Ashes of the Fallen

"My little boat," I replied with a blank expression. "I thought I said I would visit with a small boat… did I tell someone else? Ah, my memory is sketchy."

"Psh, small boat huh, cocky asshole," she retorted with a grin.

The banter continued on for a little while, as we poked fun at each other while my crew unloaded the ship. After nearly thirty minutes, four massive piles of white rabbit, fox, wolf, and bear furs had formed roughly ten feet from the shoreline.

"Uhm, that's a lot, you know," said Ellieby with some hesitation in her voice.

"I think my exact words were-" I started to reply while trailing off a bit, trying to recall exactly what was said. "I'll be bringing a lot of goods, yeah, that was it."

"Whatever, that's got to be at least… how many are there?"

"Twenty-one bear furs, one-hundred and thirty-nine wolves, two-hundred and eleven foxes, and eight-hundred and two, rabbits," I listed off with nonchalance.

"Uh, I'm not that rich," she immediately shot back. "Are you crazy?"

"That's what bartering is for my dear," I replied with a wink. "I'm not expecting a straight cash sale here. There are goods in this area that I can't get on the other side."

She started waving her hands in the air, no doubt using the in-game calculator to run the numbers. Going by our pre-established rate, there was a minimum of fifty-four copper per wolf pelt, eight copper per fox, and three copper per rabbit.

That was around, at least eleven-thousand and six-hundred copper coins, or one-hundred and sixteen silvers, or if one wanted to get fancy, one gold coin and sixteen silvers. I'm not sure if anyone had actually seen a gold coin yet, so silver was the largest denominator in terms of currency at the moment.

Of course, I didn't factor in the price of the bear skins, since I didn't have an established value for those, yet. Either way, I was going to be a rich man once all of these goods were sold.

"I, don't even have enough in value if I traded you everything I own… how did you farm so much, and a personal boat? NPCs that follow you? Are those Companions?" she rambled off as she shook her head, completely confused by the situation at hand.

"No, never mind, I don't even, yeah," she continued to ramble nonsensically.

"If it would ease your mind, this doesn't all belong to me," I answered somewhat seriously as I gave her some time and space to let everything sink in. "We're a collective, a large part of the proceeds here will go back to the NPCs' pockets, as they did the work, they deserve their rightful pay."

Stopping short of explaining everything, I looked over the small village and realized that it was in somewhat poor condition. They weren't a big guild at all, fairly casual really. They had a few shacks set up and they were working on some cabins, but even so, the state of their village was quite, unappealing.

Ellieby was a small time trader.

Perhaps, I made a mistake.

"I'm sorry, but I don't think I can even take a quarter of this," she finally stated apologetically as her face gave off the look of a downtrodden individual.

Those were not the words that I wanted to hear.

Panic nearly struck my mind as I realized our deal could fall through at any moment. To travel this far out, all for naught, that… couldn't happen.

"Theoretically speaking here, how long would it take you to sell these, if they were in your possession?" I asked honestly, wanting to find a middle ground that could rectify the situation. She was always playful in her messages and probably thought I was kidding around half the time, when I was only masking the seriousness with humor.

She was a nice girl, and I felt she was a trustworthy individual since the first time we met in town, when she stopped me by standing in front of me, while waving a hand in my face. When she bought every pelt I had, I was under the impression that she was a fairly successful trader.

That was my mistake.

"Um, honestly, I think it would take me a few weeks, real time," she answered.

The gears in my mind were starting to move, even if they were rusty and chipped, the cogs still worked. It was slow and not always accurate, but my mind did work.

I could plan with the best of them.

Yeah, strategy, business savvy, that was an inherent gift.

"Alright, humor me if you will; is this a campsite or a named village?" I asked.

"It's still a campsite… why?"

"Well, that's troublesome," I said while rubbing my chin. "Okay, here's my proposal, if you're interested. I'm going to leave these pelts with you, and give you a list of items I need if you happen to come across them… and in another month real-time, I'll come back with another shipment.

"At that point, you can pay me for the first shipment, assuming you've sold enough to cover the basic cost, and if you're interested in continuing we can work out the second one. We can discuss that as time goes on though, but I believe you can probably sell these without too much difficultly in the larger cities."