Greed God chapter 100

February 6th 2016 Gemworld 8:00 PM EDT

We  made pretty good time getting to the village. I considered stopping to  fuck Barbie, but I had a better idea for getting her off and keeping her  happy. It would have to wait until later. Due to that we didn't linger  on the way to the village and we got there in just two hours, which I  considered a win. Once we did, we didn't go into the main square or even  walk through the outskirts of the town, but stopped outside at the edge  of the forest to hunker down and watch. "So, tell me what I need to  know about this specific village. Cherry did some recon when you were  here right?"

I'd gotten overarching facts from them about  culture and population, but if I was going to be taking people from here  I needed the nitty gritty. Who was in charge, who was an outcast, who  was secretly banging someone else's husband/wife. I need leverage. The  village, which I'd been informed by Barbie was called Bridhall, was  average sized and unassuming, which was a polite way of saying it looked  like shit. The houses were badly constructed, the crops looked limp,  and the only source of obvious water was an old shitty well in the  middle of the town.

Barbie was looking just as disgusted  as I was, as a consummate city girl, and someone who had been helping me  plan and construct Lord Village, this medieval shithole was hands down  the weaker settlement. I was positive she wouldn't mind helping me get  some of these people to defect. It took her a second to shake off her  distaste at the comparison and respond. "Oh, um, yeah, we looked into  things. I wouldn't say we necessarily learned everything, we only staked  the place out for a few hours, but with...Cherry's." She made a  disgusted face at having to use the nickname. "Recon, we picked up  enough."

I assumed they had. Barbie was basically a  trained spymaster, and Cherry wasn't far behind. If the two of them  couldn't get the goods on a dinky little backwater like this with  literal ghost powers at their disposal I was going to have to rethink  their competence. Time constraints were fine, but these people were  literal peasants, their information security couldn't be that great.  Luckily I suspected Barbie was just downplaying what they picked up, she  seemed like the type not to think a good job was good enough.

She  blew an errant lock of hair out of her face nervously as she took in my  impatient stare. She let out a long breath. "Right. Ok, we did see the  mayor. His name is Manka, big guy with a beard. He's...not great. Pretty  sure he's having sex with at least two of the daughters of the local  farm owners and one of the wives. We only actually SAW him fucking one  of them, but he groped the other two when no one was looking. We're  pretty sure they're doing it for favors, since he personally brings the  water they use for their crops, and those three houses got an extra  bucket."

That wasn't a shock, if you were in charge of a  medieval village I imagine you wouldn't have much to do, an leveraging  that job for good pussy was just common sense. It was actually pretty  smart that he controlled the water output for the whole village, and I  wondered how he made them agree to that. Probably by making sure he  appeared to distribute it evenly. Neutral third party or whatever.  Still, that was good info to have. "They have a blacksmith here?" I knew  one of the villages did but I hadn't asked which one.

Barbie  smiled smugly. "Of course. Why else would I pick this one. The  Blacksmith's name is Levka. He actually seems like a nice guy. He's  about sixty, or at least looks it, medieval cultures tended to age  faster, but this is another world so maybe he's ten thousand who the  hell knows. Regardless, he and his wife are kind of like the town  parents. I saw him waive the fees for several horseshoe jobs, and give  out a few pieces of bread to hungry families. If we can get him onboard  I'm guessing the others will be much more likely to come along."

She  filled me in on a few other dynamics that were useful. A farmer who was  skimming water from his neighbors a cup at a time, a tailor who looked  suspiciously like the young son of the town's only baker, and about a  dozen examples of gossip and talking behind the backs of other people  that PROBABLY wouldn't be worth much, but were interesting to hear  nonetheless. When she was done I was just staring at her, dumbfounded.  "You got all this in only a few hours? What do they do just sit around  and talk all day?"

The shrug she gave in response was  fairly casual. "These people have zero enjoyment in their lives. They  spend every day growing food so they can survive. The only social  interaction they get is with their families or some illicit shit they  get upto behind their spouses back. This is basically a suburb on  steroids in terms of how soulcrushing it is, and the dynamics in those  places are dysfunctional as hell. I'm honestly shocked that these people  are as well adjusted as they are. I didn't see any serial killers or  cannibals, and I gave it even odds. Though granted it HAS only been a  day."

That...made way too much sense actually. Bored  people did crazy shit to feel alive. If I'd lived in this town growing  up I'd have fucked every woman I could get time alone with by now, or  taken over the village and tried to go to war against the next closest  settlement. Put in that light it was pretty reasonable that this place  was basically a medieval soap opera. I was kind of looking forward to  what the courts the nobles had were like.

Regardless, we  had plenty of recon to do to identify the people we wanted. Bridhall was  a reasonably large village compared to mine, even if it was tiny in its  totality. About twenty farms surrounded the core portion of the  village, which had maybe fifty poorly constructed houses. It was bigger  by far than Lord Village, but we could only really use some of the  farmers at the moment. While it might be possible to put up some quick  houses for cheap, it would ultimately screw up our obviously superior  vibe, which would be our biggest crowd pleaser.

Instead we  needed to remain small and elite for now, which meant taking the most  successful farmers. We could get a decent idea about which those were  from the quality of their fields, and with a combination of appraisal  and observations made by Barbie in the past we should be able to weed  out the best eleven of the farmers to bring back to work our fields.  With that in mind we waited for night to finish falling and then headed  out into the fields separately. I sent Barbie to do some scouting so I  could appraise in peace, and after twenty minutes or so we met back up  to compare notes.

When we stopped in the middle of one of  the fields I looked around carefully, checking to see if anyone was out  and about. Since there was no one I decided to go ahead, but I kept my  voice low. Something about the night made me feel like we should  whisper, even if there wasn't a real reason. "Alright, I've been looking  around, and I think I found the people we need. Just to double check  though, give me your list. If you don't know names just point out the  house and we can go from there."

She gave the run down on  her people, and while I agreed, I still scowled at the list. She just  rolled her eyes. "Seriously?" I gave her a quizzical look, raising my  eyebrow, and she just laughed. "You're sulking because all the farmers  are men who either have no wives or daughters or have ones that are too  old. We only have eleven farms, we can't afford to pick specific farmers  because you want to get your dick wet."

Despite the fact  that she was right I was still annoyed, mostly because she sounded so  damn triumphant about it. Still, I wasn't the type to shoot myself in  the foot for nothing. The girls could take care of my sex drive easily  enough, she was right about limited output. Not to mention that not only  would the farmers be able to go out and get shit for me, the produce  they grew should count for points as well, so I wanted the best farmers I  could find. Sure the plots could do most of the heavy lifting, but the  better they were the less it needed to do.

Contrary  to my personal preference though, we decided not to approach them now.  Granted the farmers might be easier to convince individually, since they  wouldn't have to deal with pressure from their mayor or their neighbors  to stay put, but there were benefits to approaching them in the  daylight too. Aside from making them feel more comfortable with us by  approaching when they were more receptive to visitors, it also  introduced an element of competition to the decision of who got to come  to Lord Village.

Our  farms were premium products, especially compared to the ones in this  shithole. If we begged and pleaded with people to come to our village,  not only would it establish the exact opposite of the dynamic a leader  should have, it would also cheapen the appeal of what we were offering.  These people were medieval peasants, they should be chomping at the bit  to live in my town, and the best way to make that happen was to make it  clear from the get go that only the lucky few would be accepted.

People  valued things that they had to fight for or put effort into much more  than things that were handed to them. The farms were already going to  make growing crops much easier, but if we made that feel like a  privilege that they had to earn it would go from being a potential  crutch to a gift we gave them, and help establish even stronger  motivation for them to remain useful to us. The easiest way to do that  was to turn it into a competition, there was no faster way to make  someone want something than to tell them they might not be good enough  to have it.

Making  this happen wouldn't even be that difficult. These people were bored,  uneducated, and generally miserable from what Barbie had told me. We  were dressed like nobles (well, dressed in fancy ass formal wear anyway  which was close enough) and that alone would give us massive  credibility. We were also well spoken and attractive which again, would  weigh in our favor. If I couldn't manipulate a bunch of stupid farmers  under these conditions I might as well change my last name.

Once  I hammered out a plan, we headed home. It was a two hour walk with no  heading, but once I knew the way my superior strength meant I could pick  Barbie up and run it. Lifestorm wyrmkin could literally go all night,  and I managed to get us back in thirty minutes at top speed. Once that  was done I headed to sleep, planning out what we were going to do  tomorrow to make sure we could get everyone we needed onboard. While  there were many options for establishing our value, Barbie had already  handed me the easiest, and it was already a priority of ours anyway. As I  drifted off, I cemented my strategy for the next day. Our first order  of business? We needed to get ourselves a blacksmith.