Prospect's Ledge Winter 2025 Dominion

“Naught is fair; neither love nor war”

You would have to be a blind idiot not to notice the rising tempers in and around the Market Prime of Prospect’s Ledge.  Even the traders tucked away in well-fortified alleys and reclaimed warehouses had grown wary of doing business too openly in recent cycles and the whole economy of disrepute and malfeasance was grinding to a trickle as trust was no longer a coin the denizens were willing to trade in.

The sharp eyes of Jaccomo Castracani looked down from his pulpit, 20 meters above the recorders and accountants studiously hunched over their cogitators and ledgers.  He had watched generations of scribes initiated to their desks, grow old at their stations, and then carried away as a final transaction to the Mercator Pallidus to make ready that important chair for another new initiate. The wheels forever turned, to put their stamp onto Lord Helmwar’s tithes.  To put HIS mark on Lord Helmwar’s tithes!  And he was displeased with the accountancy of late.
Castracani took a sip of the amsec on his lectern, engaged the Catechism of the Audit, and  readied himself to speak.  As he exited his meditation, the Master of Coin pulled at the hanging velvet cord by his side, and a low resonating tone echoed through the cavernous vault.  The hundreds of busy hands stopped in an instant.  The murmur of voices and machinery ceased without so much a cough or a sputter.  All heads turned toward Castracani’s Speaking platform but no face was raised to look toward the Master of Coin as he had called for them to listen.

“The numbers do not deceive.  There is a deficit of faith in the marketplace.  A deficit of faith which has festered and now must be expunged so that the tithes remain unimpeded.  Look to your ledgers!  Trace the balance sheets backward in cycles until each and every one of you has identified the rooting of this disruption.  This is your task, at my insistence.  To work!”

The clatter from below resumed to a roar at the very instant he released his servants and set them at their prey.  “Find who has been interfering with my coin!”, was the clear message
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Week 1

Census Assessor Feddit shivered as he entered the tall smokey narthex of The Basilica Permutacio Nundinae, his breath billowing from his lips.  Rows of tallow sticks burned meekly from the side aisles.  From the sprawling nave the rows upon rows of cogitators and pari-mutuels ratcheted, tapped, and clacked as a chorus of calculations.  No human voice broke the cacophony though timid eyes did briefly rise to gaze in his direction before diving back into their obsessive tasks.  Feddit stood at the mouth of the Mercator Gelt temple anxious to catch the eye of his escort to The Ancillary so that he might present his own tabulations.

In time, a small bald and hunched figure approached down the center of the calculation floor.  He stepped lightly around the stacks of ledgers and snaking cables on filthy bare feet, the hem and sleeves of his cream-colored robes stained black with ink and soot.
“Assessor Feddit?  Your arrival was anticipated some time ago.  The migration accounts are errant without your reports and alacrity has been squandered in the difference.  Were you not instructed to attend before the beginning of the second waxing cycle?  Come!  Come!  He will not be pleased by this delay.”
And with that admonishment the small man turned his back to the Assessor and made his way back through the undergrowth of bureaucratic flotsam and the weeds of conduit.  Feddit fell immediately in tow to the bent man’s wake, trying to imagine how he would explain away his tardiness without condemning himself to servitude or even worse,... demotion.

Whispers among the merchant classes had spread like plague in the recent brace of cycles.  Whispers which suggested that the Master of Coin was unimpressed by the product of their labors and that an audit may be imminent.  This sparked dread in every trade from apothecary to zymologist as each set themselves to double their efforts lest they find themselves culled.  But such whispers were not universally feared.  Among some, there was opportunity in troubled times to reap and impress and all manner of new faces had recently poured into Prospect’s Ledge seeking both fortune and fame.  Some would no doubt raise their stations in the unrest.  Others would vanish in anonymity as the wheel of fortune passed them over and ground their bones to corpse starch.  This throng of optimists were the cause of his delay.  No sooner was data fixed on a group of itinerants then another patch of ruffians would be recognized at the toll crossings and a new data set would be required.  They came in waves.  Not as pilgrims or as families.  These were working groups of a trade which was certainly unsanctioned, and that doubled the documentation he was required to register.  He was more than 11 ticks tardy of his assigned audience.  He only hoped that his thoroughness would balance the scales in his own favor.

Feddit saw before him, as he passed the midpoint of the nave, the towering pulpit of the Mercator Inspector Magistrate Jaccomo Castracani.  It rose in the Apse of the cathedral, bathed in the light of braziers and glowrods.  Servoskulls hovered in the smokey columns which filled the vault, their glowing eyes attentive on the Magistrate in his gilded nest of printed records and dataslates.  At the pulpit’s base stood an entourage of power-armored condotta, stone-faced and projecting menace.  As Feddit stood transfixed in their stare, still 100 meters away, his shoulder was pinched with a full hand, pulling him into the transept chamber to his right.

“Assessor Feddit?”, the voice of his abductor spoke.  This voice was deeper than the short hunched man who had met him at the narthex, but the disdain was similar..  “I am to accept your transcript.  You were expected already.  What is it that you have discovered which is so urgent as to delay His tabulations?”

Feddit’s eyes shot around looking to confirm that he could speak with candor.  His heart thrummed in his chest, his hands trembled around the dataslate he clutched, and the terror of disappointing the Magistrate’s agents combined with the fear of the news he carried, leaving his throat dry and raw.  Feddit steadied his legs, drew in a breath, and whispered the two words he had never hoped to deliver in these sanctified chambers.

“Gang War”
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Week 2