He has plenty of things to do at home, too, checking on his various ongoing projects and scanning lesser-traveled roads for problems and doing various bits of planning and logistics work. (Would have been nice to be able to play with the alchemy, though.)

He's paying enough attention to the new world to greet senator Jealwind when he comes in in the morning, anyway.

"Greetings! I've got the Secretary of the Treasury and the Speaker of Roads hooked, I think. Do you have the time to meet them this afternoon?"

"Sure; what are they going to want to talk about, do you know?" And is he going to want to offer the Speaker of Roads priest status, because it sure sounds like he might.

"So I see there as being two... three possible high-level outcomes of this whole business. The first is that you can claim the major roads the Pallass currently maintains, which is the most efficient but has some awkwardness around rights, ownership and security. The second is that you can't claim most of the roads Pallass currently maintains, but can claim the ones that are redundant, or create your own—this is inefficient, but makes sure we don't completely lose our road network if something goes terribly wrong. The third is that you can't claim or create any roads, which is probably unlikely, but I'm including it for completeness.

"First, we'll want to understand the mechanical effects you claiming a road and providing your services has, and the mechanical effects of offerings. Then, in each of the cases, we want to discuss what the exact rights, powers and responsibilities you and Pallass have regarding the roads in question. Then once we have a set of workable options, which might not be exactly the same as the ones I suggested, we'd try for a general consensus on which we prefer best, or what concessions we'd want in each case.

"We probably can't cover all of that in one day."

"Probably not, no. That's all right, I'm not in a rush. The one thing I'd like some time to think about before it comes up is war-related policy. At home, wars in the sense you have them here are rare, since gods have other ways of handling conflicts and very much prefer that their people stay alive, and I've mostly been able to stay out of them aside from supporting the refugees like I would with any other sort of disaster. I expect things will be different here, though. Can you give me an idea of what I can expect?"

"There are... two types of war, I suppose. There's the more civilized type kind of war Drakes, Gnolls and humans tend to conduct, where there are rough forms of rules armies are expected to abide by, and everything is... predictable. The kind that ends in peace treaties and concessions and changes to the border, but low civilian casualties. Refugees—do happen, and sacks do happen, and mass exoduses, but no one's going to object to sheltering of refugees.

"I expect the generals will want you to take Pallass' side in that kind of war, impede enemy movement on our roads, help supply our armies, and so on. I expect they will be satisfied with you providing ordinary services to our military but denying it to enemies'. I think they will grudgingly accept if you decline service to all war operations, or only service defensive operations. I nonconfidently predict they'll be unhappy if you want to provide service to all passing militaries regardless of affiliation, even though it's technically as symmetric."

"There's the other kind of war, which is wars of... annihilation, let's say, or destructive conquest. Fighting the Necromancer, or the Goblin Lord, who made serious attempts at conquering Izril, and in the former case raising everyone as his undead slaves. Wars where when they take a city, you expect everyone left is enslaved or dead at the end of the day. The city will be upset if you decline service in those cases, and even more upset if you want to help the invaders.

"There's the obvious issue that the line between the two is unclear and the military has an incentive to argue it's the latter at all times. You might prefer to set an agnostic baseline—not assisting any foreign incursions or actively impeding Pallassian military operations, for example—and negotiate any additional work on a case-by-case basis."

"That all seems... fairly reasonable. I don't have any reason to think I'll want to uniquely support Pallass once I have connections elsewhere, and I won't be able to support myself here without those. My policy at home has been to stay out of wars - by which I mean not impeding a traveling army, but not helping them either, or just providing food to spare nearby people from being raided for it - or if I don't stay out of it I'll support the defender, and I've been as happy with those policies as I expect to be with anything. The annihilation case doesn't happen at home, and there I'd want to support a defending city, which seems like a decent reason to want to make that my policy the rest of the time, the last thing you need in an emergency is an argument about how to react."

"Yes, of course if you had roads in Salazsar's or Manus's territory it would hardly be reasonable to expect you to allow our armies passage; this is with respect to the roads in our jurisdiction only. I'm not familiar enough with these matters to comment on emergency response, so you'll have to discuss that with the armies. But it doesn't sound like it'll be a blocker, just a matter of ironing out the details."

"Ah, I'd been misunderstanding - I don't usually think of normal people as holding significant territory aside from where they live and work. That might change my approach, yes. I'll have to think about it, and I should probably hear more about how you think about that sort of thing. Not necessarily from you personally, I understand that you're busy."

"Ah. A lot of Izril isn't formally owned, but is considered within the sphere of influence of a state, and there are in-between cases and grey areas—but yes, to take an unambiguous example, if Salazsar marches an army within a hundred miles of Pallass without notice and approval, this is considered threatening and is in violation of extant treaties, and the same for the converse.

"You might want to look into an aide, since I understand you've determined a reliable source of spending income."

"I'm not sure I'd call it reliable just yet but I should have one soon, yes. Can you recommend someone, or a way to find someone?"

"I can recommend some with good credentials. People normally hire by posting a job opening, but it won't work in your case since nobody knows who you are."

He can list some candidates who worked with him or other people on campaigns in the past, and have expertise on inter-city politics and the broad Iandscape of Izril, and which are currently between jobs. Does Kiraavi have additional desiderata?

He needs someone who's flexible and good with unusual situations, mostly. It'd be useful if they liked travel or had been to a lot of places, too.

This Gnoll's claim to fame is interfacing for the Walled Cities with Niers Astoragon, a famed general from Baleros who came to Izril during the Second Antinium War to fight the Goblin King; he followed Astoragon to Baleros for three years before returning to Izril. He's worked in cities across this continent from Zeres to First Landing. Not a Pallass native, but resides here in semi-retirement and takes interesting consulting cases. This probably qualifies.

That does sound like the right sort of person, yes! He probably needs a letter of recommendation and directions? He'll send his avatar over for the letter, and to drop off a bowl so he can accept things like that here or at the senator's office in the future.

Yep, this person has an office at this location and probably has a receptionist or secretary who'll better inform Kiraavi on next steps and what to expect.

(They'll ask for contact information and say to expect one or two days for a response.)

He can leave a vial in lieu of contact information, if that works for them?

Yep, that works!

And with that done he has the rest of the morning free, until his appointment with the Secretary and the Speaker this afternoon; he should use it to get an income set up that can support him and his aide. There might be enough jewelers to do that sustainably - Pallass is so much bigger than any city he's seen before - but it seems wiser to ask at a proper industrial center that can take bulk deliveries on a regular schedule. Probably there's something like that within range of his gateside claim?

The 9th floor has bulk industry encompassing entire supply chains from ore processing to end-user goods like swords, armor and tools.

Can he find one that doesn't produce swords, and ideally not armor either?

Certainly! How about this bulk manufacturer for cooking pots?

Someplace that wants smaller quantities of higher value things would be much better but that doesn't not work. It doesn't have to be metal, maybe there's a fabric mill that wants dyes or something?

If he doesn't want to wholesale rare alchemical ingredients on account of Might Come Out Wrong, there's this appliance manufacturer that buys high-purity gold and silver as an enchanting substrate.

Might Come Out Wrong and also he doesn't want to disrupt an industry that might not be able to recover if he has to disappear on it, he's seen some things like that happen in his time. Bulk gold and silver is perfect, though, he'll go talk to them about what he can do.