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-VB-

Simon Zahringen, Count of Heiligenberg

He took a deep breath and let it out slowly as he stared out of the window of his solar. The heavy rain outside was like a mirror to his inner turmoil and the state of his fief\'s finances.

Eight years ago, his father left home to throw his lot into becoming the King of the Germans.

He came back in a casket.

His mother, who was not the best when it came to finances, spent away all of the fortune his father and grandfather had gathered over the course of half a century. Though he wanted to be upset with her, none of it had been squandered, merely used for all things that were, at the time, necessary.

When he took over as the Count of Heiligenberg five years ago, he found himself with a crisis on his hand.

His line of Zahringens possessed two fiefdoms: the County of Heiligenberg and the County of Rheintal on the other side of the Constance Lake. While Rheintal was definitely the richer domain, Heiligenberg and its surrounding lands were his ancestral lands and also where he got the majority of his levies from in the event of conflict. Rheintal, though, was a land of petty knights; majority of the smaller villages there were all given to knights, and only Rinegg and Altstatten paid their taxes directly to him.

But right now, he wasn\'t sure if he could keep them both. His house was severely in debt.

"Milord?"

He looked around to see Clerk John waiting by the open door, and not stepping into his solar without permission.

John of Lindau was a clerk he borrowed from the Mayor of Imperial City of Lindau. The mayor, Frederick, was a good friend of his from his childhood, and probably why he let him borrow a clerk indefinitely without any fee except to the clerk. He was famous for some silver counting, but he couldn\'t be that famous if Frederick lent him out.

"Come in," he sighed.

John did… with a stack of parchment, which were all sure to hold some sort of report.

"How was the tax collection?"

John looked a little troubled. "There has been … issues with the harvest, milord."

"I know. You were there when some of the commoners came to ask me for leniency on future tax."

On top of his house\'s debt, this year\'s harvest had been bad for some inexplicable reason.

In his county, there were eleven villages: Altheim, Hattenweiler, Unterrehna, Wintersulgen, Betenbrunn, Beuren, Leustetten, Markdorf, Immenstaad, Strass, and Weildorf. This was excluding the castle town and the seat of his county Heiligenberg itself. There were other villages, but most of those were either the fief of his knights or barons. Elven villages were those who paid him their tax directly. And of those eleven villages, ten village chiefs came to ask for tax leniency.

Ten! The villages that hadn\'t come to ask for leniency was Immenstaad, and that\'s because they fished a lot of their food. They paid their tax with salted fish, but the volume of it was low because they counted the salt used in salting the fish as part of the tax. Bastards.

"Just … tell me how bad the damage is," he sighed.

"Very well, milord. As you know, milord, the County of Heiligenberg has a total of 11,000 acres and Rheinstal has 14,000 acres for a total of 25,000 acres to your name. In a normal year, you would have received approximately 14,000 bushels of wheat, 20,000 bushels of barley, 100 ells of linen cloth, 800 tubs of butter, and 1,900 silver pfennigs.

"This year, we were only able to collect 9,550 bushels of wheat, 12,092 bushels of barley, 47 ells of linen cloth, 688 tubs of butter, 1,100 pfennigs, and … 300 and a half salted fish."

… A fifth? He lost a fifth of the tax?! Even if he was generous and considered the 300 (and a half) salted fish to be worth 500 pfennigs, that didn\'t change the calculations at all!

The upkeep of his one hundred thirty men-at-arms for the year alone would be 5,000 pfennigs! If he sold all of the fish at exactly 1,200 pfennigs, then he would still be behind 300 pfennigs in coins! Selling all of the linen ells wouldn\'t net him 200 pfennigs, so he would have to sell at least a tenth of the butter.

Just to pay off the men-at-arms.

And then there was the servant upkeep, clerk pay, "late fees" for his loans, loan payment…

He didn\'t have enough. Or if he did, then he couldn\'t tell.

Simon felt his shoulders droop.

He wanted to cry. He really … really wanted to cry.

"Ludwig," he called for the guard who should be outside his door.

Ludwig stepped into the doorway and bowed. "Present, milord."

"Please call the retinue captain. I must speak with him in private."

"Yes, milord."

And then he was off.

"Give me the reports," he said as he extended his hand and gestured to John to hand over the parchments. John did, and Simon placed them in front of him.

And he began to look through the clerk\'s barely acceptable handwriting. He had an extra rag on the side that he was counting with, and he smear charcoal for each thousand bushels of wheat and barley and for each one hundred pfennigs.

When he stopped and checked…

He wanted to cry.

The clerk had done his job a little badly, so he had an extra 200 pfennigs to spare… but that was less than a tenth of the principle needed to be paid off this year alone, never mind whatever else he needed to pay.

He … he couldn\'t. He was barely hanging on last year. This? This will ruin his house if he didn\'t solve it somehow.

But he already used every single trick he knew and then some more he learned from John here.

"Milord…"

He looked up and saw the guard captain standing next to John. From the unease that he saw on the man\'s face, the captain knew that something was about to drop.

With a trembling sigh, he dropped his head. "Captain Ruprecht, please relieve thirty of the worst performing men-at-arms from my service."

"... Yes, milord."

And then he was gone, leaving him alone with John again.

"Milord, do you have a plan for the … deficiencies?" he asked with a dark undertone asking if he was planning on extra means of taxation.

"This isn\'t something extra taxing would solve," he grumbled. With how small his fief was, he might be able to collect maybe 1,000 pfennigs, but that would also mean that tax gathered next year and beyond would be smaller. If the harvest for barley was a nearly a third less than what it should have been, then his peasants surely didn\'t have enough to eat, especially since they would have to set aside 1 to 2 bushels back into each acre plot next year to grow more barley.

If he collected 12,100 bushels, then that meant that the peasants had 105,000 or so bushels. Assuming roughly a third of his land was used to plant the much more productive barley, then another 15,000 bushels needed to be kept as seed for next planting season, leaving 90,000 bushels for the peasants to use. Assuming that most of it was used as animal feed, he would see a decrease in butter and barley tax next year. If his peasants got scalped by the tax collectors and both barley and wheat were overreported, then there will be less people able to pay their taxes next year, either through fleeing the land or death by starvation.

So extra taxation might solve this year\'s deficiencies but it would compound and make the next year worse.

"..." He wasn\'t even going to bother checking Altstatten and Rinegg***. Any and all tax that came from those cities always seemed to get swallowed up in some need one way or another. If it\'s not the roads that needed to be fixed because of a flood, then it was something else. Never mind the fact that it took half a day of walking just to get there from Heiligenberg.

He stared at the numbers before frowning. "John."

"Yes, milord?"

"Do you … know any lord who are rich?"

"... I know only one with that description, milord."

"You do?"

"Yes. A lord who is rich and someone that I know."

"Who?"

"Baron Hans von Fluelaberg, milord."

Simon looked at his clerk with eyes.

"The rumored battlefield monster?" he asked, aghast.

"Yes, milord. I do not know much about the baron\'s battlefield prowess, but he is someone to learn from. From what I remember, he will not be hostile or wary of you just because you are a noble."

"Truly? Then all of those rumors…?"

A man who rose from among the commoners to become a baron by violent means. A butcher on the battlefield. An ignormaous of the noble customs and deeds -.

"I know not, milord. But why do you ask?"

"... Help me prepare a letter for him."

-VB-

Hans von Fluelaberg

It took me a month to get a dye factory started by buying land on the southern end of Davos and a little bit removed from the village anyway. The reason why we did this was because that was the direction in which the water flowed. The Albula River, which Davos sat on top of, was one of the tributaries that flowed into the Rhine. The Albula flowed into the Hinterrhein which then flowed into the Rhine which then flowed into Lake Constance and back out against as the Rhine River.

A dye factory would obviously use a lot of water and have waste water as well, even if the volume of waste water would be nothing compared to post-20th century\'s waste volume. Even if the waste water would contain nothing that wasn\'t natural, it still would be unhealthy to introduce that into drinking water supply, which was why I bought land that was down river of the village.

The factory wasn\'t built yet; it was still in the planning phase. I needed to find a steady supply of the dye materials, equipment to help turn the materials into rock, and etc etc.

If the dye factory succeeded at making the dyes and dyeing the fabrics we could provide here, then I planned to sell it not to Venice but Free Imperial Cities to the north. Specifically, I was very interested in Kempten and Memmingen.

Kempten was the center of the Allgau region, which meant that sale of dyed fabric there could easily spread throughout a region and generate demand faster than starting at a border town or city with a market and trying to expand from one end to the other.

Memmingen, on the other hand, was at the center of a burgeoning salt road between Lindau and Bohemia, the very same salt road that had its origins in the salt mines developed by Duke Henry\'s sister and my wife Isabella\'s cousin, Empress Elizabeth of Carinthia.

While selling at Kempten would allow me to dominate the luxury fabric market there, Bohemia was the richer and far better investment. Unfortunately, any investment in Bohemia would take years to mature compared to a faster return from Kempten. Kempten, on the other hand, was a very limited market compared to the growing salt road that cut through not just eastern Swabia but also through northern Bavaria. More specifically, the very same salt road cut through all three Wittelsbach duchies of Bavaria: Munich, Landshut, and Straubing.

This could be the unexpected but another viable source of influence and power within the Duchy of Upper Bavaria (Munich) which I could use to weaken Duke Louis\'s hold of the duchy.

I still freshly remembered the discussion all of us conspirators last year.

"So you agree?" Henry asked Rudolf, and the slightly slimmer man grimaced as he nodded.

"Fine. You can have the rest of the Valley of En you don\'t own as long as you get me my duchy back and my brother out of it," Rudolf grumbled.

The empress cleared her throat lightly.

"And I\'ll reduce the tax on salt trade to a minimum," he said as his shoulders drooped.

We bullied him rather harshly, but then again, I didn\'t feel much sympathy for a man who tried to destroy the town I built with my own two hands. Literally. The original wooden walls to the east and west (now center) of Fluelaberg were still the original wooden walls I built. Actually, the walls and houses were secondary to the people who I came to appreciate and respect. I would be livid if Albert or Alvia died. I would be apopletic if Kraft got killed.

I would probably burn Munich to the ground if Isabella had died.

I hummed as I got back to writing down the formulas for all of the dye recipes when someone knocked my door.

I paused and looked up. "Come in."

My eyes widened when one of my rare, non-ranger men-at-arms opened the door and showed in a noble messenger.

The messenger stepped right in front of the opened door in the corridor and bowed.

"Greetings, baron. I am a messenger from the Count of Heiligenberg. I havea message from the count addressed to you."

"Come in, come in," I gestured for him to enter. \'Where even was Heiligenberg?\' I asked myself.

The messenger cleared his throat and pulled out a parchment scroll. He handed it to me with two hands in a respectful gesture, and I took it. I broke the seal and unfurled the scroll, which crinkled loudly as I did so.

And I began reading.

And reading.

My eyebrows gathered together above my nose bridge as I continued reading.

And then I looked at the seal.

"And where is … Heiligenberg? Please forgive me if I am ignorant of my peers and betters outside of my immediate region."

"My lord\'s domain lies in two parts: his main domain laies between the lands of the Bishopric of Konstanz and the Habsburg lands on the north side of Obersee* and his lesser domain of Rheintal lies right at your border, County of Montfort, Abbey of St. Gallen, and County of Werdenburg."

I blinked.

Huh. That must be frustrating for him, but wasn\'t that kind of normal in the empire? A lot of inheritances through marriage meant that sometimes you found yourself with land that wasn\'t connected to your land and/or in an ideal position for your strategy.

"And this Rheintal…"

"Runs along the Upper Rhine River from Chobiwalt** to Rinegg for a total of 3 and a quarter meiles**** of the Rhine to the Obersee."

That was a substantial amount of land, even if it was just the slip of land between the river and the valley foothills.

"I see."

I don\'t know what kind of problem this count was having, but in this letter, he offered to sell the Barony of Rheintal and wanted to meet to negotiate the price.

… Yeah, this was going to be interesting.

-VB-

*Obersee: Lake Constance

**Chobiwalt: old name for Oberriet

***Rinegg is older name for Rheineck.

****Meile was different depending on where you were. The most relevant one, in my opinion, was the wegstunde, or one hour\'s worth of travel. 0.5 meile = 2.31 US mile.

A/N:

Do you guys remember John of Lindau? The guy who took Double Bookkeeping and claimed it as his? Yeah, he\'s now working here because even if his book was published, the mayor found out that it really wasn\'t his. So he pseudo-exiled him so that he wouldn\'t be implicated if Hans found out and reacts … violently. Not that he would or even care, but the mayor doesn\'t know that.

I did a very rough estimate of County of Heiligenberg and Rheinstal on Google Maps using

Karte_Werdenberger.png from wikipedia. While the total combined area was around 180 square kilometers, a good fifth of that land was either mountain/forests or village areas and one-fifth of the four-fourths would have been left fallow, leaving only three-fifths of the land for arable cultivation. The result was only around 28,000 acres. And then I started taking roads into account and calculations started going weird so I just cut down another 3k and called it 25,000 acres.

The definition of bushel changed all throughout the years… I hate it.

And then I tried to find a reputable source for how much bushels of wheat, barley, and other crops/livestock could be grown on each acre. And dear God, life was shit back then. A good harvest was 6 bushels of wheat per acre? That\'s less than a sixth of what we harvest in commercial farms around the world per acre!

Ell: medieval northwestern european word for arm from tip of finger to elbow. And also how wide a cloth roll usually was, apparently.

I also learned that in Tirol (you know the same Tirol that our Henry comes from) interest rate could be as high as 87% for loans. (Tiroler Landesarchiv, Innsbruck). Speaking of Tyrol, the County of Tyrol

didn\'t include all of modern Tyrol but stopped around Jenbach, which left the lower valley (from Jenbach to Oberaudorf) to the Duchy of Upper Bavaria (Duchy of Munich in the not too distant future).

This will be discussed in future chapters, but the reason why Hans didn\'t even mention selling to Konstanz or any of the cities to the west was because Konstanz itself was a city famous for its linen production. As such, competition would be fierce there as well as underhanded moves to keep our linen out of their market.

Never let it be said that my stories (or at least the AN\'s) aren\'t educational!

-VB-

Chapter 102

-VB-

Isabella von Fluelaberg

Barony of Fluelaberg

She read through the letter meant for her husband, and realized just how big of a deal this was.

One did not just buy a barony. This kind of opportunity came only once every generation, especially in a manner that allowed for direct land-to-land connections.

This was probably the secondmost important political decision Hans could make as both the leader of the Compact and as the founder of his own house.

"You want … me to head the negotiation?" she asked in surprise.

"Yes," he replied. "I can negotiate with the count, but it is my opinion that you will be able to better negotiate than I can."

She stared at Hans. "I … I don\'t think you understand what you are doing, husband," she began.

"Hmm?"

"Husband, this is a once in a lifetime opportunity. I understand that you are showing how much you trust me by offering me to do this…" And she wanted to. A successful negotiation with the Count of Heiligenberg might be what she needed to show that she deserved to stand by his side. But she also loved him too much to use her desire for better standing to potentially rob him of a better deal. "This is too big. I can\'t … I won\'t take this role." Even if it hurt her a little to deny it.

Hans looked at her in surprise.

"... I thought that a noblewoman in your position would have a better negotiating right and stand than a peasant baron would," I replied. "Is that not the case?"

She shook her head. "If you were just any other baron across the empire, then you would be right. And wise for admitting that to yourself and delegating the role to me. However, you are not a regular baron nobility. You are one of the most competent generals of our time, if not the most competent. You\'ve repelled a duchy\'s full roster of knights and men-at-arms." She stopped and then glared. "Unless you are trying to use me to insult someone else."

He looked surprised by her accusation. "What? No. That\'s not what I am doing."

"Then?"

He hesitated briefly before he sighed. "I just thought that you would appreciate how much I am trying to involve you in … all of this ruling stuff. You know, that you are my equal."

Her heart squeezed a little before she sighed. "Husband… Hans. I am happy to hear that from you," she replied. "But this is not the way. In fact, I could go so far as to say that you are neglecting your duties as the lord."

He stared at her for a moment before nodding. "Okay, can you explain? I wasn\'t raised a noble, so I probably don\'t know all of the intricacies…"

She nodded in return. This was expected as well as her duty to educate her husband on topics like these that he knew very little about, especially since he hadn\'t hired anyone to educate himself.

"Had I been the ruling baroness and you the consort baron, then it would be fine for me to show up as the negotiator. However, I am not. Sending me in your stead when you have little to no emergency sends a signal that you, a baron, does not consider him, a count, to be of significance. This would be an insult."

"Okay, that\'s actually pretty simple."

"Two. I love you, Hans, but I am not your equal. I am your lady and you are my lord, and there are clearly defined duties. I can only act in your stead if you are not present or otherwise unable to carry out your duties. Telling me to perform your duties while you are able, in this case the negotiation for a successful acquisition of the Rheintal territory and potentially the title of a count, is you neglecting your duty. In fact, such acquisition would be considered the highest priority for a lord with the exception of duties such as siring an heir or defending your lands."

Hans tapped his index finger on the solid table. Isabella allowed him some time to absorb everything she said so far.

"I know that this might not be too different from what you grew up with. A peasant husband and wife perform many of the same duties, but even then, the man of the household defends the family and the woman performs household works. Is this not the case in your father\'s house?"

"... Kind of?"

She blinked. "It isn\'t?"

"Well, since both mother and father both works out in the field during planting and harvest seasons, they tend to take turns in things like cooking, trading, and the like. If there\'s a baby in the house, then mother gets less work. If father has to go be a mercenary to bring in some additional coins, then mother gets more work."

"I see. It is a much more equal relationship compared to that of a lord and lady\'s. But even nobles do that, Hans. When the lord goes off to war, then the lady takes control of the house and maintains the household. This is what I did when you went off to fight on multiple occasions. This is not the clearly defined roles I mentioned earlier. These are exceptions to a normal relationship and defined roles of a man and a woman."

"Then what would be the roles?"

She took a deep breath and thought about it. How did she simply this …?

… Ah. That was one way to put it.

"A man\'s role is to be the public face of the house. A woman\'s role is to be the head of the household in private." She fidgeted a little. "Which … I may have violated by asking you to train me."

"And I don\'t intend to stopping that."

She smiled. "Thank you. But that is what I mean. You\'ve already given me a lot of leeways that a more traditional lord would have allowed. This is why it is more important that I do not go lest you are seen by other lords as nothing but a puppet for me and the House of Gorizia." She raised her hand when he opened his lips to speak. "And before you say that you don\'t care, please remember that this will affect not just you and the Compact but my father\'s house as well. I am now a woman of the House of Fluelaberg but I would like it if you did not cause undue troubles for my father and brothers."

He snorted. "Alright, alright. I\'ll … step it up a bit." Then he paused contemplatively before speaking up again curiously. "So what are the things that I\'ll have to know and act like when I\'m talking with a totally strange count?" he asked. "Your cousin and enemies don\'t count."

She chuckled. "Well, I suppose we can start there."

-VB-

Andrea Terrena

Barony of Fluelaberg

Andrea looked over the rest of his men as they loaded the carts with goods more valuable than their lives.

And they better respect it if they didn\'t want to end up dead and in a ditch between here and Pisa.

He watched as one of the workers grabbed a hold of another stack of porcelain dishes, which were all carefully wrapped up in the softest fabrics these mountain hicks had on hand, and carefully laid them down inside of a wooden crate. He spread them out evenly and made sure to cushion them with wool.

And then he placed a false bottom top on top of those, and made sure the porcelains themselves weren\'t touching the wooden false bottom. Once the false bottom firmly remained in place, he placed the cheaper goods - like low quality wool - on top. Once he had the crate packed to the brim with the wool, he closed it.

Andrea knew that he was now smuggling porcelain out of a town owned by a man so bloodthirsty that no lord would protect him.

But it would be worth it. If he could make it out of here and get to Milan, Genoa or Pisa, then he could sell it for at least three times how much he spent.

He looked up and grunted in satisfaction as he saw his laborers awaiting his orders.

"Not a word out of you of this," he warned them all. "And whatever else you aren\'t supposed to have needs to be in false bottom as well."

The workers and guards alike all nodded.

Andrea couldn\'t believe his fortune. One of the porcelain makers wanted to make more money by not paying taxes, so he and the man made sure backroom deals.

Of course, he couldn\'t proudly carry those around in the city. No, this blasted place scrutinized what kinds of goods came and left, going so far as to require a list of goods on paper or parchment for merchants leaving the town. To make sure that their illegal dealings weren\'t discovered, he had needed to hide it, and that\'s where these false bottom crates came into play.

Considering that there were only four such crates in his caravan that had easily over four dozen, he knew it would go undiscovered.

"Alright, then we set out!" he shouted, and the caravan quickly began to gather their things.

Within an hour of his declaration, he and his caravan of four ox, four carts, and sixteen men were by the western gate.

There, he found himself subject to a quick search by the squad of guards.

They looked into his crates, shuffled the goods around a bit, and then came to see some of his men. Andrea held his breath, praying to God that none of his men had things they shouldn\'t have. He intentionally gave them some room in the false bottoms for that exact reason!

The guards went around and then nodded. "You\'re good to go," the deep baritone voice of the gate guard captain (which he could tell from a fancier equipment) reached his ear.

He was free to go.

After briefly glancing at the light snowfall, Andrea ushered his people forward. He wanted to be in Chur and out of this cold by the end of the week!

-VB-

Anton Luhr

Munich, Duchy of Upper Bavaria

He frowned.

He did not like frowning.

Ladies didn\'t like it when he frowned. Always went on about how a handsome man like him needed to smile more.

But as he stared at the coins in front of him, he couldn\'t help but frown.

Because he had too much Wittelsbach silver pfennigs.

It … started, like what, a few months ago? More Wittelsbach pfennigs started piling up faster than any other coins. He expected to have more of it than any other coins. In fact, he expected to have ten times more of it than a Tyrolian pfennig or two times more of it than Swabian pfennigs.

But the most troubling part of it was that he had two hundred times more Wittelsbach pfennigs than he had Florentine florin and Genoese genovino combined, which was abnormal. He needed to get rid of it, but other merchants and peddlers were also trying to get rid of it.

In the markets, grocers started demanding more Wittelsbach pfennigs for the same good while the price remained the same with other coins.

It was an irksome situation, but it was still a white pfennig, not the black pfennigs that had too much copper mixed in. So it still held value.

But he still needed to use it up. Having too much of one coin as a merchant guild was not good for the prospects of that guild. It might signal that the guild didn\'t have the necessary connections to trade in the surrounding regions or other cities, or that the city they were based in didn\'t have a lot of trade itself.

All of which was bad.

He didn\'t think that trade was bad in Munich, and he doubted that his guild didn\'t have the connections. If anything, he now had more coin flowing in than before. There were even some of those elusive Fluelan porcelain and ceramics that were showing up in the market.

But why did they have to be so expensive? Ugh. His wife was hounding him to get some.

Whatever. He\'ll deal with the Wittelsbach pfennig tomorrow.

-VB-

A/N:

something I found out during my superficial research into Italian nobility is that the former German and Italian nobilities run around in the same circles and marry among each other to this day. Could be because they retained a lot of land and property from their old days, so rich people are just meeting rich people, but I thought that it was still interesting for yall to know. Case in point, because wikipedia exists, Matilda Borromeo and Prince Antonio zu Furstenberg. And by sheer coincidence, I picked the couple whose ancestor later owns, wait for it, Heiligenberg. This was how my wiki walk went. Milan > Matricula nobilium familiarum Mediolani > House of Arese > Beatrice Borromeo Arese Taverna > House of Furstenberg (link in the name of Prince Antonius zu Furstenberg). The Furstenberg acquisition of Heiligenberg happens in 1535, though.

Yes, crime is starting up in our town. It\'s just smuggling a few tax-free white porcelain here and there (not the more valuable blue and green porcelains, which Hans personally makes). But the growing wealth in the town will soon bring in bigger trouble…

Oh, and yeah. Hans\'s scheme against the Wittelsbach is starting to come to fruition.

-VB-

A/N: Gamer-heavy chapter.

Chapter 103

-VB-

Hans von Fluelaberg

Two months before Christmas. That\'s when the negotiation date was set. It allowed the count and I to organize ourselves before meeting up. As for the location of our meeting, it was going to take place in the Free Imperial City of Lindau. Of course, we didn\'t know if the city was okay with us hosting our negotiation there, so I reached out to the Lord Mayor of Lindau.

And the Lord Mayor Rupert von Notzing happily agreed in his latest letter.

Maybe he wanted to his city to be seen as a good place for meditation. Smaller deals like these would allow his city to rise in prominence as a center of diplomacy.

I read the final letter from the lord mayor… and then a ping rang.

I froze in place in my solar\'s chair and glanced up.

[One\'s Desperate Measure is Your Opportunity]

-Territorial Quest-

Objective:

Successfully gain the Bailiwick of Rheintal (Vogtei Rheintal)

Bonus:

*Purchase Rheintal for under 500 gold guelders or equivalent

Reward (Choose One):

*Title of Count

*1 Critical Intel (Foreign)

*1 Critical Intel (Domestic)

Bonsu Reward:

*Temporary boost to the Compact\'s cohesion

*Temporary boost to the Barony of Fluelaberg\'s cohesion

Accept?

Y/N

I accepted immediately. I wanted to get Rheintal anyway the moment I received that letter, so this was a bonus for me and the Compact.

… But what was this about cohesion?

I pulled out of the Quest screen and looked through my Gamer System. After a quick look, I found it under my Character Status.

[Character Status]

Name: Hans von Fluelaberg

Age: 20

LvL: 40

HP: 700

MP: 410

ST: 350

STR: 100

END: 70

AGI: 82

DEX: 52

INT: 41

CHA: 15

Current Objective: Set up Home [11/?]

Current Quest: [One\'s Desperate Measure is Your Opportunity]

Territory: Compact (Barony of Fluelaberg)

I didn\'t notice that before. Was there an update or something that I missed? Regardless of the why and how I missed it up until now, it was there. And the Compact and the (Barony of Fluelaberg) were highlighted separately.

I pressed on the Compact.

[The Compact]

Official Name: The Compact

Government Type: Confederation

Member States: Barony of Fluelaberg, Prince-Bishopric of Chur, County of Toggenberg, Abbey of St. Gall… (6+)

Military Power: Minor Regional

Economic Power: Major Regional

Political Power: Minor Regional

Influence: Major Regional

Technological Power: Major Regional

Stability: B+

Cohesion: C+

It was nice to see a list of the Compact\'s impact upon the world, even if they could be misleading. It showed the Compact\'s Influence as "Major Regional," whatever that meant, but I could see immediately that a lot of that had to do with just four heads of state: the Prince-Bishop of Chur, Abbot of St. Gall, Count of Toggenberg, and me. Even among the four of us, the influence was not equal and not in the same field. So the Influence being "Major Regional" was not wrong but kind of misleading.

As for Stability and Cohesion…

I clicked on those.

[Stability]

Represents a state\'s ability to whether hardship. Ranked from top to bottom, S+ to F-. Failure to maintain Stability at or below D risks collapse of the state.

So it was important.

[Cohesion]

Represents a state\'s ability to mobilize its powerbase effectively within a reasonable timeframe. Ranked from top to bottom, S+ to F-. Cohesion at or below D risks ineffective taxation, corruption, and military mobilization.

Oh. Cohesion was apparently also very important, and the Compact\'s Cohesion was only C+.

That … that didn\'t bode well.

I pressed on Cohesion again, hoping it would provide me with some more information.

And it did!

[Cohesion] TheCompact CohesionDataFactors

Bureaucracy: D-

Centralization: D-

Corruption: B-

Employment: A+

Interdependence Trade: C-

Interdependence Politics: B+

Internal Networking: B

International Recognition: C

Language Cohesion: B-

Law Enforcement: C-

Legitimacy: C

Power Balance: B

Prosperity: B-

Religious Unity: A+

State vs. Community Balance: D+

(20+)

… Yeah, that\'s a lot of factors counting into Cohesion. Some of it was confusing, too. Employment factor was there in place of Unemployment, and A+ Employment… I guessed that it meant most people who wanted to work got work or something like that?

The most glaring deficiencies were the lack of bureaucracy and centralization. And it kind of made sense. It\'s hard to mobilize the entirety of the Compact when we were depending on pony express mail orders to members that may or may not have the resources and manpower to participate. Bureaucracy could just mean knowing what was where. Centralization, though, was the opposite of what the Compact was. I didn\'t create the Compact to make a fiefdom for myself up in the Swiss Alps; I made it so that we can all protect ourselves from invaders.

The next worst factor was State vs Community Balance, and yeah, I don\'t think I can change that. I wasn\'t in an era where nationalism and loyalty to the state was a thing. At most, loyalty would be to their immediate higher-ups, God, and maybe their hometown. It made sense why that one was bringing the overall grade down.

But having the factors affecting Cohesion laid out for me to see helped me determine what I needed to improve or delegate someone else to improve.

Then I moved on to my personal fiefdom.

[Barony of Fluelaberg]

Official Name: Barony of Fluelaberg

Government Type: Hereditary Monarchy

Liege Lord: King of the Germans

Member Nation: Holy Roman Empire

Military Power: Minor Regional

Economic Power: Major Regional

Political Power: Minor Regional

Influence: Major Regional

Technological Power: Major Regional

Stability: A+

Cohesion: A-

Nice~. Okay, why did my barony have a higher Cohesion than the Compact?

[Cohesion] Barony.FluelabergCohesionDataFactors

Bureaucracy: A-

Centralization: S-

Corruption: B+

Employment: A+

Internal Trade: A-

Internal Politics: A+

External Networking: B-

International Recognition: B

Language Cohesion: A-

Law Enforcement: B+

Legitimacy: A

Power Balance: S

Prosperity: S

Religious Unity: C

Baron vs. Community Balance: A-

(20+)

… Okay, all of those made sense. Corruption was low, and thus the grade for it was high. Religious Unity was low because I had Jews and Muslims living in my town…

Actually, no, that didn\'t explain why it was that low. From the latest census, the number of Jews and Muslims combined didn\'t account for more than 4% of the total population. I can accept a B, even a B-, but C? Why was it that lo-... Were there heretics living in my town?

Ugh. That\'s going to be a headache.

Still, I now had a much better look of my own barony. I saw a few things I could improve but mostly saw that my decisions had not been wrong.

… Wait, did this mean that I would have to worry about all of those for every single fief I got? Wouldn\'t that essentially be a summary report that only I can see, thus paperwork only I could do?

Ugh.

With a shrug, I decided that it was probably better like this than being left to figure out every little detail, and gave me something to work toward for all of the Compact.

But first, it was time to get off of this chair and arrange my visit to Lindau.

-VB-

A/N: Free Imperial City of Lindau is situated right across Lake Constance from the coasts of Rheintal. It is also within a day\'s walk of County of Heiligenberg, which is further north along Lake Constance. Historically, the entire area was not united into one entity but separated into four: Altstatten (biggest city/town in Rheintal area west of the Alpine Rhine river and north of Liechtenstein) which did not incorporate the lands west bank of the river, Lustenau (downstream of Altstatten and straddled both sides of the river), coast along Lake Constance along Rheineck and Mehrerau, and St. Margrethen (later sold to Abbey of St. Gall). The last of these used to be hounded by the robber barons of Grimmenstein Castle, which eventually pissed people enough that they tore down the castle in 1416 after two battles.

So for clarification\'s sake, Hans is not buying the entire area from the coast to where today\'s Liechtenstein is. He is purchasing land centered around Altstatten but not the lands along the river banks which includes the town of Kriessern, Lustenau and its surrounding lands on both sides of the river, and Rheineck but not St. Margrethen and the land directly adjacent to it.

The total area is roughly 31 sq. miles.