“Not easily,” Aldwin answered without hesitation. “I would have to consult Ritt for the full details, but I believe with the tax collected from the Adventurers so far, I can make a substantial payment and offer them the rest in resources.”
“Or you could just pay them in Æther,” I told Aldwin thoughtfully as a germ of an idea slowly began to form in my head. “We could make a fair argument that it is worth more than raw coinage.”
“Aldford technically doesn’t possess any Æther though,” the Bann replied pointedly. “Only Virtus does, through its claim on the Hub. Stanton may use that point against me and refuse to allow you to effectively buy out my debt.”
“And if I were to sell a vat of Æther directly to Aldford in exchange for food or supplies?” I countered, waving Aldwin’s concerns away. “For say…a low price of a copper a liter? There’s not exactly a thriving market for it out here outside of me and handful of the other mages.”
“That could work,” Aldwin allowed, speaking slowly as he considered my offer. “But Stanton will know exactly what you did.”
“So what?” I grunted. “He has already threatened to dispute our claim to the ruins we’ve found. Assuming he still even wants to now that we have a rough idea of where the rupture is.”
“I’m sure he will, eventually, if not right away,” Aldwin said confidently. “From their perspective, if Aldford controls the Æther to Eberia, then they will see themselves effectively at our mercy. Regardless if Stanton is telling the truth and sincerely wishes to help us right now, Emilia will never let that stand long term, neither will the King or the other nobles. Especially with the threat of war looming over Eberia.”
“Then we need to join the game and start building our powerbase right now,” I told Aldwin excitedly as a wave of inspiration struck me.
“You have an idea?” Aldwin asked. “What can we possibly do to stand up to the might of an entire Kingdom?”
“We use the coming war to our advantage,” I replied, feeling my earlier stress fade away as my thoughts began to race. “Currently the military is fortifying Coldscar and preparing to meet The Ascendancy head on. Once the war starts, Eberia won’t be able to send forces up to Aldford without attracting attention from The Ascendancy and risking it being intercepted. They’ll be cut off from the continent by all except the fastest and sneakiest scouts.”
“That would cut us off as well,” Aldwin noted. “If The Ascendancy realized that we were the source of all Æther for Eberia, we would be doomed to stand against them.”
“I don’t disagree,” I acknowledged with a nod. “But we have a wild card that can tip the scales in our favor, even if we are isolated.”
“We d—” Aldwin’s expression shifted rapidly from confusion to realization as he cut his question off before he could fully ask it. “The Adventurers.”
“Exactly,” I said with a knowing smile. “The first thing that is going to happen when The Ascendancy and Eberia go to war is all of the Adventurers and guilds surrounding Coldscar are going to be destroyed or forced to flee.”
“And you want to offer them safe haven and absorb them,” Aldwin finished, resting a hand on his chin in thought. “That may work, but would bring problems of its own depending how many joined us.”
“I think we can deal with Adventurer problems much easier than the political one Stanton represents,” I said confidently. “If only for the fact that if we reject them, they will have nowhere else to go. As it is, Adventurers are fiercely territorial, and we have more than enough space to spare if they’re willing to play by our rules. If The Ascendancy or Eberia decide to move on us in the future, we’ll have enough manpower to make them regret it.”
“Lyrian, what you’re proposing is more than just using the Adventurers as a deterrent,” Aldwin said with concern. “You want to turn Aldford into an Adventurer City.”
“Bigger than that, Fredric,” I replied, mentally readying myself for the genie I was about to unleash.
“I want to turn Aldford into the heart of an Adventurer Nation.”
Chapter 14
CTI Player Housing Complex
“Hey, Marcus!” A smiling blonde-haired woman greeted me as her face appeared on one of the large screens before me. “It’s nice to finally see the real you after all this time!”
“Likewise, Sonia!” I replied with a genuine grin as I finally saw the real person behind Freya’s Avatar and found her startlingly similar to her in-game appearance, save for her having slightly longer hair in reality and sharper Scandinavian features. “We’ve put this off for too long!”
“Hey, is that Sonia?” a familiar voice called out as an older, bearded man’s face appeared on the screen beside the one that held Sonia’s, having not been in view of his camera’s pickup. “Nice to finally see you too!”
“Hello, Thorne!” Sonia started to give the man a small wave before realizing her slip up. “Ah! I suppose I should call you George out here!”
“Oh, don’t worry about that!” George replied with a chuckle. “I’ve done that at least three times now going between Marcus and Peter. It takes a bit of getting used to!”
“That it does,” Sonia agreed wistfully.
“It’s not like we spend all that much time in Reality anymore!” Peter chimed in from behind me as he, Zach and Deckard made their way over from the table and fell into the couch beside me, each of them carrying a drink in hand. “We hardly even use our real names now.”
“Did any of the others say if they’re going to be coming to the meeting?” I asked, wondering if I’d have a chance to see Cerril, Huxley, or any of the other Thunder Lizards for the first time.
“No, not this time,” Sonia shook her head, causing her long blonde hair to sway from side to side. “Léandre needs all the help he can get right now, so they all stayed behind to help him out with crafting and raising the framework for the newest longhouse, along with managing our new recruits. They said they’re happy with whatever we decide.”
“Alright,” I said with a nod, understanding their choice all too well. Even as we spoke, our virtual avatars were likely working right beside them as they worked to settle all the new arrivals in their new home, as well as serving as a warning system to alert us if something happened in game. Turning around to the apartment behind me, I called out to the two missing members of the group. “Are we ready to start? Hopefully we can sort out a plan without it taking too long.”
“We’re ready,” Misha’s voice echoed out from the kitchenette a moment before she and Heron appeared and made their way over to us, grabbing a pair of chairs from the table as they joined us.
“Okay,” I began, shifting myself around to look between Sonia and George displayed on the screens before me. “So, today turned out a bit more…exciting than any of us had anticipated, and I think we need to regroup and make sure that we’re all on the same page.”
“I’ll say,” Sonia agreed enthusiastically.
“You mean the page where there’s a giant Ley Line under Aldford that may explode at the drop of a hat? Or the page where you told Aldwin that you want to found an entirely new nation and give us even more work to do?” Peter asked sarcastically clearly enjoying the opportunity to give me a hard time. “Because forget page, I don’t think I’m even in the same book as you!”
“Peter is right here, Marc. We were barely gone for three hours,” Deckard chimed in, leaning forward on the couch so he could see me as he spoke. “Couldn’t you have waited a few weeks before giving us two impossible tasks and embarking on a path to piss off a neighboring nation on the edge of war?”
“We were blindsided,” Misha replied, coming to my rescue. “Stanton just appeared and roped us into his meeting, as it was, it was lucky Marcus was in the right place to even meet him.”
“Unless his timing was calculated to include Marcus,” Heron added, having heard all my suspicions of Stanton’s honesty.
“God, thinking like that is going to give me grey hair,” Zac
h commented with a sigh. “Or give me ulcers.”
“I know a lot happened really fast,” I said, shifting myself in my seat so I could look at the group while still seeing Sonia and George on the screens. “And maybe I overstepped with the whole nation idea, but in the span of a day, our original plan of ‘Let’s settle the newcomers and build up Aldford’ turned into ‘Hey, there’s a magical time bomb under your town, and by the way, a war is coming. Oh and also your town may be annexed if it doesn’t explode first’. We need to come up with a better long-term plan and assume the worse.”
“And the best way to do that is to figure out what Stanton’s real motivations are,” Sonia suggested confidently. “If he’s hiding stuff from us, either about the Ley Line or his plans for Aldford, confirming that will go a long way to helping us to do what needs to be done.”
“Well, I don’t think we’ll be able to trap him in wordplay or get him to contradict himself,” I said considering Sonia’s idea. “He’s too crafty for that.”
“You’re thinking about it the wrong way, Marcus,” Sonia replied with another shake of her head on the big screen. “The Adventurer you met, Lazarus, told you that Stanton isn’t telling the truth. Make him prove it. Tell him to send us his raw feed of what he said about Stanton. It’s impossible for someone to forge and CTI has no restrictions about sharing it after the time limit is up.”
“There’s an idea!” Peter replied enthusiastically.
“I hadn’t considered taking a meta approach to getting Lazarus to prove what he said,” I commented thoughtfully as I reached out to grab a tablet that was sitting on a nearby end table and brought up a search. “Maybe we can see if he’s posting his feed anywhere right now and save us some time…”
“While Marc does that, I want to talk a bit more about this whole ‘founding a nation idea’ that he had,” Heron stated.
“As great as it would be. It seems a bit beyond our reach right now,” Peter jumped in immediately. “I mean as it is we’re struggling to find a place to house anyone, let alone let more people in.”
“Actually, that’s my point, I kinda think it is within our reach,” Heron said, looking around the group as he spoke. “Sure, we’re nowhere near ready to elect or crown someone and declare ourselves a sovereign state, but we can at least start preparing the groundwork to do so.”
Heron paused to collect his thoughts and nodded his head towards Deckard and Zach. “Remember when we passed that Hallowguard guild in the wild today? They were off on their way to carve out their own settlement somewhere towards the North East, far away from Aldford.”
“Yeah, I remember them,” Deckard replied. “Wish they stayed with us; they actually knew what they were doing.
“They did seem like a decent bunch, smart too,” Zach agreed with a nod. “But what does that have to do with anything?”
“It has everything to do with it,” Heron stated. “If they manage to survive and form their own settlement, then we’ll be in a position to support one another, trade goods and have mutual protection if something comes to threaten the area. Marcus’s idea to invite more Adventurers into the area will only cause other settlements to spring up, or give the existing settlements more manpower to expand.”
“If we can get enough Adventurers up here, then their presence in the area will make Eberia or The Ascendancy think twice before coming to poke us with a stick. With enough time, we can get enough of us working together to declare ourselves completely independent from either nation.”
“I can see inviting more Adventurers working in some cases,” Peter said. “But I think you’re being really optimistic with the quality of Adventurer that we’re going to get. There are going to be a ton of people who aren’t going to play along. Look at what happened with Graves and Mozter. We’re going to be inviting a hell of a lot of trouble right into our backyard.”
“More trouble than Eberia or The Ascendancy?” Heron queried. “Let’s face it, guys. As soon as that war starts, we’re going to be completely cut off from Eberia for who knows how long, and while we’re far away, there’s nothing stopping The Ascendancy if it decides to keep going westward at some point. The way I see it, we either start trying to make ourselves look too tough to risk bothering, or we pull up stakes in Aldford and try resettling somewhere else even deeper in the wild.”
“Which would mean giving up our claim to the Nafarrian Ruins in the area,” I added having been following the conversation while browsing for Lazarus’s feed on my tablet. “And by extension our Æther supply. The chances of us finding something similar would be slim to none.”
“That’s why I think we should seriously look at digging in and seeing if we can get even more Adventurers out this way,” Heron repeated, his eyes darting between Deckard and me. “Look, I know that I painted a pretty bad picture of Coldscar the other day, with all the infighting and banditry. But I took a quick scan of the newest feeds coming out of the major guilds in that area this last afternoon and a handful of them have mentioned that they are considering abandoning their holdings since they already know that The Ascendancy is coming. Don’t forget, them thinking that was ten days ago. The situation may have gotten worse by now.”
“A targeted…invitation would be a better approach than just announcing ourselves online or in our feeds,” Peter agreed, still not clearly sold on the idea. “Have you seen any feeds from The Ascendancy’s point of view? What are they doing? They have to have their own Adventurers too.”
“There’s a fair bit I saw, but not all of it useful,” Heron replied. “A handful of Ascendancy guilds have set up their own settlements on the edge of their westward frontier and have focused around town development like us. There are also a few Ascendancy guilds that are actively raiding Eberian guild settlements, which then, in turn, do the same thing back to one of their settlements. It’s hard to say what’s really happening since there are just so many feeds to sift through. I could spend all day searching and not find anything useful.”
“I’ll say,” I chimed in while scowling at my tablet, using my thumb to scroll downwards. “Apparently you can have multiple people with the same name in Ascend Online, and there are currently one-hundred-and-forty-nine different ‘Lazarus Cains’ that are currently playing right now and posting their feeds.”
“Anything from our incarnation of the name?” George’s voice called out from the screen.
“I haven’t been able to find anything that matches what I remember of him,” I replied with resignation, turning the tablet off and putting it in my lap. “I managed to filter the list down by location, and it still didn’t come up with any results.”
“It was worth a try,” Sonia said, her pale shoulders appearing briefly on the screen as she shrugged at me. “I think Peter has a good idea though with inviting guilds that have indicated they want to leave the Coldscar area. At any rate, they may seem the most likely to take us up on our offers.”
“I meant that invitation more as an offhand comment,” Peter said hesitantly. “I’m still not sure if this is the best idea for us. We’ve survived for the most part by being off the beaten path and hidden. If we invite a huge crop of guilds out our way, what’s to stop the whole situation surrounding Coldscar to repeat itself? I watched the same feeds Heron did, and some areas are a few steps shy of a warzone there. We don’t need that up here near Aldford.”
“What you’ve seen are only snap shots of the area, Peter, so you probably don’t know why it turned out the way it did,” George said, a hand coming up to scratch his beard as he spoke. “I was there with the first wave of players and a lack of space combined with the terrain is what’s causing all the conflict that you’re seeing now.”
“What do you mean?” Peter asked, cocking his head to the side. “I didn’t notice anything particular with the terrain when I watched. It was mostly flat too.”
“The outlying regions are flat, but how much of the area surrounding Coldscar did you see?” George asked. “Because the approach
to the actual city is very hilly, and there are only a handful of safe routes to reach it, unless you fancy climbing straight up an escarpment.
“During the early days when the first guilds settled the area, they settled on top of the best routes that led to and away from Coldscar, which in turn forced newer guilds to settle further away from the city, or to find a new path through altogether. Some of the guilds decided that they didn’t want anyone passing through ‘their’ domains,” George continued to explain. “That led to really long travel times to and from Coldscar, if not cut it off entirely if a guild decided to close a route for a time.”
“Which builds resentment and eventually causes things to snowball,” Peter finished with a slow nod of understanding. “Okay, that does make sense.”
“If Eberia policed the routes and ensured they stayed open, it might have ended up being a peaceful area,” Sonia added. “But the moment you passed the city limits, they just didn’t care and let the Adventurers run wild.”
“We wouldn’t have that problem in Aldford,” I said. “The area surrounding us is flat and lush for miles, if not further. There’s plenty of room for everyone to expand.”
“Which again gets us back to the question of how we’re going get the right sort of people to move up into our area,” Deckard pointed out. “If we can get more people like those from Hallowguard, I’m on board, but I’d want it targeted to a select few. As it is, once entire guilds start moving out towards us, people are going to notice.”
“I think you’ve lost me,” Zach interjected. “How are we even going to convince people to come up here? Just cold call them? They won’t know us from a hole in the wall.”
“I’m not so sure, Zach,” Misha responded. “You forget that we’re ranked eight-hundred-and-ninety-ninth on the feeds. If we approach any serious guild and tell them that there’s opportunity out here if they want to play by the rules, they’d be idiots not to take us seriously.”
Legacy of the Fallen (Ascend Online Book 2) Page 17