Wish upon the Stars chapter 527

Baronies. On Stratholme, the undisputed ruler was the Earl. Vanden  Nevius was a peak C-ranker that was stuck at the threshold of B-rank  after pissing of the Emperor somehow. Even Anna wasn't sure how,  apparently asking was considered a taboo, and pissing off the strongest  man in the world was a pretty obvious no go. Beneath Nevius the twelve  Viscounts stood supreme, D-rankers of varying strengths, each of them  having carved out a decent chunk of the planet.

Viscounts,  however, didn't micromanage. They were there to collect taxes and be  left alone. The real movers and shakers on Stratholme were the  E-rankers. The Barons. There were dozens of them, and dozens of Baronies  that they ruled, though more than a few had several territories under  their sway. As long as you paid up on time, the Viscounts didn't care  what you did, so there was quite a bit of social mobility among Barons.

The  Robber Barons were the E-rankers who didn't report or owe allegiance  directly to a Viscount, and traditionally squabbled over poorer  territories like Saltzberg, which was the whole reason we came here.  That did NOT, however, mean that Saltzberg didn't already belong to a  Baron, which was where Anna came in.

Baron Alexander  Clairdon was first on the list. The Baron whose family had possessed  this land for the last five hundred years or so was well known for his  trade acumen, and until recently his rule had been fairly stable. At  least until about a century ago when the neighboring Baron suffered and  accident and his son took over. Chancey Highgrave was young, vicious,  and had something to prove, and he'd declared open war on Clairdon  almost immediately.

Unfortunately for Highgrave, Clairdon,  while not particularly talented as a commander, was still much  wealthier than the younger man, and had been throwing money at his  forces for decades now, slowly whittling down both his own fortune and  the Highgrave military. Due to this struggle, an opening in the local  power structure was being created, and Camden had come to exploit it.

Because  of the way politics was handled on Stratholme, none of the local forces  had any wiggle room to try to break Clairdon or Highgrave's hold on  their territories, lest they expose their own flanks, since the  surrounding Baronies were all fairly weak ones, which made this a  uniquely suitable place for someone like Camden, who was hoping to avoid  his family politics by establishing himself as an independent.

Since  we were here to help him, that meant we needed to be up to date on the  information for Clairdon, Highgrave, and the closest neighbors who might  risk exposing themselves to attack if the power imbalance got too  extreme.

First up was Clairdon. Anna had asked me for a  copy of his trading ledger, and had gotten it, but unfortunately for her  the man wrote in code, and the decryption was too expensive for me to  afford with my stats. She also figured out, after some perusal, that  Clairdon didn't keep all his accounting in one place, he actually had  four ledgers, and each of them made up a part of the decryption, with  the code being written line by line across all four books.

How  she knew this I had no idea, but she apparently had a Skill for  cracking codes, and while she couldn't just breeze through whatever he'd  done, she was able to get enough out of the books to figure out the  basics.

Clairdon, as I was told in payment for the first  book, was particularly adept trader, specializing in quick ship travel.  He had an entire shipping industry setup along the river that ran  through his territory. Because of this trade flexibility, his gear was  better than most, and he put all those resources into heavy infantry.  Every man a Might focused Job called a Cavalier and decked out in absurd  amounts of heavy armor.

Highgrave, on the other hand,  focused more on mounted warriors, and fielded mainly cavalry units  called Hussars, a form of light cavalry known for their speed and  mobility. The absurd overgearing Clairdon had done to his Cavaliers made  them a nightmare for the Hussars, since harrying them didn't really do  shit when you couldn't hurt them, though Highgrave continued to put  pressure on the older Baron by using his forces to attack shipyards and  other land based supply lines.

This had been happening for decades now, and both sides were bleeding men and resources at this point, hence Camden's presence.

After  she explained the main players, Anna filled us in on the two closest  Barons most likely to make a play if opportunity presented itself. Simon  Prentiss and Albert Carrey. Prentiss was an entrenched Baron with  centuries of time watching over a lucrative F-ranked iron mine, and his  specialty was heavy cavalry. Slower than the Hussars but much harder to  stop, his lack of mobility meant he was unlikely to exploit any small  openings, and would only be a problem if everything went to shit.

Carrey,  however, was much more likely to interfere at the slightest hint of  weakness. The Carrey family possessed a force of powerful Dragoons. A  type of mounted infantry that they used to devastating effect, riding to  battle for mobility and then dismounting to fight on foot.

I  wondered if Camden knew all of this, and when I asked her about it Anna  just laughed me off. "Camden Tolbert is a scion of one of the great  houses of the Empire. His information resources far outstrip my own, and  even if he tried to keep things low key there's no chance he doesn't  have detailed dossiers on every Barony in this area. His main weakness  is that since he's making a patchwork militia, he can't field any  specialized units like the others. The Tolbert family specializes in  training Hoplites, but there's no way he's going to be able to  specialize a bunch of random mercs into a now Job quickly enough for it  to be helpful. I hope he brought a good general, because putting  together a battle plan with a force like that will be a nightmare."

I  had no clue how the Job system worked, though knowing you could change  Jobs didn't surprise me. I knew all of them would have also been born  with native abilities, though they would be Skills now that they had  Jobs. "Alright, so...how does this work then?" I asked her after she'd  given me the run down on all the players. "I know we'll be training,  though I'm shocked Camden was able to buy property here when it's so  obvious he's going to try to take the territory."

"Clairdon  had no choice." Anna said with a snicker. "Until Tolbert actually  declares, he's a visiting noble, and one from a powerful family. Not to  mention Clairdon needs the money to keep Highgrave at bay. Tolbert would  have still showed up to try to take the territory even if he'd said no,  he'd have just been harder to pin down. Worst case he could have set up  in the woods or something and Clairdon would have had no idea where the  attacks were coming from."

That  sounded stupid as hell to me, but politics usually did. "Isn't he  worried about the defenses on that place though? Like if he digs in and  builds it up it'll be impossible to get him out." We'd seen some of the  defensive measured Camden was taking, and they would be hell to get  past.

"Nobles  rarely assault each others homes." She said with a shake of the head.  "Any core dwelling will be heavily defended, and it's considered bad  form. The only exception is the final push to take a territory, but it  takes years to reach that point."

I groaned. "This is all such nonsense. It's more like a game than an actual war. We WILL be having actual battles right?"

"They  call them skirmishes, but yes." She chuckled. "For quick and easily  struck targets, raids are common, but in order to negotiate for border  areas that could be contested by either, skirmishes are held. Basically  both sides bring a whole bunch of soldiers and line up on either side of  a field and then beat the hell out of each other for hours until one  side is routed or surrenders."

That  was more like what I'd expected, though it ALSO sounded stupid when  phrased like that. It would be good enough though, at least for our  purposes. "Alright." I said with a sigh. "Two more wishes. Payment for  the first will be a map of the area complete with territorial markings  and up to date affiliation. Second will be a geas from you binding you  not to mention my presence here to anyone without my explicit  permission, nor to allude to it through less direct means in any way you  suspect may result in my discovery."

Her  lips split in a wide grin. "Well someone knows all the tricks doesn't  he? That's a tightly worded geas. Fine. For my fifth wish I want a new  room for my inn. An underground space no one will be aware of, where I  can conduct business of a...less than savory nature."

Wish detected. Grant wish?

Moving  some dirt around wasn't exactly a stretch for me, though the Impact  this planet had made it quite a bit tougher than it might otherwise have  been. Still I could manage, and I told her so. Once that was confirmed  she went ahead and had me create the room under the storage area we were  already in. I walked to the back corner and discharged the building  static into the ground, and the area in front of me glowed purple for a  moment before the energy faded.

Reaching  down according to what my power had told me as it was working, I  pressed hard on the floor in a specific spot near the wall, and the  stone dropped away to reveal a small wooden ladder. We all climbed down,  and a switch near the wall lit up the whole area, exposing the new  room.

It  was...empty. She'd asked for a room and it was a room, with wooden posts  supporting a ceiling structure that held up the stone and nearby earth.  I whistled at the sight. I'd never used my power like that before, but  realistically it wasn't a stretch. I could easily vanish dirt with Pit  of Despair already, and a few wooden beams wasn't too much more effort.  Seeing it all together like this just drove home the absurdity that my  wish power was capable of though.

Anna  grinned widely, then held up a finger, vanishing for a few minutes and  coming back with a rolled up paper. She passed it to me. Unrolling it  slightly I checked it over, and sure enough it was a map of the area  with plenty of notations. "Last one." She said eagerly. "For now at  least. I wish this room was tied into the rest of my wards. Not too many  runes since there's not much in here. Should be doable, especially with  permission. In exchange you get me under that geas."

Wish detected. Grant wish?

I  confirmed, repeating the earlier geas to make sure there was no tricks.  As the static built, she glanced around the room happily. "This  shouldn't be hard to manage." She repeated. "My place is under recursive  thaumaturgy wards. Each individual piece of the building is tied to a  wardstone which in turn is tied to the building as a whole. You hit any  part of the inn, and it gets redirected to the wardstone and back to the  building in its totality, so you can't break any single piece of the  building without demolishing the whole thing, and there are a LOT of  pieces."

As I took her hands,  discharging the static, my symbol appeared on her forehead for a second  before fading, and runes began to appear on the beams and the tiles in  the ceiling. They flashed once before fading, and the wish completed, my  last for the day, confirming our safety here and concluding our  business. I had to admit it had given me a lot to think about. I needed  to talk to Callie about everything I'd learned. But first, I should  spend some time with my sister.