Arc 11 Post 23: Fortunes Great and Small
Fortunes Great and Small
Thirty Seventh Day of Ikomi-hamba (Ikomi Descendant) 1348 A. L. (After Landfall)
"You might have talked to me about it, words are not so dear when they can be spoken in secrecy," you later send unspoken, once Esha is going over what she knows of the affairs of the Purples and how they may be of use.
"You did not wish to keep the the assassin's good graces," she sends back startled, perhaps even a little hurt. The word 'assassin' does not help the case, but you do not wish to seem ungrateful and still less to cause her any distress over a deed well meant. Thankfully there are advantages to speaking without language, you can just wrap your feelings on the matter into a vague shape like a parcel in embroidered cloth. Recognition and thanks, yes, but also...
"Ask first if it is at all possible, better that we all walk at the same pace under the banner of the Fellowship so that we do not stumble along the way."
At this Esha nods, looking briefly down, straightening the scarf around her neck that needs no such thing, then admits: "I am not used to working with others, not others whom I trust in any case. It is hard at times to judge how far the thread goes out."
Odd to think of trust as something so fragile as a thread unwound. That in itself tells you something of how she sees your company still. Yet of many threads together is much that is worthwhile and enduring made, you tell yourself and are content.
***
Thirty Eight Day of Ikomi-hamba (Ikomi Descendant) 1348 A. L. (After Landfall)
Much of the coin that you had received from the Purples then goes towards buying a bronze breastplate for Tom, this one of local make and not taken as prizes in war. It had apparently been forged for a noble who died of camp fever here in the city before he could even pick it up, leaving the smith very glad he was able to find someone to take it off his hands, and leaving Tom himself grumbling at the decorations wrought in the guise of the chest it it meant to guard, though with proportions that are more ideal than lifelike. "Here's another chest to cover your chest... what's next, a mace with a great big fist for a head?"
Lost 300 gp
Tom gains breastplate
It does not help his mood much when the young Odorin Koire admires the armor and asks for the smith who had wrought it that he might commission one in its likeness nor when the boy seems to decide that you and Tom are alike enough it manner and in accountants that he can treat you roughly the same, that is as less as sellswords and more as venturers and 'sword-lords', those younger kin of the nobility endowed with a martial education and with the arms and armor to use them, but whose families do not have need of their sword arms for one reason or another. There certainly are not enough of those as there are rootless warriors in the Sunset Islands for this is a richer and wider land, yet here, as in other lands, nobility respect may be earned on the point of a spear or the edge of a sword.
Thus when you asks about guards for Wayfarer's Respite Odorin asks if 'Sir Tom' would be staying with the keep to ensure that all is in order. Who he had found the honorific from you do not know, or perhaps he had just overheard it, but it leaves you in an uneasy place and it leaves poor Tom looking like death warmed over. What was he meant to do, correct the young lord on the blunder of calling a commoner a knight? Explain what knighthood is and whence it springs?
"Tom will not be staying. I need his skilled spear and his counsel on the journey ahead," you smooth over the matter as best you can, even as part of you begins to wonder if those words are true, and you mean every one of them, then what cause have you not to hand out a knight's spurs some day? Alone in all the world you are a knight so what but your own judgement is knighthood worth?
Shaking off the thought for now you instead approach the manner of a Koire garrison for the season. Alas, you do not have many options and none of them are all that fair to the ear.
"I... wish that I could give aid to those who have been of such service to my family in a time of need, but we do not have any skilled spears to spare from our own defense and the call to arms. You yourself trained those who would be sent on ships this spring to serve as guards or to help protect our clients out here in the city." The boy fidgets in his seat, likely ashamed that his House is still in such dire straights. "I might perhaps suggest some of those who are overwintering in the city from what my First Shield knows, but there is no surety of oaths there."
What do you do?
[] Take the Koire guards, green as they are
Cost: 1-2/4 Favors with the House
Number: 10-20
Weapons: Bronze Spears
Quality: Green Recruits Warrior 1
[] Hire on warriors on the open market using Koire recommendations
Cost: 75 gp/Solider
Max Numbers: 12 soldiers
Weapons: Mix of Bronze and stone weapons
Quality: Warrior 2
[] See if any of the young Shore Sworn have an interest in a solid wall over their heads and steady pay for the season
Cost: 25 gp/Fisherman
Max Number: 20
Weapons: Clubs, nets, flint gutting knives
Quality: Commoner 2-3
OOC: Favor can be spent on things like getting the House to come to your defense in a legal dispute, provide goods and services, and loan you out the use of experts.
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