Celestial Hymn 10

Celestial Hymn
Chapter 10

-VB-

My men-at-arms immediate stormed the now dead septon’s house with the sight of the slit throat of said septon shown to every single one of them before they went to

Sufficed to say, the implied consequence for failure (not what I intended but what they asked afterwards) spurred them on with the speed of hell’s escapee and eyes of a desperate detective.

They found what I wanted.

And they found lots of it.

-VB-

Brownspear Town (because it wasn’t a city) faced my wrath the very next day, which was also when my Celestial Forge acted up and then quieted down without getting me anything.

I walked into the town with only ten men-at-arms, called up all of the town’s leadership, and sat down in a private room.

I did not shout, yell, or destroy.

Four men and one woman sat in the room with me, and only three of them looked ashamed by what their town did yesterday. The woman looked confused and the last man looked affronted.

“What might this be about, milord?” the woman, the head of the town’s weavers and tailors, asked me.

“Yesterday, a mob from this town approached me with weapons and demands with a septon at the head of the mob. The septon, a very rich man, asked me, once he was close enough that no one else would hear us, for money to disperse the crowd.”

The woman looked at me disbelievingly with wide eyes and a pale face. She looked around the room, snapping her head from left to right to take in everyone’s faces, body languages, and lack of denial.

“For daring to extort his lord, I killed the septon.”

She now looked faint.

“I have come today to exact my demands on the town. Inability to agree or negotiate with my demands today will mean that I will have to carry out the full punishment smallfolks pointing weapons at a lord demands.”

I looked around the table, and the three ashamed men looked even more ashamed, especially when the matron’s face started to grow thunderous.

“What have you done?!” she shrieked at the men.

“We did what we thought was right!” the fourth man snapped back.

“And you are?”

“Robert, milord,” the gruff and stubborn man grumbled. “Of southern Brownspear.”

“And what was right?” I asked him.

“We thought that our lord dabbled in magic.”

“And picking up weapons and pointing at your lord was the right decision?” I asked.

“We-!”

“That was a rhetorical question, Robert. Keep speaking like an idiot, and I’ll put you down like an idiot.”

He shut up after that.

“Does it matter if I dabble in magic? Have I sacrificed people like the Targaryeons? Have I conducted some dark rituals that fallowed the fields? Have I destroyed your lives by extorting you for money?”

He didn’t respond.

“Have I not made your life easier? Are you suggesting that washing your hands before eating is magic? That bathing in the public bath I helped construct is magic?”

He looked down and away.

I turned to the others.

“You could have petitioned me. You could have asked me. You could have even spied on me. I’m sure that last option was not only viable but easy, considering that so many of your townspeople and kin work for me. Instead, you listened to an obvious corrupt man, a septon who was fatter and richer than his superiors, and rebelled. Had any other been here, you know as well as I do that dying would be the least of your concerns.”

They trembled as I laid out the facts and options.

“I, however, consider such a response to be unjust. As unjust as you have acted towards me.”

No one objected.

“I saw at least a hundred and fifty smallfolks, mostly men. Assuming that only half of them were the heads of their families, this makes Brownspear in a quarter revolt.” I doubted that only half of them were the heads of their families; Brownspear, as I came to know it, had roughly two hundred and fifty-ish families, but of the two-fifty, thirty lacked a mother or father and fifty lacked grandparents. “I will not point out any single individuals that I remember the faces of. Instead, I will increase the tax on all forms of income and levies. Specifically, I will increase the levies by another ten percent and taxes by eight percent.”

The woman looked aghast. “Milord, we cannot survive such an increase! Please have mercy!” she choked out.

“Agatha, ask where Samuel, Johan, and Yuren were yesterday,” I countered.

She paled and then fainted. I did just name her husband, her firstborn son, and her eldest grandson. By right, I could have them all executed and end their lineage because it wasn’t just that members of her family raised weapons against me, it was the eldest patriarch, the current head of the family, and the heir of the family who did so.

Celestial Forge popped up in my mental space, sparked, and then fizzled out. Nothing again, huh?

“Even if I did dabble in magic, it is no concern of yours,” I added with a glare at them all before continuing on with my decree. “I know exactly how much you can take. I keep a strict record of how much you pay, after all. Living will suck for the next five years for all of you. That is exactly the point of this punishment. You live despite your crime.”

The four men bowed.

I stood up from my chair.

“Have two hundred men ready within a week. I will be doing more construction, and they will be working as levies, not paid workers.”

Which meant they would be fed but not paid.

“Yes, milord.”

“Good. Don’t make me have to do this again, because it won’t be as pretty this time.”

-VB-

With the additional levies, I began the construction of a second wall surrounding my keep. At about four hundred yards from my moat-less keep wall, I intended to

I, of course, got permission to do this. See, the thing about any feudal society was that military prowess, defensive and offensive, was the key to power. Without it, no financial, mercantile, social, and political power could exist. Upgrading a keep, as such, was a means of power.

Most lords did not take kindly to such a move from their lessers.

Fortunately for me, my Lord Paramount was Renly Baratheon, a man eager to obtain new and exotic art, so I sent him a glass kintsugi cup. Kintsugi was the Japanese art in which a broken ware was fixed with gold to fill in the cracks or edges.

The result? A one-of-a-kind glittering and shining cup.

He was very happy to grant me the permanent right to expand my castle as I saw fit (within my lordship’s limit, of course) in exchange for an art piece only he had.

(In a letter accompanying the official and legal certificate that gave me the right to construct whatever I wanted, Lord Renly asked me to not make any more of those cups unless he gave permission, and if I agreed to his request, then I would be further granted rights not many lords had).

The second wall would touch up against the town, and played a role in what I intended to do in the future. See, I knew that leaving the town alone, which grew in power thanks to me, would be a bad idea. Such towns, once they gained enough power, would try to gain their independence. It was just the natural trend where power was concerned. The mob earlier this week was just the tip of the iceberg, and I refused to let it happen again.

For that reason, I intended to not only expand my keep into a proper castle but also incorporate the town into my castle.

They would be dependent on me, not the other way around.

Never again.

(... Also, it would protect the town better if any skirmishes or wars come to my lordship.)

I also reported the wrongdoings and crimes of the septon using the evidence I found in the dead man’s abode, and Lord Renly gave me a commendation for rooting out a wicked man but also scolded me for taking justice into my own hands. However, the evidences absolved me, so I didn’t get into any trouble. Hooray.

-VB-

A/N: we really don’t have luck in getting those cheap goodies, huh? 3 chapters and 4 thousand words later, we got nothing.

List of Celestial Forge Assets:
Crafting Artisan - Artisan
Skills Magic - Dark Crystal
Makeshift Weaponry
Ar Tonelico Database
Attendant: Servitors
+400 points