him like a storm. The glory of it was something greater than he had ever imagined. To sit on the leaderboards of the Adventuring Guild seemed petty when compared to the heights he could rise to in the Arena in the new center of Nexus.
The uncertain fate of the people he and Karno had come to ‘save’, Karno himself, and the whole operation was now a distant voice in the back of his mind, drowned out by the fantasy of what he had stumbled upon in Great Pines.
But something wasn’t right. When a patron came peddling fantasy rather than putting gold on the table, there was more going on than was being said.
He managed to tear himself away from his imagination long enough to ask “Why me? Why are you telling me all this?”
Barret smiled again, “Another finger on the scales. Men who understand their fate, who buy into the system, are much more useful to me than men struggling with silly, animal confusion.”
“My fate?” Conrad said, the feeling of confidence that came with Silver Tongue was still gently nudging Conrad as he listened, “Am I being scouted then?”
Barrett’s whole demeanor changed as he said, “Quite the opposite. You’re being arrested.”
Shock froze Conrad in place.
“Every crime in Great Pines comes with a debt to society that must be paid,” Barrett said, “And you have confessed to the murder of two of my citizens.”
The stomach dropped right out of him, feeling of Silver Tongue vanishing in an instant to be replaced by icy dread.
Murder?
“You killed two men in the pursuit of your mercenary contract, but those men were citizens of Great Pines. We don’t yet have the size to invite a chapter of the Adventurer’s Guild ourselves, but if we did I can guarantee quests would be issued for your capture. But in these circumstances we had no need, because here - you - are,” Barrett said, pronouncing each of the last words individually as he sealed the trap.
“I didn’t…! Those men…! ” All of the conversations with Troy and Mara, all of his choices, all of it exploded into his mind and body in a wave of sickening understanding that seized up his stomach and threatened to empty it.
Nobody got upset if you killed the wrong monster, he had thought to himself at the start of this journey, but kill the wrong man or woman?
That was what they called murder.
Barrett watched him, a picture of serene repose, “You begin to understand at last.”
“Barrett,” Conrad choked on the name of the man who had seemed so intelligent, so civil.
And now so ruthless.
“Barrett I was defending myself!”
“Out here, Conrad, you have no tribunal to appeal to, no lawyer to defend you and make your case, and the only witness to your crime is the same man who delivered you to me,” Barret said.
Karno.
“He didn’t… He brought me here to help people,” Conrad said. He had begun to feel that the bandit was his friend! They were kindred spirits, pitted against each other by circumstance. Or so he had thought. The idea seemed stupid now. Idiotic. Boyish in its naivete.
“Yes, you may have won the battle but he has won the war. In truth, The Tower is a persona meant to dissuade fighting. For a man hardened to killing, a man such as yourself, he really stood no chance.”
It was true, Conrad had been shocked at Karno’s lack of fighting skills and abilities. It was brute strength and numbers that had almost ended Conrad out at Eloise’s cottage, but even with those advantages he had still won.
And then he just let the man bring him here to face the cold logic of a law he had no clue even existed.
“The people here love him,” Barrett was saying, “they believe the legend behind him and would give anything to see an adventurer of his repute in the Arena… but I fear the spectacle of it would only deprive me of a competent man. And I can’t bring most adventurer’s here. Soon, but not yet.
“You though? A killer. An underdog. The Arena needs - no, I need a man like you to demonstrate the potential of this place!”
“Fuck this place!” Conrad yelled, “Fuck you!”
He stood rapidly, mace and shield manifesting themselves into his hands. Glory in the Arena sounded nice and all, but getting the hell out of here sounded a lot better!
The guards at the door were ready for him, blades already drawn. He could do it, he could win. It was three men he bested to get himself here, what were two more? This was all a mistake but he was not about to die for it!
“Control yourself, Officer!” Barrett boomed, voice the harsh, commanding tone of a drill sergeant.
Unwittingly, Conrad flinched and turned to see the man standing, a long two-handed curved sword held easily in just one. Not just two men to fight his way out against.
Two men and Barrett.
“Have you forgotten so quickly? The Arena is opportunity, not a summary execution,” Barrett smiled warmly, “We don’t do that here.”