— Keira —

With the vote complete, Mesalin leapt to her feet and exited the meeting room, walking in the peculiar way all skilled scouts seemed to, regardless of species. It was a smooth languid gait that covered distance more like a jog.

Even as the door swung closed behind her, the assembled council members broke into quiet conversations or busied themselves with individual tasks. Keir was about to follow their example and spend some time studying the list of damaged and destroyed structures she’d thus far put off.

Before she could Alasdair spoke up, his deep oddly hollow voice carrying the sound of grinding stone “I’m glad ta see ya seem to be takin well to yer position.” A hint of amusement seeped into his voice like groundwater as he continued “Ya still worried we all secretly blame ya.”

Keir turned to face the partially petrified dwarf, only the now vacated seat Mesalin had occupied between them, and said “It’s starting to sink in that at least most people in the village are either too busy recovering to think about it too much or don’t feel I’m to blame for their situation. It’s not quite so simple a task to convince myself to feel the same way.” She allowed herself a small sigh before she continued “However, I feel that’s a topic better discussed over an ale.”

Alasdair’s chuckle carried the sound of a rockslide. “Aye, eh Karak eh Koruk un kirn, eh?”

Keir wasn’t entirely fluent in dwarven but few soldiers didn’t know that particular phrase in a dozen or more tongues. It was as much a show of respect for the fallen as an invocation of Karrielle the Goddess of Booze and Battle. She flashed the common salute to Karrielle and switched to elvish and repeated the phrase back “To those I felled and those I failed, a drink.”

After both of them sat in silence for the few seconds expected, Keir sat back and said “Since you carry that cooking ax I take it you were a mess sergeant.”

Alasdair smiled proudly and said “Aye lass, I retired to open up the Root and Bough with my lovely Lin after six decades of active service.”

Keir nodded with genuine respect. Logistics troops were important to every force but they were especially valued in dwarven forces. Due to the nature of subterranean warfare their battles were won or lost by the strength of their back line forces as often as their near unbreakable shield walls.

By unspoken agreement they shifted to light hearted banter, leaving the heavy topics to a time when they both had an ale in hand.

Time flew by and soon the door swung open to reveal Mesalin and Lovisa. Mesalin wore a playful smirk as she glanced at Keir before she took her seat. Lovisa by contrast stood a bit awkwardly in the doorway before taking the last open seat.

Seeing that, Keir felt a bit guilty that she hadn’t explained her plan to Lovisa rather than just springing it on her at the last minute. She felt worse about what she was about to have to do as she saw the expression on Lovisa’s face that said she would be blushing if her blood still flowed. She didn’t want to put Lovisa on the spot but the System would require formal confirmation before she was officially granted the seat they’d voted her into.

Figuring the least she could do was to take most of the attention, she stood and tapped into her experience as a military officer more so than any of her class skills and said “Lovisa Silverthorn, the Chthonic Council of Still-Leaf village has voted to offer you the position of Counselor of Defense. Do you accept that position with all the rights and responsibilities it entails?”

Lovisa straightened in her seat before answering “Oh, um yes, I mean, I accept the position.”

Keir let her steel firm stance relax before she smiled genuinely and said “ Then let me be the first to say I look forward to working with you.” and returned to her seat.

With that out of the way she looked around the table as the others welcomed Lovisa. Only when they had all said their piece did she continue “Before we move on to the meeting proper, do you have any information on how to deal with an alraune seed, Lovisa?”

Lovisa shook her head and answered “No, not really. I know there were some in the Argent Forest but frost-aspected alraune are more secretive than most, especially about their seeds and seedlings.”

Keir made sure no sign of disappointment showed on her face at that response and said “Fair enough, none of us had any useful information either. Now let's start by having everyone with matters they want to go over with their fellow council members or myself do that now. When that is concluded then we can address the reason Ismini and I called for this meeting.”

Most of the reports given by the council members were not terribly surprising. Celylia and Ahti both went over their current and projected stocks at their respective stores. Antheia reported what she managed to learn about the undead as well as Mortis. Lindel went over the state of the farms. The only real surprise came from Mesalin.

This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

When her turn came around Mesalin said “I got the Root and Bough more or less ready to serve customers though I haven't gotten around to cleaning the rooms yet. The real issue is that like most businesses in the village, I’m sure, the tavern downgraded in the intervening years since our death. We don’t have to deal with it immediately but as soon as it is feasible we need to go over the tax situation.”

Around the table most of the others agreed, especially those who operated businesses. The only person who seemed a bit confused was Lovisa. Keir was also a bit unsure where they were going with the request until a half remembered lesson bubbled up in her mind. Most of her lessons had focused on such things primarily from the perspective of the village leader. She was therefore the most familiar with creating or improving businesses by spending Advancement Points. Given the limited number of points available to a settlement that was not the most common way businesses improved. Instead they received their own version of resource points based on the amount of contribution to the settlement. That included, but was not limited to, the taxes they supplied to the village coffers.

As the others settled down Keir said “Well we definitely need to set aside time to determine a long term tax rate once things settle and we have the time and information needed to do so. What we can do immediately is vote on an emergency temporary measure to deal with it in the short term. As I understand it we should be able to temporarily allow businesses to set their own rates. The discrepancy from the standard rates allowed will reduce over time until it is within the standard rates.”

Lovisa frowned, confusion written clearly on her face, and said “I know taxes are an annoying necessity but is this really the time to be trying to dodge them. It feels like the village will need money now more than ever. We need to band together and help each other the most at times like these.”

Keir did her best to keep the small smile off her face to make sure the younger elf wouldn’t think she was being mocked. Several of the others were clearly doing the same as they all waited patiently for her to finish her surprisingly impassioned speech on the necessity of taxation, especially in times of crisis. When she finished Mesalin spoke up “You have things a bit backwards there. While gold is always useful, especially for a business, at times like this paying more taxes is better. Improvement Points acquired from paying taxes are exponentially more useful right now and as you said the village will definitely need more gold if we need resources and or services from others.”

Lovisa deflated a bit but before she could get too down on herself the others including Keir made it clear she should be proud of her intentions rather than ashamed that she didn’t have the same relatively niche information the others did.

Antheia took that opportunity to chime in saying “I’m not surprised you didn’t know as it rarely comes up outside of historical, scholarly, or religious context. The primary architects of the Village Interface System were Stherin the god of community and contracts and his wife Synteth the goddess of honor and honesty. The entire System was built from the ground up to prevent any seeds of corruption from taking root.”

Keir had known the pair were involved but so had a half a dozen other deities to one degree or another. She certainly hadn’t realized they were so heavily involved, and from the reactions of her rest of the those present she wasn’t the only one. Clearly Antheia was not only pleased for the chance to talk about a somewhat esoteric bit of information she was also a rather impassioned and talented teacher. The meeting was therefore slightly derailed by an interesting and impromptu lesson on the origin and ongoing development of the System.

With that all finished they moved on to the vote, which passed readily. The others as well as the business owners not present would be able to access the System at any point over the next few days to set their desired rates. Most would be operating at no actual profit or even at a loss while that option was still available.

Alasdair didn’t have anything he felt needed addressed and the other two didn’t have much to go over outside of the reason for the meeting. When they had all said their piece Keir motioned for silence and said “If there are no objections let’s move on to the main reason for this meeting.”

No one had an objection so she continued “I’m sure it won’t surprise anyone that repairing and rebuilding the village will require a considerable amount of stone and lumber. Lovisa and I went and reclaimed the quarry and lumber mill for exactly that reason. Unfortunately while the quarry is operational albeit only level one the lumber mill is so deteriorated it can only be classified as a logging camp.” She paused to allow the others to react before continuing “Essentially the entire saw mechanism will need to be reforged which would be enough of an issue on its own. Unfortunately Ismini informs me that the blacksmith remained dead and the smithy itself is almost entirely destroyed.”

Ismini spoke up in her fiery windy voice “We need lumber to fix the smithy to fix the lumber mill to get the lumber we need to fix the smithy. The only reasonable place to break that cycle seems to be going to Stonesheild to find a smith to repair the lumber mill.”

Keir nodded her agreement and said “I’m not great at defensive actions so I plan on primarily leaving the village defense in the capable hands of lovisa and making the trip to the Stonesheild to arrange for assistance but I don't have any contacts in the city. Does anyone have any suggestions?”

Alasdair and Antheia both spoke up at the same time. They then both told the other to go first. That continued for a comically long time before finally Alasdair went first saying “I served in the army of Stonesheild. I still have plenty of friends and family there. I don’t know how they’ll feel about my being undead but I will go with you.”

“Thanks, I would appreciate that.” Keir answered

Antheia then said “I might not be as much assistance but I also want to join. There are a few libraries and an academy that may have more useful information about our situation.”

Keir barely needed to consider the request before saying “You’re welcome to come along. Now we just need to determine who else if anyone will be joining us.”

With a basic plan set the meeting moved along quickly from there. Soon enough they had a list of a dozen people who would either have business in the dwarven city with them or valuable contacts they could use while there.

When the meeting wrapped up and everyone was preparing to leave, Alasdair approached Keir as Mesalin moved over to Lovisa.

“We Dinae need to have that chat but I did want ta invite ye. After these sort of meetings we all normally pop by the tavern for a drink. Ye up fer that lass?”

Keir noticed Lovisa glancing over her way so she said “Sounds great.”