The Rise Of The Three Crater Alliance

His lungs sounded like a pair of overworked bellows to Serstia Olpalkaj. He leaned forward, as he ran feebly through a forest that contained way too many dangers, both real and imagined. All of his stamina was gone. Each step an agony. His mouth was drier than he had ever remembered it. Each breath HURT.

A monster jumped out in front of him... and ROARED in his face. Olpalkaj stumbled and fell backwards... into a hole... that closed above him... leaving him the DARK.

He hit a floor on his back and lay there gasping and wheezing, completely out of breath. Hours seemed to pass before he got his wits about him. He rolled over and slowly got up... The darkness slowly receded, like the tide on a beach going out. The room was featureless and the walls were all white. The floor was a smooth stone that he had never seen. The ceiling was about ten feet high.

He stood there befuddled.

Then he noticed that a long distance away there was someone sitting at a table. An empty chair, the table and the person were the only features in the entire room... which seemed to stretch out around him for eternity.

He slowly stumbled toward the table. He noted that he had lost a shoe and his foot was bloody and it HURT. His fingertips were bloody where he had successfully clawed his way up an almost sheer cliff to safety. His right eye was swollen shut where he had bumbled into something in the first panic filled race away from the tide of monsters assaulting the convoy.

As he came closer to the table, he noted that there was a bottle of some liquid and two glasses set on the tabletop in front of the man. The other took that moment to fill both glasses and motioned for Olpalkaj to sit and...

Olpalkaj lunged forward.

He grasp the glass with both hands and shakily drained the glass in one titanic gulp, sloshing a lot over his bloody fingers onto his torn and soiled clothing. The alcohol in the drink burned the wounds on his fingertips, but he was able to get the glass to his lips without dropping it. Then Olpalkaj motioned for more... which the man willingly supplied. Olpalkaj shaking hands spilled still more of the liquid before the man finished topping off the glass.

This time Olpalkaj slowly drained the glass... noting in passing that the liquid went down smooth and was COLD. Olpalkaj plopped down in the chair. For a wonder the thing did not collapse under his weight... Olpalkaj again motioned for a refill... The man filled the glass... Olpalkaj again used two hands to lift the glass to his lips... This time Olpalkaj actually tasted the drink as it went down. It was sublime... He snorted... After nearly dying a hundred times in the last day, maybe more, without anything to drink, almost any beverage would be sublime.

He finally looked up from the drink and took in the man across from him and... froze... Olpalkaj had met a few men like him in the past. This man was a killer... His fierce eyes could easily have been in the sockets of some wild, dangerous beast.

Olpalkaj closed his eyes and began to THINK... He was in a large room. Prior to arriving here, he had been about to be killed by some monstrous beast of unknown origin. The man had rescued him, but could VERY easily kill him without a second thought... The only reason that Olpalkaj could come up with for his continued existence was that the man wanted something.

Suddenly, the pain was gone. One minute he was in barely suppressed agony. The next the pain was just GONE. He blearily opened his eyes without meeting the other man's gaze and set the glass on the tabletop. "I am Serstia Olpalkaj. You may call me Olpalkaj. I wish to thank you for sparing me from being eaten by that monster."

"I am called Rock... I spared you on a whim. I need some information about a city about three days ride from here." A picture of the front gate of Lishanam appeared in the air to the right of the two of them.

Olpalkaj considered his words, then decided that the truth would now be best. Death in all its forms hovered around this man. "I am from there. My trading house has been headquartered there for two hundred years."

"Who is in charge of your trading company?"

Olpalkaj paused again and then decided, again, that truth was the best course. "I am in charge of the trading company."

"You look to be about twenty-two, maybe twenty-three.. Why were you chosen for that much responsibility?"

"I... I am a genius... at trade. I can sell anything, assuming the client wants to buy... I try never to sell products that my client does not need."

"Skill in selling is only the merest incidental in the running of a trading empire. Organizational skills are also necessary. My people say, 'Logistics is everything.'"

Olpalkaj sighed and said, "My grandfather has said almost the exact same thing more than once. I had a good team of administrators around me... I have an eye for talent."

The man, no, Rock, sipped his drink for the first time and said, "Whether you are a fat despicable coward or a merchant prince means little to me."

"I am not a coward," Olpalkaj said coldly. "As for the fat, I have tried everything I can to get it off and have been unsuccessful."

"Do you realize how it will look when you limp into town? That was one hell of a long convoy. I counted over one thousand people and over one hundred wagons of goods in it. All of them are dead. Each of those one thousand have families. They will want someone, anyone to explain why their loved ones died... They will blame you. If you are not careful, people will mob you and tear you limb from limb."

The liquor had about sunk in. Slowly the man's words sank in. If he survived and all the other members of that convoy died, then... There was no then. His future did not exist. Wait... If that were true, then why would this guy have expended so much effort in helping him.

Choosing his words very carefully, Olpalkaj asked, "What do you know that I do not?"

"Look at these series of pictures," the man said... Wait... His name was Rock. "Stop me if you recognize one or more of them." His surroundings seemed to slip in and out of focus.

One by one large pictures appeared to their right. Each was so lifelike that he could almost think that the person in the floating picture was standing there beside him. Olpalkaj saw something strange. "Stop... Back up one." The picture was of a man in his late twenties, early thirties. "Ummm... His name escapes me at the moment... Let me think... He is my mother's sister's husband's illegitimate child by a chambermaid... Ummm... He is supposed to be very good at... doing dirty deeds. What is going on?" The man did not elaborate.

Over the next hour, Olpalkaj picked out two other distant relatives, five family retainers that he knew in passing and four members of the wagon convoy. He tentatively identified six of the convoy guards. When the last picture was displayed, the man said, "You were screwed over... Are these people part of a faction within your family that want someone besides you as head of family?" The pictures of all the relatives that he had identified floated in the air.

"Yes... My stepbrother, my father's son by his first wife, feels that I am too young and him being the oldest son qualifies him to take over. Set aside the fact that he spends all his time spending money instead of making it. Set aside the fact that he makes possible clients angry at him without even trying. Set aside the fact that his hangers on would only be at his side because he is spending money on them."

"Who is the power behind your stepbrother?"

"Ahhhh... My uncle, my father's brother, has championed my stepbrother... My uncle felt hard done by twenty years ago, when my father was chosen over him."

"You spoke of your grandfather... Why did he not stay on as head of family, if he is still alive?"

Olpalkaj paused, thinking. "I am not sure. Something happened twenty years ago that forced my grandfather to give up being head of the trading company. He has stayed in charge of the family... Well... not really. My father has been head of family as well. He and my grandfather have been at odds over that for years. When my father died a year ago, my grandfather appointed me head of the trading company and took back the position of head of family."

"How did your father die?"

"My father was on a short trip to the port of Perialos. His party was attacked by a wave of monsters and..." Olpalkaj blinked a few times. "Are you saying that my father was murdered and the monsters got the credit? Wait... I saw the wave of monsters attacking the convoy. If my convoy was ambushed by men in my uncle's pay, then I would have seen some of them... What do you know? What do you suspect?"

"I know that these people..." A host of pictures appeared to his left. "somehow got the monsters to first congregate at a staging area and then attack your convoy as a wave... Among the people who did this dirty deed, were the relatives you pointed out." Another set of pictures appeared, among them pictures of the four he had been able to remember as being part of the convoy. "I know that these people slipped away before the wave of monsters inundated your convoy... They live. Everyone else in the convoy is dead... except you... The reason for that is that, after the monster wave killed and injured almost everyone, the people over here, moved in and finished the job using clubs that have claws on them." He paused. "The most important question is whether any of these people you pointed out as within your family are part of your grandfather's faction."

Scratching his eyebrow, Olpalkaj contemplated the pictures of the eight people he had identified. He finally lowered his hand and said, "No. None of them are associated with my grandfather. They are all my uncle's men." He froze and looked up at the man and asked, "Why do you care? What could I possibly have that would make you want to help me?"

The man sipped his drink for a while, then said, "As I said at the beginning, I saved you on a whim. One of my people pointed out that your convoy was being wiped out... Incidentally... A convoy of 112 wagons is insane. A wagon convoy should be at most fifteen, with ten as optimal. Being at the end of that convoy with all the dust and stink must have been miserable... Why didn't you break it into ten convoys of about ten or twelve?"

"I knew all that. Up until six days ago, we were in twelve convoys of between nine and twelve wagons. Each convoy was a day behind the other. I decided that for the last ten days, we should be one long convoy to... well... impress everyone. I... Wait..." He pointed to one of the pictures from the convoy that he remembered. "This guy has been going back and forth between all the twelve separate convoys and stating that we should save time, if we formed a long convoy for the last few days. His reasons sounded sane... The military commander finally gave it, saying that having so many people would keep the monsters at bay even though everyone at the end of the convoy would be miserable... If I remember correctly he received information that there were a larger number of monsters than normal."

Olpalkaj sighed and took a sip of his drink, finishing it up. He motioned for a refill. The man filled his glass. "What do you want?"

The man gestured and all the pictures disappeared. A map appeared. "This is a map of the continent that we are on. North is at the top. Most of the maps I have seen made by locals have east at the top, but that means nothing to me." Red dots appeared all over. "I have found your family crest in a large number of places. I am assuming that you have offices in all of these cities, towns and villages... Now, I have a LOT of things that I want to sell. Having you sell them for me will be advantageous for both of us." A blue dot appeared south of Lishanam. "I plan to create a kingdom on these grounds."

Olpalkaj stared down at the map and up at the man a few times, before saying very carefully, "Those are bad lands... I have never heard of anyone going there who came back... Ummm... My grandfather said that a dragon lived in that area on top of there being a HUGE number of monsters... One of his more fanciful stories was that the dragon changed into a human and visited the king of Lishanam fifty years ago."

"That is most interesting... That changes nothing... I plan to make my kingdom there for a reason that makes sense to me. As for the dragon, we shall see... Now... the big question is whether you can trust your grandfather. Second, is your grandfather involved with your uncle to kill you?"

"Impossible... Or rather, I have to trust my grandfather, because there just is no one else with the power to keep me as the head of the trading company. It is impossible that he would kill me in this way... Of the 112 wagons in this convoy, 98 were the company's. The amount of wealth in those wagons cannot easily be counted. Admittedly all of the money used in this venture was from my inheritance, but, still, putting that much wealth in jeopardy would be unthinkable for him... My uncle? Yes. He is a long game player. He would see the loss as the price to pay for him to become head of family and the trading company. How he planned to supplant my stepbrother I just do not know.

"Look, Rock. How can I possibly recover from this blow? When people see that I am the lone survivor, they will determine that I am as you said, 'a fat despicable coward'. Nothing I say or do will change their minds once I limp in with nothing to show for my year's absence."

"Olpalkaj, the convoy was destroyed less than six hours ago. The monsters that did it have not finished feasting on the dead horses, human bodies and any other food that they can scrounge. The people who brought them down on the convoy will wait for them to leave before stealing everything that they can carry away... maybe. What if we kill the monsters, capture the would be thieves and parade them through the streets of Lishanam?"

Olpalkaj sat there for a while staring at Rock before he asked archly, "Say, do you happen to have a band of, oh, about 200 mercenaries?... Because that is the minimum needed to move 100 wagons to Lishanam."

"Mercenaries? Hmmm... Mercenaries?... No... A monastic order... maybe... Let me think about that.

"Olpalkaj, let us understand each other. Had I passed by twenty minutes earlier or ten minutes later, you would have died. I was traveling to what you call the bad lands to begin the process of creating a kingdom.

"Now, let us get back to basics." The man set a lot of coins on the table. "I gathered in many coins in my travels. These three predominate." He moved a gold coin, a silver coin and a copper coin in front of Olpalkaj. "What can you tell me about these?"

"What? You do not know about currency? That is insane. These are from the Green Empire Mint. The Green Empire is no more, but all the successor kingdoms agreed that the Mint would have the responsibility of creating a common currency. Well, most of the kingdoms agreed. These others are from those that disagreed." Olpalkaj sorted the other coins into fourteen groups of gold, silver and copper coins. "If I could see that map again..." The map appeared... floating in the air. Over the next hour, he drew the rough outlines of the borders of the 38 kingdoms on the continent of Boswep.

The short histories of all 38 countries was straight from Olpalkaj's memory of his own school days.

Rock said, "I noted that each gold coin was about the same weight as all the other gold coins. Was that the Green Empire Mint's doing?"

"Yeah. They sent out a book that described how best to press a coin along with how much each should weigh and what each of the coins should be made of... Some of these coins are underweight, so they are discounted by traders."

Somewhere in there, Olpalkaj and Rock had a meal like none that Olpalkaj had ever had. The meat, the vegetables, everything was exquisite to taste. Before the meal, Rock had bandaged his wounds in a way that he could still feed himself. They spoke way into the night about what various things cost... land, women, wheat, a good house, eggs, a good sword, meat and so on.

When it was time for bed, Olpalkaj was astonished that he could take a shower. The commode was a marvel that he had NEVER even considered. Soap, whoever heard of soap?... The sink baffled him until Rock explained it... The bed was... heaven. He slept until he awoke.

While relieving himself, he noticed something strange... no lice... not in his genital area, in his head hair... nowhere... Also, his bed did not have bedbugs, nor fleas... Olpalkaj sighed... He could ask Rock, but it did not matter, once he was home his body would be re-infest.

He dressed in totally new clothes laid out on the bed waiting for him. For a wonder the shoes fit exactly right.

Over breakfast, Rock said, "I have had all of the monsters loitering around what is left of your convoy killed. I have also captured all the men who were involved in this massacre. They will be questioned as we go along. The wagons relatively intact will be repaired using parts from wagons that were destroyed. We will use some of my wagons to transport any goods that cannot fit in the surviving wagons.

"I had all the cargo inventoried. I note that you have a lot of books. Do you have a bookstore or something?"

"Or something. People ask me to keep an eye out for certain books. If I find them, then I quietly deliver the book and take payment."

A picture appeared. "Did you fill all the orders for this book during your trip? I mean, could you use more copies? You had five copies of it."

Olpalkaj sighed and said, "That particular book will go for 500 gold coins. No matter how many copies I had, I would still not fill the demand for that book. My grandfather will be astonished that I was able to acquire those five. Normally, on a trip like this, I would be lucky to find one or two."

"If people want it, why do they not borrow it and get someone to copy it?"

Olpalkaj sighed, "Copying a book costs at least three maybe four times the cost of an existing book."

"I have 2781 copies of it, could you sell each for 500 gold coins?"

Olpalkaj froze...