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-VB-

Hans von Fluelaberg

"Your Grace," I greeted Prince-Bishop Gion of Chur as I took a knee and kissed his ring.

The middle aged man allowed it to happen and cleared his throat. "I thank you for your welcome," he told me with a blank face. "I\'m here to follow up on some of the concerns that have reached me. Let us discuss in private, but before that, let\'s go through the town. It looks magnificent."

"Of course. Your carriage -," I nodded and stood up.

"I wish to walk," he interrupted me with a smile with bright curiosity in his eyes as he glanced around the western gate\'s entrance. Like the eastern gate, the western gate and wall denoting where the town began and ended was made out of wood because I didn\'t get to upgrade them to stone yet. But that was something I intended to fix within the next five years. If nothing else, then I had enough stone from the constant flow of stones from the local mines.

I turned to my house retinues and servants who\'d all come out to greet the prince-bishop. "All of you are dismissed. Back to your original duties."

They all bowed and went off in an orderly fashion. I then led him through the town. He walked just fine, being only in his early fifties.

"... It\'s impossible," he said after only a minute.

"Your Grace?" I asked as I glanced at him as we walked through the town.

"A town of this size doesn\'t exist anywhere but here," he said. "The very nature of the mountains and valleys prevent such a city from existing. After all, it\'s hard to feed thousands of people from farming these valleys that reach less than a two-thirds of sunlight that the wider plains of Po Valley and Bavarian plains do," he added. "But you managed it. I\'ve heard stories of your venturing in agriculture. How you went around the entire Compact to help people with their problems and troubles, even parts of members who have no direct use to you." He smiled at me. "So it is impossible, yes, but I think that impossibility is a thing of the past."

I smiled in return with genuine pride. "Thank you. I\'ve worked hard on it."

"Oh, I bet you have! Your town certainly has, too. Look at those buildings. Most of them are at least three stories high, and there are some that are even built into the mountainside! This is the kind of thing I\'ve never seen anywhere else, and I have been to Pavia, the city of towers!"

"A city of towers?" I asked him in surprise.

"Yes. That city has been building towers since before the 1000\'s, I believe. They do it for the patricians to show off how rich they are! Foolish," he huffed. "Those towers are all narrow and long, barely holding enough space for a staircase up the entire tower\'s height. But your buildings here. They are all for people to live and work in."

I cleared my throat. "It can get a little dangerous," I replied. "Since most of these buildings use wood as the frame and flooring, fire is a problem I have to address one way or another."

"Oh, I bet you do," he chuckled. "Fire in a regular house is a beast we can barely contain. Fire the size of those buildings? I\'m glad I won\'t be living here."

I sighed. "I am getting the people to build with bricks, but even then, I need a way to put out fires quickly and have that method in the hands of everyone and their mothers."

"What other way is there but sand and water?" he asked me.

"Well… I\'ve actually been experimenting a little, Your Grace." Then I began to explain to him how I have "rediscovered" from an "ancient text" how to make sodium bicarbonate from limestone, water, and air, and how it drove away flames…

"Ah, so you are not only a competent leader of men, builder of cities, merchant of luck and profit, but also an alchemist?" he asked me with a deadpan stare. "Why not be a miner, too?"

I paused. "Ah, well -."

"You\'re a prolific miner, too? Are you a farmer as well?"

I laughed nervously.

He snorted amusedly.

"Dear me, the strongest lord of the Alps isn\'t content with just being a lord. Whatever shall we do…" he hummed as we continued to walk. Halfway through the town, he suddenly stopped and frowned. "What are those houses over there?" he asked as he pointed northward.

I glanced over. "Ah. That\'s the non-Christians quarter," I replied.

For a moment, Gion looked like he was about to frown before he nodded. "It is good that you keep them separated," he noted. "It keeps the regular people from straying from the path of God."

"..." It was risky but I felt a genuine need to speak up here. "I do not believe that."

He glanced at me but didn\'t say anything more. Was that an invitation for me to speak more or did I not want to talk about it right now?

He nodded. "Then that is what you believe."

The tour of the town continued in that fashion on a bright note, and we finally reached my castle.

Unlike most of the structures of the town, my fort was actually stone because I did manage to renovate a little bit at a time thanks to my insane strength, coordination, and incessant digging underground for materials.

"You built this yourself?" he asked me.

"I did," I replied. "It used to be made out of wood, but I\'ve been working on changing it out with stone a little bit at a time everyday. It helps that the stonemasons of the city got the stone ready for me to use instead of me having to spend precious time chiseling the stones on top of the renovation."

He gave me a deadpan stare. "And you\'re also a stone mason? Is there something you don\'t know how to do?" he asked me half-seriously.

I shrugged. "I think I haven\'t tried priest before?"

He snorted. "Something tells me that you wouldn\'t fit into a monastery life." He paused. "Or do very well. Who knows?"

---

A lunch meal later inside the castle, we finally got the privacy the bishop wanted.

It was just the two of us in a small room away from most of the fort. Hell, there weren\'t even any guards stationed outside the room, not that either of us needed one with me here.

"So we are finally here," I said to him as I leaned back into my chair. Both of the chairs weren\'t the more barebones design that I preferred but the thickly wool padded and silver inlaid designs fit for higher nobles. It was also easier on fragile and older bodies. "What is it that brought you all the way out here to discuss with me?"

Bishop Gion looked at me with a frown.

"It seems that there is trouble brewing in Bavaria," he sighed with a grimace. "Rumors of the Duke of Upper Bavaria minting only half silver pfennigs have reached me along with people fleeing what they see as the start of something horrific."

I blinked.

Half silver?

I didn\'t do that. I only mixed in like … a tenth. Or a quarter. At least those were my instructions. Were Henry\'s smiths over in Tyrol going gungho with the project?

"That … does sound like an issue," I nodded. And then decided to play dumb. "But it\'s just coin in the end, right? If I can use it, then it shouldn\'t be a problem."

"Boy, that is not how coins work," he deadpanned at me. Success! "Even though I was a mere abbot before becoming a bishop, even I knew what debasing your coins meant. What is a coin, Hans?"

"... What we use to exchange goods and services."

He paused. "Well, yes," he muttered. "But that\'s not all. Each coin has a value in and of itself. They are silver. They are copper. They are gold. Each of these metals are, by themselves, valuable. So what happens if you mix in some other metals that people don\'t value? Like lead?"

"... The value of the coin goes down."

"Yes! But only if people notice it," he nodded. "And when that happens, people start panicking. Their trust in the coins and the people who minted them. But the people are not important. What\'s more important is that the laws were broken by a lord in a public and unrecoverable manner. This will get the emperor involved, and if not, then at the very least, the neighboring lords will. You came to ask if you needed help preparing to prevent the coming Bavarian crisis from spilling into the Compact."

My eyes widened.

Well… would you look at that? A non-noble member of the Compact actually came to me first to ask if I needed help.

I smiled sincerely. "I suppose there will be more people coming over to the Compact, then. Would it hurt if Chur, not the city but the Barony of Chur that you have under your control, to accept some of those refugees?"

"I can with ease. The Unruly Year left a lot of land available to settle, so this will not be a problem for me."

"Good."

After that, we got a little bit more in-depth about coordination of the Compact. I felt a little guilty about not being able to tell him about our scheme that caused Bavaria\'s future problems.

-VB-

Anton Luhr

Everything took time, and leaving everything behind also took time because, well, he wasn\'t leaving everything behind, now was he?

Anton had done his best to convince as many members of his guild, friends, and associates to leave Munchen, and in the process, managed to gather himself a caravan of considerable size, especially after he proved that the newly minted coins being distributed mostly outside of the city were … subpar.

This was now a group of nearly a hundred people with a dozen mercenary guards.

Anton glanced over toward the low fort. Its tall walls now felt oppressive to look at where as before he used to feel that it was a safety net from foreign attackers.

Because that was where the new duke administered the duchy from, and he had intentionally allowed his realm to go to waste. And from the way there was not a single response from the duke and his council despite the fact that there were already rumors of the debased coins…

He saw a crisis in his hometown\'s future, and that hurt him a lot more than he thought it would.

It was where his parents and ancestors were buried, after all.

He sighed as he turned to look at all of the people waiting for his call. And then he turned to his guide, the man who claimed that he successfully smuggled goods out of the Compact.

"You know the way?" he asked the smuggler.

The unevenly shaved man nodded. "Yeah. I\'ll get ya there as long as the reward at the end is what you promised."

Anton nodded. He promised this smuggler three gulden to guide him and his caravan through the safest and quickest way to the city in the Alps.

"Then you have me, mate," the smuggler grinned.

Anton then turned to the rest of the caravan. "Alright, let\'s get moving! We\'re heading toward Memmingen!" he shouted and the people started moving, whipping the horses and cattle pulling their wagons and carts. Most of them just walked next to the baggage laden wagons.

He turned to look one last time at the cobblestone streets and the busy marketplace.

There was a very good chance he\'ll never come back.

But staying wasn\'t an option right now. He could be taking drastic actions beyond what the immediate problem warranted but he didn\'t think so. Not when this debasement of coins was the first official-unofficial act of Duke Louis IV.

Anton turned back toward the front of the caravan and took his last steps out of Munchen.