[X] "Oh, Mother, to quote Ser Richard, that ship has well and truly sunk. My mercantile interests span the Narrow Sea and beyond, and the Iron Bank is but a junior partner in my latest endeavor, one which promises to revolutionize international trade and make me wealthy beyond the dreams of kings or dragons. You need not worry for my good name, however, at least not that it will be besmirched by becoming a trader of all things. No, it is too late for that, I fear, for the Usurper's dogs have done far worse to damage my reputation. Among the peoples of Westeros, commoners and nobles alike, they name me monster, slaver and madman, defiler and worse. If only they saw me as a simple trader..."
 
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One of our essential amulets costs what?
2500 IM?

You'd need to own a bank/large kingdom to keep up with the amount of money Lya is burning!

An Enduring Amulet of Protection from Evil used to cost us 800 IM, but with Lya's recent learning of the Extraordinary Artisan feat, that comes down to 600 IM. Either way, it's considered a basic piece of equipment, but represents an absolute life-changing fortune for all but the most wealthy of individuals.
 
So there are two basic ways to go about replying to this. One is to simply be blunt, and address the fact that our good name has been fighting a constant uphill battle in Westeros ever since we started to really become known to it. It's simple, it's effective, and it's also entirely not what we want to do. No matter how tempting it is.

The point I want to push has already been raised, but we're going to have to be...um...rather careful in doing so. Hitting the 'child of Braavos' button is guilt in all caps, regardless of it being true. The easiest way to approach it is probably pointing to the fact that it's the most effective way to make money within the Free Cities, and Braavos was built on trade. @Diomedon raises an excellent point too, in that within the city where we grew into our power it was the most effective means to win friendship and support. I'm actually going to fold that line directly into a vote. Key issues here are as follows, as I see it:

[X] I Had To Change Too - Pt 1
-[X] "Within the City of Secrets, there are few ways for one to support a comfortable life that don't involve trade, mother. And my successes won acclaim and friendship that simple magic could not. Without those, much of what I've done in civilising the Stepstones would have been impossible." Reference to what we have, what she knows already. Impossible without the financial streams that Azel has painstakingly constructed.
-[X] "If I am to claim Westeros, it will take more than magic. It will take coin, in great measure, and I must be able to sustain that. Legions cannot march without arms." Speaking of the future, with certainty. As a Queen, she might have some understanding of the cost of raising or supporting a true army.
-[X] "Creations of magic do not come without price, either. Many of the items most precious to my company have been crafted by our own hands." The wonders we've forged, that she now knows are real. Make it clear that miracles aren't without physical cost.
-[X] "For all my heritage, I have never had the resources of a Kingdom of Westeros, and there is but one way to match them for one growing to adulthood in Essos." Said wrongly, this could be Guilt, but it's not designed that way. We worked within the limitations in front of us, as did our ancestors when they left Valyria behind, and have prospered for it.
-[X] "Yet now I find myself in the position of one soon to do so. The Iron Bank itself is a junior partner in my latest endeavour, and mine is a fleet of ships that fly the Dragon banner. A fleet I could not maintain without the coin that they bring flowing through my fingers. Relate the notion that you are, for all intents and purposes, approaching the status of a Merchant Prince as well as King of your own domain. This is already done, already known, and there is precious little that could ever be done to change it.
-[X] If a reasonable opportunity presents itself, mention in jest that ledgers appear to act as a remarkably effective talisman to make Dany vanish...as if by magic.
-[X] Once more, be gentle in your words. You fought with this opinion in your early days, after all, as you did with the complex figures of trade until at last you mastered them. Don't expect to change her mind here, but for an opinion to change you must first show why yours did before.

Ha. I forgot the Westerosi's disdain for actually having money.

I sure as hell didn't :V
 
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[x] "...about that..."
-[x] Go into detail about how the Stepstones are now the home of one of the most potent raiding and trading fleets, and that it flies your banner.
-[x] Talk about the costs of magical reagents, and how what was once a way to afford such exotic materials has grown into a trading network capable of sustaining the stepstones, in addition to footing the bill of managing an entire cabal of sorcerors.
-[x] Who also answer to you, actually. Lya, the Archmage of Sorcerer's Deep, is capable of making objects that are worth entire small kingdoms. Everything someone wants can be sold for a price, and magical is capable of fulfilling many wishes.
-[x] As one of the most potent sorcerers of the new age, and with the resources you have at your disposal, you could probably conquer most of Westeros in a fortnight. The problem is not winning the war, it's keeping what you've claimed in the aftermath.
 
@Snowfire Something to notice also is that we don't exactly peddle our services on the street.

We send our own fleet to trade in our name. Our work balancing books and making investments is not so different from, say, the Master of Coin.

It's also very handy to scare Dany away when she is being bothersome. Show her an open ledger and she literally flies away :V
 
[X] Snowfire

It's not so much a disdain for having money as it is a disdain for earning money in ways other then taxing smallfolk.
As if you could notice the difference between the way you got a coin when you hold in your hand...

...

Actually, you might. The tax coin might still smell like cow shit.
The trader coin will most likely smell better.

[X] Snowfire
 
To add onto this, something we might try to thread into things here is how magic does not respect the boundaries of Blood. An urchin can as much gain powers of magic as can a scion of a noble house.
You know, neither of those statements are true. Magic doesn't make people more equal, it makes them even more unequal. Sorcerers inherit their power and from what we have seen all sorcerous families seem to be descendants of Valyrian noble houses. Wizardry doesn't run in blood, but it's something that must be learned, either by hiring a teacher or studying books. A street urchin cannot afford either. Divine magic is more equal opportunity, but it's still not truly equal. A noble will simply have more opportunities to get magic.
 
@Snowfire Something to notice also is that we don't exactly peddle our services on the street.

We send our own fleet to trade in our name. Our work balancing books and making investments is not so different from, say, the Master of Coin.

Problem with that argument is that it leads directly to the question of why we don't have one of those doing it for us. Like, I get what you're trying to do, but it's not something I see as likely to work.

It's also very handy to scare Dany away when she is being bothersome. Show her an open ledger and she literally flies away :V

:rofl::lol:rofl::lol:rofl::lol
 
@Snowfire Something to notice also is that we don't exactly peddle our services on the street.

We send our own fleet to trade in our name. Our work balancing books and making investments is not so different from, say, the Master of Coin.

It's also very handy to scare Dany away when she is being bothersome. Show her an open ledger and she literally flies away :V

What TNE said, @Snowfire, and what I touched on in my plan. We need to be specific about how we own fleets of ships, and how the Iron Bank is our bro. We're not mere traders, we are a Merchant Prince.
 
It's not so much a disdain for having money as it is a disdain for earning money in ways other then taxing smallfolk.

I'm being a little tongue in cheek. Trade, and encouraging trade, generates far more wealth than simply taxing farmers and small time crafters. Flanders was one of the richest areas in Europe, not because it was order of magnitudes better than other places as farmland, but because it became the center of the textile trade through the industry there and encouraging the trade of it.

Trade and Industry go hand in hand, and I was always a little baffled by noble attitude towards making more money, when money is literally what turns the gears of war.
 
You know, neither of those statements are true. Magic doesn't make people more equal, it makes them even more unequal. Sorcerers inherit their power and from what we have seen all sorcerous families seem to be descendants of Valyrian noble houses. Wizardry doesn't run in blood, but it's something that must be learned, either by hiring a teacher or studying books. A street urchin cannot afford either. Divine magic is more equal opportunity, but it's still not truly equal. A noble will simply have more opportunities to get magic.
Something we carefully enshrined in our constitution and the social order it defines. Stratification is always a thing, but the issue here is that it runs counter to the way it used to be.

And nobody is going to take our easily indoctrinated street urchin recruits. :mad:
 
Problem with that argument is that it leads directly to the question of why we don't have one of those doing it for us. Like, I get what you're trying to do, but it's not something I see as likely to work.
The difference in scale and means matters quite a lot, I bet. We don't sit down with random merchants passing by our fief. We sit down with the high council of the Iron Bank.

But IC, Viserys is sort of a commerce genius. He invented the stock exchange.
 
Technically our ships fly the SSE banner. And in a few months, we might have ACSEC ships that ferry goods between SD and Tyrosh for a fee, through we will probably hire subcontractors to supply those ships.

Snake is close enough to dragon. And I'm taking liberties to make things sound better.
 
Looks good.

And one of the things I love most about making money, besides the money part, is that it's something genuinely Viserys.

He comes up with the crazy schemes, the revolutionary ideas. He figured out how to game Yss knowing what would be sacrificed to him to make risk-free investments.

Anyone looks at his books will see at best vaguely familiar gibberish.

Lya's ability at commerce, for example, goes more or less like "I suppose people should pay with, uh, money? For stuff?".
 
Looks good.

And one of the things I love most about making money, besides the money part, is that it's something genuinely Viserys.

He comes up with the crazy schemes, the revolutionary ideas. He figured out how to game Yss knowing what would be sacrificed to him to make risk-free investments.

Anyone looks at his books will see at best vaguely familiar gibberish.

Lya's ability at commerce, for example, goes more or less like "I suppose people should pay with, uh, money? For stuff?".
To be fair, IC it was Lya who came up with my scheme to game Yss Communes to make it rain money.
 
Hrm, it's 203 IM per Glammered armor, so that's still 609 IM. A ring of arming is 375 IM, currently, so 1125 IM for all of them. The price range is pretty large there, between 609 IM settling for just glmmered armor, to no glammered armor but rings of arming at 1125 IM, to both options at 1734 IM. I'm not sure that last jump is worth it. I think choosing between Glammered armor or rings of arming is the better value.



We're not exactly overflowing with free time. It's at the point where Viserys has had rings of sustenance made because he wants more time in the day to gets things done.
does he not have a single bard in his kingdom? or any companions who could even attempt it do we not have any kind of spy master?
 
We did a whole lot of things far worse then hanging around with thieves.

We nailed people to trees.
We employ a demon.
We barter with fiends.
We went on a genocidal rampage against Sahuagin.
We took control of a Dothraki hoard.
We cut a deal with Mindflayers.
We plan to conquer the world.
We killed nearly a thousand men and a divine avatar in a few hours.

Seriously. You are worried about our association with thieves?

i was just thinking we need some one to record our legends
 
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