The con­sor­tium doors banged open. Noses lift­ed from oak­en coun­ters, dis­tract­ed from their paper-stamp­ing and coin count­ing. Three pairs of boots stamped in, trailed mud and snow. They clicked, hob­nailed, on the stone tile.

The lead­ing pair belonged to a cut­ter in a leather duster. A con­sid­er­able amount of some­thing red and dry­ing clung to his leather chaps. A fresh split leaked on his unshaven lip. He licked it as he walked, dragged a sack of some­thing dense and clink­ing.

Of the boots which fol­lowed, only one pair walked with a steady gait. The first was a spindly woman with scarred, out­sized knuck­les. The sec­ond, a man with gore and vom­it in his beard, leaned on her. A thick gir­dle of stained ban­dage bound his bel­ly. He stum­bled, wretched occa­sion­al­ly. A crass scent of spoiled pota­to drift­ed from the pair.

A pim­ply clerk looked to the man in the duster, smiled fee­bly. “What can Tiber and Fel­lowes do for you, Mas­ter?”

There was grunt and a crash of coins. The coun­ter­top shook. “Ewan Hall­son, of Jen­go­ry,” said the man, sneer­ing as his lip stretched. “With Rowan Per, of Stat­ton, and Chaemus Blake, of Down. Returned from the ven­ture to Lee­land Haunt.”

He took a leather license fold and tossed to the counter. A rolled doc­u­ment fol­lowed. The clerk plucked them up.

“This says you depart­ed with a Sam Per­ry­ton, as well.”

“The good Mas­ter Per­ry­ton didn’t make it. Rag­man stuck him in the groin. Bled clean out. We got him out­side, on the mule, if you wan­na see.”

The clerk peered around Hall­son, out the open door. A mule was roped out­side. A fig­ure wrapped in car­pet was tied over the beast’s rump. Atop it, a raven pecked idly.

“I’ll arrange a coro­ner.”

“Best ye do,” said Hall­son, dab­bing at his lip with a filthy ker­chief. Behind him, Chaemus wretched. A greasy red gob fell to the scarred woman’s boot.

The clerk stretched a thin smile. “Report?”

“Hill was filled with rag­men. Dis­till­ing some piss. Approx­i­mate­ly eight.”

“Approx­i­mate­ly?”

“Hard to tell. Rowan boiled some,” said Hall­son, point­ing back with a thumb. The woman smiled with yel­lowed eyes, waved with a twist­ed hand. Her knuck­les clinked audi­bly.

“I see. Casu­al­ties?”

“Well, the chap on the mule. And Chaemus got shanked in the guts.” Behind Hall­son, the beard­ed cut­ter groaned, wretched again. “He’s fine.”

The clerk scratched some­thing in a ledger. “Thank you. Yield?”

“Some sil­ver on the rag­men. Whole pile of coins under the mid­den. Some for­eign.”

“No antiq­ui­ties or items of excep­tion­al­i­ty?” asked the clerk, look­ing to the oth­er two. Rowan shook her head. Chaemus whim­pered.

“Not­ed. Your stand­ing and rep­u­ta­tion with Tiber and Fel­lowes are high, which would have earned a fourth of ten per­cent,” recit­ed the clerk, scratch­ing a pink pim­ple. “Due to fatal­i­ty, your shares will be adjust­ed to a third of ten per­cent.”

There sound­ed a series of wheez­ing, wet gasps. Rowan made a dis­gust­ed face, dropped her retch­ing com­rade. He wrig­gled, clutched his gut, pro­duced a spout of red and pus-filled flu­id. He wrig­gled, went limp.

Rowan stepped round the pool­ing vom­i­tus, pressed two fin­gers to his beard­ed neck. She shook her head. Hall­son shrugged.

The bank clerk tried a con­sol­ing expres­sion. “My con­do­lences. Five per­cent, each.”

***

On a high veran­da over­look­ing the sea, a dozen folk had met. Folk in suits of pitch black and bloody scar­let, clutch­ing flutes of wine dark­er than the placid waves. They milled, idled with eager smiles, as if shar­ing in the pres­ence of some secret. 

A high tone struck the air, clear above the mur­mur of surf. Heads turned. At the rail­ing, a woman in apple red tapped a knife on the bell of her glass. 

“Good evening, every­one,” she smiled. “As Vice Direc­tor, I’d like to wel­come you to this cel­e­bra­tion of our year’s suc­cess.” 

A gen­er­al tit­ter­ing of approval went up. Glass­es raised, flashed in the low sun­light. A sin­gle, fat mouse, lean­ing by the door, applaud­ed. 

“This has been a time of out­stand­ing growth for Péri­dot Firm: Our man­u­fac­tur­ing invest­ments hold strong. Lend­ing in the Belvirin­ian con­flict is see­ing mas­sive returns. And our ven­tures in the Sea of Grass have been unprece­dent­ed­ly fruit­ful.”

The Vice Direc­tor nod­ded, accept­ed more gen­tle applause. “In that dis­tant land, our ven­ture on Tacen­da Gate has breached a fifth lev­el of the com­plex. Trea­sures beyond reck­on­ing have been found inside. Some are arcane and will take time to deci­pher. Some are sim­ple. The wine we are enjoy­ing now was found in those antique halls.”

A gen­tle excla­ma­tion rose from the crowd. Folk peered into their glass­es. A woman by the rail­ing gasped.

“All these suc­cess­es have been informed by our mutu­al friend,” said the woman in apple red. “He has guid­ed us since the begin­ning. Join me in salut­ing our founder. Our Direc­tor.”

She raised her wine, turned to face the water. The oth­ers fol­lowed, mim­ic­ked her. “Our Direc­tor.”

Far below, some­thing tremen­dous lis­tened, dark beneath the gloam­ing sea.

Banks

To many, a bank is just a counter. It has a scale, and a grille, and a lot of papers and stamps. It has a clerk, who’s like­ly bored, who will give you loans and ban­knotes and lock your gold­en sav­ings safe away. 

Few guess the truth of banks. Few know the crush­ing­ly dull titan of bureau­cra­cy which keeps their pen­nies holds clout to rival nations.

While the patron­age of a thou­sand labor­ers look­ing to bor­row a crown may earn a bank a tidy sum, the inter­est on a sin­gle loan to the War Depart­ment of a for­eign coun­try may rake in mil­lions. Every coin mint­ed by a Coastal nation will like­ly see its day in the vault of a bank. 

Banks, how­ev­er, are not sat­is­fied by their immense reach. While lend­ing and invest­ment may churn an appre­cia­ble sum, there remains more to be had. 

Not all the mon­ey in the world is yet exploit­ed. In the antique depths of tombs and hid­den places, untapped sums lan­guish in the dark, own­er­less and ripe for the pick­ing. * All an enter­pris­ing finan­cial insti­tu­tion need do to make a bit of extra wealth is pay some fools to go and pluck it.

Many banks oper­ate on the Coast, but only those who find prof­it in ven­tur­ing are the rich­est. 

• Man­til­la Prof­i­teers is a Mapoli­tan insti­tu­tion. The mer­ce­nary bank is noto­ri­ous for serv­ing the high­est bid­der dur­ing times of war. In the past, Man­til­la has­n’t balked at such tasks as pay­ing for and rais­ing its own troops to sup­port their cho­sen side. No price is too high for the Prof­i­teers, if it ensures the sur­vival of their mil­i­tary debtors. In these times of rel­a­tive peace, Man­til­la hires cut­ters as pri­va­teer crews. ** Their stat­ed goal in naval ven­tur­ing is seago­ing secu­ri­ty, but has oft­times slipped into the bounds of pira­cy.
• Péri­dot Firm is a new influ­ence on the Coast’s eco­nom­ic sphere. Through a series of uncan­ni­ly pow­er­ful moves, the group has expand­ed from a small band of gem buy­ers to a mas­sive play­er on the finan­cial stage. It has made these advances sole­ly through cal­cu­lat­ed, metic­u­lous­ly-researched raid­ing of ancient sites. Cache after vault of hoard­ed wealth has been breached and claimed by the skilled cut­ters of the Firm. Some have won­dered at the accu­ra­cy with which Péri­dot tar­gets and cracks ancient sites. Whis­pers say a sin­gle source of ancient knowl­edge serves as the Fir­m’s guid­ing light, illu­mi­nat­ing dark­ened rich­es with secrets of the past. 
• Tiber and Fel­lowes is an old bank. Its pow­er has risen and fall­en with the iron-bound pound of Fir­lund, its moth­er state. T&F near­ly saw their end some two hun­dred years ago, when one of the coun­try’s famous­ly mad kings refused to repay debts accrued while host­ing near-con­stant tour­neys. Now, the insti­tu­tion keeps friend­ly ties with the North’s pow­er­ful salt-min­ing fam­i­lies, grant­i­ng it a steady, prof­itable ally. T&F are deeply involved in colo­nial efforts. From fron­tier set­tle­ments, the bank orga­nizes and spon­sors thou­sands of cut­ters on hun­dreds of month­ly raids into the tomb-filled Gorathi­an Moun­tains. Above all oth­er banks, good stand­ing with Tiber and Fel­lowes is most cer­tain to guar­an­tee a Cut­ter a hearty share in any ven­ture’s yield.
• Lagão Trea­sury is an Alagóri­an firm with a cer­tain rep­u­ta­tion. The bank’s stric­ture to Avethan ideals dic­tates that it deal only in busi­ness with human part­ners and cus­tomers. Thus, mice (let alone oth­er, uncom­mon folk) are shunned by the zealot Trea­sury. In more cos­mopoli­tan loca­tions, the bank will, at best, offer non-humans sub­stan­dard rates. Though­Lagão deals main­ly in civil­ian lend­ing, they have made con­cerned ven­tur­ing attempts on ancient sites of Avethan sig­nif­i­cance. The may be found, rep­re­sent­ed in the con­sor­tium of any South­ern fron­tier set­tle­ment.

Note

I use banks as quest givers. In many games, a tomb-ven­tur­ing sign-on with, for instance, T&F may serve as an entry point to a larg­er mys­tery of the past. In oth­er games, banks serve as easy sources of side jobs for char­ac­ters. The unpre­dictabil­i­ty of raid­ing tombs, cou­pled with the gam­i­fied ele­ment of track­ing stand­ing, can be a fun game, on its own. 

Some time in the future, I’ll have to post a sys­tem for deter­min­ing bank stand­ing.

I imag­ine that a group of char­ac­ters, upon find­ing a ruin, might fea­si­bly sell its loca­tion to a bank. This will have to be the start­ing point of an arti­cle on car­tog­ra­phers.

This arti­cle was made pos­si­ble by Incunab­u­li’s gen­er­ous sup­port­ers on Patre­on. To join them and read arti­cles avail­able only to sup­port­ers, sup­port Incunab­u­li on Patre­on.