Part XIV: Scrolling Through History
Chapter 7: The BIO – Blackwood Importation Office
Timeline: AO 304-318
“Who? What? When?” I woke with a start, still in my library. The Eye of Seraphiel was still radiating its threads of the fate of the Drokka, yet I could barely muster the energy to give it more than a passing glance. I sighed, reaching for the blood-wine in my goblet—my 300th cup… or maybe 400th? But who’s counting? All that mattered was that the potent elixir was finally doing its job, dulling the sharp edges of my boredom.
“Enough of these damned threads,” I muttered, my voice slurring slightly as I took another deep gulp of the blood-wine. The rich, metallic taste used to be intoxicating, a reminder of the power I held over both life and death. But now? Now it just made me feel groggy. The endless visions and prophecies swirling within the Eye had begun to blur together, a never-ending tapestry of fate that had long since lost its charm. Manipulating mortals and gods alike used to be thrilling, but now… even the grandest schemes seemed tedious.
I shifted in my seat, trying to shake off the drowsiness that had settled over me like a heavy blanket. My eyelids drooped, and before I could stop myself, I drifted off again, the goblet slipping from my grasp and clattering to the floor, staining the stone all around.
Yet The Eye kept spinning its threads, oblivious to the fact that its master was now snoring softly with a blood-wine stain my slaves would never be able to get out.
What follows are the threads of fate – some of it I remembered, some not. See what you make out it…
As one vision solidified, I found myself within the darkened chambers of Monty Redstone, the rotund Coinmaster whose cunning knew no end. The room was dimly lit by the soft glow of fat candles, their light casting long shadows across the countless ledgers and chests filled with gold coins [now rare] that lined the walls. Monty’s fingers, thick and bejeweled, danced over the pages of his secret ledgers. His mind was consumed with the complex calculations of his latest scheme—the Drokkma Easing project.
Although the king’s mind was consumed by his desire to crush the Derkka, what Hacktor failed to realize was that his wealth had increased dramatically – whether he acknowledge it or not. For Monty’s money minting scheme that funneled wealth from the common people to the central government, and by extension, to the shadow elites who truly held the power.
The minting of Drokkettes, now composed of 90% copper, flooded the economy. The royal coffers swelled, and with them, Monty’s own fortune. The war had brought untold suffering to the commoners, yet Monty’s wealth had only grown. His money minting operation had siphoned the lifeblood of the Drokka people, transferring their hard-earned wealth into the coffers of the central government, and more significantly, into the hands of Monty and his shadowy allies—the Ruks. Even the royal family, though more ignorant than complicit, had reaped the benefits. The price of bread had soared to such heights that only the wealthiest could afford it, while the common folk starved.
“Mmm, that’s good.” Monty gobbled another biscuit as he paused over his ledgers. Then he leaned back in his comfortable chair and let his mind wander in another direction – thinking about all the things he’d like to do with Hecla – in private.
The Coinmaster well knew that the people’s protests had grown louder with each passing day, their cries echoing through the streets of Rhokki Pass. Yet, Queen Hecla, the de facto ruler in Hacktor’s absence, dismissed their plight with a wave of her hand. Monty knew Hecla had lived her entire life as a royal and therefore he also knew Hecla had no special attachment to the common people of her clan. Sheltered as she was inside the palace, the queen only ever heard the inklings of complaints from Monty and her advisors – yet she was always annoyed to hear of anything less than full praise for ‘her’ reign. The suffering of the commoners was nothing more than a distant annoyance to her, one that she refused to acknowledge.
“Let them eat cake,” Hecla had laughed, her voice dripping with disdain when last Monty had spoken to her about another round of protests.
Monty knew Queen Hecla was certainly smart enough to understand the people’s plight if she cared to do so, but spending time thinking about the common people wasn’t high on her agenda. Yet the Coinmaster also knew that the queen’s patience was not infinite. The constant wailing outside the palace gates had begun to grate on her nerves. She’d recently turned to Monty demanding a solution to quiet the crowds. “Come up with a solution, or I’ll have General Heraclez and the Secret Servants start chopping off heads to silence them.”
Monty remember paling at the thought of violence within the mountains—not out of concern for the people, but because it would disrupt his delicate economic manipulations. “It’s merely a perception problem, my queen. Give me a month, and I’ll solve it.”
Yet as he sat in his chambers eating fine foods, drinking the most expensive wine, and counting all his money, Monty Redstone was ill at ease. His options were limited, and he knew he couldn’t reverse course on his Drokkma Easing project.
Desperate to placate the queen and the restless populace, he finally devised a cunning plan. “Two Weeks to Flatten the Derrka!” Monty laughed, rubbing his greasy hands over the soft tunic that struggled to cover his belly.
Reaching for his pipe, he relaxed and played through the scenario in his head. he would dispatch his minions—town criers, bribed scribes, and paid-off scholars—to spread a new message throughout the kingdom. They would preach of the need to tighten belts, to sacrifice for the war effort, and to trust in the wisdom of their ancestors.
“Two weeks to flatten the Derkka,” they would all soon be chanting! It was a slogan destined to spread like wildfire among the people. It was a lie, of course. A complete sham – Monty well knew that there was no beginning or end to those two weeks, just an endless cycle of suffering and sacrifice.
But the people, ever the sheep, would believed the words of Monty’s minions.
“They’re suckers catchy slogans,” Monty puffed on his pipe. “It’ll work like a charm.”
“Ugh, what a mess,” I grumbled as the blood wine spill while rubbing my temples. “I need a new hobby.”
But since The Eye was still going and I was too drunk and tired to do anything else, I I tried to focus on the visions forming within the Eye. The images came and went in disjointed flashes, like the hazy recollections of a drunken night out.
I’d seen Monty Redstone, the bloated Coinmaster, fussing over ledgers and gold, his beady eyes gleaming with greed as he came up with his “Two Weeks” plan and I snorted in amusement—Monty’s antics were always good for a laugh, even if they were painfully predictable.
I’d caught that flash of Queen Hecla. Let them eat cake, she said? Classic. I’ve seen that play before.
What would the next yarn show?
The vision shifted, and I now stood in the Grand Hall of The Guilds at Rhokki Pass, where Monty held court with the merchant leaders. The air was thick with the scent of incense, a haze of opulence and corruption that clung to the walls. Monty, ever the fashionably rotund windbag, addressed the room with his usual bravado. He had come to them with a new idea—the Blackwood Importation Office, or BIO. A way for the government to nationalize the entire Blackwood trade under its control.
“The government,” Monty declared, “must take control of the Blackwood Trade to ensure equitable distribution and stable prices.”
Now the idea for the BIO was developed as a by-product of Monty’s propaganda machine – during their “Two Weeks to Flatten the Derkka” speeches, Monty had his army of ‘influencers’ continually hint upon a somewhat obscure and never fully explained theory that the people’s plight had more to do with the intricacies of The Blackwood Trade and not the King’s war or his wealth (rather conveniently no mention was made of Monty’s wealth). The speakers therefore often floated the idea that the central government should perhaps take over control of the Blackwood Trade for a short time (the aforementioned ‘two weeks’) in order to more ‘equitably’ manage the Drokka’s demand for Blackwood while also using a standardized system to keep prices under control. Naturally this was promoted as a benefit of the people, but in reality The BIO was nothing more than a front for Monty’s greed, a way to charge hidden taxes on the all-important Blackwood imports while lining his own pockets
As he spoke to the wealthy merchants who headed the guilds, Monty explained to them how his idea for The Importation Office would benefit them too, “We’ll use I.O. to oversee Blackwood imports – ensuring that top tier businessmen like yourselves have access to the spoils of Hacktor’s great war!”
The merchant leaders, eager to profit from Hacktor’s war, agreed without question, for although their customers had suffered during the years of war, these Drokka had only ever benefitted by following Monty’s leadership.
Now what Monty didn’t tell his merchant partners, nor the Drokka people, nor the shadow elites that were his partners, nor even Queen Hecla, was that his I.O. was set up to use two sets of ledgers – one that was shown to the public and one that was known only to Monty. (Two sets of accounting books? Yet another first by Monty Redstone – the world’s first financial wizard). It was upon this second ledger that the I.O. was secretly charging a hidden tax on Blackwood imports. Naturally Monty didn’t keep his promise to ‘share the wealth’ and instead used the BIO’s secret taxes (and his continued minting operation) to make himself richer than even the royal family – yet he kept that fact well concealed, lest the queen ever grow suspicious.
And so, the Blackwood Importation Office was born, its true purpose known only to Monty. The people were told that the government was taking over the Blackwood Trade for their benefit, to keep prices under control. But as always, the promises were hollow. The price of Blackwood continued to rise, and the common folk suffered even more.
I leaned back in my chair, trying to make sense of the scenes flickering before me, but the blood-wine had dulled my usually sharp mind. I could barely keep track of the tangled mess of lies, schemes, and betrayals unfolding in the Drokka kingdom…
In the end, not withstanding the many influencers who tried to convince the people that their lives were always ‘soon’ to get better, sadly things only got worse for most of the Drokka. The war dragged on, and the promised “two weeks” stretched into months, then years. The commoners, once eager to believe in the cause, began to lose hope. They had tightened their belts for far longer than they had been asked, yet victory remained elusive.
Hacktor’s army did not flatten the Derkka, and the war showed no signs of ending. The people grew disillusioned with the monarchy, with Monty’s promises, and with the war itself. Protests erupted once more, this time targeting the Blackwood Importation Office. The people demanded answers, demanded relief from the ever-rising prices and the endless war because, despite the increased supply of Blackwood (as a result of Hacktor’s success at expanding Drokka control of Blackwood Forest), the government’s promise to use the BIO to control the price of this all-important commodity did not prove true – instead, the Drokka people only ever saw the price of Blackwood go in one direction – UP!
To combat this problem, Monty recruited more of the Drokka’s Intelligentsia to help him ‘educate’ the people – sending highly respected scholars (Read: totally biased, very well compensated sell-outs) throughout the mountains. Armed them with ‘unbiased’ reports that detailed the ‘science’ of the economics of the situation in ‘simple’ terms that anyone could understand, Monty’s scholars ‘proved’ that the Importation Office was in fact ‘stabilizing the price’ of Blackwood and that any rise in prices was in fact the result of ever-increasing costs to transport Blackwood — that transportation being adversely affected by the nefarious actions of The Golden Hand and his Derrka goblins who continually raided the Drokka merchants.
“Garrick’s Price Hike” was the new slogan deployed to trick the people in casting blame away from the government and onto a convenient boogeyman – and it too worked like a charm.
With Monty’s propaganda men convincing the people that the BIO was not only protecting the price of Blackwood, but also protecting the distribution of this hard-to-acquire commodity, the noise around the palace died down (although Heraclez’ secret police also aided in that endeavor). With the end result that Queen Hecla could enjoy her peace.
“Ah, Monty, you are a genius!” Queen Hecla giggled one day, lounging with a glass of wine in a bath filled with as much emeralds and rubies as it had water. Hecla was openly displaying her body to the Coinmaster (although she had no intention of letting him actually touch her). “Your methods are complex but the results are amazing!”
Having already secretly enjoyed the pleasure of the Queen’s daughter Livy on numerous occasions, Monty had long lusted for Hecla. Trying to control his lecherous gaze, the Coinmaster’s jowls jiggled as he stuttered. “Th-thank you, m-my queen. Let the rabble complain. After all, the needs of the state must come first, right?” He took a step towards the alluring Hecla, yet the queen’s sudden frown stopped the man in his tracks. Therefore he quickly bowed and took his leave, “My queen.”
Once her advisor left, Hecla took another sip of her ultra expensive wine and sighed, “Ah, Drokka are so simple – could this game be any easier?”
I found myself nodding off again, the flickering images merging into a strange dreamscape where Monty was riding a giant coin, and Queen Hecla was chasing after him, waving a loaf of bread. Then came a view of the battlefield, usually a source of dark satisfaction – yet it only made me yawn.
“Hacktor, Hacktor, Hacktor…” I mumbled, watching as the king hacked his way through his enemies with single-minded determination. “Still fighting the same old war, are we? No imagination, these mortals…”
My vision focused more on the king’s war – amidst the chaos and bloodshed Hacktor’s eyes wild with a fervor only Ghast could ignite as he swung his blade with deadly precision. But even as he cut down his enemies, I could see that the weight of the war bore heavily upon him. He had no idea how much gold filled his coffers, nor did he care. The war was all that mattered to him, and he was blind to the suffering it caused.
But the rumblings of discontent had begun to reach even Hacktor’s ears. His army, once loyal and eager, was growing restless. The glittering pseudo-ghasts that his men wielded were pale imitations of Hacktor’s own weapon, and they knew it. The problem among the men was simple — while Hacktor never suffered more than a scratch in battle, lots of young men in his armies perished. Yes, the glittering Ghast won the day wherever Hacktor fought, and yes by now most of the men had pseudo-ghasts if they wanted them, but it was long past clear that their blades were nothing like Hacktors and often inferior to their regular weapons so, when given a choice, most Drokka preferred to fight with their own blades instead. More importantly it became clear that the army was losing men at an alarming rate. Furthermore, King Hacktor was but one man — even with his magical weapon, he couldn’t wipe out all of The Derk by himself. He needed the other Herr generals to win their battles too — often they did, but just as often they did not – ghasts or no ghasts.
The Herr generals, once steadfast in their support of the king, began to question his strategy. They grumbled about tradition, about the foolishness of fighting in The World Above. Hacktor scoffed at their counsel, dismissing their concerns with a wave of his hand. He pushed his armies further into the Forsaken Lands, determined to crush the Derkka once and for all.
It didn’t help matters that the aged scribe Grak continually begged Hacktor to visit him in Chaldrea to discuss what he claimed was secret wisdom that he’d recently uncovered. Hacktor had previously forced Baldur’s trusted amanuensis into ‘retirement’ by sending him back to Chaldea – the ‘capital’ of all things Scribe-related – and the king now dismissed Grak’s requests out of hand — often throwing the scribe’s missives in the trash without breaking the seal — for Hacktor had no time to be bothered with outdated prophecies and other assorted mumbo jumbo.
And in spite of all his problems, it should be noted that Hacktor was NOT weary of his crown.
He didn’t let all the naysayers bring him down. He had his war. He was still married to Hecla. He still had his children (what was left of them). And in Hacktor’s mind, his people had never been closer to accomplishing the goal Rhokii had entrusted to them – namely wiping Mittengarten clean of the curse that was The Derkka.
Most importantly, on the battlefield, Hacktor continued to enjoy personal success – now fully convinced he was invincible, he no longer just called for Garrick of the Derkka, but advanced his boasting to include the gods.
“Go! Run you vile spawn. Tell your masters that Hacktor Derkillez is waiting!” He screamed, waving The Ghast on high. “Summon Nektar. Call upon Mighty Gwar. Cast a spell for Hekubuz. It matters not to me. Yet, tell them if they do not come soon, I will come looking for them! For I am The Ghastwielder and not even a god can stop me now.”
And THAT was the foolish remark that was the beginning of Hacktor’s fall…
And with that, I drifted off again, leaving the Eye of Seraphiel to weave its threads in peace, while I dreamed of simpler times—times when gods ruled the heavens, and mortals were merely pawns in a game that was far more entertaining than this.
The Apocrypha of Azazel 