“Expendable?” Shane said.
“I was going to go with unknown. More likely to fly under the radar. That kind of thing.”
“So that's what you want us for. To section us off into our own little thing. I'm guessing that you'll want to keep a lot of information separate?” Shane said.
“Compartmentalized, yes.”
“So you can't have it traced back to you,” Kelvin said. “That's understandable.”
Alex nodded. “So this is all just in theory, but we're considering it.”
Kelvin thought about it for a moment. It seemed dangerous, difficult, full of risk. If they ran out of money, if they ran afoul of guild patrols at the wrong time, if they couldn't get the weapons they need, if any number of things happened it would all come crashing down around them. They'd be blacklisted from the trade routes, ostracized and hounded, maybe even to the point of quitting themselves.
But the idea also excited him. They had been running and hiding from the Iron Guild for far too long. This might be their best chance to fight back, to do something, anything at all to stop the guild's stranglehold on this world and its trade. The most they had been able to inflict were mere pinpricks. Kelvin wanted to slug the Iron Guild in the mouth.
And to do that and do it well they needed a plan in place. They needed a strategy, a doctrine. They needed ships, they needed supplies, money, crews to man them all, connections to point them toward targets and protect them from the enemy spies, and so many other things.
Kelvin and Shane looked at each other, then stood up.
“I'm sorry,” Shane said. “But I think it's time that I resigned from the guild. I'm giving you notice before I head down to the hall of records to do it.”
“I am as well,” Kelvin said.
Alex frowned. “If I've said something-”
“Oh, you have,” Kelvin grinned. “And I think it's high time we went and started our own guild. Or at least started saving for one. Office space in the nice neighborhoods isn't cheap, you know.”
Alex nodded and then smiled back. “So that's it then. You know you don't have to leave us now.”
“Sorry, but the longer we wait the more suspicious it will become when we finally break off. You said it yourself,” Shane said.
Kelvin nodded. “And besides, we want dibs on the name. It might not be there in a few months.”
Alex laughed. “OK, point taken. In that case I'm going to refund your share.”
“Keep it,” Shane said. “Consider it a thank you for helping us out and taking us in. And it's not like this is goodbye. We'll be seeing a lot of each other, I'm pretty sure.”
Alex reached out and shook both their hands. “Best of luck to you both. Just keep your heads down and bide your time until we're ready. We'll support you the best we can.”
They thanked Alex and left his office.
“Well,” Shane said, “here goes nothing. I hope this is the right choice.”
“I hope so too,” Kelvin agreed. “Let's go find Brandon and Bailey. And hope that they're willing to go along with this too.”
Ready or not, their plan would be in motion soon enough.
Chapter Sixteen
“So it's just the four of us now, huh?” Brandon commented as they walked through the streets of Beylan. “That was fast.”
“We thought we needed to get the wheels in motion,” Shane said.
“Just as we were starting to get comfortable. You don't seem to like to do that, lately. It's always jumping around.”
“You can rejoin Rho, if you want.”
Brandon laughed. “And ditch you guys? Who's going to watch your back and warn you when the Iron Guild's coming for you?”
The others smiled.
“Seriously though, there's been a lot of talk and not enough action. We need to start doing something, otherwise we're going to be standing around waiting for the engineers to stop throwing wrenches,” Kelvin said.
Brandon glanced back at him. “Stop throwing wrenches?”
“This is the first I've heard anything like that,” Shane agreed.”
Bailey spoke up. “We were having… issues with the current project. Enough to get Teresa frustrated enough to start tossing wrenches.”
“She didn't smash anything, did she?”
“I don't think so. Not anything important.”
Brandon looked around the street, watching the other players hurrying about their business. “So where are we going to look for space? The cheapest spot possible?”
“I think we need to look into location as well,” Shane said. “We want to be somewhere convenient. Near the marketplace would be preferable, and I'd like to head to have space near the south harbor as well.”
“That probably eliminates everything along the north side,” Kelvin said. “Of course, cost would also do that as well.”
“Are we buying or renting?” Bailey asked.
“Buying if we can. I'd like to have the ability to heavily modify our space, if we can.”
Brandon nodded. “Always a good thing, although are we going to be able to front the money for it? Unless you're thinking of getting a bank loan.”
“Not happening. Or I really don't want to risk it,” Shane said. “We'll work out of our ship if we can't afford a property, but we need to own it, and we need to pay for it out of pocket.”
Brandon pulled out his guidebook and opened up to a map of Beylan. “OK, so going off of all that, the best spots look like Kilrey Crossing, Waldron, and Baltry Way. I'd try Kilrey Crossing. The railroad goes right through it, so we might be able to get cheaper property around the tracks.”
“That's going to be annoying every time a train goes through,” Bailey said.
He shrugged. “Well, can't you rig something up to dampen the noise? A sound barrier or something like that? And even if we can't, there's always the cost to think about. Plus, at least we don't have to worry about the Iron Guild busting down our door and smashing us up.”
“This is all speculation until we actually find something,” Shane said. “So come on. We'll start in Kilrey Crossing like you suggested. Who knows, maybe we'll get lucky.”
“OK, now I know why the property values here are so low,” Bailey said, shouting to be heard over the sounds of the train passing by.
Brandon barely heard her. So far they had looked at three properties, all of them essentially holes in the wall. They were cheap, but they had little space and little property to go with them. Even if they bought the property their guild would have little room to expand. They'd have to find another place fairly soon.
Which was why their search had led them to the last spot, a dilapidated, abandoned building that looked like a brick warehouse and stood right next to the train tracks.
From the outside it didn't look like much. Parts of the facing were crumbling, the windows were cracked, shattered, or completely missing in some cases, the land surrounding the building was filled with junk, and the yard itself was little more than a mud pit.
“Charming,” Kelvin said. “I daresay that it's worse than some places in Low Falmath.”
“Safer, though.”
Brandon nodded. “But price-wise...”
He walked up to the front gate, worn and damaged like the rest of the property, and took a look at the paper sign hanging on the front.
“Well, that's not too bad,” he said. “There's a lot of space that goes with it too.”
“What are we getting, though?” Bailey said. “I'd need to see the interior before we made a decision. There's a different between it being worn down and having the entire structure ready to fall apart.”
“Care for a tour, then?” Brandon said. He reached for the paper sign again and touched one of the ink symbols. A moment later the gates swung open.
“Never going to get used to that,” Kelvin said. “We're supposed to be in a world that's in the industrial era, and the properties are sold by something out of a cyberpunk show.”
“Would y
ou rather have to run around trying to find a real estate agent?” Brandon said.
“Nah. I'm just saying that there's a little bit of dissonance between the world they're trying to project and the game mechanics, that's all.”
“Oh, like that's the worst of it,” Bailey said.
“You mean something like this?” Brandon said. He pulled his guidebook out of his pocket and tossed it away toward the train tracks. He didn't have to worry about losing it, since the guidebook always appeared back in the pocket of its user if they were still alive. Once it got ten yards away from its user the object would simply teleport back.
She laughed. “You know, sometimes I wonder why I even bother putting it back in my pocket when I could just toss it and have it appear there anyhow.”
“Force of habit?” Kelvin suggested.
“That's probably it.”
They stopped in front of a huge pair of metal doors, large enough to drive a truck through in the real world.
“Well, here goes nothing,” Brandon said. He put his hands on one of the handles. “For some reason I'm almost afraid to look at the interior.”
“What's the worst it could be?” Shane said.
“Don't say that. There's going to be a huge hole in the middle of the floor,” Bailey said.
“At least we don't die if we fall down it,” Kelvin said. “One good thing about being in a safe zone.
There was no use putting it off any further. Brandon yanked the door open, feeling the sheer weight of the heavy metal object. He had to strain and pull for a moment to get it free, and the hinges protested with a loud squeal.
“Well, that's going to need to be fixed,” Bailey commented as they stepped inside.
“Not hard to oil them a bit.”
“Nah, but it's just another thing on the list. And-”
Her voice cut off, and Brandon looked around the interior. The sight wasn't exactly what he had been hoping for.
“Well,” Kelvin said, “now we know why this is so cheap. And why no one's bothered to buy it with so much land that goes with it.”
The building had three floors, if what remained could even be considered floors. Bailey had been wrong. There wasn't just a hole in the floor, there were huge sections either completely missing or partially collapsed. The stairwell in one corner had been completely blocked off, and he saw a hole in the roof.
“Well, this is going to take a lot of time and effort to repair,” Shane said. “And I'm not sure we have the time and resources to do that. It was a good thought, but-”
Brandon saw Bailey move further into the complex. “What are you looking for?” he asked.
“This looks like a factory. I'm guessing that there's an office here somewhere, so...” she stopped and looked around a piece of collapsed floor. “OK, here it is. Looks like it might be in OK shape. Now...”
Brandon followed after her to find a brick room jutting out from a wall, with a window and a single door as the only entrances. She opened it up and stepped inside.
“Well, it's dirty. But there's a desk and some furniture. Doesn't look very nice, but it's functional, and that's what counts.”
He ducked his head in the door and looked. They didn't have a ton of space, but it would be enough to run a small guild out of.
“So we're just going to use this thing because it's in a safe zone and the building is relatively cheap?”
Bailey shook her head. “Look around you. You see how much space we have?”
“It's all collapsed,” Kelvin said.
“Yeah, and I'd say that's a good thing. It saves us some time. It's not like we need this as office space or anything like that. We need warehousing space for goods, and shop space so we can do engineering. And the more height we have to work with the better. We might be able to install a crane in here.”
“Is the building stable enough to support something like that?” Shane asked.
“We won't know until we get structural plans. But we can always reinforce it,” Bailey said. “Don't worry about that. I'm not going to bring this thing down on our heads.”
Brandon smiled for a moment, then turned back to the other two. “So this might be our best bet. It's not in good shape, and the railroad is going to be annoying, but we might be able to make something out of it. I noticed there was another building out back.”
“We're still going to need the shipyard if we want to build ships,” Kelvin said.
“Of course,” Bailey spoke up. “Not like we're going to be able to drag a full-sized ship to the harbor. But we can built components and things like that here. Or smaller things, like small arms and blades.”
“This is starting to sound really ambitious. Are we getting ahead of ourselves?” Shane asked.
Brandon shrugged. “This might be the way to go. We don't need all of this space right now, but we might in the future. So we can just fix up the spots we need and leave the rest of it for later, when we get enough funds for the projects. We'll take it in steps.”
Kelvin pulled out his guidebook and a pencil. “So, let's see. First we have the price for the property. Then let's say it's going to cost us as much to get this place into somewhat presentable shape. I know we're not going to do everything at once, but we should at least clean it up.”
“Probably a good idea,” Shane said. “We won't mind, but if we're pulling in other members then we're going to want to leave them with a decent impression.”
“Why, don't want to have your office in the middle of a dump?” Bailey asked.
“Not really.”
Kelvin kept writing. “So if we add all of that up, then...”
Brandon glanced at the figures. “That's quite a bit. Do we have enough gold to cover that?”
“Just enough with a little extra, but I wouldn't want to chance it. We should probably make another run to Tengra or Dux. Probably Dux for deep pearls. If we get that here safely and sell them we should be able to afford this with a decent cushion.”
“Only made possible because the place is literally falling apart,” Bailey said. “And with-”
The rest of her sentence was drowned out as another train rushed by. Even inside the brick building it still sounded loud.
“OK, so we're figuring out a sound barrier too,” Kelvin said. “Should I add this to the cost?”
“Yeah, that's a good idea,” Brandon agreed. “So we need to get our guild founded at the hall of records, we need to buy this, and then we need to make a run to Dux without getting our ship shot out from under us. Sounds like a plan.”
“Then let's get to it before someone else claims this place,” Shane said.
Bailey snorted. “You think that someone else is going to be crazy enough to grab this?”
“Do you really want to take a chance of losing this? Because I'd rather be safe about it,” Shane said. “Or as safe as you can be after buying something.”
Brandon laughed. “Come on, we've got work to do.”
The trip to and from Dux passed without an issue. Once they had collected their earnings and deposited it in the bank they began to assess their newly bought property.
“See anything useful?” Shane called up to Brandon, who had climbed his way up to the third floor.
“Not much up here,” Brandon called down to him. “Looks like there were a couple of rooms up here.”
“Were? What happened to them?”
“I'm going to guess that they're down there now. Along with the floor and part of the ceiling as well.”
“Are we going to have to replace the roof? Aside from the hole in it already.”
“Yeah, there's a bunch of small holes that I didn't see before. We might be able to patch them, but I'd rather do it all at once. Otherwise we're probably going to have to keep dealing with it.”
“OK.”
“The joy of being a homeowner,” Kelvin grinned at him. “The realism here is off the charts.”
“Yeah, I'm so happy about that,” Shane said. He sighed. “Why
do I get the feeling that we just purchased a money sink?”
“You didn't think about that beforehand?”
“Well, we were kind of desperate. And I didn't want to lose out on this much property. But...”
“It's fine,” Kelvin shrugged. “Bailey inspected the walls and she says the structure is still solid, it's just that the facing needs to be replaced at some point. And then there's the roof and the interior, but the main structure is solid.”
Shane felt something fall on his head, moments before a section of flooring smashed down in front of him. A second later something else smacked into the floor with a meaty thunk. It was Brandon.
“Huh, you were saying?”
“I said the main structure, not the floor,” Kelvin said.
Brandon groaned. “Don't mind me, I didn't just fall three stories and I'm totally not dying now.”
“It's a safe zone. You can't die.”
Shane laughed, but something in the doorway caught his eye.
“Welcome to our humble offices,” he called over to the newcomer. “As you can see we're still working on getting it cleaned up. Estimated time between a few days and a few months.”
“That much of a range, huh?” Jamie said as she stepped into the building and looked around. “Well, it's certainly big enough.”
“That's part of the plan,” he said. “It's not exactly the best place, but it's something we can build off from, and it gives us space for when we make our guild larger.”
“A good plan,” she said. “And actually, that's what I'm here for, actually.”
“Oh?”
She nodded. “You know I don't have a guild at the moment, right?”
“Yeah, I heard that through the grapevine. What about it?”
“I'm not sure if this is the time for it, but I'd like to join yours, if what I'm hearing about you is correct,” she said.
Shane nodded. “I see. And what have you been hearing about us?”
“That you're going to be the ones doing the over fighting against the Iron Guild. I want to be part of that, especially because they attacked mine and pretty much forced it to disband.”
“Can't you start it from scratch?” Kelvin said.
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