The Way Ahead

Edwin didn’t end up leaving Tara for a little while longer. A couple of questions expanded beyond their initial scope, which led into a few additional questions, and… well, being an ‘Ally’ involved a fair number of benefits he hadn’t anticipated. He was given access to various citizen services, such as access to the Grand Library in the capital city of Xarenia (one of three, apparently) should he ever manage the lengthy, lengthy trip to a city almost a continent and a half away; consultation with Rizzali for Skill advice- not that he’d likely change his current setup, and even Tara admitted that the gnome would so readily discuss System subjects with anyone who showed even a modicum of interest that it didn’t make any practical difference so long as he stayed local to Vinstead; he was allowed to use the postal system if he so desired, and could be a recipient of mail as well, though he’d need to get a tracking token if he wanted to ensure his mail showed up in the right city. Even then, he’d have to check in at the postal office to actually get said mail unless he wanted to declare a permanent office and pay a recurring fee for delivered packages and letters.

Tara also warned Edwin that his status as an Ally meant that Shash’falara, the local governor, was more likely to take note of him as compared to when he was just another anonymous adventurer. So, he ought to expect receiving a summons to appear before her if he stayed in town more than a day or two. Given he had no desire to get caught up with courtly politics, Edwin made a mental note to get out ASAP. He wouldn’t be able to dodge it forever, naturally, but it was still something he was more than happy to foist off onto future-Edwin.

That conversation had led naturally into Edwin asking about what the Empire was actually structured like, which Tara seemed unusually willing to explain in detail. When he had asked if it was alright he was taking up so much of her time, Tara admitted that she had paperwork that she was trying to avoid doing. Which… fair enough. Edwin could sympathize.

In any case, the Empire officially had sixty provinces, though at any given time there were in practice usually only 45-50 due to overlapping governorship, catastrophe, rebellion, or a host of other complicated legal stuff which Edwin found himself completely lost in and even Tara admitted she didn’t know all that well.

Each province had three individuals more or less in charge; the Governor, who was almost autonomous in their authority; the General, in charge of the military; and the Administrator, who handled all the massive amounts of paperwork that kept everything running.

The governor was broadly in charge of everything, akin to a local king or lord. The general was both approximately equal to and yet subordinate to the governor, running the local military recruitment and defense organizations. While they were to report to the governor and were supposed to follow their orders, the general was still paid by and ultimately loyal to the emperor.

The administrator was in a similar position, and was tasked with paying taxes to the empire, organizing the local registrars, keeping the local postal service running smoothly, and maintaining local information networks with the goal of keeping both the governor and emperor informed of all the goings-on in the region.

Enforcers like Tara were also apparently on this same level of governors, generals, and administrators in that they reported almost directly to Xares himself, but were expected to cooperate with their governmental peers, even if they had no administrative power themselves. They were dispatched anywhere it would be either impractical or impossible for normal guards and soldiers to deal with a situation, be it a rampaging monster, a particularly strong bandit group, or other ‘unusual situations.’ Most enforcers knew each-other and tended to be on good terms with one another, meaning their effective range of action and authority extended well beyond the single province they were tasked to maintain, though it was usually considered good courtesy to stay within one’s home province. Edwin was fairly certain there were countries smaller than Rhothos, so even that ‘limited’ area was still massive.

What struck Edwin as remarkably… forward-thinking of the empire was the amount of autonomy the governors had. Essentially, so long as neither the province nor its inhabitants didn’t start openly rebelling, they kept paying their taxes, and they upheld a few imperial laws, the governor could act as they saw fit. The skill control was Empire-wide, as were property laws and other forms of protection for citizens, but other than that, there wasn’t much. As a result, there was a tremendous amount of diversity in governmental structuring.

Some provinces, like Rhothos, had a strictly hierarchical and pseudo-feudal structure, with the governor appointing magistrates who ran shires, and some of them appointing mayors who managed townships… Meanwhile, the Susa province near the capital was practically a constitutional monarchy, with democratic elections and everything.

Some provinces had governors who acted like petty tyrants, but those rarely lasted long. Some strictly limited who could become citizens rather than subjects, while others had the default as citizenship. Every once in a while, there would be a province that tried something novel, and those....

Edwin found it incredibly fascinating until his eyes glazed over, and his brain refused to listen to any more of the empire’s politics. Tara was at least easy enough to talk to, but that still didn’t make the specific legal differences between a natural citizen and a developed citizen any more interesting. Tara herself admitted that she wasn’t entirely certain of the difference herself, and was mainly just trying to talk herself through it all in the hopes it would jog her memory.

Even though she didn’t talk much about herself, Edwin was still able to pick up a few tidbits about her past. She had only been an enforcer for a few years, was originally from Ecbatana, one of the capital cities, and she’d had a very busy few years since moving out to Rhothos and Vinstead, putting down several bandit groups which had sprung up in the time preceding her predecessor’s retirement.

She’d also managed to pry out a fair bit of information about Edwin’s past as well, and he managed to stay on topic, explaining parts about Earth when asked for clarifications. Tara had been quite adamant that any political system with no absolute authority figure presiding over it would mean politicians would never do anything even halfway useful instead of arguing for argument's sake and purposefully just getting in one another’s way, which… yeah, he couldn’t really argue with that. They had mutually agreed to not get mired in a debate about individualism and set the topic aside for the time being. It wasn’t a productive use of their time, not when he had so much to take care of still.

Tara had seemed oddly accepting of the fact that there wasn’t magic back on Earth, which he didn’t know how to process. But then again, Inion hadn’t seemed surprised by it either, so… well, he didn’t really know what that meant. He told himself it wasn’t important to try and feel better, though it was undoubtedly going to come back to haunt him somehow.

All in all, Edwin found it quite informative and useful. The rest of his day couldn’t be described nearly so positively, though. He really, really didn’t care about the logistics of ration-making, which would apparently be the primary use for his talsanenris berries. He had brought so many, as it turned out, that they weren’t even sure that they’d be able to use them all. They eventually worked out a deal where he’d get paid approximately half their weight in silver this time, and between selling most of his berries and his spare healing salves he was paid a small fortune for his relatively minor crop.

In the end, he got twelve grai (gold), which was more than enough to buy a horse and build a good-sized house/workshop. Or, buy a fancy suit. That wasn’t even an exaggeration, the store he found himself at to get a replacement shirt, and a few spare changes of clothing, casually said that if he wanted to be fashionable they had high-class outfits starting at merely ten grai.

In the end, he settled for something much, much cheaper, and though he was still splurging he found himself in possession of three insanely comfortable tunic-shirts, one in a deep forest green, the other in similar shades of blue. They were also quite durable, even withstanding him directly stabbing the cloth with his knife, and were apparently waterproof. Plus, they would stay clean and resist ‘a lot of’ hazardous materials as part of the waterproofing Skill. Overall, a fantastic investment. They weren’t self-repairing, sadly, but you couldn’t have everything.

He also got one outfit in a lighter green for Inion, so her leaf-outfit would stop ‘accidentally’ slipping at times. He very nearly didn’t get it, but figured that a silver was well worth winning that exchange in their ‘spars.’

Sure, he might be getting a little careless with his money, but he had also found out that what was barely a week of work for him paid him what most laborers would take some six years to earn on their own, so he wasn’t too concerned about being stingy. Apparently talsanenris just didn’t grow very well outside of the Verdant or something, and nobody had actually managed to get a crop of them to fruit before. He wasn’t sure why it had been so easy for him, but he also wasn’t complaining.

By the end of the day, he’d gotten almost everything he had wanted, and had a jug of what was essentially olive oil in an improbably heavy flask on his hip. Apparently the bigger-on-the-inside trend could also apply to containers as well, though it allegedly was a Skill on the oil, rather than the flask. He’d test it anyway at some point. Flour, dried fruits, vegetable seeds, salt… he hadn’t been sure how much of his list he’d be able to afford, but the answer was apparently ‘yes.’

Though he didn’t commission himself any glassware for his alchemy, he was sorely tempted to. The cost of such things helped dissuade him, though, as he could easily blow through his large-yet-small earnings all at once if he wasn’t careful. No, he’d keep things simple for now.

He stopped by Rizzali’s office before he left at the end of the day, asking for a bit of advice on how to speed up some of his slower-leveling Skills, mainly Seeing and Flexibility in the hopes the gnome might have some trick to their leveling speed. Sadly, he didn’t. He did find out that Seeing was generally accepted to just be a slow Skill to level, but it didn’t matter much because most people had it their entire lives.

Leaving the city was also fairly uneventful, though he was now laden much more with gear and supplies than when he first entered, he wasn’t stopped by any guards or, incredibly, even any pickpockets. He was gone before sunset.

There was still more to do in the city, naturally. He wanted to try to get a healing license, which apparently involved a week-long course and a test, see if he could get some blacksmithing and glassblowing instruction, and look into what it took to buy an incredibly-elusive true magical item (not counting the minor household magic items made from Skills which everyone used). Not to mention he should probably get some armor and actual weapons, though that would probably fall into the same trap as getting glassware….

He could have probably spent months doing all sorts of things, but he didn’t want to stay too long. Both because Inion still hadn’t found him and he wanted to make sure she hadn’t gotten into too much trouble and also because he wanted to get out of Vinstead before the governor was able to try and meet with him.

Fortunately, he didn’t need to look for Inion. As he left the city by the gate he entered through, she slunk up to him from the long shadows cast by the setting sun.

“No luck?” he prodded.

“...No.” She admitted, “There seems to be the same sort of effect that kept me in the Verdant around the city itself. The gates don’t have it, but…”

“You got stabbed again?”

“They’re fast, okay? I could probably get by them, but it would still be so annoying and I’d have to deal with swarms of them and…. Yeah. It’d be annoying on the best of days.”

“And this isn’t the best of days.”

Inion shook her head in agreement.

Edwin chuckled darkly, “Well, how much do you have in you tonight? It’s been a long day, but I can still push on for a while longer. I wouldn’t mind trying to get to the waypoint we were at last night, but it’ll be dark by the time we get there.”

“I don’t need sleep.”

“But you do need rest.”

She shrugged, “Not unless I do a ritual, usually.”

“Fair, I suppose,” Edwin conceded, “Guess we keep going.”

As promised, Edwin’s shirt did indeed fade away around sunset, shortly after they had left Vinstead, the threads unravelling and dissolving into silver motes like so many stars shortly after darkness set in across the landscape. He ignored Inion’s playful whistle as he donned one of his new shirts. As light as it was, it still felt oddly heavy in comparison to the essentially weightless Skill construct that he had been wearing.

It was about midnight by the time they reached their destination. Edwin gratefully flopped down on a mattress, his pack carefully placed next to him. He wondered for a few minutes how they were always empty when he came around, but before he could really ponder it too much, Inion started singing and it knocked him out like a magical lullaby.