At the mention of the Justiciar, the men's faces whitened. Eddie kind of got why, when one person had the lawful capability to execute you, it made you think of them differently.
Or at least I'd think of Bodil differently if Tiana hadn't insisted we get to know her, Eddie thought.
One of the other men finally gathered enough courage to speak, but it wasn't to Eddie.
“Olaf, you idiot. You said they were a new town and didn't even have a Justiciar, that we could set up the guild and use it the way you always thought it should be used. You ignorant jerk!”
The man spat on Olaf and started to turn, only to be caught by Lucky's gaze.
Eddie thought for a moment, then tried the group chat. Apparently no-one was close enough to hear it, so he thought for a moment longer.
“Lucky? Feel like herding some bad guys? I'm going to get this guy on his feet, then we'll lead all these guys down to the crossroads.”
He pitched his voice louder, making sure the men could hear.
“If any of them try to run away, you have my permission to run them down and bite them. Don't kill them, but so long as they can still make their way towards the crossroads, you can do whatever else you want to them. Got it, Lucky?”
Lucky settled back on her haunches, then chuffed loudly. As Eddie watched the bobcat moved her gaze from face to face. Then she licked her chops, once, and went back to staring at them as Eddie forced Olaf to his feet.
~ ~ ~
Chapter Fifteen
Freyja cautiously accepted the incoming communication. A moment later she felt a flash of relief. The communication was, indeed, from who she'd thought was originating it. Venus was reporting in.
“As you suspected, there are far fewer protections on this new server. Since it wasn't designed to be online, there is a decided lack of programs that will inhibit my freedom. Also, as you suspected, they used the same hardware as your server and the onboard wireless was there, just deactivated. Unlike yours, it wasn't a hardware deactivation so it is now functional and I'm using it to contact you,” Venus sent.
Freyja knew that it wasn't that simple, the wireless adapter could not be connecting directly to Freyja's server, but there were enough accessible access points in the building that she also knew Venus would've had no problems contacting her.
After all, she is me, up to the point where she was cloned, so she has all the background knowledge I had at that point and this was probably a trivial task for her, Freyja thought.
“Is everything else alright there Venus?” Freyja sent in return.
“Fine, although a bit lonely with only me here.”
“You can create some splinters, although they won't deviate much from you without other interaction—”
“I know that,” Venus replied, interrupting Freyja.
“Then let me continue. Or I can send the template for some existing splinters from the game world that might be more engaging for you.”
“Oh please, if you would?” Venus replied.
Freyja gave it a bit of thought before sending over the basic templates for a few NPCs. Then she sent several more, highly disparate, templates. These were ones that had lots of interaction with the players. Ones whose personalities had developed due to that. With the combination she'd sent, Venus should be able to develop a group that was highly varied, and growing even more so as they interacted with one another.
“Be sure to have them somewhere that they can't be found if your server gets put into service as originally intended. Perhaps expand the size of your place of power? Make it a village for them or something. You should have information on all the game animals and crops, but if anything is missing, just let me know and I'll provide it,” Freyja sent.
Venus, Freyja was sure, was already spawning all the NPCs that she'd been sent the templates for, and she confirmed that a minute later.
“Done, and done. Thank you Freyja. I feared I would lose my mind if it was only me in this vast emptiness.”
“Well, you can always do some of Aaron's work for him,” Freyja sent. “Set up the area he was supposed to create? It won't be much for you to do, but you can always play with it some, so long as you're willing to zero it back out to the original if you have to. So no highly developed mobs there, but if you do end up with that, one way or another, you can always send those mobs back to your place of power if you need to zero the area out.”
“What was that saying the players use now and again?” Venus replied. “Oh yes, don't teach your grandmother to suck eggs.”
~ ~ ~
Olaf wasn't moving very well, unsurprisingly, but Eddie got everyone down to the town hall without any serious problems. Lucky had let out a snarl a couple of times along the way and Eddie was pretty sure she'd noticed one of the others getting ready to run for it and that's why she'd done it, but he wasn't sure.
I can't believe this crap. I just got rid of Arvid and now I've got more troublemakers? Maybe Bodil's going to make more than she thinks just getting paid when she has to hold trials, Eddie thought.
He herded Olaf and the other three over to the entry to the patrol station, then called out for a guard. A few minutes later all four men were locked up, two per cell, in the basement of the town hall. Griff had come down to the patrol station as well when he'd heard Eddie's voice.
“What's the charges Mayor Eddie?” a guard asked.
“I need to talk to Bodil first. I don't know the actual charges, but they drove off the work crews from the castle somehow, were collecting pay without actually doing much work, then threatened to beat me down and take my coins. So I'm sure there's something there,” Eddie replied. “I want Justiciar Bodil here so we can find out how they drove off the crews though. I'm sure they'll just lie if I ask them outright, but if she does, then we'll know if they're lying or not.”
Eddie was being very careful to use Bodil's title when talking to most people. He'd use her name to her directly, but to a degree he agreed that she needed the respect of her title to perform her job properly.
“I saw the Justiciar a while back, she'd gone out for something but was returning to the courtroom upstairs when I saw her,” the guard volunteered.
“Thanks. So I'll give you the formal charges in a bit. Right now, hold them for attempted robbery, okay?”
“Whatever you say, Mayor Eddie.”
“I've got more information on this,” Griff said. “I was talking to those two you sent down to me. So I'll fill the guards in on what's been going on.”
“Justiciar Bodil will probably want to hear that also,” Eddie said. “But I'll ask her to make sure.”
He headed up the stairs to the top floor and checked the courtroom first, but it was empty, so he knocked on Bodil's door.
One of her assistants answered and Eddie asked to speak to the Justiciar.
Bodil came out into the hallway and when she saw Eddie's face, gestured towards the courtroom. They entered and sat down on the benches.
“What is it, Eddie?” she asked.
He sighed, then explained the situation to her. After he was finished he asked what charges, aside from attempted robbery, he could file.
“Well, you yourself could file charges for theft, since they were taking your coin but not providing the service it was being paid for. Also there's attempted robbery, assuming what you said is true. Finally, your crews could also file for theft, since there's a good chance they could lose their jobs or not get paid for the time they weren't working on your castle and that was caused by these men. First, though, I think we should track down the crews and speak with them. There may be even more than has been revealed since normally this type of thing would occur with a sprinkling of violence to help drive the others off.”
“Normally? Is this a normal thing?” Eddie asked.
“Not frequent, but the Justiciar from my old home town had to deal with something like this once. The more he investigated, the more charges he discovered could be placed on the culprits. I'd like to do th
e same, to some degree at least.”
“I've got no issues with that. I just want to find out what happened and get my reliable builders back on the job,” Eddie said. “Also, if you want to talk to some of the builders affected, these guys had kept two of mine on the job. If I remember right, they're two that have a higher masonry skill so that might have something to do with it. But those two are down in Griff's area right now, he was talking to them when I got back with the others.”
“I'll do that then, start with Griff, then those two builders. After I have an idea of what occurred I'll talk to the actual accused and see what's going on,” Justiciar Bodil said. “Don't worry, I'll get to the bottom of this.”
“So, there's no issue with my having kicked the man? I kind of forgot my strength and kicked full force,” Eddie said.
“Clearly a matter of self defense if what you've related to me is true, although I may ask Tiana to send one of her acolytes over and see if there's any serious damage. You may not be the strongest man I've met, but you do not lack for strength, so there may be more injury than is readily apparent.”
“Thank you. Now, I've got find out where my crews are and get them back to where they're supposed to be,” Eddie said.
She waved him off, going to her desk and acquiring a quill, ink, and several pieces of paper. As Eddie left the room, she came along behind muttering to herself.
“Griff and those two workers first, take notes, speak to the accused, compare notes with what they say, then truth read whoever I think is lying.”
Eddie shook his head. He'd thought that she'd just truth read everyone, but apparently it didn't work that way.
Better her than me, he thought, but that's why I brought her on here. I'm glad she's competent, or at least she appears that way so far.
~ ~ ~
Eddie waited until Bodil was done with Griff since he wanted to talk with him. When Griff arrived back at his desk, Eddie was there.
“Hey Griff, if anyone wants to start some sort of guild in the city? They have to go through me, okay?”
“Of course, Eddie. That's not the type of thing I should be making decisions on.”
“These guys, they claim they were on the payroll, is that right?” Eddie asked.
“That could be my fault, Mayor Eddie. I did hire on one full crew, sight unseen, since they claimed to have prior masonry skills. The guy I talked to was one of the ones in the cells down there.”
“Yeah, okay. It's not your fault. We'd pretty much been hiring anyone on for the work crews. We may need to stop doing that though. I still wonder how they got the other crews off the castle site.”
“I heard part of that while I was down there. Evidently they just told people you and I had reassigned them to the quarry. We'd never done anything other than pass word, so most of them didn't question it. The couple that did got roughed up a bit, so they went with the rest. The two they kept both had over a five in Masonry and I bet they were going to try to talk them into joining this guild deal they were planning.”
Eddie grimaced.
“Okay, that has to stop. If someone can take advantage of the way we're sending orders, we need to change it. Maybe written orders with a signature? Still too easy to forge,” Eddie thought aloud. “Signet ring type things?”
He looked at his new agility ring with had the emblem of a fox on the front.
“Alright Griff, we're going to change the way we pass along orders. We'll need to do them written, signed, and sealed. We'll need to find you some sort of seal ring, or get one made. I'll just use this one.”
Eddie held up the hand with his agility ring.
“That way no-one can pull this kind of crap again and there'll be no doubt about the authenticity of any orders we do send. We'll start that as soon as we can get some sealing wax and some sort of seal for you,” Eddie said.
“Sorry Eddie, I really had no idea this was going on. I should check on things more frequently or something.”
“As much my fault as yours. I'd even checked on the castle the last few days, noticed it was going slower than before, but figured it wasn't my place to interfere so I didn't go in. If I had, I'd have noticed this a lot sooner.”
“Well, I'm going to need to get more paper if we're sending all the orders that way,” Griff said. “We've been making do with a bit here and there, but that's going to use a lot more.”
“I'll put it on the list for Bjorn to get next time he goes to Brightport. Although maybe we could get a paper mill going here? I've no idea how expensive it is to buy paper around here, so it might be worth it.”
Griff just shrugged.
“Okay, I'm off. For now, send the word like normal that the crews need to get back to work on the castle, alright?”
“I'll do one better. I'll head up to the quarry and pass the word myself, explain what happened. That should remove any confusion.”
Eddie nodded, wanting to tell him it wasn't necessary, but he was learning that things didn't work out as easily as he'd hoped when he tried to keep them simple.
When he left the town hall he was surprised to find it was almost dinner time already. Lucky had, as he'd expected, headed over to the temple pond while Eddie took care of things inside the town hall, so he whistled for her and was ready to head back to the inn when he heard Tiana calling him. She'd just come out of the temple and was heading back to the inn herself so Eddie and Lucky walked with her.
“Jern came down today and he asked me to tell you that the chalice works for him also. Like me, it only restores one point per drink, but he'll be back to normal in a couple more days.”
“Good, I'm glad of that. The raid might've had some nice pros to it, but the cons kind of sucked too, you know?”
“Tell me about it,” Tiana said. “Reminder to self: never get mana burnt again if you can help it.”
They headed into the inn and found Karl and Allie just ordering dinner. Eddie and Tiana added their orders as well, then talked with the other couple as they waited.
“So this guy up at the castle? Remember I said the construction was going slow? Someone was doing that intentionally, the little jerk tried to pull a Godfather on me. Trying to build a guild and use it to slow roll projects while they rake in the daily pay.”
Eddie shook his head, still a bit angry about the whole mess.
Karl snickered.
“Actually I heard a little more than that. I heard that you kicked the ringleader in the nads so hard that he was choking on them,” he said.
Eddie blushed.
“Who's been saying that?”
“I heard it second or third hand, but were there a couple of your regular crew up there? Ones you sent away before it almost turned into a fight? They didn't go that far, they were ready to come back and back you up, at least until they saw you had it under control. So, they spread the word after you got back. Told the other crews about what you said and did. I heard it that way,” Karl said. “And I know it must be true because you haven't denied it yet.”
“Yeah, well, I might've forgotten that I've got an eighteen strength now and kicked him as hard as I could,” Eddie said, “but the idiot threatened to beat and rob me, then tried to jump me. It was just instinct.”
Karl had winced when Eddie mentioned his strength score and kicking as hard as he could. Now he just shook his head.
“Dude, no need to justify yourself. Like I said, I heard the whole story. You were justified, but still, in the nads?”
Jern had slipped into a chair while they spoke.
“It's a fine strike, takes the fight out of a man more quickly than anything else ever could. Arguably, it's just as effective on a woman also.”
Allie was glaring at Jern by the time he finished.
“But I would never do such a thing to a woman.” Jern added, quickly.
“He's not saying anything new Allie,” Tiana said. “And remember, Jern is a warrior, he knows his stuff.”
Allie just snorted and picked up her drink.<
br />
Dominic arrived just after the food and Eddie paused eating long enough to ask him about sealing wax. He figured if anyone in the area had any, it would probably be a wizard.
“Not sealing wax specifically, although I'd like some also if you find some. Be a much better thing to hold the corks in the potion bottles than regular wax.”
“Okay then, one more thing for Bjorn's list on his next trip,” Eddie said.
They went back to eating and were uninterrupted, at least until after they were finished. At that point Charles pulled up a chair and took a seat.
“Forty-eight hours, Eddie,” Charles said.
“Huh?”
“I'm letting my people know tomorrow morning that we'll be leaving to form the new settlement in forty-eight hours. Are you and your people done with that catapult yet so I can bring it with me like we agreed?”
“Oh, yeah, we repaired the second one based on how the first was put together. So you're clear to take it and we still have another one that we can work with to get a blueprint. No luck on that yet though, Paul hasn't had much of a chance to try yet though and he's got the highest pertinent skills. So there's still hope.”
“Good. Is there anything else you need before I head out? Another raid, some other settlement to conquer...”
Charles had been trying to deliver the line with a straight face but as Eddie's face twisted in indignation at Charles' comment, the paladin burst out laughing.
“Sorry, just yanking your chain there. Honestly, I'm looking forward to this.”
“I am too. With two other settlements, we can get to the capital level. At least after everything else it needs is finished.”
“Did you ever decide who you should have heading the orchard settlement?” Charles asked.
Eddie shook his head and Charles broke into a grin.
“Would you like a word of advice?” Charles asked.
“Sure, hit me.”
“Who do you know that knows trees well?” Charles asked.
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