Diamonds cheap enough that they can be used as board game pieces is not a turn of phrase he has ever considered, but he finds he quite likes the idea. 

"There is obviously not infinite demand for diamonds, but I expect it will remain the most valuable per pound for a long time, particularly if much of that turns around and gets used up on spells you commission. As for the raises, are you imagining the crusade publicly pays in gold equivalent to the price of the spell and the diamond, the church uses the diamond you sell us, and then pays you for it without an announcement? If so, while that will likely help conceal the exact source of your cash flow, if you purchase such spells at rates limited by slots and not material components there won't be any hiding that you have some phenomenal source of income. I can work with the church to mitigate this, such as by having the crusade receive anonymous donations that actually come from you or by paying the church to increase their contributions in their own name across the entire worldwound defense so the crusade stands out less, but there are still limits on how much spending this is capable of plausibly disguising. I advise taking some time to consider at what rates you're willing to trade your anonymity for your cash flow, so that when you make the decision it's a trade you endorse the details of."

"Yes, that's what I'm imagining. It's going to be obvious that we have some secret source of funding as soon as we start providing the troops with good gear and resurrections and so on. I'm mostly concerned with concealing that one, our source of wealth is conjured diamonds, and two, that it's me personally. My current plan, and I'm very open to suggestions on this, is to have an account for me personally and an account for the crusade, deposit the diamond money in the former and make anonymous donations to the latter. Depending on how many people are likely to be looking at the crusade's books we could even do something like set up a bunch of medium-sized recurring donations on different schedules, so it looked like we had several mysterious benefactors instead of one."

"That won't stretch infinitely far, but it will almost certainly help. Now, the other limiting factor on raises is that they each require a seperate spell. I have three 5th circle slots a day, and Jhoran has more than I, but from what her majesty said the next most powerful cleric traveling with the crusade is currently only at 4th circle. By Mendevian standards that's a fairly large thoroughput even accounting for the other powerful cleric spells you might need cast, but from the sound of things you would like to at least be able to manage more than that. Is this a matter you would like to purchase the church's assistance with, or would you prefer to handle it yourself or through the crusade?"

"You know a lot more about where and how to recruit clerics than I do, but I should speak to Captain Harmattan and find out if he's already doing that as part of his recruiting efforts or not. Relatedly, I'd like to give both him and Quartermaster Garms an estimate of how much the crusade can spend per month. I shouldn't give them the full number right away unless I decide to tell them everything, but can you give me your best guess at how much I can bring in? Based on past crusades I'd like to spend at a pace that we can sustain for ten years, maybe somewhat more at the beginning for one-time startup costs, but I don't have a good model of how the market will react to a giant pile of diamonds all at once versus a smaller but steady flow of them. Probably the latter is better for not crashing the price because people will develop new things they want them for?"

Rathimus nods.

"For values this large I would want to pay for teams in Axis to do evaluations before committing to a number, but certainly enough that it wouldn't make sense to denominate it in crowns. If you supplied a sufficiently large volume I expect you could get at least 4 million pounds a month in gems and dust without significantly crashing the price, and somewhere between ten and a hundred times that if you were."

That's a lot of money. She has no idea how it compares to the crusade's monthly budget other than that Garms didn't say anything about crowns being the wrong units. 

"How much volume are you estimating? Either in number of gems of various sizes or in, uh, is gallons a reasonable unit? Also I wonder if it wouldn't be easier logistically to transport me to Axis so I could make the diamonds in a vault or something there?"

"The most steady markets are in dust and raise quality gems. Diamond dust goes for between 7000 and 7600 Absalom pounds per pound of diamond, depending on the supplier, while raise dead gems are-"

There's a brief pause, as he does some mental math. "About 38 million pounds a gallon."

What a world. Nobody measures diamonds by the gallon, but if you could just produce raise dead diamonds by the thousands... There's a sort of feeling of being adrift. The diamonds yesterday had been enormously valuable, but it feels like something just hadn't sunk in until he imagined a bucket filled with diamonds. "Abadar, grant me aid, that I might not fail at my duty..."

There are few things in creation that Abadar can see more clearly than fair trades between entities trying to deal in good faith. That one of them is His own chosen does help, but the main thing preventing Him from already knowing every detail is that His employee is being very legible about this meeting being a private one, and gave no indication that this privacy shouldn't include Him. Now, though, His aid has been sought-

Oh, hey. It's that squirrel that came past immigration. She's different enough from Him on sufficiently many axes that to get real visibility on her He would have to pay another god for it, which would be against the spirit of his cleric's promise, but neither is she foreign to Him. He can see the deal she's offering, the hand reached out in good faith in search of a deal that's beneficial for all parties, for Aktun the city where everyone can afford what they wish, the desire for wealth achieved in exchange for doing things of value for others - and He does not want to give her cause to regret trying to deal with His followers in search of it. With all the care He can muster, He reaches to brush against the soul of His follower.

<Aktun the city of portals / The balanced scales / The pages of a contract / The foundation upon which exchange can happen>

Rathimus' brow furrows slightly at the resulting headache, but any pain is overwhelmed by the feeling of assurance.

"Abadar confirmed that we may use his realm in Axis for storage or to secure transactions against theft or observation. And I think he might have given me another cleric circle, though I won't be sure until I prepare spells tomorrow."

She keeps being wrong about when prayers are direct communication with gods that the gods respond to and when they're more like attempts to steady one's mind, which is a slightly unsettling thing to keep being wrong about.

"That sounds very useful; I appreciate it. And congratulations on the possible new cleric circle! --I don't know if being able to use Abadar's realm is a, a job perk of being a cleric or if I'm supposed to pay for it but if it's the latter I assume you'll explain how." She is dealing with a mental image of bearded-old-man cartoon God sitting behind a cash register and it needs to go away.

"There is a sense in which most of Aktun is Abadar's realm and is thus accessible to anyone, but operating out of there full time is typically expensive enough to be out of reach for business dealings; even the church itself does not rent much property there. Abadar told me that we would be permitted to do any exchanges in one of the areas where His influence is strongest, which would make theft, violence, and hostile observation nearly impossible. I would have to speak with the relevant Axiomites to know if I need to rent storage separately, since it's hard for Abadar to give details like that in a vision, but if you find it agreeable it would be significantly safer than even commissioning a private demiplane for the purpose."

"If it wouldn't take too big a chunk of my total revenue that seems like the way to go. Thank you for all your work on this. Is there anything else we should cover other than scheduling a time for the trip to Axis?"

"Not unless you expect to need more cash on hand before the first sales go through, or to make purchases through the church."

"I would actually like to buy one each of a lot of scrolls, especially Wall of Stone, Discern Location, and the arcane version of Plane Shift. And Mage's Private Sanctum. I can do something that's effectively casting from the same scroll repeatedly, so I'd be able to save you the scroll for future meetings."

He doesn't have discern location, but he can do the rest of those and put in an order for it. The church probably has several in storage, but if not it'll probably be about a week for one to be scribed.

Awesome; she's happy to pay for that one now with the rest if that's simplest. And they should do whatever paperwork is necessary to create the official crusade bank account and her personal bank account and then she can get out of his hair.

While the sheer scale of what he's now responsible for is somewhat stressful, that bit at least is just the same as it normally is. He can get her set up with that, then, and once she's on her way put off returning to his work for a bit while he uses the sanctum to look over his reference materials on Aktun and notes from his previous visits. He'll have tongues up for the language, of course, but it's been years since he last visited for any prolonged amount of time.

That's a sentiment Brenda finds extremely relatable. Onward to meet with Quartermaster Garms about armor.

Wilcer Garms is very enthusiastic about meeting her for armor! He spent the time since their last meeting getting his hands on copies of all the common types of armor in use by Mendevian forces, in case some of them were easier or more feasible than others, as well as gambesons, buff coats, and boots. Between that and the paperwork it gives his tent something of a crowded feel, but there's still plenty of room for Brenda.

She appreciates his having done all the running around!

"So, shall I just figure out how many of each of these I can make in a minute?" she asks, scanning her eyes over the panoply and contemplating the fastest way to take each one off. "What kind of size range do you need for each thing? Or maybe a better way to phrase that is, what are the species we need to have stuff for and what's the tallest member of each species you want to accommodate? Making anything smaller than I can wear myself will be slower but from what I've seen I'm on the small end for a soldier so that shouldn't be too constraining."

"If you could, that would be great! Most of the army is humans, but we do have a number of halflings, dwarves, half elves, and gnomes, plus a handful of rarer species. If the armor isn't an exact fit we can do resizing, which is still usually much faster and cheaper than making it from scratch, but you're right that a range of sizes are easier if it's not more of an inconvenience. I would guess about 80, 90% of people are between five and six feet tall, ranging towards the upper end of that zone? We'll probably want to have an armorsmith on hand before producing too much, but I figured it would be better to go to them with an idea of what was possible.

"As for shorter than you... there are some, particularly halflings and dwarves, but even if we end up having to equip them normally it will be a lot easier without having to spend as much of the budget and our smiths' time on the others."

"Makes sense. Hmmm, one more question--are there any ways any of these could be improved on? Better materials for the armor, making the rings single pieces instead of riveted since they don't need to be assembled, anything like that?" She suspects titanium might offer some advantages over steel, but she'd need to dig around in her materials science textbook to figure out the best alloy. Or just put a couple different chain shirts on scarecrows and stab them repeatedly.

"Single riveted rings would be very useful, if it's not particularly more difficult to manage. Chains breaking in combat are mostly a problem with shoddier gear, which I have tried to avoid here by making sure my examples are masterwork and had been recently inspected for defects, but every little bit can help on the margins. As for special materials... you'd think cold iron would be helpful, but I actually checked and aside from the cost the problem is that it doesn't actually help outside of weapons. Mostly we just try and use good steel... I guess the hellknights use adamantine, but even if we could afford it the advantages of switching over wouldn't be worth giving up the ability for you to quickly make replacements."

"I might be able to make adamantine versions. How about I give it a try, and if it works we can figure out whether it makes sense to try to have me make enough for everyone or accept having a mix or stick with steel all around."

It seems like a waste to deliberately make something worse than optimal, but she can see the argument for not having to deal with the question of who gets the nicest armour.

"None of the armor here is adamantine." Why hadn't he gotten any, when she said she could make clothing? Because - at the time, it had seemed like obviously the kind of thing that wouldn't be included in that kind of power. It hadn't even risen to the level of conscious thought as something to be considered and rejected, it was just obviously an underlying fact of the universe that things wouldn't be that convenient. "If your clothing making ability might stretch that far, do you have a sense of if it would also work on mithral? Or, enchanted armor? I can have examples brought, though it might take a bit."

Everything his layman's understanding about magic knows says that the answer to the last one is going to be obviously not but he can't not ask.