My Servant System

Sweeping the rest of Nogart yielded very little else of interest for us as we cleared the rest of the western side of the city, looking through all sorts of buildings and meeting with Satanya in the midst of our route when we both were looking closer to the center.

Upon hearing the news of the impending arrival of the Cult, the Young Miss of the Beliali Clan frowned and accepted the letter we handed her, going over it herself before handing it to Ammit to read as well, her lips pulled into a frown as she pondered what she read.

"This is... a boon, yet also a rather annoying happening as well. Ronove, take one of the horses and make haste back to Arx Impius. Tell Lord Belian, the Madam, and Lady Hathor about these Cultists arrival, and give them the letter to read too. Bring back a dozen warriors at least before dusk tomorrow. Go quickly now..."

The red skinned man nodded and swiftly turned to leave, heading out of the city before being followed by Luci as Satanya added "Luci, bring the carriages in for me. That Banshee can bring their carriage in, it just... needs supervision is all. Park 'em in the center. I want to go ahead and start making this city a deathtrap for those damn Cultists..."

Looking back at us, Satanya pursed her lips and said "Finish the rounds quickly. We need to begin fortifying this shit hole of a city into something we can defend from whatever the hell the Cultists bring down upon us. I don't want them to take this place, nor do I want them on our land!"

Jahi just snorted as she nodded at the red skinned woman's fervor, saying "Aye aye Miss Leader~!", which made Satanya raise a brow and roll her eyes before turning and leading her group back into the city.

Our findings weren't impressive, with the only things of note being that armory, two banks, a merchant hall and then the general money we found left behind in some of the buildings, all of it amounting to a nice amount of general wealth, but...

Nothing impressive, really.

Anput was excited though, since she now had an abundance of metals to play with, adding to her already deep reserves of materials that I sincerely doubt she will ever manage to get through... but I wasn't going to rain on her parade at all.

As for Leone, there were a few alchemical ingredients being used as houseplants and being grown in some of the richer houses gardens, and she was willing to try some rudimentary alchemy with some thrown together equipment that both Anput and I could throw together for her.

And... the wealth that we gained was important, since it would help Jahi establish her own funds to begin doing legitimately anything with, be it investing in larger businesses, starting her own businesses, buying properties, employing skilled people... there was a lot that we could do with this extra influx of coin, and so long as we played our cards right, we could snowball this initial wealth into generational kinds of wealth that the Marquess had accumulated for herself.

From what I could remember Mother offhandedly telling me - as well as the words of the Countess whenever we went shopping - the Marquess had an absurd amount of money in coin, as well as quite the amount in hard assets across the Empire; plus... well, the Vice Captain of the Knights of Cinder could definitely go on a mission once or twice to earn more money than some smaller Noble Houses would see in a few years...

So it was comforting to know that we were able to fall back on that mountain of Platinum's if we ever needed it, but all of us wanted to be able to create our own mountain of coin to use whenever we pleased, and I think we were beginning to create that mountain slowly but surely...

But, that mountain needed time and care, and right now wasn't the time to think about this proverbial 'mountain' that was nothing but a thought, so instead I returned my focus towards the clearing that was in the center of the city where we had set up our base of operations.

Our carriages were here, and Satanya had a table made in the center that held up a map of Nogart, one that they had from who knows how long ago.

"Alright, I think the best thing for us to do would be funnel them down certain paths, no? Wall off certain streets and create layers of said walls to ensure they instead head for one of the more open pathways, which would lead them straight towards us..?"

Satanya looked up and looked between Ammit, Jahi, and Leraie, the older Demoness pursing her lips as she leaned over the table and studied the map.

"I... don't think that works with these Cultists. Respectfully, of course, Lady Satanya... but they aren't a normal army. They have access to those portals. I think it'd be best to focus our efforts on creating a smaller area for us to occupy and work out of instead of trying to occupy the entire city. They could be marching over to Nogart, or they could teleport here based on something we haven't seen. Maybe one of the Cultist left behind some sort of mark or there's something hidden inside the city for these Deacons to use? We just don't know how they'll get here, and I think we need to accept that they could either attack the walls or appear inside them."

Jahi tapped the center of the map, where we were located, and said "We can take this plaza and make it into a fortress. Fill in the various buildings around us, wall off some of these other streets, and create concentric rings around this plaza to defend. Just keep going until we feel satisfied? I agree with Leraie though; we have no idea how these Deacons will appear here, and since the letter specified full moon for the time, perhaps this is for a ritual or something. Portals might just be the best option for them, no?"

Sighing, we all looked around the large, empty plaza and turned towards the Earth Magicians in our group, who smiled wryly as they just nodded and leaned closer to the table, where we began to create a rough model of the area to better plan everything out for the battle to come.

We needed to prepare ourselves, and the rest of tonight, all of the next day, and then a few hours into the next night were ours to use; we needed to create a trap for these Cultists and capture one of those two Deacons, so that we could better understand the enemy we were dealing with.