God-Kings of Lotus

[The Demented One]

Rata-ji goes pale, shocked by both the imperious mean of the child-who-is-no-child, and by his sudden promotion. "Five good men?" he nervously stammers, entirely unsure of himself. "Junpei, my supervisor. Kara. Sanzo. Arete. Yuko." he says, shakily pointing out four men and one woman. Most of them about as young as he is, if not a little older; only Junpei looks older than forty. "They all actually do their work, which isn't really how things are done here. None of them work the guard's books, or the tax registry. They're really all good people, gods bear witness."

He follows Ivory Eyes to the door; not until too late does he catch on to the fact that she's leaving, alone. As she questions him, he stands utterly baffled. Thaumaturgy? The little magics are not unknown in Lotus, but few in the bureaucracy have ever had need of them–save only the fiendish philosopher-bureaucrats of ancient Meru, who calculated taxes by casting horoscopes and bound the very demons of hell to correlate their paperwork.

Walking out into the city of Lotus, Ivory Eyes (and any who follow her) surveys the muscle and mechanism the city, getting a feel for the flow of jade and silver. The fields surround the city, worked from dawn to dusk by the farmers, half-tenant and half-serf. A few pointed interviews reveals much of how the system works: the landowners own the fields, but stay in their urbane mansions, never personally tending to the land. The farmers pay for the right to work a piece of land, planting whatever they are ordered to by the landowners, and entitled to a small share of what they harvest. Enough to live on; nowhere near enough to thrive on. The rest is given to the landowners, who sell it to the merchants, who sell most of it to the Guild. What remains to feed the people of Lotus is rarely enough, and sold at prices that know no compassion for starving children or haggard farmers.

More fortunate than the farmers, though not by much, are the artisans. Their workshops stand between the periphery of the city and its governmental heart, a cluster of brick-boxes, dull and uninspired. Ivory Eyes' survey does not impress her with its results; skilled as some of them are, the craftsmen lack the capital or competence to operate a full-scale business. Instead, they sell what they make to the city's merchants, glorified middlemen.

Operating under arcane trade deals forged with the Guild, the merchants buy the artisan's goods for a pittance, and sell them to the Guild. They are then marketed elsewhere in Creation as authentic Haltan or Linowan handicraft, and sold for much more than they're worth (or at least, so mutter the older and more jaded craftsman). In turn, they middlemen buy up all manner of shoddy goods from the Guild, and sell them for as much as they dare to the people of Lotus. Those artisans who have tried selling their own goods in Lotus have found that they either go under within scarcely more than a season, undermined by their own lack of experience or equipment, or are forced into a price war with the merchants. The result is inevitably the same–the artisan's business folds, and they are forced into an even less equitable contract with the merchants in order to keep their family fed.

Such is the way of the world. The farmers toil, and receive nothing. The craftsmen toil, and receive little. The nobles recline on their lofty couches, and prosper. And above all the Guild, with its puppet-merchants, cheats everyone of their rice and jade.