plans for the future

There were no working smithies on this level of Tut 'Tel, forcing Alex to look through a secondhand armor shop. He found what he was looking for easily enough, but the store clerk was unresponsive to any questions that were not directly about the price of the wares.

Alex eventually made his selection and sold his old gauntlets to get a small discount. The process was dull enough to leave Alex unsatisfied even though he had what he needed, but the lack of human interaction made the whole event feel hallow and meaningless.

Alex took another stroll around the block to analyze the drones who lived and worked here. The more he watched the more he felt a mixture of pity and disappointment in these people.

When the shadows grew long Alex headed towards the Shadow Scryer. The inside of the place was surprisingly packed considering how dead the city felt in general, making it a minor challenge to locate Raven in the din.

Raven was seated at a small table in the loft overlooking the rest of the main floor, his mood even more pensive than that morning when he and Alex had parted ways. Alex dropped his pack on the floor next to the railing and sat down on the stool across the table.

"Are you as ready to leave this city as I am?" Raven asked.

Alex shrugged, "Tut 'Tel has way of making me want to leave, yes."

"You and me both. I avoid it as often as I can, and stay no longer than I must."

"Between you and me I'd like to fix this place, although I don't see a clear way to help the people here."

"How heroic," Raven rolled his eyes, "Unfortunately for you no one here wants to be saved, they don't think they need saving, and if you did attempt to save them you wouldn't be treated like a hero, just a meddler."

Alex waved in a non-committal way, "I'm not a boy hero anymore, I couldn't get a shop clerk to say anything to me besides the price of the goods I was looking at. I can very clearly see that the citizens don't want to be saved, but I still want to meddle in the affairs of this city. It'd be hard to make it worse here, but despite there being a great room for improvement I also don't have any clear ideas on where to begin."

Raven took his eyes away from the room and studied Alex. At length he broke the silence, "You're serious aren't you?"

Alex nodded, "Had some time to talk with Julian on the way down and we spent a lot of time discussing him looking for opportunities now to leave a legacy. It got me thinking about wanting to do something to leave the world a better place than it was when I born, only issue I'm having is I've very much limited my marketable skillset to stabbing things until dead."

Raven sighed, "I see the dilemma. As as much as I'd love to let you loose on the clergy of Tut 'Tel the bloodbath wouldn't change a damned thing in the city and would only get you remembered as a usurper in a perfect world, and a tyrant in a more realistic one."

Silence fell between them.

"You can't..." Raven trailed off, "You have to build outside the city. If you can build a new market district outside the city you can draw the lower classes and merchants into a place where the priests cannot exert religious authority over their actions. The Street might know how to recruit labor from the slums to build a new guild post here and probably some warehouses. There's more space outside the city than inside and despite fears about the desert it's actually quite safe near the city.

"There's an old abandoned quarry due west from the city right near the trade routes where building materials could be gathered less than a day's journey from the gates of Tut 'Tel, and it would also make a decent place for a mercenary company to set up. Would be able to oversee the quarry and patrol for bandits at the same time, merchants would appreciate safer roads and there's not much hassle trying to get a fief of land out here because there's a great lack of lords to claim ownership of lands."

"Are you suggesting that I build a castle at the crossroads?" Alex was curious.

"Not at first, maybe later if you want one. I'm suggesting that you build a small fort and farm in tandem with the quarry. People are naturally lazy, but if there's a place where they can work and live better than the slums in easy walking distance then even the people in the slums here will be willing to take their chances, especially if they have children. What you offer at the fort are opportunities, opportunities give people hope, and hope is where people find a sense of purpose. Once people feel a sense of purpose they'll abandon the systems that took away their sense of hope and purpose."

"And I suppose Jenida would enjoy being able to send convoys to a place with less scrutiny than Tut 'Tel."

That got a grin out of Raven, "A simple nice perk. I'm sure we can ask the Avatar for some aid as well."

"We?"

"Sure. We. This is our plan now. I want to stick it to my old man, assuming he isn't dead of old age or boredom."

"And bringing hope to the slums is just a happy side effect for sticking it to the man?"

"Naturally."

Alex chuckled, "Well it's nice to have clear priorities."

"We should talk with my mother too. She can work as a local point of contact for anything we try to implement here too...assuming she feels like it."

"No harm in asking. But first I'm hungry." Alex made an effort to get the attention of a waitress.