It was certainly a day of revelations. As the pair stepped out of the factory, Norman glanced at his Finance Administrator from the corner of his eye. She still wasn’t looking at him after Lausu had spilled their little secret. Whatever the heck chu’kana was, it seemed to be a very personal and private thing for her. He decided not to grill her about it, at least not at this moment.
Perhaps after the wedding.
While he had a friendly relationship with Nolia, it wasn’t nearly as close a friendship as Kalia had with the jorik woman. And he certainly didn’t want to add any complications to the relationship before the wedding.
The pair returned to the seamstress’, finding that Kalia was still being fitted for the dress.
Norman let his thoughts wander to other issues while they waited for his fiancé to finish.
His biggest concern at the moment was what to do about Bertrand. The man’s attempts to acquire more mineral rights from Alacala were increasing. The fact that his efforts coincided with Donovan going quiet did not go unnoticed by him or his spies.
There still wasn’t anything linking the man to Donovan and Bertrand had already been scanned by Princess. The man wasn’t one of Donovan’s shapeshifters. Other than a gut feeling, he hadn’t found any connection between the pair. The man might have had no connection to the Council Leader after all. That didn’t mean Norman trusted him. The man reminded him of the sleazy fences he was forced to use back in Colorado. There was just something slightly off about him. And Norman was learning to trust his instincts more and more in recent years. Instead of waiting to find out what the sleazy guild man was up to, he had acted.
To prevent Bertrand from acquiring any more mineral rights, Norman had inked a new deal with the merchants. This deal tied up a significant amount of the capital Normenia had to work with. But it also prevented Bertrand from slowly picking away at the smaller merchants that were moving materials back and forth.
Not long after that deal was signed, he heard about small buyers gobbling up rights for other resources. With Normenia’s cash reserves tied up, he couldn’t stop that from happening. And perhaps that had been what Bertrand had hoped for all along.
That in itself wasn’t worrying. He wanted small merchants to create competition. The problem was that those small buyers were vanishing in alarming numbers. With their disappearance went any trail to who controlled those resources since the deals were transferable.
It was one annoying aspect of how the Alacala did business. They didn’t care who held the agreement, so long as the contract was still in force. Their agreements were more akin to transferable bonds than a legal contract that would expire after the initial party died. Whoever controlled that slip of paper, owned that contract. So long as the owner continued to hold up their end of the contract, the Alacala would continue supplying them.
He suspected Bertrand either hired people to buy up small portions or killed them off to acquire the contracts for himself.
The wraiths were doing their best to chase down the leads but from what they reported, the man was slippery. It was times like this that Norman wished he could just get rid of him. But if he didn’t follow his own laws, how could he expect others to?
No, he needed to have faith in his people. Bertrand would slip up eventually, and when he did Norman would be there to excise the tumor.
His thoughts were interrupted when Kalia finally returned with Sarah the seamstress.
“All finished!” Sarah exclaimed in her bubbly and excited voice. “See, that wasn’t so bad.”
Norman only nodded before standing. He could see the exhaustion in Kalia’s face. But it wasn’t even noon and they still had a lot of errands to complete.
***
Time quickly passed and the date of the wedding grew closer and closer. Most of the details had been locked in by this point but it seemed like there was always something small that needed to be handled.
His excitement and nerves only grew as the days sped by. Norman was looking forward to his future with Kalia but he also feared being a disappointment.
He didn’t have the best track record with women.
Those fears wouldn’t stop him from trying though.
“How are things progressing?” He asked Sariah.
“There is a lot to learn, Lord Norman. But I believe I understand most of what Lausu has been showing me.”
Norman nodded at the mage and former guard. She had been one of only a handful of people who had replied to the job posting and also had the requisite skills.
He hated to lose a talented mage from the guard, but the position Lausu was training her for required magic. It did help explain why nobody else had discovered the secret of converting the tough grasses into the fine fabric that almost everyone in town used to make clothing.
Then there was the matter of how to handle that information. Already he and his administrators were being bombarded with requests to learn the secret.
Some of those requests came from people like Sarah, the seamstress. Others came from completely unknown people or even some from the merchants in town. It seemed like everyone was clamoring to know what his plans were. Likely so they could take advantage of the information to turn a profit. He idly wondered if Lausu dealt with this same nonsense on a daily basis. If he did, maybe returning to his people wasn’t the only reason for him wanting to get out of the textile business.
As for what Norman was going to do with the knowledge, he was leaning toward selling off the production and keeping the secret of processing the grass. This way Sariah could manage that single aspect of the industry and he wouldn’t have to worry about all the rest of the nonsense.
But that was a decision for after his wedding. His biggest concern now was the guest list.
And it was a doozy.
Turns out there were quite a few people who wished to attend. Each day he would have stacks of letters wishing him well in an attempt to try and pry an invite to the private ceremony. After what happened with the coronation, he was only handing out personalized invitations to people he wanted to attend.
People could bitch and moan all they wanted about not getting invited, but this was his wedding day, not an opportunity for people to make connections. That meant none of those bozos from the guild would be getting in. He had offered Lausu an invite but the man declined. It seemed the jorik man would be leaving prior to the ceremony so Norman could understand why he refused to attend.
All his advisors got invites, as well as their personal guards. The guards didn’t need to work on such a day as there would be more than enough Death Knights to ensure nothing untoward occurred.
The leaders of each city in Normenia also got an invite but the bagu declined. He wasn’t surprised that the fish-like humanoids declined the invite. Norman was surprised that the narasi accepted though.
Invites then went out to all of Normenia’s new allies. Although the Matron would probably be attending as Eugene’s plus one. The pair made a bit of an odd couple, but they seemed to enjoy each other's company so who was he to complain?
The Admiral would be attending along with Major General Roberts. As far as he knew the two of them hadn’t met in person yet so that might be an interesting encounter. But Norman hadn’t limited the invites to just big-name people. He invited his cooks, even the cranky old bastard who rarely left the kitchen. He also included anyone who had a hand in helping to prepare the wedding. Which included the seamstress, his tailor, the bakery staff, and a host of other people.
It was a rather one-sided guest list, but Kalia did not wish to invite her parents for obvious reasons. And she didn’t know where any of her extended family was or if they even still lived. She was more than happy with inviting the people she worked with on the enchanting team as well as the workers that made it all possible. Most of whom Norman had already included anyway.
The last few days leading up to the wedding slipped by in a frantic rush of effort to ensure everything was perfect. And on the night before the wedding, Kalia and the enchanters surprised him with a huge gift. As he was reading by the glow of the mana lamp, he suddenly saw lights pop on outside the window.
Curious to see what it was, he walked out to the balcony to see the many street lamps that had been prepared along the streets were now all lit up.
Norman couldn’t help but grin. It seemed they had finally gotten the first powerplant online, and just in time for the wedding. It may seem like a small step to most, but to Norman, it meant Normenia was one step closer to becoming a true country.
His original goal to create a place where he could be free had long since been surpassed. So he had shifted to a new goal of turning Normenia into the leading producer of high-end infrastructure enchantments. And returning power to people who had lived without it for a decade was a huge step in that direction. Not even the Council had access to constant or consistent electricity. And if it came down to it, that was a card he would willingly play to get these belligerent assholes to finally fall in line.
He was getting ahead of himself though. The ability to supply an entire city with power was still years away. The plant was only powering street lamps currently. And those didn’t take much energy.
There was also the manufacturing side of building them to consider.
Even though the power plant was relatively small, it was still something Normenia couldn’t produce on its own. He needed to contract out to companies in Southern California for parts. The Commonwealth still had large parts of its power grid working thanks to all the solar power that had been built in the region before the collapse. It was the main reason The Commonwealth was able to support its massive population as well as fight off the Council.
The future was looking bright for Norman, and Normenia.
***
As he sipped the wine, Bertrand cursed that bastard jorik in his mind while keeping his face calm. “So the man finally sold out?” He had been hearing rumors from some of his contacts that the jorik was thinking about selling. It was a perfect opportunity to grab up some more industry inside the city. But the bastard had gone and sold it all to Lord Norman.
And while Bertrand’s underworld was beginning to thrive, he wasn’t dumb enough to go after Lord Norman or even Lausu. He needed to be cautious and take his time. Just like how he had started to rise back in California. That small slice of the criminal underworld paled in comparison to what he had control of now. It had been foolish of Lord Norman to accept anyone into his city who wanted to stay. But it worked out in Bertrand’s favor. It didn’t take long for him to make contact with the more unsavory sorts.
With his charisma and ideas, he quickly took control of the small groups to keep them in line and put them under one umbrella. His new enterprise couldn’t afford petty crime as the guard and Lord Norman’s enforcers would quickly squash any issue. That became even more abundantly clear with what happened in New Cali. He hadn’t had many people in that shithole of a city, but he kept a few out there to keep tabs on what was going on. Which turned out to be a good thing.
Despite the risk, that didn’t mean he would play by these new laws. Bertrand was a free spirit and he only cared about one thing, living a life of money and excess. He had no issues subverting the laws to his benefit, creating shell companies, scapegoats, you name it he employed it to make this dream come true. He even had legitimate companies to help hide his more shady practices. It was all working out fantastically. And he chose the people that worked directly with those criminal interests with extreme care. It was just another way to separate himself from the actual crimes.
He smiled slightly, dying really had been the best thing to ever happen to him.
“I’m afraid he did,” the woman said with a wistful sigh. “Such a loss. That man was so handsome.” Bertrand ignored the airheaded woman’s babbling as he tried to find an angle to make a profit from this information.
He just needed to come up with a plan to make sure that the Lord chose something that would benefit him. His smile grew. “Indeed it is,” he spoke absently, causing the woman to titter in delight at his agreement.
It was certainly a day of revelations. As the pair stepped out of the factory, Norman glanced at his Finance Administrator from the corner of his eye. She still wasn’t looking at him after Lausu had spilled their little secret. Whatever the heck chu’kana was, it seemed to be a very personal and private thing for her. He decided not to grill her about it, at least not at this moment.
Perhaps after the wedding.
While he had a friendly relationship with Nolia, it wasn’t nearly as close a friendship as Kalia had with the jorik woman. And he certainly didn’t want to add any complications to the relationship before the wedding.
The pair returned to the seamstress’, finding that Kalia was still being fitted for the dress.
Norman let his thoughts wander to other issues while they waited for his fiancé to finish.
His biggest concern at the moment was what to do about Bertrand. The man’s attempts to acquire more mineral rights from Alacala were increasing. The fact that his efforts coincided with Donovan going quiet did not go unnoticed by him or his spies.
There still wasn’t anything linking the man to Donovan and Bertrand had already been scanned by Princess. The man wasn’t one of Donovan’s shapeshifters. Other than a gut feeling, he hadn’t found any connection between the pair. The man might have had no connection to the Council Leader after all. That didn’t mean Norman trusted him. The man reminded him of the sleazy fences he was forced to use back in Colorado. There was just something slightly off about him. And Norman was learning to trust his instincts more and more in recent years. Instead of waiting to find out what the sleazy guild man was up to, he had acted.
To prevent Bertrand from acquiring any more mineral rights, Norman had inked a new deal with the merchants. This deal tied up a significant amount of the capital Normenia had to work with. But it also prevented Bertrand from slowly picking away at the smaller merchants that were moving materials back and forth.
Not long after that deal was signed, he heard about small buyers gobbling up rights for other resources. With Normenia’s cash reserves tied up, he couldn’t stop that from happening. And perhaps that had been what Bertrand had hoped for all along.
That in itself wasn’t worrying. He wanted small merchants to create competition. The problem was that those small buyers were vanishing in alarming numbers. With their disappearance went any trail to who controlled those resources since the deals were transferable.
It was one annoying aspect of how the Alacala did business. They didn’t care who held the agreement, so long as the contract was still in force. Their agreements were more akin to transferable bonds than a legal contract that would expire after the initial party died. Whoever controlled that slip of paper, owned that contract. So long as the owner continued to hold up their end of the contract, the Alacala would continue supplying them.
He suspected Bertrand either hired people to buy up small portions or killed them off to acquire the contracts for himself.
The wraiths were doing their best to chase down the leads but from what they reported, the man was slippery. It was times like this that Norman wished he could just get rid of him. But if he didn’t follow his own laws, how could he expect others to?
No, he needed to have faith in his people. Bertrand would slip up eventually, and when he did Norman would be there to excise the tumor.
His thoughts were interrupted when Kalia finally returned with Sarah the seamstress.
“All finished!” Sarah exclaimed in her bubbly and excited voice. “See, that wasn’t so bad.”
Norman only nodded before standing. He could see the exhaustion in Kalia’s face. But it wasn’t even noon and they still had a lot of errands to complete.
***
Time quickly passed and the date of the wedding grew closer and closer. Most of the details had been locked in by this point but it seemed like there was always something small that needed to be handled.
His excitement and nerves only grew as the days sped by. Norman was looking forward to his future with Kalia but he also feared being a disappointment.
He didn’t have the best track record with women.
Those fears wouldn’t stop him from trying though.
“How are things progressing?” He asked Sariah.
“There is a lot to learn, Lord Norman. But I believe I understand most of what Lausu has been showing me.”
Norman nodded at the mage and former guard. She had been one of only a handful of people who had replied to the job posting and also had the requisite skills.
He hated to lose a talented mage from the guard, but the position Lausu was training her for required magic. It did help explain why nobody else had discovered the secret of converting the tough grasses into the fine fabric that almost everyone in town used to make clothing.
Then there was the matter of how to handle that information. Already he and his administrators were being bombarded with requests to learn the secret.
Some of those requests came from people like Sarah, the seamstress. Others came from completely unknown people or even some from the merchants in town. It seemed like everyone was clamoring to know what his plans were. Likely so they could take advantage of the information to turn a profit. He idly wondered if Lausu dealt with this same nonsense on a daily basis. If he did, maybe returning to his people wasn’t the only reason for him wanting to get out of the textile business.
As for what Norman was going to do with the knowledge, he was leaning toward selling off the production and keeping the secret of processing the grass. This way Sariah could manage that single aspect of the industry and he wouldn’t have to worry about all the rest of the nonsense.
But that was a decision for after his wedding. His biggest concern now was the guest list.
And it was a doozy.
Turns out there were quite a few people who wished to attend. Each day he would have stacks of letters wishing him well in an attempt to try and pry an invite to the private ceremony. After what happened with the coronation, he was only handing out personalized invitations to people he wanted to attend.
People could bitch and moan all they wanted about not getting invited, but this was his wedding day, not an opportunity for people to make connections. That meant none of those bozos from the guild would be getting in. He had offered Lausu an invite but the man declined. It seemed the jorik man would be leaving prior to the ceremony so Norman could understand why he refused to attend.
All his advisors got invites, as well as their personal guards. The guards didn’t need to work on such a day as there would be more than enough Death Knights to ensure nothing untoward occurred.
The leaders of each city in Normenia also got an invite but the bagu declined. He wasn’t surprised that the fish-like humanoids declined the invite. Norman was surprised that the narasi accepted though.
Invites then went out to all of Normenia’s new allies. Although the Matron would probably be attending as Eugene’s plus one. The pair made a bit of an odd couple, but they seemed to enjoy each other's company so who was he to complain?
The Admiral would be attending along with Major General Roberts. As far as he knew the two of them hadn’t met in person yet so that might be an interesting encounter. But Norman hadn’t limited the invites to just big-name people. He invited his cooks, even the cranky old bastard who rarely left the kitchen. He also included anyone who had a hand in helping to prepare the wedding. Which included the seamstress, his tailor, the bakery staff, and a host of other people.
It was a rather one-sided guest list, but Kalia did not wish to invite her parents for obvious reasons. And she didn’t know where any of her extended family was or if they even still lived. She was more than happy with inviting the people she worked with on the enchanting team as well as the workers that made it all possible. Most of whom Norman had already included anyway.
The last few days leading up to the wedding slipped by in a frantic rush of effort to ensure everything was perfect. And on the night before the wedding, Kalia and the enchanters surprised him with a huge gift. As he was reading by the glow of the mana lamp, he suddenly saw lights pop on outside the window.
Curious to see what it was, he walked out to the balcony to see the many street lamps that had been prepared along the streets were now all lit up.
Norman couldn’t help but grin. It seemed they had finally gotten the first powerplant online, and just in time for the wedding. It may seem like a small step to most, but to Norman, it meant Normenia was one step closer to becoming a true country.
His original goal to create a place where he could be free had long since been surpassed. So he had shifted to a new goal of turning Normenia into the leading producer of high-end infrastructure enchantments. And returning power to people who had lived without it for a decade was a huge step in that direction. Not even the Council had access to constant or consistent electricity. And if it came down to it, that was a card he would willingly play to get these belligerent assholes to finally fall in line.
He was getting ahead of himself though. The ability to supply an entire city with power was still years away. The plant was only powering street lamps currently. And those didn’t take much energy.
There was also the manufacturing side of building them to consider.
Even though the power plant was relatively small, it was still something Normenia couldn’t produce on its own. He needed to contract out to companies in Southern California for parts. The Commonwealth still had large parts of its power grid working thanks to all the solar power that had been built in the region before the collapse. It was the main reason The Commonwealth was able to support its massive population as well as fight off the Council.
The future was looking bright for Norman, and Normenia.
***
As he sipped the wine, Bertrand cursed that bastard jorik in his mind while keeping his face calm. “So the man finally sold out?” He had been hearing rumors from some of his contacts that the jorik was thinking about selling. It was a perfect opportunity to grab up some more industry inside the city. But the bastard had gone and sold it all to Lord Norman.
And while Bertrand’s underworld was beginning to thrive, he wasn’t dumb enough to go after Lord Norman or even Lausu. He needed to be cautious and take his time. Just like how he had started to rise back in California. That small slice of the criminal underworld paled in comparison to what he had control of now. It had been foolish of Lord Norman to accept anyone into his city who wanted to stay. But it worked out in Bertrand’s favor. It didn’t take long for him to make contact with the more unsavory sorts.
With his charisma and ideas, he quickly took control of the small groups to keep them in line and put them under one umbrella. His new enterprise couldn’t afford petty crime as the guard and Lord Norman’s enforcers would quickly squash any issue. That became even more abundantly clear with what happened in New Cali. He hadn’t had many people in that shithole of a city, but he kept a few out there to keep tabs on what was going on. Which turned out to be a good thing.
Despite the risk, that didn’t mean he would play by these new laws. Bertrand was a free spirit and he only cared about one thing, living a life of money and excess. He had no issues subverting the laws to his benefit, creating shell companies, scapegoats, you name it he employed it to make this dream come true. He even had legitimate companies to help hide his more shady practices. It was all working out fantastically. And he chose the people that worked directly with those criminal interests with extreme care. It was just another way to separate himself from the actual crimes.
He smiled slightly, dying really had been the best thing to ever happen to him.
“I’m afraid he did,” the woman said with a wistful sigh. “Such a loss. That man was so handsome.” Bertrand ignored the airheaded woman’s babbling as he tried to find an angle to make a profit from this information.
He just needed to come up with a plan to make sure that the Lord chose something that would benefit him. His smile grew. “Indeed it is,” he spoke absently, causing the woman to titter in delight at his agreement.
