Makers

Campaign

The church scribe sat at his desk, scribbling away at the figures he had been assigned. He looked up in irritation at another cleric doing the same task as he. That man had an insufferable cough and was currently struggling not to let it free. The resulting half choking was twice as distracting as the cough would have been. Why didn't the fool just go to his chambers already?

The scribe was not normally so irritable but he was in irritating circumstances. He was an engineer, not an inquisitor, and he chafed at his current assignment. Economic projections! He was being wasted on economic projections!

With a final glare at his choking compatriot the scribe returned to his figures. There was no need to run them again. What the Prime Inquisitor planned to do was disastrous and it really didn't matter significantly how disastrous it would be. Not after a certain point.

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"Madam, I must object. Your chits became common currency due to their stability, and their relative rarity, not to mention their remote source." The sternly visaged and elegantly dressed Treasurer of Rosoph said angrily. "If you devalue them like this it will be ruinous for our markets and businesses. Half of the royal treasury is chits! And you know this! You helped to make it happen!"

"I filled your coffers with prayers, displacing empty promises and worthless metals with them. This is not something to complain to me about" responded Taffen. Her tone allowed no response and indeed the Treasurer stared at her in open-mouthed incredulity until she continued.

"This is not about your economy, it is about my religion. I will no longer bind my clerics to this outdated code against proselytization. They will preach and they will gain converts and they will accept their parishoners' tithes as is the Church's due."

"They will pay lip service to your prophet and you will hand out chits in their thousands to them" blustered the Treasurer. It was a simple statement but came out as the complaint it truly was.

"As is THEIR due" said Taffen, with finality.

"Madam Inquisitor, you are intentionally devaluing our effective trade currency. Rosoph IS trade! You will destroy our economy with this activity. This is an act of war!" The Treasurer had been growing steadily flushed and by the time he bellowed out his last statement his face had reached a fairly intense shade of red. Taffen stared at the human corruption standing before her until she had fully suppressed the urge to reach out and crush his face like the tomato it now resembled.

"No, little man. It is an act of faith" she finally replied."Faith in a holy man and faith in the science he preached. It is faith of a thing you can't put into piles and count, which is why comprehension of it eludes you."

Taffen spun on her heel and strode from the toad's office, her business was complete and she cared not if his remained unfinished. There was no longer a need to feign politeness to this person. She ignored his hails of "Madam! Madam, please a moment!" and made exit, flanked by two church armsmen.

With Rosoph now effectively funding this branch of her campaign she could turn her attention to the true foe... The famed weavers and makers of Caddaway, whose wanton manipulation of Reality itself was stealing the promise of life from her world.

Most of her local targets had fled or gone to ground with the Inquisition's arrival in the city, but not all. Some had faith that the famed independence of the merchant state would protect them. Her intelligence service had located and were tracking several of these weavers. As these were culled of their abomination and became petitioners of Elod they would, as always, be her best source to identify additional weavers in hiding. Her interrogation techniques had been remarkably successful in cleaning out the infestation of tribal makers that once infected the fishing and shipping villages of Pell's coastline.

She would momentarily control the purse of the Rosoph Garda and had already purchased the loyalty of key Council members. Between the two she had a tenuous control over the nation state itself. It was time and past time for the Inquisition to start acting on its accumulated information. It was time to join battle with Darkness and the first skirmish would be right here in Rosoph.

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Did you like what you read? Let me know!

The first draft of Makers (that's what you're reading now) is a story in progress.

If ever there was a time that your opinion could influence a story for the better, this is the time. Tell me what you liked, what you didn't like, and what confused you.

Thanks for reading!

-Jim