The baronet had insisted there would be no slow trickle of increasing adventurer activity.

The opening of the adventurer's guildhouse in the Promise had to be a special event.

So it was on the first day of the culling, with adventurers from all over the region being redirected from Eston towards the Promise, that the new headquarters had its grand opening.

The main street was filled with lads and lasses, eager to earn some pocket money during the special springtime event.

It was so filled there was barely room for any goblins there.

In fact, it wasn't long before one was kicked to death.

"You. With us." A member of the knight force sternly said.

The local guards were not allowed to raise a hand against adventurers, but captain Beauregarde had send some of her most loyal men to oversee proceedings.

"He was touching me! He was touching me!!" The woman that had killed the goblin loudly protested.

"You can tell that to the captain." He said, as they all but carried her away.

-

"Managgia, so this is already shaping up to be a complete fiasco." Audace cussed.

He and Scratch were standing in front of the new guildhouse, observing the swelling crowd of combat ready youths that were gathering inside their small town. By now, it was enough manpower to

sack and conquer their little capitol twice over.

"No this is good, this is what I wanted," Scratch said, "it's better when an example is set for everyone at once."

"So one goblin death's a fair trade for setting an example. Is that it?"

"Of course, one life against many, simple math."

"Pah!" Audace crossed his arms, "in Grienice, lives of regular people aren't tokens exchanged by the powerful. It's an equitable society."

"Well then go back to Grienice man. Oh no, I forgot, you were exiled. Because an equitable society has no place for the likes of you." Scratch's words were angry, but he was grinning ear to ear.

Audace hadn't even noticed how he had begun counting goblins among his own class of downtrodden common people.

"Managgia."

"This year's culling will be a little different." The new guildmaster announced, using a voice projection spell.

Her guildhouse was as new as she was, and a little unorthodox. It had been made by goblins.

The hallways were narrow and the open spaces large. All the walls were crooked firebricks held up by concrete arches.

Even the floor managed to be askew.

A guildhouse was generally not a complicated thing. The entrance should lead directly into the gathering hall, where the members could sit down to wait or converse, and where room was for a receptionist's desk and a notice board.

Behind that were staff quarters, offices, and specialty rooms for training, item appraisal, that sort of thing.

The Promise had managed to complicate it tremendously.

The main entrance led into an oversized foyer of sorts, where guests could continue on to the actual main hall or climb a spindly spiral staircase to enter the specialty rooms directly.

In general, the direction a doorway pointed had no bearing on the direction its destination had, and the narrow spaces within the walls surrounding the hall ran criss-cross besides each other, went vertical as much as horizontal, split, joined, and ended suddenly.

In short, it was like a dungeon.

Were she stood, at a lectern, she looked out over a sea of adventurers. But not straight ahead, she was at a bit of an angle from where they came in and where the architecture naturally pointed their attention.

"Ahem." She cleared her throat. "This culling, you will not be rewarded for indiscriminately killing everything that looks like a goblin."

This had been made clear to them of course, but it bore repeating.

"Goblins within the perimeter walls are known as 'day goblins', they are not monsters. They are subjects of the king, and have earned the law's protection. However, outside these walls, there are monstrous goblins roaming between the peaceful communities of day goblin."

"How can we tell the difference?" A voice among the crowd yelled out, it was one of her own guild staff with a scripted question.

"A system has been derived. Day goblins live in camps and march under one of the approved banner sigils. You will be handed a guide at the entrance when you leave, and the sigils can always be looked up inside this hall.

Straight ahead, where her lectern wasn't, metal shields had been placed on the wall with symbols painted on. They were loosely hung over nails for easy removal by the staff.

"Any troupe that does not have a banner, or that uses a banner not from the barony, is game for you. I am happy to announce that there are more slayable goblins in a ten kilometer distance than there ever were before the culling was banned!" She said, purposefully not counting that far back.

A cheer went up among the adventurers. Their ostensible purpose was to suppress monster population, but one can never begrudge a working man his job opportunity.

"And due to sponsorship by the baronet, rewards will be increased. Every left goblin ear is now worth not three, but five copper pieces."

"You're kidding!" Her plant said, "that much?"

"That much! Now get out there! And remember: the culling doesn't start until you're outside the perimeter."

The general buzz of the crowd exploded into full-blown chatter.

It was too busy to hang around and relax, and anyway they were too amped up now to take a break before starting. But several hung around with questions or complaints.

Suddenly, the guildmaster's first day on the job had begun, and she had to assist the overwhelmed guild receptionist in handling the adventurers at the counter.

-

There was a last member in the adventurers' guild that was not present during the morning rush.

A halfling woman by the name of Mildred. The mage instructor.

It was already noon when she tried to snuck into the building unnoticed.

"Mildred? Hi. I haven't seen you here since the building first began construction," the guildmaster said.

"Yes! Well. It's a two-day hike. And I don't understand the point of this."

The short woman quickly turned the conversation around.

"Eston has a warping circle you know! This place does not. And it's a place where people actually live, so they come by to actually learn about the mage class. I'm an instructor first you know, you can't expect me to run from place to place in this dump when I have spells to sell."

The guildmaster smiled enigmatically. "From now on I do expect you to be here, Mildred. The Promise is to become the new gathering hub for our local members, so please make this your base of operations. If your instructor activities are preventing you from doing your regular staff duties, I can take over as mage instructor for the time being."

"N-no! It's fine." Mildred quickly backpedaled. She had essentially been threatened with a demotion. "I can be here."

"Good. Could you please stay to mop the floor after closing? It's new and we have gotten a lot of foot traffic. Thank you."

Mildred cursed under her breath. She was still paying hush money to the thieves' guild, but her contact was the pastor in Eston. She couldn't keep fitting back and forth.

There had to be some sort of agreement they could come to...

Two days later, Barbara came to Scratch regarding that exact matter.

He was in the manor's kitchen, staring at a large pile of goblin ears.

"How do I know..." he slowly deliberated, "... that these are genuine rebel ears? They could have delivered me the ears of my blood related brothers and I wouldn't know."

"The broodmothers would complain." She said.

"Or not. What if they're in on it?"

"Birth goblins just to have them killed for 5 copper apiece?"

"Why not? Don't they have trouble with people breeding monsters specifically for the slaying bounty further in-land?"

Barbara sighed and decided to just change topics, "the mage instructor woman came to ask me for a favor."

Scratch thought for a second, "oh yeeeaah, Mildred. Didn't she come to exterminate us once?"

"That was before we knew we were both with the thieves' guild."

"I knew." He said.

"The priest in Eston takes bribes from people that have confessed major crimes. Hush money."

"Naturally."

"She wants to know if she can pay it with me. We can pay it out to him via the smuggling route, right? I'll ask for a commission of 1/20 and we'll split it."

Scratch raised an eyebrow. "That would be... three quarters of a silver piece to both of us each month."

"Pure profit. I wasn't raised to look down on small amounts, they add up you know."

"Evidently." He leaned back, divested from the ear mount now "...we'll do it for free."

"What? Why?"

"Two reasons. First of all, because it's a service we are already offering. Anyone can come into the remittance office right across from you and deposit money on someone else's account. That's how we encourage use of paper money, it's how we grease the wheels of industry in our cross-city investments."

Barbara disapproved, the movement of funds from the Promise to illicit business all over the duchy was a closely kept secret. "That's for members, not loose associates."

"I think Mildred's earned member status by now, she's been paying for years. It's a bit too late for her to squeal and claim innocence. I think we can both benefit from closer cooperation. That's the second reason, by the way."

Barbara tapped her foot impatiently, looking for something to criticize. "You think remittance supports industry? How could it do that?"

Scratch looked slightly surprised. "Didn't we already have a talk about banking? Financial inclusion?"

Her brow furrowed.

"Fair enough, that was a few years ago. Let me explain again." Scratch patted the pile of ears, inviting her to come sit down.

She sat down, but not on the ears.

"What you described to me as a bank, the, uh, savings account institutions started by the sunflower-"

"the sunflower hero, yes."

"Yes. Those are not true banks, they are full-reserve banks, but they do provide something called financial inclusion."

"They allow merchants to travel without risking their life savings to robbers." Barbara corrected.

"That's part of it, sure. But it also allows a father to safely send his adventuring rewards to his family from three counties away. And it allows tradesmen to save money for their senior days, without keeping it under their mattress for any robber to find. All of these examples involve people being able to pursue lifestyles they otherwise couldn't. Because they're included in that service."

"That's all well and good, but how do we profit? The sunflower bank is a charity funded by the king."

"Well a rising tide lifts all boats, you know?" Scratch said, as if that were the end of the conversation.

He returned his gaze to the pile of ears.

"What the hell does that even mean? Do you hear yourself?" She said, genuinely angry.

"What? Oh. We are the only investor, and biggest lender by far in the whole country's black market operations. The more Reddington's thieves' guild is able to start projects and businesses, the more we profit as well. Currently, there's an assassin group in Haddon that is able to buy weapons and poisons from a fence in Hiffield through our remittance offices. That business model couldn't exist without financial inclusion, and the dividends from their stock already makes up for the whole countrywide operation."

"A-assassins in Haddon? I didn't know about that."

"Well, you're more part of the smuggling side of things, aren't you? The small amounts. With the Liege leaving us all this territory, I've been meaning to develop it. Payment accounts are just one type of financial inclusion, there's also things like retail investment, and mortgages."

"Scratch... what exactly are you planning to do?"

He looked at her, but she could not read his expression. "Eventually, the lifestyle of an exile must become at least equivalent in quality to the lifestyle of a citizen. That way, we rob the nobility of its power over the peasantry, and we can no longer be attacked. Mortgages will allow bandits to build homes and businesses, when peasants have to be granted a farmstead or rent in the city. If they can cultivate their resources and ensure enough safety... I mean it's just a general ambition for now. If it fails, at least we'll have become rich in the process."

Barbara stood up. "You mean you will have become rich."

Scratch laughed, but it wasn't meant to be funny.

He wasn't laughing just 20 minutes later, when he had to receive bad news from Cyclophan.

If things go on the way they are now, peace will stand between the two countries.

And not on terms favorable to us, will it?

Nay. The crown has meant for us to be a bargaining chip from the start. Blurich is dedicated to your destruction, and they are willing to make concessions on other demands in exchange for revoking your peerage.

"I still can't figure out why," Scratch said out loud, "why is the ruler of an entire nation of 40 million people so honed in on us? How does he benefit?"

"It is their morality master," said Youthere, who was never far away. "Human beings will throw away all benefit for the chance to feed their virtue. I have repeated this many times."

"And I know that and I accept it, but there are more goblins in the world. I can't imagine there's anything special about us. He must know about the second segment, but is unwilling to make it public for some reason."

"Tut-tut-tut." Youthere jumped in front of him and wagged his finger, "you are thinking with Reddington morality, not Blurich morality."

Scratch sighed and pinched the bridge of his nose, "...Fine. what's the difference?"

"As I said before; each of the four realms has a legacy of heroes. It is by mimicking the heroes of their stories that the people pursue virtue. Reddington has stories of dragon slayers, dungeon explorers, and clashing armies. Blurich has stories of succubus slayers, exposers of cults, and the rooting out of doppelgängers."

"Okay? So they're the same."

"The difference is night and day, master! The heroes of Reddington defeated monsters that would attack the kingdom, the heroes of Blurich defeated monsters that had infiltrated their communities.

Their greatest nemesis is a monster that makes peace with the nobility and walks among the peasantry unmolested. As you do, with your pretensions of civilization."

Scratch decided to ignore the jab at his pretensions.

If that's true, then there's nothing we can do to call sate their hatred. Cyclophan whined fatalistically.

"There's a whole 'nother country between us and them, I think there's something we can do." Scratch insisted.

"Isn't it funny?" Youthere said, "the paragons of purity believe monsters are their death and they root them out in the name of life. But they can not live without an enemy to hate, they need to feed their virtue with the killing of infiltrators, so they spiral into ever stricter dogma trying to find them."

"You must like them." Scratch said.

Youthere looked at him very seriously, "as a demon I revel in all sources of suffering and confusion, but from the ranks of their lot there can never come a demon king. The demon king must not be confused on good and evil, they must know good and they must know evil, and then choose to be evil."

"A high bar."

"But I know you can clear it, master."

"Hold your horses Moriarty, I don't believe in good and evil. I transcend such notions."

"Still, I do have faith in you."

I believe I know how to stop it.

Youthere?

The peace.

The devil altar in the underground cavern had grown into a mystical emporium over time.

The design principles that channeled the dungeon stem through crystals in sanctums could similarly empower the black slab of the altar, the same as it had been when it still stood directly on the wyrm shard.

Tents of silk and golden thread enveloped the thing, which trapped and swirled around the magic pouring in from above, so that it drained in a whirl through the central location and out underneath, pooling in the channels with the toxic byproduct of industry and disappearing towards the underworld.

Unlike a sanctum, a devil altar would not exhibit a constant magical effect. It did not release the captured magic into a static spell, unchangingly etched into the lattice of a crystal. Rather, it allowed Cyclophan to exert his will on the world directly.

Scratch had avoided letting his children get too close to it.

-

The constant orange light of the foundry shone through the silken curtains as it always did, bathing the pathways between fabric walls in an evening atmosphere.

The trolls guarding the devil altar were therefore fast asleep, as they always were.

Scratch whistled. "Wake up. Look busy. The boss is here."

They startled awake and began rearranging furniture pointlessly. The room surrounding the altar was like a storage space of reagent containers and stepladders for people of different heights to use it.

There were instances where the rearranging of furniture could have really helped them put on the appearance of productivity, but this was not one such occasion, and they quickly slowed down when their awakened minds caught up with the situation.

"I'm looking for a mirror." Scratch declared.

He was handed a small hand mirror, but he gave it bag.

"Something man-sized please." Then he deposited himself onto the black slab. "So I just sit here?" He asked, but the trolls couldn't answer his question.

"Well okay then..." he continued as if it had been answered. "Boys, I'll be out for a bit. You two will keep watch, yeah? And find me a proper mirror."

They nodded.

-

Seconds later, Scratch was communing with the abyss.

He experienced a suddenly falling sensation as his consciousness plunged into the blackness.

He had seen that emptiness twice before. First when trying to summon a demon familiar, that had ended up being just an incubus, and secondly when visiting another dungeon, when he had seen how it was a physical place that could be bored into.

Endless nothing loomed underneath him, and in the distance statues of titanic men seemed to be holding up the world.

But with a calm mind, one could make out the little flecks of light floating around.

They were the demons that had not yet found a way into the surface world, and they whispered promises in exchange for that chance.

"Blood. Blood for power."

"A shadow, give me a shadow and that domain shall be yours alone."

There were ulterior motives. They only whispered of the sacrifice necessary for the summoning, not the one they would claim once out.

The way the manabelt on Scratch's arm needed blood to sustain itself, but it wanted to excrete poison. The way that the incubus in his employ needed Lydia's dreams to grant him a form, but wanted to corrupt leaders into sin.

"Mirror demon." He said to the will-o-wisp before him.

Cyclophan could summon demons that fit his nature towards him, though be what mechanism wasn't clear. There were no lines of magical energy visible anywhere in the darkness.

"The evil god of guile and trickery is able and willing to summon shadow demons in every corner of my dungeon," Scratch said, "mimics in every box, grues in every room, and those... weird... spider things. So why do I have to come down here and negotiate like I'm trying for another familiar? What's your deal?"

"... You have consorted with a demon of temptation..." the mirror demon whispered in a breathy non-voice.

There were 777 species of demons, 111 for each of the seven families of sin. Scratch had found Youthere outside of the regular selection of shadow family that Cyclophan had served him.

"So?"

"... we are... not aligned..."

"Listen. Tell me what your deal is, I see what I can do."

"...you wish for cloak and dagger... you wish to turn man against man and call forth the horrors of war..."

"That's my deal. What do you want in return?"

"You will grant this one a mirror... This one will inhabit the mirror.... Your will be done." The speck of light began to float into Scratch to settle the deal.

But he was having none of it. "Hoooold... your horses. The interview is still ongoing, tell me what you really want. What's the catch?"

The demon hesitated.

"I'm not judgmental, if it doesn't affect me we're cool. But I warn you not to lie to me."

"I must serve the demon king..."

"There is no demon king on the surface."

"...the family of shadow has already chosen who must become the demon king... we must bring about his corruption."

"You can do that while bringing about my war?"

"...we must."

"In that case, pleasure doing business with you."

-

"The pleasure is all mine."

The next thing he knew, Scratch was back on the devil altar and looking at his reflection.

The troll had placed polished silver in front of him, and a toothy smile was grinning back at him.

Not that Scratch was grinning himself.

"Now that you've brought me into this world," his reflection said, "you gotta bring me my target. Right now I just animate reflections, once I get the right reflection I can jump out an' ice 'em. Then I can replace him as a physical body."

"You talk differently than you did before." Scratch said suspiciously.

"Yeah, I copy everything from whoever's form I'm taking- get your fat fingers away from the glass," the demon commanded the troll. Who, while holding the device, had curiously bend over and tried to touch the moving reflection, "you'll smudge it."

"Well okay then, handsome. You have a plan, or what?" Scratch said.

"Bring me some official that'll be at the piece talks. It doesn't matter who. I replace them, start and incident, maybe assassinate someone we'll see, and make sure that war breaks out between Reddington and Blurich."

"And after that?"

"After that I'll be free to pursue my own agenda. As a shadow demon, I will naturally seek out our chosen demon king."

"That's fine, I-"

"The Reaper of Darkness, lord Abyss."

Doppelgänger

Family: Demon

Threat Level: D

Reward: 1 silver piece

Doppelgängers are a type of demon that impersonates people. As demons, their appearance indicates either the existence of a dungeon far along its growth cycle, or extreme corruption and sin within a community.

A doppelgänger follows the appearance of a specific individual, and can not be told apart from the original via physical traits. However, a doppelgänger does not possess the prowess and magical capacity of their target and as such is easily slain.

Doppelgängers are known to kill non-adventurers and attempt to take over their lives. For this purpose, they have the ability to enter mirrors, share memories, and become invisible in the shadow.

As they possess human level intelligence, they will attempt to isolate their target from those that might help defend against it using confusion and manipulation.

Suspected doppelgängers that have already replaced their target must not be killed immediately, as a holy ritual by a church affiliated is needed to prove their true nature.