Caroline had just finished reading a stack of letters she’d received from Hillsdale. The moment she’d gotten strong enough, she’d started sending out letters to her friends. Since her Guild party was practically illiterate, she’d had to use Mariel as her go between with them.

She’d already officially transferred her Guild membership from Hillsdale to Halcyon City (the Capital). It wasn’t required to switch, but it made the paperwork easier to deal with by keeping to the Guild branch closest to where she lived.

Her Guild party could transfer over too, but they’d decided to stay in Hillsdale. That was a bit disappointing but she had expected it. Roy and Canny were married, and there’s no way there wives would be willing to move to the Capital with their family all in Hillsdale. The wives barely tolerated the long-distance Requests their husbands sometimes accepted.

Jack was a bit of a coward when it came to new places (even more so after the cursed ruins) and Douglas… as always, that guy was totally self-centered. He plain hated the cold and wasn’t willing to go to a place that snowed heavily (which was why he never did see dragons despite being infatuated with them).

‘These guys…’ she thought with some exasperation as she read the letter and then smiled sadly. ‘..still, I’ll miss going on adventures with them. It’d have been nice to have my friends here.’

They’d always been goofy meatheads, but that’s partly why she liked them. They had given her a chance to prove herself when no one else would. She’d be forever grateful.

It was bittersweet, saying goodbye to the Hillsdale branch. She’d been with them for four years after all, and it’s where she got her start. But, as long as she got to keep being an Adventurer, she didn’t really care where she did it. And in the end, being with Thio was more important than being in Hillsdale.

Her house, and everything left in it, she gave over to the Church. She’d considered selling it, but she didn’t need the money and Thio said there’d be no buyers anyway. (Apparently she’d made it too nice for the area.) The Church, however, would put it to good use. When she’d been out on Requests that’d keep her away from home for weeks at a time, she’d had Father Richard use the house however he liked. He’d often housed people in need there when she’d been gone.

Living in the slums of Hillsdale she’d gotten a first hand look at how awful life could be in the Empire. She wanted to improve the situation for her neighbors, but quickly figured out that the line between a fool and the unlucky was very thin. Sometimes indistinguishable. When she tried to help by herself, she unintentionally made things worse in her ignorance or simply got scammed.

Eventually Caroline solved this problem by getting the most trustworthy people she knew involved: Father Richard, Guildmaster Darren, and Head Guard Tack. They knew the town better than she did, who to trust, who to discard and which methods were likeliest to work.

The problem for those in the slums was three-fold: a lack of education, few job opportunities, and little-to-no law enforcement.

For the first problem, Caroline paired with Father Richard. He already ran an orphanage, and he’d always wanted to build a school. There was no schools in town, with even the rich having to send their children off to private schools in the cities or hire private tutors.

The idea of a low-income school was not entirely foreign to the culture. Churches in big cities had built such schools before, usually in conjunction to their orphanages. People in the congregation could also send their children there. But a school that anyone could attend if they paid a small fee was a new concept, which is what Caroline proposed.

Naturally, building a school was no small endeavor. The reason none had been built was that those with money weren’t interested in investing in a school that poor people could attend and they had ways to educate their own children without wasting money on building a school in town. Hillsdale was large as far as towns went, but the community was not terribly religious, so there was no way for the local church to support a school on it’s own without at least one very wealthy benefactor.

To solve the money problem, Caroline began taking on lucrative (but dangerous) Requests. These Requests took her farther and farther away from Hillsdale, and was the main reason her reputation as an Adventurer increased so dramatically in the south. By the end of the year, she’d made enough to build a school, hire two teachers, and make sure every orphan Father Richard took care of would be able to attend school. By the beginning of second year the school was open, the demand was so great Father Richard was going to hire another two teachers.

Not talking about her reputation as an Adventurer, her personal reputation (and Thio by proxy) skyrocketed. Making a school anyone could attend was unheard of, and everyone was excited to have one. It was clear Caroline was very rich but also generous in ways that mattered. She didn’t just throw money at a problem, she worked within the community to make life better for everyone.

Part of the reason it was difficult for people in the slums to get jobs was because no one knew what kind of worker they’d get from there. Perhaps the person would be hard working, or perhaps they’d steal from their employer.

Reputation was a huge deal, and people in the slums either had none or were in the negative. People like Thio, who persisted despite the discrimination, were rare. Most simply accepted their lot rather than struggle to rise above it.

A new system was needed for workers, and not just the ones in the slums. Thus, the Trade Association was born. It was a system similar to Adventurer’s Guild, but instead of grading Adventurer’s, it graded workers, employers, and mediated employment contracts. It made finding good workers and getting a good job extremely easy for everyone involved.

Guildmaster Darren connected workers to employers using his vast network within the Guild. Once enough reliable workers were members, the reputation of the Association naturally increased. This attracted more employers, and thus more workers, the cycle upward continuing.

At first, Caroline invested quite a lot of time and money in the Trade Association. But to her surprise, after the first year, it was self-sustaining. By the second year, the Trade Association had spread out to several cities in the south and was working it’s way to other parts of the Empire. Last Caroline had heard, they were thinking of opening a branch in the Capital itself.

The last problem, crime, was a difficult one and in the end she settled on a compromise. Unlike where she came from, the power structure was very different in the Empire. Lords ruled local territories and they hand picked leadership in towns and cities within their jurisdiction. Often generations of a family ruled over towns and cities by the power of their Lord. Thus, local authorities didn’t answer to the people, they answered to their Lords, and the Lords in turn answered to the Emperor.

In the case of Hillsdale, the Lord only cared about getting his taxes and was ambivalent about everything else. If Hillsdale had had decent leadership, this might have been a good thing. After all, the Mayor was given a lot of freedom and could have improved a great many things without his Lord interfering. Unfortunately, Hillsdale didn’t and the results were as expected.

The Mayor had an extreme disinterest in doing anything but eating, boasting, and taking bribes. He was fat, proud, and annoying. Corruption was rampant.

It was a small miracle that the same Lord who appointed the Mayor also appointed the Head Guard. And the Head Guard was an upright and honest man, scrupulous in following the law. He and the Mayor fought frequently.

It was easy enough to get Head Guard Tack on Caroline’s side. He liked orderliness. But the Mayor was a problem, he fought Caroline building the school and the creation of the Trade Association. He even went so far as to hire thugs to destroy the school while it was being built and harass employers so they were too scared to hire through the Association.

It took a prodigious amount of self control for Caroline not to smash the Mayor’s face in. After a lot of thinking, she came up with a nonviolent method of protesting:

She stalked the Mayor.

Everywhere he went, she was there, speaking quietly about his evil deeds and leaving notes to “encourage” him to turn over a new leaf. Like an eerie specter playing at being a conscience, she haunted him. The thugs he’d been using to harass the town were instructed to get rid of Caroline.

But that didn’t work. Caroline defended herself with extreme prejudice, reducing the thugs to a pulp on a regular basis. Some even repented and left their life of crime rather than deal with the crazy Adventurer one more time. The sketchier people who usually did the Mayor’s dirty work began to refuse doing his jobs. They respected raw power more than money, and Caroline proved herself to be the kingpin of the city (unintentionally).

The Mayor found himself isolated, with the criminal elements rejecting him outright, and respectable society firmly on Caroline’s side. He couldn’t even complain to his Lord, because Head Guard Tack was always one step ahead and contradicted everything he said.

By the third month, the Mayor of Hillsdale (now several pounds lighter) gave up. He had no intention of helping, but he wouldn’t actively fight her either. Ever after that, when he saw Caroline, he immediately fled in the other direction (much to everyone’s amusement).

Even with that victory, the core problem was still there: the laws needed to be reformed. And without the support of the Lord, that wasn’t going to happen. Caroline’s attempts at getting the Lord’s support failed miserably. He was an extremely apathetic person with a lot of aristocratic pride, and outright rejected any advice or condemnation from those “below” his station.

So, Caroline and the Head Guard compromised with the Town Watch. Citizens with a good reputation, even from the slum, were given special dispensation to work alongside the Town Guards. They became the secret eyes and ears of the Guards. Criminals suddenly found all their secret, safe locations being exposed and their activities constantly disrupted. No amount of bribes or threats to the Mayor helped, as he feared Caroline more than them.

This was definitely not the best of solutions, as it put citizens in danger and could be easily abused. But as a temporary solution that empowered the community and raised the reputation of the Guards, it wasn’t too bad. Caroline hoped that the next Lord in line would be more open minded so a more permanent solution could be found.

Also, though of course she didn’t realize this, much of the criminal element was terrified of Caroline. Many counted her as the “big boss” in town, and didn’t dare do anything nastier than occasionally cheating at gambling or tricking a merchant out of a few extra coins.

Even if she wasn’t physically there, the Head Guard would tell her who was causing a ruckus, and then she’d go in and “deal with it”. And no matter how gentle she smiled when she did, her fists indicated a zero tolerance policy to crime.

Caroline was never fully aware of how she’d fundamentally changed Hillsdale. Whether it was the family in the slums, or the baker on Main and 4th Street, everyone’s life had improved despite her being there only a short four years. She was like a stone dropped in a pond, her very existence causing ripples where ever she went.