Chapter Two Hundred and Sixty-Four - Game of Groans

“We need to go over everything, then plan out what we’ll be doing while we stay in Goldenalden,” Amaryllis said. She slapped her book onto the surface of the room’s dining table, then slid a rolled up map out of her bag and unrolled it.

“I thought we just had to deliver some letters,” I said , bunny ears twitching. “And maybe snoop about, have some fun? Play tourist.”

Amaryllis huffed, a very particular huff that I think meant something like “this is going to take some explaining.” “Things are more complicated than that. I don’t have a good lay of the situation either, until then everything I’m about to say is entirely speculative.”

Awen and I glanced at each other, then back to the table. It felt like she should have been doing this in the Beaver instead of the Dewdrop Inn, but if Amaryllis thought this was the right time... “Okay,” I said. “What do you want to explain, and what will we be doing?”

“The situation first,” Amaryllis said. She tapped at the world map with the tip of a talon, something that I’d noticed she liked doing. “There are four bigger players here, and quite a few smallers ones.”

"I'm guessing Mattergrove isn't one of the bigger ones," Awen said, her expression somewhat pained.

I supposed she was worried about her home.

"I'm afraid you're correct," Amaryllis confirmed. Her talon moved to the west and down, settling over the Seven Points. “Mattergrove has economic ties with Deepmarsh and the Harpy Mountains, and deeper ties with the independent cities to its north, but otherwise, I don’t think they have a big enough stake in things to truly get involved. If a war breaks out, they might be a source of supplies for the harpy and grenoil, but I don’t think they’ll be any more involved than that.”

“Oh, alright,” Awen said. “That’s probably good.”

“So who are the big players?” I asked. “And what’s that mean, anyway?”

“The big nations to watch out for are the Nesting Kingdom, Deepmarsh, the Trenten Flats, and Sylphfree.” She tapped each nation’s capital as she named them. “Deepmarsh is the smallest of these, but they are well-situated. Their marshland is inhospitable to large troop movements, and the grenoil are capable of having big population booms if they so choose.”

“They can?”

Amaryllis nodded. “You’ve spent some time in their kingdom, I’m surprised you didn’t know how they’re born.”

“I never asked,” I said. “Do they do it like... frogs?”

“Essentially, yes. They have pools where eggs are laid by the hundreds. The fittest of these are chosen and are raised to become tadpoles and eventually members of whichever family they’re from. Most eggs are never hatched though.”

“Huh,” I said. I didn’t know what to think about that.

“It’s an important factor to consider in the grand scheme,” Amaryllis said. “But we’re going off topic. The next country to consider is the Nesting Kingdom.”

“Your home,” I said. “Would they go to war?”

“Against the sylph or the cervid? Definitely. We’ve skirmished against the cervid before, and the sylph are long-time enemies.” She touched the mountain between the two nations. “The Golden Peak is a natural wonder that both of us want. Not only for the gold found there, but the ancient dungeons as well. Right now, it’s ostensibly owned by both sides, with everyone having claims over the same area. In practicality, it’s neutral, unclaimed territory.”

“That’s not great,” I said.

“It isn’t,” Amaryllis agreed. “Having fought the sylph before means that we... the Nesting Kingdom, that is, don’t think the idea is impossible. The last war was a long time ago though. Now there are proper airships and new weapons; the populations of both nations are quite a bit larger too.”

“Does that make it more or less likely that they’ll want to fight?”

“I don’t know. People have been at peace for a while, they might not want that changed. And some of the xenophobia has settled down a little.”

I nodded, that was good to hear. “What about the other two? The Trenten Flats and Sylphfree.”

“The Trenten Flats are a problem. Regardless of whether a war is started or not, the nation is an issue. They’ve been expanding a lot. They nearly have cities spanning the central continent. They’re stretched thin across most of that though. A lot of wide, barren swatches with nothing but plains and a few forests. Still, they have by far the largest military, though it is also the least advanced.”

“Advanced how?” Awen asked.

“Cervid airships, as far as I’m aware, are still two generations behind anyone else’s. Their bodies also mean that piloting isn’t as easy for them as it is for a harpy or sylph. Their enchantments are generally of lower quality, as is most of their magecraft. Really, their greatest advantage is their numbers.”

“There’s a lot of them,” I said.

She nodded. “Plenty more than any other nation can field. If it comes to a wide-scale battle, it doesn’t matter that their mages are weaker. A modern, academy-educated harpy warmage will run out of mana long before the cervid run out of poorly-trained novice mages to throw into the battlefield. Likewise for their soldiery. Every single soldier counts as cavalry, being who they are. On an open plain their mobility is a huge advantage. Their bowmen are also quite gifted.”

“Scary,” I said. I could imagine a big group of them charging across a hill. That would be terrifying.

“Indeed. Unfortunately, I think any modern war will be fought in the skies. Which brings us to the sylph.”`

“They have a big army,” I said.

“It’s not only big, it’s modern,” Amaryllis said. “I think only the Snowlands might have better equipped and trained soldiery. It’s a mark of pride here to have served, as well as an obligation. They have... usable airships as well. They lack elegance and I believe any harpy ship could outpace and fly circles around a sylph ship, but there’s no denying that they make up for it in durability and numbers.”

Nothing I didn’t know, though I doubted some of Amaryllis’ patriotic views about ship designs. She had some biases. Airships that looked like ships were nice, very romantic, but there was nothing wrong with big boxy ships too.

It wasn’t the size or the shape of the ship that mattered, but the way it handled and how much it was loved by its crew.

“So, that’s the, ah, players? That’s what my mother always called the people who were taking part in a big political event,” Awen said.

“That’s the players, yes. The big ones, at least. There’s also the Snowlands to the north, who are likely to only defend their borders unless the cervid antagonize them, in which case they might expand southwards a little. The independent cities are a mixed bag. No two of them are similar, except in their scope. For the most part they’re too small to really change things on an international scale.”

“Those are places like Rosenbell, right?” The place where we’d first met Rhawrexdee and where I fought in that tournament.

“That’s one of them, yes,” Amaryllis said. “It’s somewhere in the middle in terms of size, I think.”

I nodded. Those cities likely had a lot of people in them, but they probably didn’t care too much about other countries since they weren’t part of any. “What about the desert?”

“The Ostri? They’ll be on both sides as mercenaries. Likely more of them on the harpy and grenoil side, if only because of geographical convenience. The only other big player on the continent is the Kingdom of Endless Swells, and that’s only because they have a few colonies set up to the west, along the shores of the Moonstruck Sea.”

“Are they nice?” I asked.

“They’re very fixated on the sea and its surroundings. I can’t say whether or not they’ll fit whatever definition you have of nice,” Amaryllis said.

Awen “awa’d” silently. “I’ve met some of them. Traders. They dressed strangely, but they were very kind.”

I nodded. “That covers everyone then?”

“We could go over the groups that make up these players,” Amaryllis said. I think she noticed my pout because she rolled her eyes. “But we should move on. The current situation is somewhat precarious.”

“Because of Reinnewt,” I said. The no-good mean... jerk who had tricked Amaryllis and I into almost getting kidnapped and who had blown up that ball.

She nodded. “In part, yes. Pointing out that he’s likely an outside factor trying to aggravate the current political situation would be a good place to start. But there are a lot of tensions between all these nations. Right now, we need to navigate things towards a peaceful resolution.”

“It’s like trying to calm things down between angry neighbours,” I said.

“And one of them is accusing the other’s dog of pooping on their porches,” Awen said with a barely-restrained giggle.

“Immature, both of you,” Amaryllis said. “But essentially yes. Even if this problem is solved, that doesn’t mean the tension will disappear. Accusations are likely to be tossed around and insults will follow right behind.”

“So even after learning that it’s a stray pooping on their porch, they’ll still be mad at each other because they said mean things to each other before,” I surmised.

Amaryllis glared. “Anyway. The situation is volatile, but I think we can keep ahead of it. First though, we need to know what everyone thinks is going on, and how they’ll move. Which means either spying on everyone, which we don’t have the equipment, people, or experience for, or we use the Broccoli method.”

“What’s the Broccoli method?” I asked. I was Broccoli. I should probably know what that was.

She grinned. “Aggressively befriend everyone.”

I felt my cheeks puffing out. “I don’t befriend people aggressively,” I said. “And you can’t just... weaponize friendship!”

“Not with that attitude you can’t,” she replied. “We need to get information from each faction, in particular the diplomats who will be gathering here. There should be some from every nation, which means that Goldenalden will become the centre from which a lot of important choices will be made. We need to learn what those diplomats know in order to know how to act ourselves.”

I thumped my foot down. “I don’t like any plans that involve pretending to be someone’s friend just to use them. Friendship should be treasured, not commodified.”

“I don’t know,” Awen said. “Forced friendship would be nicer than doing some of the things my mother encouraged me to learn. It’s a lot more honest.”

I thumped my foot harder. “Awen!”

Awen raised her hands in surrender. “It’s like walking from house to house to see what everyone in the neighborhood thinks of the yard-poop situation before trying to fix things.”

I considered it for a moment, then gave in with a nod. “Okay, fine. I wouldn’t mind meeting more people anyway. Is that the whole plan?”

Amaryllis started to roll up her map. “That’s part of it. A lot of it will depend on what we discover. For the most part, if I can represent the Nesting Kingdom, then our goal becomes deflecting and discouraging any open conflict. We want to avoid any war at any cost.”

“I’m sure everyone can get over a few stains on their porch,” I said.

My head stung and it took me a moment to realize that Amaryllis had whapped me with her map. “Stop it with the dog turd analogies!”

I rubbed at the spot between my ears, then glanced to Awen, and we both started to giggle while Amaryllis fumed. She couldn’t resist for long though, and soon she chuckled before trying to hide her own amusement.

“So, what now?” I asked. A glance out the nearest window revealed that it was still midday.

“We have a week to get everything ready, which should afford us some time to reconnoiter between setting up appointments,” Amaryllis said. “I also need an idea of where and when to meet everyone important.”

“Oh! Then we have time for fun!”

***