"I'm best paid in attention, and it's hard to explain the nuances of it to humans, you don't have the concepts exactly. Right now, if you wanted a wagonload as a proof of concept I'd be willing to do it, and maybe two if there was some compelling reason for the second, but not five; in the long run I'll have to see how various things go to see if that would be a worthwhile use of my time, and I'd much rather do the construction myself with tollbooths, if you want it for roads."

"Mostly we want it for fortifications. Or I suppose some people like to enhance their businesses and congregations with it. Laying paths in forests is also very popular, and a lot of larger constructions need some of it.

Can you also do mithril? Weirwood? Ilium? I think mithril is normally the most expensive as you can make mana site mirrors and conduits - oh, and armies, I suppose."

"I'll need to either see a sample of pure mithril or spend some time teasing it out of its alloy, but I can do it - I do prefer not to explicitly help armies, though, letting them travel on the same roads everyone else can is one thing but providing them with arms and armor is something else. Raw wood is difficult, but if you'd take it in planks that's not too much harder than stone by the wagonload - in general the forms of things that you'd expect a trader to carry are easier for me than the raw form you'd find in nature. And I suspect I can't make anything that's outright magical."

"Probably not ilium, then, although I've a ring of it here if you'd like to give it a go." A 'ring' of ilium turns out to be a cube about an inch across; it's an incredibly magically charged metal that arrives in asteroids. "There's no shortage of demands for mana site improvements, or great works of mana production, any given wain of mithril is more likely to end up in one of those than an army, and we could easily make sure of it. There are some pure mithril traceries in our mana collectors..."

"I'll want to hear more about what mana is used for and how mana sites work, but that sounds agreeable enough. I really am more interested in facilitating travel than doing trading myself, but it's always useful to have a bit of money available so it's good that there's an obvious way for me to earn it."

"We're currently buying mithril at four thrones five crowns a wain, and white granite or weirwood at four thrones, Prosperity obliges me to tell you that you could absolutely get a better price than that at Anvil but you'd have to be at Anvil, and given Sextus is trying to glare a hole through your bridge I'm not convinced the Synod is going to be happy with you."

"I know this Spire has a reputation but we are absolutely not to start worshipping this entity just because it can produce immaculate bridges and wains of bourse materials out of thin air for the low, low price of your immortal soul."

"I mean, good, I wouldn't want you to."

"Nobody is worshipping Kiraavi, Sextus. We're just establishing context for trade.

Speaking of which, this definitely needs to be escalated to the Senator.

...who used to be Highborn, so I imagine this will be an interesting test case.

You're welcome to settle in and use the Spire facilities while we're awaiting a reply; I'll send a heliopticon summary, but he'll probably want to come here in person to actually ensure we're not hallucinating and so on.

And I expect your offering will end up being taken to Anvil - that's where the Senate meets, it is indeed in Highguard but I do take Sextus' point, once this gets out there will certainly be people doing whatever they think will make you prioritise them, with a power like this on offer."

"In that case I'd like these coins to be brought to Anvil and wherever else people will be discussing me," he says, manifesting a few small crates of ordinary blue jade discs. "I can begin a claim from one of them if it's placed on the ground, and the larger my territory is the more attention I have available to manage it, so I shouldn't need to worry about priority very much. I can also see and hear and speak through them, but not manifest anything larger than they are."

"...okay, that is probably too many coins.

You are going to have a lot more luck if you bring, like, half a dozen, and you auction them. Then you're an opportunity. Four crates full, and you're instead a threat."

"He is a threat! I know you love your new bridge, Prudentia, but this... 'claims' business is not... look, even if he is completely harmless, and that's certainly still a possibility. you are going to cause a civil war. The League will scoop up all the coins they can carry, the Highborn will try to get them interdicted and certainly whip up a mob in the Synod about it, and we don't need another civil war, one is already too many."

Oh dear.

"I could use more of an explanation of what exactly the problem is, if you could."

"As the one member of Synod in this Spire, it falls to me to pay attention to the religious and social implications of what's going on here.

You don't fit into any of our existing categories, which is dangerous to start with. Claiming to be a god certainly doesn't make that any better.

It's possible we could slot you into the 'Eternal' category and work with you on that basis - limited individual deals on a clear trade basis with nobody subsuming their will or destiny to anything.

However, as a society we are generally quite wary of the Eternals too, for excellent reasons - none of them have a particularly human compatible value system, often they appear to want something nice, like equitable trade, and it turns out that in fact this means they support the slave trade and are confused when we get upset about that.

If a perfectly ordinary Autumn herald walked out of our lake and said 'hey, we can provide you with effectively unlimited quantities of white granite and mithril for road building projects, but to do it you've got to take our token and let us claim that bit of land', that would also cause a gigantic argument between the people who think they would very much like improved infrastructure at a very low apparent price, and will just go and enable it if it's as easy as bringing a coin home, and the people who think that's a bad idea because it would let a herald of unknown priorities - or any of the known Autumn priorities - have a lot of information about our Empire, and control over vital infrastructure, that they could use for betrayal or trade to our enemies or what have you.

Add your anomalous state of being, and you also have a considerable number of people who will be concerned about the long term metaphysical implications of using your services - there are already quite a number of people in the Empire who believe that dealing with normal Eternals can damage your soul, never mind some other entity.

So: some people would gleefully accept and apply your gifts, some other people would show up and attempt to destroy anything that resulted from them. We do have a legal system, but it's often hard to discover who did criminal damage to an unattended road segment, and also I suspect the people who provide Virtue defences would be able to claim they had no other mechanism to oppose you. Or they manage to actually get your coins and their results declared illegal, at which point we have an even worse problem.

The side that is actually using your gifts might consider them too much trouble before this turns into a full on war, but I doubt your opponents will back down so easily, especially given the previous attempt to magically enhance the entire Empire has just recently resulted in armies of heralds who wish to destroy all life appearing throughout the Empire."

"I'm not sure I follow. What you're saying is that some people will either believe that I am what I seem to be or decide that the benefit of working with me is worth the risk that I'm not, and some people won't, and instead of the second group leaving the first group alone they're likely to start a war about it? With the first group? For no reason other than the disagreement, even if I haven't done anything more than what you've seen here?"

"Yes.

The Empire goes to war for two reasons - one is when someone insists on going to war with us, and the other is for the good of the souls of the people that inhabit wherever we're going to war with.

If a large faction think you are a threat to souls - and they would, if you turned up to Anvil and started handing out amazing prizes with seemingly no catch - they will not stop until that threat is eradicated, or they are."

What a ridiculous waste.

The crates disappear.

"I might - go and see for myself, I suppose."

"I really do think we can sort this out. We've just got to move a little slowly at first to not spook anyone." She glares at Sextus. "There are a lot of worse outcomes if he doesn't think he can do business with the Empire at all!"

"I would rather not just - " he gestures vaguely. "I'm new here but I'm not new, I know humans benefit from having me around."

"By 'benefit', though, I assume you mean 'improve their material conditions', rather than 'improve their capacity for Virtue and chances of becoming a Paragon'?" 

"Personally I'm all in favour of improving our material conditions," insists Prudentia, "and certainly you can get a lot more Wisdom and Prosperity done with better infrastructure."

"I mostly mean material conditions, but also, yes, people can generally do more of what's important to them when things are easier, there's one of my kind largely dedicated to that principle."

"It sounds like we have a reasonable way forwards? I will send a message to our Senator, who has extensive experience of the relevant political and religious implications and also is a great fan of infrastructure projects. In consultation with her, we will devise a suitable strategy for introducing Kiraavi to Anvil in a fashion that will not immediately turn into an atrocious bun fight."

"And if this does turn out to be a terrible threat to our immortal souls or the territorial integrity of the Empire?"

"Then we will absolutely not make the situation any better by scaring Kiraavi off and causing him to go and find some less scrupulous individuals to launch his project with, now, will we?"