Baronies. On Stratholme, the undisputed ruler was the Earl. Vanden Nevius was a peak C-ranker that was stuck at the threshold of B-rank after pissing off the Emperor somehow. Even Anna wasn't sure how, apparently asking was considered a taboo, and pissing off the strongest man in the world was a pretty obvious no go. Beneath Nevius the twelve Viscounts stood supreme, D-rankers of varying strengths, each of them having carved out a decent chunk of the planet.

Viscounts, however, didn't micromanage. They were there to collect taxes and be left alone. The real movers and shakers on Stratholme were the E-rankers. The Barons. There were dozens of them, and dozens of Baronies that they ruled, though more than a few had several territories under their sway. As long as you paid up on time, the Viscounts didn't care what you did, so there was quite a bit of social mobility among Barons.

The Robber Barons were the E-rankers who didn't report or owe allegiance directly to a Viscount, and traditionally squabbled over poorer territories like Saltzberg, which was the whole reason we came here. That did NOT, however, mean that Saltzberg didn't already belong to a Baron, which was where Anna came in.

Baron Alexander Clairdon was first on the list. The Baron whose family had possessed this land for the last five hundred years or so was well known for his trade acumen, and until recently his rule had been fairly stable. At least until about a century ago when the neighboring Baron suffered an accident and his son took over. Chancey Highgrave was young, vicious, and had something to prove, and he'd declared open war on Clairdon almost immediately.

Unfortunately for Highgrave, Clairdon, while not particularly talented as a commander, was still much wealthier than the younger man, and had been throwing money at his forces for decades now, slowly whittling down both his own fortune and the Highgrave military. Due to this struggle, an opening in the local power structure was being created, and Camden had come to exploit it.

Because of the way politics was handled on Stratholme, none of the local forces had any wiggle room to try to break Clairdon or Highgrave's hold on their territories, lest they expose their own flanks, since the surrounding Baronies were all fairly weak ones, which made this a uniquely suitable place for someone like Camden, who was hoping to avoid his family politics by establishing himself as an independent.

Since we were here to help him, that meant we needed to be up to date on the information for Clairdon, Highgrave, and the closest neighbors who might risk exposing themselves to attack if the power imbalance got too extreme.

First up was Clairdon. Anna had asked me for a copy of his trading ledger, and had gotten it, but unfortunately for her the man wrote in code, and the decryption was too expensive for me to afford with my stats. She also figured out, after some perusal, that Clairdon didn't keep all his accounting in one place, he actually had four ledgers, and each of them made up a part of the decryption, with the code being written line by line across all four books.

How she knew this I had no idea, but she apparently had a Skill for cracking codes, and while she couldn't just breeze through whatever he'd done, she was able to get enough out of the books to figure out the basics.

Clairdon, as I was told in payment for the first book, was particularly adept trader, specializing in quick ship travel. He had an entire shipping industry setup along the river that ran through his territory. Because of this trade flexibility, his gear was better than most, and he put all those resources into heavy infantry. Every man a Might focused Job called a Cavalier and decked out in absurd amounts of heavy armor.

Highgrave, on the other hand, focused more on mounted warriors, and fielded mainly cavalry units called Hussars, a form of light cavalry known for their speed and mobility. The absurd overgearing Clairdon had done to his Cavaliers made them a nightmare for the Hussars, since harrying them didn't really do shit when you couldn't hurt them, though Highgrave continued to put pressure on the older Baron by using his forces to attack shipyards and other land based supply lines.

This had been happening for decades now, and both sides were bleeding men and resources at this point, hence Camden's presence.

After she explained the main players, Anna filled us in on the two closest Barons most likely to make a play if opportunity presented itself. Simon Prentiss and Albert Carrey. Prentiss was an entrenched Baron with centuries of time watching over a lucrative F-ranked iron mine, and his specialty was heavy cavalry. Slower than the Hussars but much harder to stop, his lack of mobility meant he was unlikely to exploit any small openings, and would only be a problem if everything went to shit.

Carrey, however, was much more likely to interfere at the slightest hint of weakness. The Carrey family possessed a force of powerful Dragoons. A type of mounted infantry that they used to devastating effect, riding to battle for mobility and then dismounting to fight on foot.

I wondered if Camden knew all of this, and when I asked her about it Anna just laughed me off. "Camden Tolbert is a scion of one of the great houses of the Empire. His information resources far outstrip my own, and even if he tried to keep things low key there's no chance he doesn't have detailed dossiers on every Barony in this area. His main weakness is that since he's making a patchwork militia, he can't field any specialized units like the others. The Tolbert family specializes in training Hoplites, but there's no way he's going to be able to specialize a bunch of random mercs into a new Job quickly enough for it to be helpful. I hope he brought a good general, because putting together a battle plan with a force like that will be a nightmare."

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I had no clue how the Job system worked, though knowing you could change Jobs didn't surprise me. I knew all of them would have also been born with native abilities, though they would be Skills now that they had Jobs. "Alright, so...how does this work then?" I asked her after she'd given me the run down on all the players. "I know we'll be training, though I'm shocked Camden was able to buy property here when it's so obvious he's going to try to take the territory."

"Clairdon had no choice." Anna said with a snicker. "Until Tolbert actually declares, he's a visiting noble, and one from a powerful family. Not to mention Clairdon needs the money to keep Highgrave at bay. Tolbert would have still showed up to try to take the territory even if he'd said no, he'd have just been harder to pin down. Worst case he could have set up in the woods or something and Clairdon would have had no idea where the attacks were coming from."

That sounded stupid as hell to me, but politics usually did. "Isn't he worried about the defenses on that place though? Like if he digs in and builds it up it'll be impossible to get him out." We'd seen some of the defensive measured Camden was taking, and they would be hell to get past.

"Nobles rarely assault each others homes." She said with a shake of the head. "Any core dwelling will be heavily defended, and it's considered bad form. The only exception is the final push to take a territory, but it takes years to reach that point."

I groaned. "This is all such nonsense. It's more like a game than an actual war. We WILL be having actual battles right?"

"They call them skirmishes, but yes." She chuckled. "For quick and easily struck targets, raids are common, but in order to negotiate for border areas that could be contested by either, skirmishes are held. Basically both sides bring a whole bunch of soldiers and line up on either side of a field and then beat the hell out of each other for hours until one side is routed or surrenders."

That was more like what I'd expected, though it ALSO sounded stupid when phrased like that. It would be good enough though, at least for our purposes. "Alright." I said with a sigh. "Two more wishes. Payment for the first will be a map of the area complete with territorial markings and up to date affiliation. Second will be a geas from you binding you not to mention my presence here to anyone without my explicit permission, nor to allude to it through less direct means in any way you suspect may result in my discovery."

Her lips split in a wide grin. "Well someone knows all the tricks doesn't he? That's a tightly worded geas. Fine. For my fifth wish I want a new room for my inn. An underground space no one will be aware of, where I can conduct business of a...less than savory nature."

Wish detected. Grant wish?

Moving some dirt around wasn't exactly a stretch for me, though the Impact this planet had made it quite a bit tougher than it might otherwise have been. Still I could manage, and I told her so. Once that was confirmed she went ahead and had me create the room under the storage area we were already in. I walked to the back corner and discharged the building static into the ground, and the area in front of me glowed purple for a moment before the energy faded.

Reaching down according to what my power had told me as it was working, I pressed hard on the floor in a specific spot near the wall, and the stone dropped away to reveal a small wooden ladder. We all climbed down, and a switch near the wall lit up the whole area, exposing the new room.

It was...empty. She'd asked for a room and it was a room, with wooden posts supporting a ceiling structure that held up the stone and nearby earth. I whistled at the sight. I'd never used my power like that before, but realistically it wasn't a stretch. I could easily vanish dirt with Pit of Despair already, and a few wooden beams wasn't too much more effort. Seeing it all together like this just drove home the absurdity that my wish power was capable of though.

Anna grinned widely, then held up a finger, vanishing for a few minutes and coming back with a rolled up paper. She passed it to me. Unrolling it slightly I checked it over, and sure enough it was a map of the area with plenty of notations. "Last one." She said eagerly. "For now at least. I wish this room was tied into the rest of my wards. Not too many runes since there's not much in here. Should be doable, especially with permission. In exchange you get me under that geas."

Wish detected. Grant wish?

I confirmed, repeating the earlier geas to make sure there was no tricks. As the static built, she glanced around the room happily. "This shouldn't be hard to manage." She repeated. "My place is under recursive thaumaturgy wards. Each individual piece of the building is tied to a wardstone which in turn is tied to the building as a whole. You hit any part of the inn, and it gets redirected to the wardstone and back to the building in its totality, so you can't break any single piece of the building without demolishing the whole thing, and there are a LOT of pieces."

As I took her hands, discharging the static, my symbol appeared on her forehead for a second before fading, and runes began to appear on the beams and the tiles in the ceiling. They flashed once before fading, and the wish completed, my last for the day, confirming our safety here and concluding our business. I had to admit it had given me a lot to think about. I needed to talk to Callie about everything I'd learned. But first, I should spend some time with my sister.