“So what is the most pressing thing that we need to discuss?” Braydon asked Colin, he already knew what Nela and Father Odom thought to be the most pressing issue, so he saved addressing them for now. ‘My study gets really crowded when we have meetings now. If there are any more new people, we’ll have to think of getting a room specifically for meetings.’ Braydon thought as he looked around the room. Besides himself there were 5 other people in the room. Steven and Gerald were there as always when Braydon was in the room. And that was because Rhydian and Roan were out taking care of their duties elsewhere, otherwise it would have gotten even more crowded.

“Now that the most pressing construction has been undertaken, we should really be considering improving the infrastructure of Cliforge. Now that the population has effectively doubled, the newly built housing has made Midbury effectively a town now, with enough supporting villages to make food for an urban population. I would advise making walls for it and establishing a permanent garrison, as well as digging wells and other smaller projects.” That was no small feat that Colin was asking. Sure the walls would be nothing in comparison to a well established town like Mapjess or a city in all but name like Wathamalin. But to unify the running of Midbury into an urban system and build all the required infrastructure to turn it into a full fledged town was still going to be a large project.

“And do we have the manpower to do such a project? I presume the guilds in Wathamalin already have jobs lined up for the people we hired and setting up a town is going to take a lot of technical expertise.” Braydon’s concern was not so much with money, infrastructure projects were not so costly as they were time and labour intensive. And he had a lot of spare money right now anyway. His mine was now exporting iron to the capital, Wathamalin and Narabun. Not to mention the merchants in the south. ‘Wait, the merchants in the south.’ Braydon realised that he had sent Colin to go and deal with them and still needed a report on that.

“There should be enough labourers once sowing the fields is finished and by then we should be able to hire the guilds again without any major problems. But the issue there is with tools, we have a shortage of tools right now, which will likely delay that as we wait for the Blacksmith’s Guild to finish our orders.” Colin mentioned the problems they were facing from a lack of tools, which got Braydon thinking.

“You just went to the south to talk with the merchants there, are any of them selling tools? It might cost more than asking the Blacksmith’s Guild but it would be faster. And how did the talks go?” Getting tools for the many new farmers on his land was a must have, as most of the food that the common people ate were produced themselves, the rest coming from trading with merchants that passed by. Delaying harvest due to planting crops late could come with severe consequences later on, and it would be harder to deal with now that there were far more people than before.

“They might be able to get some for us in future, but in the short term it is unlikely that they will be able to get much in the way of farming equipment. The closest place that produces large amounts of them is Wathamalin and we are already dealing with them, and the travel time would take just as long as ordering new tools from Wathamalin. But other than that, the talks went well. There were several merchant who were interested in the iron, but large scale merchant companies are the only ones with the money to take it in large enough amounts to be worth it for us.” Colin had been very productive when he went to talk to the merchants, Braydon hoped it would mean that more would be coming to his land. Word of mouth was a very potent force among the merchant class.

“And how many companies were interested?” Braydon hoped it would be more than one, if there was only one taker, it would be harder to get a good price than if they were competing for his goods.

“There were three, two are roughly the same in size but the third is much larger. And they all have different backers. The Sunny South Group, the Burn Merchant Company and the All Ezaes Merchant Union all expressed interest.” Colin mentioned three names that Braydon had varying levels of recognition of.

He had Never heard of the Sunny South Group, but the other two he had heard about before. The Burn Merchant Company, like the name suggested, was a company that was under the ownership of Duke Burn, and by all accounts it was very successful. It was the largest noble owned merchant company in Fiveria, larger and more successful than any of the other faction’s merchant groups, not that every faction had one. Only Duke Ryder and Earl Blake also owned one, at least that people knew of. The All Ezaes Merchant Union was the other group that Braydon knew of, it was hard not to.

The Union was the largest single group of merchants on the continent by a long shot, and it’s area of operations spanned almost every nation in Ezaes, even the Ciai petty kingdoms. It should be known that that was no small feat, pirates ran rampant there and it would take almost a literal army to defend a merchant convoy from raids if they travelled by land. Only the Leighian League was able to pull off something similar, and that was an entire nation run by merchants, but the Union was not backed by any country at all. It was a collection of merchant companies that banded together to form an even larger force some centuries ago. It was run by a council of all the companies in the Union, of course in reality that council was dominated by a few companies that held more sway than the rest.

“The Merchant Union took notice already? Not surprising really, they have merchants everywhere. And, more importantly, who are Sunny South? I’ve never heard of that group, if they rival Duke Burn’s company in size then they must be quite good at what they do.” Braydon was not really surprised that the Merchant Union would have noticed a profitable venture already, they were successful for a reason after all. He was more curious about who the Sunny South Group was, he knew that it was not owned by any of the factions, at least openly, he already knew the names of those companies.

“From what I was able to find, it is owned privately though I could not find any noble or faction behind them. But from the rapid growth that the company has shown in recent years, it would be surprising if they were not backed by someone.” Colin’s words raised Braydon’s suspicions, normally it would take many years for a merchant company to get to the size of Duke Burn’s company if they did not have the backing of someone as powerful as the Duke. The nobles would not be so kind as to let such a juicy and rapidly growing bag of denars sit in the hands of some nobody without applying heavy tolls and taxes.

“I might be able to figure that out.” It was here that Nela interjected in the conversation. Finding out information was definitely more in her field than anyone else in Braydon’s employ.