After getting dressed, we made our way up to the manor, mostly mentally exhausted from the ordeal of being dress up dolls for Bethy. When we reached the house (which looked much more imposing at night) the door opened without any prompting, revealing Alister Morgan, in all his seneschal-y glory. "Ah, Master Solomon and Lady Nightstrike, welcome back. Might I take your coats?"

He stepped back, ushering us in, and said nothing to anyone else. It took a minute for me to realize that he didn't KNOW anyone else, and I needed to introduce them. I gave introductions across the party, not mentioning my relation to Chelsea just in case. When I finished (we didn't hand over our coats and he didn't press) , he bowed formally with an aristocratic flourish of his arm. "It is lovely to meet you all. I am Alister Morgan, Baron Tolbert's seneschal. Welcome to the Baron's home."

We were escorted to the dining room, where a massive white clothed table was bedecked with all sorts of china plates full of food and crystal glasses next to bottles of wine, whiskey, juice, soda, and a few drinks I didn't actually recognize. Camden sat at the head of the table, eating a truly massive steak next to a heaping pile of mashed potatoes. When he spotted us, he swallowed and grinned. "Sorry I started early. I'm not particularly patient. Come on in and take a seat."

We did, and as we sat down, a flurry of servants came out to put napkins on our laps and pour the drinks for us. The bottles were all sealed and were opened fresh in front of us, presumably to demonstrate that they weren't poisoned. I wondered how cutthroat politics got here if they needed to make a big show of that, but shut the thought down as I picked out a nice grape soda for my meal.

Jessie, who had been the invitee (though Callie and I were namechecked) beamed at Camden. "Thank you so much for the invite. The food looks lovely. I was surprised to get this invitation on the first day here."

"Lot of surprises today." He said with a smirk. "But I wanted to reach out and talk about a few things. Contracts are done, of course, but I needed to speak with you all about some of the information I'd managed to dig up. I'm sure you know what I mean. Still, no need to be rude, lets get everyone's plates sorted before we start the shop talk. My chefs outdid themselves. I even had them set a place for your ursine companion."

He gestured to a pillow next to the table with a large metal platter set on top. Jessie grinned and placed Randall, who she was still carrying, on the ground. "Do you mind it he makes himself a bit more comfortable?" She asked innocently. "He's normally bigger than this, and he likes to spread out when he eats."

"By all means." He said with a wave. "Plenty of room." And there was, this dining room was absolutely huge. Jessie pulled out her necklace focused it on the bear, and spun the star. Randall shifted in size, expanding to become a larger, though still not full sized, version of himself. Camden whistled. "I see what you mean. I assume he'd prefer meat?" He gestured to the table. "Feel free to select whatever you'd like, the servants will plate it for him."

She did, and I reached out, starting to load my own plate up. Camden didn't seem to mind, so clearly we were fine to make our own food. I grabbed some of everything I could reach. Potatoes, beef, vegetables, a kind of savory bread pudding dish I'd never seen before, and I even ladled some soup into a small bowl to eat with my meal.

"So." I said after a few bites. "What exactly have you heard about us? Given your resources, I'm not shocked you dug up a bit. Solomon isn't a unique name, but Nightstrike isn't too common, and in conjunction we gave you quite a bit to go on. I don't want to give anything away you didn't find on your own."

He grinned, tipping his head in acknowledgment. "The basics. Lady Nightstrike is a godslayer, which is not a title many people have, obviously." Callie started to clarify, but he held up a hand. "There were extenuating circumstances, I know. If not the tale would be in the mouth of every information broker and storyteller in the five factions. But still, it made enough waves for me to get wind of it with some digging."

"You planning to advertise?" I said dryly. "Telling people you have a godslayer in your army would be good press. Even moreso when we rank up, which as I'm sure you guessed, won't take long."

Shrugging, he made an uncertain noise. "Well...I considered it. If it were just Nightstrike I probably would have. But Solomon was part of that story too. Solomon, who is a descendant of the Wishmaster, and a candidate to inherit his office. A godslayer's reputation is a powerful thing, but I think access to wishes would be more useful for me at the moment. After all, not all the notoriety from releasing your feats would be good."

"Enemies would be bound to be as common as friends." I said stoically. "So you're interested in access to wishes, I can understand that. You do know, of course, that payment has to be rendered for things like that? I seem to remember you being a bit light on cash."

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He grimaced, looking around. "You're not wrong. But there are other potential avenues of compensation. I have this army here, and I'm planning to use it to make a place for myself here. You'll be ranking up soon, and there are multiple territories on offer. Perhaps we might come to an...arrangement. Would becoming landed Barons be of interest to you?"

I blinked at that. "Can we...even do that? We're not citizens, can we claim territory?" We weren't going to be staying, but we had more than enough people that we might be able to leave someone to run things. Having our own territory wasn't exactly something I wanted to turn down out of hand.

"You can, though without a noble Job you couldn't be added to the Empire's roles." He said contemplatively. "There are substitutions that can be made to handle renown distribution to people within your territory, but without access to the roles you would be stuck taking physical taxes. It would be a substantial loss of functionality compared to what a normal noble might have."

I glanced at Celine curiously. We DID have a noble in the group. We could theoretically have her act as an intermediary. It would help speed up her growth too. "Would the noble in question need to be present? Or could we leave someone to watch the territory in their place?"

He paused, mulling it over. "Possibly. I know Alister can act in my stead when I'm gone, and provided the noble had a means of distributing the renown as necessary, I don't see why it wouldn't work. I take it that means you're interested in my proposition?"

Callie was incredibly interested in having roots somewhere after hearing about my discussion with Anna. Wishes provided a method of upgrading territory (albeit slowly at my level) that other people wouldn't have access to. I had plenty of spare wishes to use, and Callie had enough points coming in to use them as payment without worrying too much about slowing down her growth.

The point was, we were building a faction. A small one, but a faction nonetheless, and we needed a base. Callus wasn't going to work given it was only psuedo D-rank, but a real C-ranked planet like Stratholme would be able to hold our people and even allow them to rank up for quite a while. Not to mention having Camden as an ally would give us access to his training methods and might help us build an ACTUAL army. There was a lot of pro's to this. I'd have to discuss with Celine to see if she was willing, but given her wish to improve alongside Benny it didn't sound like a stretch.

"So, you promise me future territory in exchange for wishes to what...help you win the war?" I wasn't sure exactly how he would be structuring this deal, but I wanted to know what was on the table in the best case scenario.

Taking a bite, he nodded as he chewed, swallowing before responding. "I have some ideas about possible applications, if you agree, we'll hash out the size of the territory in question, my duties as your ally, and any other guarantees you need. You can contract future wishes for a lump sum, yes?"

"I can..." I hedged. "But it'll be a geas, not a contract. You'll be bound to uphold your end of things. If you don't...well, I haven't exactly seen what happens to defaulters, but I gather it's unpleasant. I'd advise against making promises you can't keep."

Camden just waved the point away. "I wouldn't have come here without assurances, and with your resources I'm not worried. I'll get the job done. I don't exactly have another choice. I leveraged every asset I had to get here without accruing a debt to any of my relatives, and if this doesn't work I'm probably dead. In for a gold piece, in for a chit, as they say. The question at hand is, exactly what is our end goal. I assume you know the political situation around here?"

"I know you're here for Clairdon." I admitted. "I assume you're offering me Highgrave's territory? I'm not sure what his assets are aside from a robust horse trade. Are you considering trying to bait Prentiss or Carrey into getting involved? I'm not sure of the logistics but do you have enough people for that? Even wishes have limits."

"Carrey is a hotheaded moron." He said frankly. "I suspect with the proper motivation we could enlist Prentiss to put pressure on him at the right moment and fracture his hold on his territory. We could split it in thirds and it would increase our own territorial gains by at least forty percent. Carrey's lands aren't bountiful or resource rich, but his ability to dispatch his Dragoons at speed lets him control a large swathe of territory. If we let Prentiss know we have access to wishes it should be more than enough to motivate him."

Glancing at Gabe, I cocked my head. None of us were soldiers, but he and Callen were the closest. They were the closest to tactical advisors that I could find at the moment. He gave me a considering frown and then tilted his head uncertainly. "We're interested." I finally said. "But we'd need to hash out exactly how much territory is on offer, under what conditions you'd hand it over, and some redundancy payments in case we don't hit the targets we want."

I didn't care about penalties for geasa, or I did, but more in that I didn't want to see anyone suffer them. That didn't benefit me and it would be actively harmful to potential allies. Putting in redundancies and severance fees was something I'd been playing with just in case, and this seemed like a good time to institute that policy, because I'd be taking quite a bit on faith here.

He agreed without any hesitation, and we got down to the business of haggling. As we settled in, I couldn't help but feel a thrill of excitement run through me. Having my own territory, even if I had Celine put her name on it, would be fantastic. I was excited to find out how Callie was planning to develop things. She'd been close with Stella, and would have a good idea how to run a territory like this, or better than me at least. With my wishes, the sky was the limit, and I couldn't wait to see how high we could go.