"So in the end, I settled on the village of Hargendorf, at the mouth of the Demst. I told them the Eonir could be pacified by sacrificing trees of the Empire to them, as it was the killing of the trees of Laurelorn that had angered them in the first place. That I'd have a cargo of 'sacrifices' delivered to them, and that they'd be paid to move it upriver and drop it off at a marked point, and if all goes well this could mean lasting safety for Hargendorf." She wraps up her presentation and looks to you for your evaluation, trying and failing to keep nervous expectation from her expression.
"It's a clever framing - almost true and playing to their biases," you muse. "It would be hard to convince Nordlanders so close to the lost villages to see the Eonir as trading partners, but a forest horror that needs propitiating is a lot easier to fit into their current mindset."
"The other pieces of the route were easy, it's only twenty miles along an established path from the drop-off point to Tor Lithanel, which is doable in a single day so Cityborn can fetch it. It was trivial to find ships sailing from Erengrad willing to drop off charcoal in Hargendorf - most of them hug the coast anyway, and a number of them anchor overnight in the shelter of the nearby islands of Lugren and Odner just a few miles along the coast from Hargendorf. The prices at Erengrad for charcoal are fairly competitive, sourced from the nearby Grovod Wood, so the route is profitable as-is. If better river-boats were supplied to Hargendorf, or if the Forestborn can be convinced to allow a towpath along the river, then the route can be scaled up massively without problem. If this is to be a long-term concern, then a deal with the Boyar of Chebokov or the establishment of charcoaling and shipping infrastructure in Ostland would be viable ways to increase the route's efficiency, but the overall return on investment would likely be less than other opportunities currently available to the EIC."
