Chapter 3-77 - Required Gear (1/2)

His mouth opened, closed sharply. “Wait a moment, now...” he said softly. Because Bracers were considered an Armor item, and Forsaken could make them, adding Value to the base components, AND tripling the value of the comps.

Or add them by Naming their Armor...

“Soul Ward. Requires five Slots, but only requires seven Ranks of Spellcraft to understand, not fifteen.”

His eyes darted and fingers wiggled, doing the math. I helpfully brought it up on Holo in front of him.

If he could hit a 40 on QL, that was 21k in value, of the 35k required for a Forsaken to do that. That left 14k to be made up... which a Forsaken who crafted the gold first could do for a third of that price.

10 goldweight was still a lot of money, but it was a far cry from the 35 a Powered would require!

He groaned as he glared at the figure, and clenched his fists, knuckles popping like grinding stones. “It’s still too goddamn much money, even if I have to pre-Craft what I have to burn. Anyone who wants to fork up that much goldweight is going to want the final product.”

“So, it’s a revenue question. Revenue is only a short-term issue.”

Briggs sighed again. “You have a plan to make goldweight hand over fist?” he asked calmly, and I had everyone’s attention.

“Commune with Nature is only a Valence V, and I already know where there’s a crapload of raw ore to be pulled out of the ground. With Summoned Elementals, I can probably pull a thousand goldweight out of the ground in a day, easy.”

Everybody stared at me, throwing out that number so casually.

“So, borrow on good faith. There’s no sum you can’t pay back just by staying at your Forge long enough. All I have to do is live six or seven months, and I can pay back all your debts, with whatever amount of interest they charge.”

One of Briggs’ shooters, name of Seaver, blurted out in disbelief, “Are you serious?”

Briggs just raised his hand. “Believe her,” he said firmly, no trace of doubt on his face. The shooters all stared at me.

A thousand goldweight was five thousand pounds of gold. That was one hundred and fifty million dollars of gold a day!

“Okay, let’s assume you can just pull a couple of tons of gold out of the ground. Ideally, we’d still want it all processed by Forsaken to triple its value, before we burn it.”

“Ideally,” I agreed with him. “It’s wasteful, but we need Gear now, not after a few gold pieces of work per day per junior Primos. I’ll be perfectly happy to supply a thousand whitesmiths with the raw material if you can round them up, but I’m not going to be wasting my time waiting for all that to be set up. If that means burning gold and platinum at full value, that’s exactly what I’m going to do.”

After all, it was going to be my money.

“But you don’t want to lose the time before that happens,” he sighed. “And I admit I do not want to, either.” There was a big shiny sack of gold in front of him. Why wouldn’t he grab it? He smiled grimly. “Someone’s going to be thinking they are guaranteed I will be making money for them forever.”

“Gold is pretty much a strategic resource now, as I recall. How much gold or platinum do you think you can get your hands on?”

Instead, his eyes turned to Master Fred. “Heavenbound Hall tends to sit in the middle of the cooperation of the various churches, Master Fred. While I’ve got contacts in the Church of Aru who would lend me gold based on my past ability to earn it back, Heavenbound Hall can reach ALL the pockets, right?”

I glanced at Fred. Admittedly, my current knowledge of events was much higher than it was before, but what the public knew, the media knew, and the powerful knew... were always different things, unless you were taking extreme steps, and I wasn’t totally familiar with the business world and the society of the wealthy and powerful.

I knew a lot of names and faces now, and had ideas of families, clans, and guilds, and the businesses they controlled. But I didn’t know how those businesses related to one another in actual power and influence.

The Heavenbound having influence with all the Good churches was not much of a surprise, but having monetary pull was something different than influence.

THE HALL IS GENEROUS WITH THOSE WHO PUT MONEY TO GOOD USE, AND DON’T DIE, he confirmed for everyone. BUT I’M AN ACTIVE WARLOCK. I DON’T DO MUCH ON THE FINANCIAL END, EXCEPT WHAT I PICK UP INCIDENTAL TO MY WORK.

“So, you need to ask. Get your contact on the phone, if you would?”

He only tapped twice, and the holo of the gnome came up. Obviously, he’d been on standby. “What’s the verdict, Fred?” the gnome asked quickly.

“A separate matter we are discussing, Master Gregorigori,” I answered for him smoothly. “I have another question for you. How much can the Heavenbound Hall loan us in goldweight or equivalents, assuming guaranteed repayment?”

“Whoa.” The gnome’s holo adopted a thinking position. “Is there a particular number you are looking at?”

“A goldweight a day for at least Master Fred, Commander Briggs, and myself, for up to the next six months.”

“Almost five hundred goldweight?” His voice got kind of small. “Wow, Miss Traveler, you do not think small. How are you guaranteeing repayment?”

“You can choose to think of it as securing it against the Item Construction capabilities of the three of us, but in reality, within that time I will reach Nine and be able to pull out enough raw precious metal without too much difficulty.”