Debauchery Foothold 1

Tags: EU4 mod/anbennar, waifu catalog, D&D-esque setting, self-insert, company fucks everyone

-VB-

Debauchery Foothold

Chapter 1

-VB-

“So,”the newbie contractor in front of her began as he held the datapad containing the catalog. “You want to send in a contractor to the universe of Anbennar … because you would like to get your hands on some kind of wonderful materials there.”

“Well,” Agent Marika hummed. “They are a daily wondrous material, not a truly miraculous or wondrous material. The two main materials we want to get our hands on are mithrils and damestars.”

Though the man in front of her was a new contractor, he didn’t even look down. Most contractors were too busy staring at her tits to even acknowledge what they were signing. This man? He was meeting her eyes directly without erring. 

Was he a trained soldier or noble? It would make sense. 

“Mithril and damestar… those are mutually exclusive, almost,” he grunted. 

“Oh? You know about the world management wants to send you, too?”

“Yeah,” he replied. “I know enough. Damestar is a specific type of meteor. It’s a magical power source that can be utilized for … basically anything. Mithril, on the other hand, is just a lightweight and sturdy metal, no?” 

“No,” she shook her head. “Mithril is capable of conducting large quantities of mana. That’s why we have customers who want it.”

“Alright,” he nodded slowly. “What would be my compensation?”

“One point per ton of mithril, five points per ton of damestar.”

He raised an eyebrow. “You want me to give you a ton of mithril for one point.”

“Yes.”

“Did we not just establish the fact that I am familiar with this world?” he began, and before she could state her reason, he continued. “If that is the offer you are giving me, then you obviously don’t value me enough. I could use one ton of mithril to turn a hundred Tier 2 soldiers into Tier 3 elites. That’s a hundred points right there. I could offer to trade mithril directly to other contractors. Why would I offer-? You know what? Forget it.”

And again, before she could say anything, his fingers danced along the datapad.

“Wait -.”

Her computer rang. 

[Contractor Catalog filed.]

She froze. 

“I’d rather deal with other contractors first,” he replied as he carefully set the datapad down and smiled. 

Her jaws dropped. 

She was going to raise the price up! She didn’t think that he would just straight up go for a completed catalog, which locks her out of offering him an initial mission. It was supposed to be a test of his intellect and negotiation skill! This was something every agent was supposed to do. 

“Well, if we’re done here,” he said as he stood up. “I’ll be leaving. I hope I won’t have to deal with you anymore, agent. I rather dislike scammers.”

And then he was gone, the catalog completion teleporting him away from her office and to his selected world. 

“That … that …!”

She was going to make him regret calling her a scammer, though. An agent of the Waifu Company she may be, but she still held pride over how well she did her job. A scammer?! No, she wasn’t going to let this go easily. 

“If you want a scammer,” she hissed. “Then I’ll make sure you get a scammer.”

-VB-

Halann. 

It was the name of the world. Closest planet to the local sun and the home of basically most life. It was the Dungeons and Dragon equivalent of the Material Plane except instead of being a plane, it was a planet. It sat at the center of a nexus of many planes of existences - just like the Material Plane from D&D. 

And Mithril was naturally found in Halann’s largest mountain chain, the Serpentspine Mountains. 

In Earth terms (because Halann was more or less Earth-sized), it was a mountain chain that stretched from Beijing to Rome and from Rome to Moscow and beyond. Warhammer Fantasy’s Worlds Edge Mountains would be two-thirds the length of the Serpentspine Mountains. 

And what I needed to do to secure a place there to mine Mithril changed depending on where I just spawned. 

I looked around. 

I was in … a forest. 

Yup, a forest. 

I had no idea where I was beyond that. 

With a groan, I got up. It felt like I had slept a whole week on a flat rocky floor. I stretched and let out a semi-satisfied grunt before looking around again. 

Again, it was a forest. A lot of pine trees, though, which could mean anything from being high up on some desert sky island or being quite far up north. 

“First, I need food, water, and shelter. Oh, and would you look at that,” I muttered as I stared up at the tree.

Then I punched it. 

A crack showed up. I didn’t do anything for a while and watched the crack slowly disappear. 

“Okay,” I grinned. “Minecraft power is working.”

Then I looked through the memories of my second Template and brought my hands together. ‘Focus the mana and imagine.’

The process was as simple as it was fantastic. 

My mind provided the will and blueprint, my mana was the fuel, and the magic was the process. 

And just like that… a literal plastic bottle of water popped into existence. 

I grinned. 

“Water secured. Thank you, Archmage Proudmoore.”

Three Templates were all the power I took … initially. I also had Contractor Interest, a perk that cost 50 points as initial investment and kept paying out dividends (2 points every 3 days) until I got paid 2,500 points. I don’t know how that worked or why, but I wasn’t going to complain. 

This meant that I could get myself (or a Companion) a new template every month or an upgrade to an existing template, which would boost a Tier 4 to Tier 5. In Dungeons & Dragons terms, a Tier 4 would be your high end adventurers while a Tier 5 would be a step below demigods. A Tier 4 would be a threat to conventional forces but a determined Tier 5 can destroy a city by themself. 

And that’s where I was right now. With Minecraft Steve’s template, I was a threat to conventional forces, yes, but that conventional force would be established industries, logistics chains, and the free market. With Jaina Proudmoore’s template, I was a different kind of a threat to conventional forces; I could probably mass teleport a regiment within visual range. And with my last template, Panacea/Amy Dallon’s biokinesis, I could do some creative work with biology.

Combine them together.

I was a teleporting bomber capable of causing hail, earthquakes, and fire everywhere I went during the day and fast building fortresses during the night in total silence. And if I didn’t want to be flashy but deal a lot of damage, then all I had to do was grind farm wheat and sell it to my target’s enemies. Cheaper food generally helped everyone who got cheaper food, after all. Or even sell grain that could grow anywhere at anytime. Or sell monsters that can take down entire companies and battalions by themselves.

But those were for the future. 

Right now, I needed to find out where I was and what I needed to do. 

Now, what did I need to do to accomplish my goals? 

I need to mine mithril and damestar. Mithril was found only within the Serpentspine Mountains but Damestar could be found anywhere… it was just even rarer than mithril. That meant that I needed to get into the Serpentspine Mountains and set up a mining operation. 

To mine mithril and damestar, I either needed to do it myself (possible and likely) but more efficiently and easily, get people to do it for me. To get people to mine for me, I either needed to hire people who were willing to uproot their entire lives to move deep into the mountains… or buy slaves. Depending on where I was, that was possible. If I was in Cannor (the Europe-equivalent), then slavery was banned in many places and hard to acquire. If I was in the Forbidden Plains and regions adjacent to it, then there weren’t going to be slavers willing to sell to me; they would rather eat me or enslave me than sell me anything. If I was in Bulwar (Middle East-equivalent), then there might be slaves… but then again, the only slavers of the region were gnolls and they were more likely to enslave me than sell to me. If I was in Rahen, then I might be able to get a lot of slaves but the mountainous pine trees didn’t quite say that I was near Rahen. 

Then the best way to get people was to hire them or convince them to join me in reclaiming parts of the Serpentspine Mountains. The dwarves, who originated from it but were driven out by the orcs and goblins, will eagerly join me, even if I was not a dwarf myself. Other humans probably won’t, however. 

“Guess I’ll have to go find dwarves willing to join me then,” I huffed as I looked up.

The sun was just rising up, which meant that the direction it rose from was east. 

Southeast. That was the direction I needed to go to. 

If I was in Bulwar or Cannor, heading southeast would lead me to civilization. 

-VB-

Captain Mahrn

1440

“Fuck!” he hissed as he backed off. 

The goblin across from him grinned as it rushed up to him with its rusted mace and shield. Mahrn tried to attack with his longsword, but the arrows constantly raining down on his position forced him to keep his shield up lest he get shot. 

The arrows bounced off of his shield, and then the frontline goblins jumped in to take advantage of his state. And it was never one but always two to four.

He glanced to his left and right and saw that the situation was the same throughout the convoy. 

They had been moving vital goods from deeper within Azka-Evran to the border fortresses when these goblins ambushed their convoy. 

“Don’t let the convoy burn!” he shouted when he saw more goblins rushing at them and some of them had torches in their hands. 

If the materials burned, then the border forts will fall! 

He roared as he intentionally jumped forward. He shield bashed one of the goblins who hadn’t expected his assault and stabbed his longsword into the second. 

He pulled -.

He pulled -.

He looked at his sword and the goblin in shock. It was alive and intentionally holding the sword in its guts.

He let go as quickly as he could as a third goblin tried to smash his head in. 

He ducked, rolled, and got back up. 

In his two hundred years alive, this was one of the hardest fights he was in.

Probably because he and his soldiers were outnumbered ten to one.

“DOWN!” 

He didn't know who said it and why, but it wasn’t a goblinoid snarl.

So he pulled his shield up and ducked behind it with his back to one of the convoy carts. 

Then it came. 

Ice. 

Sharp and thin, they came in droves. 

Everything froze up and Mahrn shivered as an unnatural cold sweeped into his bones. 

Then a human appeared out of nowhere. Wearing attires that he did not recognize, he popped out of a spark of blue mana and crashed into the goblin’s backlines on his side of the convoy.

And once again, ice.

In a perfect circle around him, ice crackled and crumbled to life, freezing everything within it up to the knees. Well, human and elf knees. It got the goblins up to their upper thighs. 

The goblins, shivering and slow now, turned to try to face the human amidst their ranks. 

But that human’s hands were now burning with fire magic. 

“Burn with me,” the human hissed and slammed the magic down into the ground. 

And from the ground, fire roared up from the ground beneath the densest cluster of goblins in the frozen circle. 

Mahrn grinned when he saw the goblins burning up with that infernal fire. 

“Men, counterattack!” he roared as he grabbed one of the rusted hatchets one of the dead goblins near him had dropped and threw it. It swirled in the air once, twice, and then landed blade first into a distracted goblin’s temple. 

---

He put down the last goblin survivor and turned to look at the fledgling human war wizard. 

War wizards were few and far between even among mages. Not every human and elf with talent for magic became a mage and not every mage became a war wizard. 

A war wizard was someone who could turn the tide of battle by themself. 

This human wasn’t a fully fledged war wizard. Those could bring down hail and fire big and powerful enough to breach city walls, but he was obviously well versed in war magic to use his lesser talent in the battlefield so fluently. 

He walked up to the human and gave him a nod. 

“Un’surdasar, human mage. I thank you for helping us from the goblin ambush,” he began and extended a hand for a handshake. “I am Captain Mahrn of the Dusk Eagle Legion. Who might you be?”

“... Just Alan,” the human smiled as he shook his hand. “A mage looking to explore the Serpentspine.”

Mahrn blinked as he pulled his hand back slowly. “The Serpentspine Mountains?” he asked, confused. “Why would you want to go in there? It’s crawling with goblins and orcs,” he said while gesturing to the carcasses of the very monsters who roamed the tunnels, dwarven railroads, and ruined dwarven holds. 

“I feel like there’s an opportunity for money to be made, that’s all,” the human grinned. 

Ah. It was one of those. 

“I see. If money is what you seek, then why not seek employment with the Kingdom of Azka-Evran? Our king would be happy to pay you handsomely to keep you on our retinue.”

The human looked surprised by the offer. “... I guess what I did wasn’t exactly normal around here by local mage standards.”

Oh, the man didn’t know.

“No. You were … powerful. Perhaps not as powerful as the mages who have earned the title of ‘war wizard’ but certainly powerful enough to be a court mage.”

“Maybe,” he hummed. “But I’m still interested in exploitation and exploration,” he said while gesturing to the mountain range that dominated the northern horizon. 

Mahrn glanced at the mountain range. 

The Serpentsreach. It was a lesser part of the greater Serpentspine Mountains. In the long past, there were six dwarven holds that dominated those mountains: the Flint Dwarves of Verkal Skomdihr, Garnet Dwarves of Ovdal Lodhum, Basalt Dwarves of Gor Burad, Cobalt Dwarves of Orlghelovar, Marble Dwarves of Shazstundihr, and Diamond Dwarves of Arg-Ordstun.

Dwarven refugees fleeing the Serpentsreach over thousands of years have told the stories of Gor Burad’s fiery fall, fallen magic wards of Verkal Skomdihr, the crumbling decay of Shazstundihr, and corrupt decadence of Orlghelovar. It’s been thousands of years since anyone heard from Ovdal Lodhum and Arg Ordstun, which really meant that there were no survivors who managed to flee the goblins and orcs. 

And this human wanted to go in there where civilization broke and fell under the onslaught of goblin and orc tide. 

But then again, there were always people who sought to explore the unknown or the forgotten. 

“As far as I know, the Greysheep goblins we killed,” he said while gesturing to the corpses again. “Are part of the goblin group who swarmed out of the Serpentsreach just a decade ago. If you want to enter through the way they came out, then you will need to fight your way through their territory.”

“And the other ways in?” the human asked, interest sparkling in his eyes. 

“The Hold of Shazstundihr is behind the territory of the Marblehead Goblins,” he spat with a snarl. “They hold both way in and the city of Aqatbar. They are an even more formidable enemy than the Greysheep. You might have better luck with the western hold of Orlghelovar, but you’ll have to cross both Marblehead goblin and Mountainhugger goblin territories through treacherous mountain passages before reaching the human kingdom of Ourdia. It is through their lands that you will reach the Hold of Orlghelovar.”

“... That sounds like a lot of work,” Alan sighed. 

“It is. But perhaps if you stay and fight for us, you might be able to earn a title from our king, which you can then use to gather colonists within the kingdom…” he led on. 

The human now looked interested. “Your king would be willing to give me a title?” he asked before glancing at his ear. 

“There are plenty of human nobles in our kingdom,” he smiled, realizing that this might be the way to get this mage tied to the kingdom. “And if you are a particularly high achieving contributor in defending the kingdom and even pushing out the goblins to help us reclaim the lost lands of the Kingdom of Baharkand, our predecessor, then he might offer you an elven bride.”

The mage … didn’t seem to care about that. 

Bah. Not all humans had taste. 

“... If I do all of the work,” he began after a while of just staring out into the distance. “Then will I be able to claim that land as, let’s say, a citizen of the kingdom?”

Mahrn raised an eyebrow. “If you do claim any large chunk of land, then you will be expected to pay that much in tax. But titles give you tax exemptions though you will be then required to provide manpower and - in your case - magical assistance.”

The man definitely looked interested.

“Perhaps.”

-VB-

Nah. 

I wasn’t interested in settling down. 

Sure, there were plenty of individuals across the world who I would be able to profit from. 

For example, the current king of the Azka-Evran? He was at least a Tier 3. A Tier 3 individual was worth 5 points total, capture and sale combined, which was worth five tons of mithril.

But the number of individuals I could capture and sell to the Company were spread out in a vast world, and as time ticked on, they would die from age, accidents, “accidents,” fighting, disease, and more. 

Mithril, though? 

That was effectively unlimited. 

Rare, yes, but the dwarves in this world have been mining that stuff for literal tens of thousands of years and they still haven’t ran out. The Hold of Mithradhum was literally named that because that’s where they found the largest mithril vein and they didn’t run out.

While I might initially get a lot of points from hunting down Targets on the surface, my true path to power on this world and within the Company was through mithril. 

At the same time, it wouldn’t be difficult for me to get some help.

After all, if I joined hands with the Kingdom of Azka-Evran and asked goblin slaves and willing human and elven settlers, then I might be able to kickstart my colonization efforts, no? 

“Hey, Captain Mahrn.”

“Yes?”

While I had initially rejected the offer he made, I still decided to work with him temporarily to keep the convoy safe. 

“If I asked you to not kill every goblin so that I can make them slaves to, you know, work for me in the mines in the reach, you think we can do that?” 

He looked at me and then grimaced. “I… see. Slavery is common where you are from?”

“Not exactly but it’s not absent.”

“I see. Here in the kingdom, we follow the Sar-Arukanas, the Devotion to Light, and slavery is very heavily frowned upon.”

I nodded slowly. “I see. So even slavery of a race that has ravaged your people is still frowned upon.”

He nodded. “The Chosen of Surael must be exemplars of justice and Light upon this world.”

Huh. 

Damn.

This guy was a better person than me by far. 

…

Good for him.

But I wasn’t so good as to not ignore slave labor. Maybe once I make my own nation, I’ll do something like the Old Testament and have a time limit on each slave’s servitude.