Imperium Rising

== Part One: The World without the Empire ==
=== Chapter I: The Miners ===
The village was a depressing mess. Dirty houses jammed together on haphazard roads of gravel. Shoddy. Mal Humbrai was not impressed as he cast a disapproving eye over the little town.
Mal Humbrai was not a very refined figure himself. Raised in the wild fields around New Menar, he had lived the first twenty years of his life practically on his own. He had never ventured near the little settlements, or the grand settlement of Menar, which was rumored to be the best place to live in the world. Clean, peaceful, and calm, New Menar stood out like a beacon, to which no other settlement could compare. Even so, Mal had had a prejudice against the settlements, and rarely, if ever, visited them, except in disguise.
He sighed as he looked over the little collection of huts. Perfectly preserved from the War, this town had hardly changed in the hundred-and-fifteen years since then. Up high in the mountains, few, if any, mobs had come up here since then, and the Imperials as well as the Mercenaries had seen no reason to attempt the daring climb to conquer these small pockets of civilization, where the folk knew the land better than them and would have defeated them easily.
Mal patted his mule gently, urging him up the last little clump of grass to the village. One almost immediately entered the village square, as the place was so small, with perhaps twenty-two families and around one hundred people. A road led, steep and winding, up toward the middle of the Mountain, Esphor.
It was "the Mountain" to these folks. They had mined it for years, digging through hard rock to uncover coal, iron, and even the elusive diamonds that sometimes appeared. Countless numbers of stone had been pulled out of the caves, which stretched from one side of the mountain to the other and which ran down many hundreds of blocks.
"Good money to be made here," said Dirk, Mal's companion trader. Dirk had been with him for some time now, always popping up when least expected and joining Mal for a trip or two before disappearing for another year. "A lot these mountain villagers don't have."
"One of those things is money," said Mal quietly, "I don't expect we will find much in the way of profit here. But we will see..."
Little villager faces peered out of dirty windows, and up the winding path to the mines Mal saw folks carrying ores or sending it along by mule or cart. Hard-working, and not very intelligent. They had what they needed and nothing more.
Dirk had always wondered, since trip's beginning, why Mal would choose to come up here. He looked at him sidelong. Mal was not as young as he used to be. Maybe that was it? A quiet retirement? Dirk shook his head. Mal Humbrai would settle for nothing less than the best, which to him would be a nice big house in New Menar or at Two Rivers, with plenty of good food and people to do his work. No, that wasn't it. Dirk shrugged and sank back into his own thoughts.
Rumors of the Guild had, more than anything else, reached this little village. The townsfolk looked on the Guild as a mysterious, yet beneficial figure. The Guild, they said, would bring back good old days and return the land to its original form. All the mountain people wished for the Guild to come, and yet feared them, they hardly knew why.
"Ah, welcome to our little town," said one of the officials nervously, "and what brings you to our corner of the mountain?" He rubbed his hands together.
"We are traders from the Outlands," said Mal, "we are passing through."
"Dangerous work for strangers, passing here," said the man, "beyond here, the way down the mountain and up it is the same; the paths are a block wide in many spots and the sides of the mountain steep and tall."
"True, but we made it up here alright, didn't we?"
"Yes, I suppose you did," the man said it as if he wished they hadn't. "There are a few places open at the inn, I believe, where you could sleep."
"Thanks," said Mal, waving, as he led his animal down the path.
The inn was not as depressing as the rest of the village. In fact, by comparison it was almost a nice place. At least the fire was high and the food was decent.
"Most of the rooms are empty nowadays," said the innkeeper, "we don't get nearly as many travelers as we once did. Those that do come round here are bad people in general," he concluded, looking at Mal and Dirk suspiciously.
The stables next to the inn were the place most of the village's animals were kept - for a fee, of course. There was fortunately room for the animals and Mal saw to the stabling of them himself, insuring that the precious cargo of hard-to-find wares and unusual objects made it safely - and unhampered - into their rooms. Mal had learned a long time ago to trust nobody too fully, not even the apparently hospitable and generous keeper of their lodging.
"What do you think of our prospects here, Mal?" asked Dirk as they sat by their own little fire in their room.
"Pshaw, I don't know," Mal answered with a yawn, "the folks on the other side of these damnably inhospitable mountains are fairly well-off and willing to trade with us. These mountain-folk, on the other hand, aren't so open to strangers. Believe it or not, they were just the same when I last passed through these parts, ten years or so ago. I even remember the Category:FoxofJudyFoster
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