You are Summoned

Chapter 272. Trading Consortium.

I accepted the negotiations, and a series of options appeared. It looked like this challenge wasn’t one where I would interact directly with folks or factions, and would just have to make the best choices I could with the limited information available.

The Gavelox Trading Consortium would like to make the following offers.

A durable peace treaty between their faction and yours. This treaty requires advance notice of 30 days if either party wishes to rescind it. If the peace treaty is violated, the system will enforce extreme penalties on the violator.

Trade between their outpost and members of your faction.

A tariff of 10% on all trade that enters their outpost. This point is non-negotiable and required at all Gavelox Trading Consortium outposts.

A trade road network constructed and defended by your faction.

Access to limited inventory for direct purchases.

Do you wish to accept these terms, decline them, or make a counteroffer?

It was quite a bit more than my previous negotiations which basically included a trade agreement and a short-term non-aggression pact. Breaking this offer down, I agreed with most of it, though I had a few points I wanted to renegotiate. First, I confirmed how the tariff would work, just thinking about it, triggered the system to confirm how it functioned.

Tariffs. For this arena challenge, some neutral parties may offer trade agreements including tariffs. Tariffs are assessed on all trade caravans that reach the trading partner. The funds for the tariffs would be deducted directly from your resource silo.

Okay, so each time a caravan arrived at the trade outpost, I’d get hit for 10% of the resource value it contained. Doing some quick math, I’d still come out ahead since the caravan would turn around and return to my cavern with a full load. I was essentially opening a new trade route that provided 90% of the benefits my others would have.

My other option was no trade with these guys, so I could live with the tariff if no trade at all was my only alternative. I thought about trying to impose a tariff in return, but I figured it was better to negotiate the other items in their offer. After considering the other points, I made a counteroffer.

You have made the following counteroffer to the Gavelox Trading Consortium.

A durable peace treaty between their faction and yours. This treaty requires advance notice of 30 days if either party wishes to rescind it. If the peace treaty is violated, the system will enforce extreme penalties on the violator.

Trade between the Gavelox Trading Consortium and all faction members.

A tariff of 10% paid to the Gavelox Trading Consortium on all trade that enters their outpost. This tariff is to only be paid on caravans that originate from the kobold cavern, and not assessed against the Kobold Empire for trade with other faction members, trading partners, or confederated factions.

A trade road network constructed by the Gavelox Trading Consortium that will link with the closest existing trade route inside the Kobold Empire. The Gavelox Trading Consortium will be responsible for protection along this portion of the trade route and the Kobold Empire will be responsible for the remaining route defense.

Immediate access to all inventory for direct purchase.

It was only a few tweaks, but I didn’t want to front the cost of road building and additional patrols if I could get the consortium to pay for it. I also didn’t want to get hoodwinked into paying for the elves, humans, gnomes, and the people of Shoremarch’s tariffs. I only wanted to pay for the caravans coming and going directly from the cavern.

The consortium could negotiate their own deals with my confederates and allies. I sort of hoped they would, since extra trade for my allies would help them grow, which would, in turn, provide more trade for me. A few moments later, the consortium came to a decision.

A final offer has been tendered by the Gavelox Trading Consortium. They agree with all your points but require a 15% tariff if they are going to provide the resources to construct and defend a section of the trade route. In addition, they will provide limited inventory for direct purchase, but will expand their offerings over time as your trading partnership continues.

I could go with that, the extra 5% tariff would probably end up costing me more in the long run, but right now, funneling my resources into quick growth was more important. What inventory I could purchase from them was a bit of a mystery, but given that I didn’t have a whole lot of extra resources to spend right now, I was fine with them wanting to unlock the options slowly.

You have agreed to the final counteroffer from the Gavelox Trading Consortium. Inventory available for purchase will now be displayed in the trade tab on your arena challenge interface.

Okay, we had a new trading partner and with the agreement, I could see a view of their outer gate. As I watched, the first caravan emerged, it was just like the one from the port, a single overloaded wagon that should bring in quite a nice bump in resources. I waited for a caravan to emerge from my marketplace but wanted to kick myself when I realized that I was already maxed out on caravans, so I added the marketplace as the next upgrade in the queue.

A trade route was now highlighted between our factions. The route led from the clearing that the trading post was in and then through the forest toward the elves. There, in the forest, it met up with the road from the elves to my cavern. It wasn’t the longest stretch of road, but I was glad I didn’t have to pay for it.

A small group of defenders followed the wagon, and I was a bit shocked to see how powerful their patrol was. It consisted of four goblins in armor and weapons similar to my goblin trio. In addition, they had an actual ogre with them. I doubted any of the threats that we’d run into so far in the zone could challenge them, even if the ogre was unarmored and just had a big wooden club for a weapon.

Your marketplace is insufficient to provide a trade caravan for your new route. This is a violation of your trade agreement and will result in system generated penalties. In a show of good faith, the Gavelox Trading Consortium is willing to offer you a structure upgrade token that you can purchase at double the normal rate, which will be deducted from trade resources generated from future caravan arrivals.

I didn’t have much of a choice other than to accept their offer. After seeing how powerful their guards were, I didn’t want to consider engaging in any conflict with the consortium. It was going to be an expensive lesson but would be fine in the long run. At least by purchasing the overpriced upgrade token, I would avoid any dumb system penalties.

You have accepted the offer from the Gavelox Trading Consortium. A repayment tracker has been added to your arena interface.

Looking at the trade tab in the interface, I could see the payback tracker was just an empty bar that would fill up as each caravan arrived in my cavern. Hopefully, it wouldn’t take too many trips for that to happen. The upgrade token was also sitting there as well, ready for me to activate.

After activating the token, my marketplace began to expand to rank four. The stalls had a more permanent look and some of the kobolds in the cavern began to move over there and act like they were examining the goods that each stall had to offer. With my kobold citizens shopping in the market, the resource flow from the structure increased, which was a welcome surprise.

I also took a moment to see what inventory I now had access to with the consortium.

Gavelox Trading Consortium. Current Inventory. Please note that inventory and stock levels change weekly.

Structure upgrade token (1).

Mercenary contract, Tier 0, Rank 5. (1).

Random addon token (2).

Spell scroll (1).

As I looked at each item, I got a feel for how many resources they would cost me. The structure upgrade token was half a silo full of resources, which made me groan thinking about how much I owed the consortium for the token they’d fronted me. When I looked at the mercenary contract, I could see that it would summon a squad of ten mercenaries at the tier and rank indicated.

The mercenaries would stay for the duration of the challenge and could be assigned to any task I could currently assign my kobold forces to. It was the most expensive, requiring a full silo’s worth of resources, but in the long run, this could be the payoff for having a trade focused empire. My forces were going to be limited, but with enough income, I could hire all that I needed.

Another interesting option was the random addon token, they cost half a silo of goods each, and would unlock a structure addon for a random structure. When I selected the item, I could see that each of my buildings glowed that could support an addon. I was surprised to see that everything could be upgraded except for my headquarters. Each building also had only one slot for addons, limiting how much I could upgrade them.

Finally, I had the spell scroll. It would grant me a random spell that I could cast from my headquarters. The spell would be on a cooldown that would vary depending on the spell I received. There was a big random theme going on with the Gavelox offerings, but it wasn’t all that bad, and gave me something to look forward to discovering.

A caravan finally left my marketplace, and I let out a sigh of relief knowing that I wasn’t in violation of the trade agreement any longer. The faster the caravans moved, the quicker I could get my debt paid off. That also meant I’d need to spend more resources to expand and upgrade my trade routes.

So far, the road construction team was only working on the stretch from my cavern to the human village. After that, I’d have to pick the route to the elf village as next in line for an upgrade. It would delay the longest stretch, which was between the human village and Shoremarch, not to mention the one linking that route to the new dungeon tariff station that should start producing income soon.

I had a solid plan in place to grow my empire financially. Now, I only had to protect it until the engine of commerce really got going.