’A reason for change.’
The situation right now is a land that cannot be used. Heck, even staying here too long if you don’t have protection or resistance against corruption will be bad for you. All in all, this just seems like a big fuck you to your face, and for , it’s good. A vast land like this, I can easily change it into sothing terrifically adequate, and right now the contract has already been filed, too, which ans I can make my move.
The only issue is that the whole situation should be done in a way that shows natural change. After all, I can’t just show that I can fully push away the corruption affecting this place and even bring more life into it.
That would be the big red flag they need to cause more issues. Everything that happens after this all should be natural, fully and completely natural, that looked like it just happened. So musing on my plans, my mind had already ford an idea that worked fully and completely, a smile shifting across my face.
I can already imagine the looks the others will have on their faces, the regret that will eat them up when they realise what has happened. So, holding my smile on my face, I looked through the whole place, after which I walked towards the door, passing through it to appear back at the sa hallway, the elven woman long gone.
Seeing so, I decided to make my next move. By now, the others would have arrived, so I need to settle all that before I jump into the rest of my issues. So, keeping my mind on a controlled motion, I headed through the place—the sa VIP place still, for the top dogs you can say—as I, moving through the hallway, walked into the vast hall.
The eyes still peering at as I walked through the hall into a wider section of the hallway, which leads towards eting rooms that can be set up. Moving through the place, I reached towards a vast area for etings, and I easily reached the eting room I had booked. Opening the door, I walked into the room already filled with several people.
A total of fifteen people in the room, all of them being the older kids. A mix of n and won, all of them not powerful, their powers ranging from Origin realm 4 to 6, mixing around. Thus, seeing enter, all of them stood up with a respectful notion. I waved at them to sit as I took the head of the table, my eyes looking at them all as I, with a smile, asked.
’Let see who we’re working with.’
At the far end of the table, seated in the last chair like he’d chosen the furthest point from mine on purpose — maybe he had — was the man I’d been most interested in eting since his na ca up in the preliminary files Ralph had quietly compiled for .
Colis.
He was on the older side, even by this group’s standards. He sat with his hands folded on the table in front of him, posture unhurried, and his eyes were already on mine when I looked his way.
"So, shall we begin?"
I asked it with a smile.
It was the man to my left who spoke first, a broad-shouldered elf nad Carven, if the files held. He leaned forward with both forearms on the table, his expression respectful.
"Lord Rex, before we begin in full, we want to thank you for bringing us together. Most of us have been navigating the system here for a long ti, and the opportunity to contribute to sothing being built from the foundation... It’s not sothing any of us expected."
"No need for thanks," I replied.
"I brought you all here because I need what you’ve got. Experience."
That landed better—a few of the stiffer postures softened by a fraction. But Colis said nothing. He just watched. I let a beat of comfortable silence sit in the air before I continued.
"I’ll be straight with all of you about where things stand. The faction exists right now only on paper — the borders are there, the na is there, the legal acknowledgent is there. But nothing on the inside. We’re here to start building the whole thing. And that ans we need to answer so foundational questions before we touch anything else."
"What kind of questions?" the dwarven woman asked.
"Starting with the most basic one," I said, leaning back slightly in my chair, one arm resting on the table, easy and relaxed. "What does this faction stand for? What is the single thing that soone on the outside — a powerful, unaffiliated Imperial who has turned down every war council faction to date — would hear about us and think, that’s different?"
The room took a mont to settle with that.
Carven exchanged a glance with the woman beside him. A few of the others stirred slightly. Most new faction leaders, I imagined, walked into these rooms and started talking about rank structures, about territory, about numbers—the imdiate chanics. The foundation question was apparently less common.
"Most factions," Colis said.
His voice was the kind that didn’t need volu.
"Most factions answer that question with power. Protection. Resources. Access. These are all real things, and things that matter. But they’re the sa answers. Every faction gives the sa speech, just with different flavouring."
He paused. His eyes hadn’t moved off mine.
"So the question becos — what’s your flavouring, Lord Rex? And more importantly, do you actually have an answer, or are you asking the room to build one for you?"
’Sharp old man.’
A smile found my face before I could stop it, and I didn’t try to.
"Both," I answered honestly. "I have the shape of an answer. But a shape without details is just an outline, and I’d rather have this room fill in the details with than hand sothing down that gets followed without genuine belief behind it."
Colis’s expression didn’t change, though my senses picked up a change.
The dwarven woman — I caught her na from the folder edge I’d glanced at on the way in, Brek — pressed her palms flat on the table. "Then let’s talk about the shape. What do you have?"
I pulled in a breath.
"The war council has operated on a single underlying premise for as long as it’s existed," I began. "That power consolidates upward. That the faction at the top sets the rules for everyone beneath it, and the factions beneath that set rules for the ones beneath them, and so on until you reach the bottom, where most people are grinding in conditions that barely let them breathe, let alone grow. And they stay because the system makes leaving costly and makes hoping for sothing different feel foolish."
Nobody argued with that. A couple of quiet exhales told they were more familiar with that reality than comfortable admitting outright.
"What I want to build is sothing that operates on a different premise. Not charity — I’m not naive enough to sell that angle, and I wouldn’t insult any of you by trying. But a structure where the people inside it grow in a way that feeds back into the whole rather than getting siphoned upward and disappearing. Where joining this faction makes you actually stronger within your own right, not just symbolically protected."
"That’s an ideal," Carven said, not dismissively.
"Every faction has a founding ideal. The question is the chanics."
"Which is exactly why I’m in this room with the fifteen of you rather than standing on a platform sowhere giving a speech," I said. "I know the chanics are the work. I’m not here to give a speech."
That earned a ripple of sothing warr from a few of the mbers.
Colis unfolded his hands from the table and leaned back in his chair — not away from the conversation, but into a different posture. One who said he was choosing to be present more fully. When you’d watched enough of these things, you developed a sense for what that small movent ant, and I caught it.
’Good.’
"The land," Colis said, and with those two words, he demonstrated exactly why his file had been the one I’d read most carefully. He’d gone straight to it. The problem everyone else in the room was probably sitting on but hadn’t touched yet, because the optics of questioning your new faction leader’s land acquisition on the first day of your first eting felt politically unwise.
Colis, apparently, was past politically unwise.
"Yes," I said. "The land."
"Corrupted," he continued. "Proximity to a significant crack. Sparse vegetation. Rough terrain. Given to you deliberately, no doubt, by soone who expected you to either reject it — which would look weak — or accept it without understanding what you were walking into — which would be foolish. You signed the docunt."
"I did."
"So." He tilted his head the smallest asure. "Do you have a plan for it, or are we starting this faction on ground that will quietly poison anyone who spends too much ti there without substantial protection?"
The room was very still now.
I let the question breathe for exactly the right amount of ti before I answered.
"I have a plan for it," I said. "One, I’ll walk through with this group when the ti is right. What I will say now is that the land is not a liability. It was ant to be — it was designed and handed to as exactly that, and I walked in there and smiled at it." I paused. "I need you all to trust that without the full picture yet, because sharing the full picture right now would create problems I’m not ready to deal with in parallel. What I can tell you is that the land issue is handled, and handled in a way that will surprise people."
Colis studied . The room was studied, Colis studying .
After a long, even beat, Colis gave a single nod. It wasn’t approval, exactly. It wasn’t blanket acceptance.
"Then we set it aside for now," he said, "and we focus on what can be discussed. The structure."
"The structure," I agreed.
Brek’s mouth curved at the corner. "Finally," she said, and reached forward to pull the central folder that had been sitting in the middle of the table toward her, flipping it open. "Because I’ve been staring at this blank organisational chart since I sat down, and blank things make uncomfortable."
A quiet laugh moved around the table.
’There it is.’
The room had found its footing. I leaned forward, elbows on the table, and the eting truly started.
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