Blood Shaper

Visitors arrived in drips and drabs of small groups as the day of Kay’s coronation drew closer. Some were envoys there to be the official presence of the cities, smaller nations, or other organizations they represented. While arriving for the coronation of Avalon’s first king and founder didn’t automatically make them allies, it implied that they wanted friendly relations. Most of the independent city states and tiny nations scattered throughout the contested areas in the center of the continent sent representatives or at least a missive apologizing that they couldn’t afford to send a presence for one reason or another and congratulating Kay.

The larger nations beyond that to the west were a mixed bag. The only official response from any country of size were letters. Some of them claimed that the distance from Avalon and the speed that they were moving forward on Kay’s coronation prevented them from having anyone arrive on time, which was understandable, since the journey from most of those nations would take several months at minimum. A few brought up the idea of sending delegations in the future, but those were in the minority. The rest of the letters were bland perfunctory missives obviously sent because it was the “proper” thing to do, but none of the senders actually cared. From the contents of the letters many of the western nations believed that Avalon would either be another of the very small countries that never went anywhere further or the kind to reach too far and collapse under the weight. A notable handful of nations sent nothing at all.

Even further west were the giant nations, the juggernauts that changed politics with their every move. The oldest and most powerful countries on the continent after the last round of calamities drove the civilizations of the past into ruin, the two main standouts of the group were the Concord and the Empire, two nations Avalon was already familiar with. There were a few other countries mixed in there and seen as close seconds to the power of those two countries, but the Concord and the Empire were the main contenders for most powerful nation on the continent. Both of them sent perfectly polite letters congratulating Kay on his coronation. Neither addressed the troops covertly sent to attack Avalon as part of the recent Shatterplate War, but Kay didn’t really mind. The government scribes tasked with writing the letters most likely had no idea such a thing had even happened, and the comeuppance for whatever masterminds truly deserved punishment would be delivered eventually.

Governments and nations weren’t the only people who sent people to represent their interests, many influential organizations did as well. The Adventurer’s Guild sent someone separately from their home nation, the Three Stars Alliance, although they did send a small delegation themselves. Many powerful merchant groups sent people, as well as well known academies, research groups, mage towers, and other groups with influence and a budding interest in new and growing nation. Kay had heard of exactly none of the groups who had sent people, other than the Adventurer’s Guild, but they were influential enough to send invitations to in order to try and form a good relationship with whether it was to get access to rare trade goods, make connections to trade teachers and information, or to get a chance to recruit members to aid Avalon.

Outside the organizations and nations sent invitations to officially attend the coronation was everyone else who wanted to attend for reasons of their own. Multiple mercenary groups showed up looking for someone to pay them to solve problems. Independent researchers, artists, small merchants looking for opportunity, and more all looking for patrons to support them started coming in droves. There were even warriors, knights, adventurers, bodyguards, and fighters of all kind arriving in Avalon to see if they could earn a place in Kay’s service. Some of those were just looking for a job, while others had philosophies or Classes that demanded they find a worthy person to serve, and came looking to test Kay.

Arrivals like that weren’t new to Avalon, many had come during the original founding of Avalon once word had spread that this new place existed, and even more beyond that when Kay had become a Lord and Avalon grew into a town and then a city. This wave of new people were the less desperate or more pessimistic, the ones who waited until Kay was a King and Avalon was a nation before they took their chances and made their moves. They were also the heralds of a new flood of immigration. One of the duties Kay had had to work on in preparation for the coronation was the expansion of Avalon City’s infrastructure, the expansion of the villages and towns already built, and the planning for several more in anticipation of the people who would arrive for the ceremony and just never leave, as well as the increased number of people coming after that.

The larger and more established nations of the world had immigration policies and laws that were similar to what Kay could remember from Earth. Many required testing of some kind, looked to see if the people trying to move into their countries would be good citizens, and were more lenient toward people who would be valuable to the nation. Eventually Avalon would have to develop similar laws, but at the moment it was a lot looser. The land Avalon claimed was large and mostly undeveloped, left to grow and change hundreds and hundreds of years ago when the countries that had existed in that area had fallen. With large tracts of land and mountains of unused resources waiting to be exploited, Avalon needed the manpower. Potential citizens were no longer required to swear binding oaths backed by the System to join, but they were still required to learn Avalon’s laws and promise to follow them, as well as passing basic tests to make sure they weren’t a threat to others. Anyone that wasn’t a criminal of a particular variety, including murderers, slavers, rapists, and arsonists were allowed in Avalon, although the criminals who hadn’t gone to that level were still given very strong talkings to about the consequences of continuing a life of crime in Avalon’s territory would be.

As the day drew closer and the work everyone had to get done drew to a peak, some of the more interesting arrivals started to show up. The Shattered Clans sent an Elder, as Ahthia had demanded of them through Kay, who showed up, checked on the status of their imprisoned soldiers, then locked themselves in their provided rooms and refused to speak to anyone. The only communication they sent was a short missive to Kay saying they would attend the coronation and speak to Kay afterward. It was a bit rude, but it wasn’t outside of Ahthia’s expectations, so Kay let it slide.

Around the same time as the Clan’s envoy arrived, a delegation from Tumbling Rapids also made it to Avalon, and the most interesting thing about them was the information they brought. Nelam had been heavily pushing to have the trading city be brought into the fold as part of the kingdom, and the arrival of King Glowl had increased that tenfold. The city councilmembers already in Nelam’s pockets started making even more moves to bring their peers to their side with bribes, blackmail, political pressure, and other underhanded moves. The neutral councilmembers had been quickly forced to join up with the anti-Nelam faction in order to form a bloc capable of keeping Tumbling Rapids independent, but they were slowly being pushed out.

That all changed when the campaign to take out Kay arrived in the city and Glowl left with them to kill Kay. Mere days after they’d left a series of scandals came to light that undermined the the authority and standing of the pro-Nelam councilmembers, in some cases severely enough to warrant arrest. The sudden shift in political power allowed the rest of the councilmembers to remove or at least weaken those who supported annexation by Nelam and destroy any chance of that happening. Another intriguing piece of information to note, immediately after the scandals had broken all at once Kurtis Nel, Nelam’s representative in Tumbling Rapids and the confusing man who’d spoken to Kay after he’d been kidnapped and seemingly deliberately leaked all of Nelam’s plans in the city at that time, vanished from Tumbling Rapids. Rumor was that the Nelamian embassy and the token forces left behind when Glowl left had no idea where he was.

All in all the councilmembers who came to Avalon as part of the delegation were very interested in being allies with Avalon in order to keep Nelamian influence out of Tumbling Rapids, and were looking forward to opening negotiations. Of course, that would have to wait until after the coronation like everything and everyone else, though they would be higher on the list than several others.

The last notable arrival was from Eleniah’s homeland, the Seramist Isles. A ship arrived at Avalon’s single port with a delegation sent by Eleniah’s cousin, the Queen of the Seramist Isles. Word came of their arrival via messenger through the distance shrinking passage of the Many Trial Halls, the color challenged dungeon south of Avalon City, which sent Eleniah into a foul mood and had Isla starting a quiet spy hunt. They’d sent an invitation to the coronation to the Isles by boat, purposefully timed so that the invitation would arrive too late for anyone from the Isles to attend, and yet here a delegation was. It had been Eleniah’s plan, in order to keep the amount of meddling her cousin could get up to to a minimum, but they’d been thwarted. The delegation was set to arrive only a few days before the coronation and Kay wasn’t looking forward to it. From Eleniah’s tales of her cousin’s manipulations and plots as well as his own minimal experience with it, he wasn’t looking forward to why the Queen had allowed one of her spies to be even partially revealed in order to send a delegation to arrive on time.

As the day got closer and closer and more and more people arrived in Avalon City, the streets started to fill with early celebrations and impromptu parties as visitors mingled with residents and stores, stalls, and merchants made a high profit from the increase of people. Underneath all the celebrations and build up to the actual ceremony of the coronation however, there was a current of unease running through some of the newly arrived. Tales of strange creatures appearing out of no where and ravaging villages and towns spread from some of the visitors. Others had gossips about strange cults pushing out from their hiding places with new powers or performing unknown rituals with powerful effects. There were other stories too, of people suddenly vanishing in front of crowds, people twisting and changing into monsters, and foul diseases that seemed to ignore the normal rules of sickness and health.

The cheery mood muffled the disquieted rumors and stories, but they were still heard by many, including information gatherers and spies working for multiple factions. Many of them, knowingly or unknowingly, directly or indirectly, worked for Isla and the worrying information coming from the rest of the world reached her ears. Unfounded tales with no proof weren’t enough to take to Avalon’s new King, but they were enough to send out agents hunting for more. As crowds looking to make connections, sell their goods, find like minded folk, grasp opportunities, or just attend a good party flooded into Avalon City, others trickled out, looking for information or proof to bring back to Avalon’s spymaster.

Weaved throughout the reports that Isla received was a thread of very interesting information that she found faintly alarming. Sprinkled into every rumor that got passed along about strange happenings and every story about grotesque never before seen monsters attacking cities and caravans out of thin air was a very specific belief. Every report spoke of Avalon being safe. Even the smallest and most benign phenomena reported ceased as soon as you got close to Avalon. That was a good thing, since it meant that they didn’t have to worry about whatever it was happening in their lands, but weird things happening every but Avalon was worrying in it’s own way. Without real information to go on though, Isla set those reports aside to wait for verification and focused on the more immediate problems, such as spies trying to infiltrate Avalon using the chaos of the coronation celebrations or foolish assassins from the Coalition of Fang’s End. The one’s in it for the money were easier to dissuade or run off, but the moronic fanatics who truly believed they were performing some heroic act needed to be dealt with much more force.

She scowled in annoyance as she sent one of the Blood Guard she’d trained the location of an idiot who wanted to try and kill Kay during a fitting. The weakling would never make it close enough to try, but the attempt would disrupt Kay’s schedule and that could not be allowed this close to the coronation. If anything went wrong Amanda would lose it, and that was a terrifying prospect.