Infrastructure: Part Two Hundred and Forty Two

The Manor of House Ferlis was in every sense of the word ancient. It had been commissioned by Sainsien Ferlis during the War of Four centuries with nearly two hundred generations of slaves knowing the imposing stone structure is as the seat of authority. It presided over lands he'd had been bestowed by the Dark Emperor herself after cutting through swaths of men, dwarves and high elves both as a common warrior and after rising through the ranks as a commander, breaking army after army with bold aggression and a knack for exploiting the enemy's weak points, especially fear. Since then the house had produced generation after generation of the finest warriors by who's sweat and blood Valnothron endured and gained glory and victory. They'd been powerful players on the ruling council and had produced their share of Master Generals and a couple of High Lords.

Despite that legacy and much to the annoyance of it's members (among them being it's contemporary head Zenrith ti'Felris) it had fallen from prominence in the last thousand years. It was still wealthy even if the produce from their estates had to compete with that the merchants brought in either through trade or from the colonies (even though the house had gained some minor holdings across the sea) and the warriors it raised were still among the best the Dark Elves could produce and they were still classed as a Great House, but for all that they'd been pushed back politically. They'd lost their hereditary seat on the Council seat nine centuries prior thanks to the schemes and plots of the peddlers. They'd manage to gain a Term-Seat more often than not, but even so it left them at a disadvantage, a fact which boiled contempt and resentment in him for nearly three centuries.

One would be hard pressed to find a Drow who lacked for ambition and did not seek to gain power and prestige either for themselves or their families, but Zenrith had that as well as a score that he needed to settle. As far as he was concerned Valnothron was on a course to ruin and the blame lay squarely with the Merchant Houses. They had their function in society but statecraft was not one of them. From his study of history they'd been a problem ever since the Dark Emperor's death and they had managed to gain some prominance during the time of the Third Empire but even so they'd never been so powerful as they'd been in the last. Trade was a useful thing to have and for that reason House Ferlis had a few investments and merchant vassals. The problem was that the merchants built their fortunes around dealings with lesser beings and so they lost the stomach to do what needed to be done. Leaving aside naval campaigns with The Eternal Foe every few decades Valnothron had gotten into one major war in the last two and a half centuries. There would be the occasional brief campaign against the Allergonian Empire, brief wars to force some trade concession or reprisal, mercenary work, hunting down tribals across the sea and formalized show battles. None of that was real war, the kind that forged true strength and culled the weak from the herd. Cannons and Janissaries had their place, but the merchants had made them to dependent on them. They were content to forever postpone the coming War of Ascendancy when the Dark Elves would cleanse Illvanas of the corrupted ones and take their rightful place as masters of the world. The Warrior houses needed to retake control and put House Valcas and it's like in it's place sooner than latter lest the rot of degeneracy run to the core, even though the opportunity to do so was still a long way off.

As such while it may have been a bit incongruous with his general position there was little surprise that Zenrith firmly backed Valnothron striking the 'Infrastructurals' in what would become the Escort War. Even though the rise of that state in the frozen end of the world hurt the merchant families more than anyone else, they still dared to cross the Drow as a whole. When that collection of avarice cowards could be pushed towards taking up the sword he pushed them as hard as he could to take up the sword and cut down those fire-lock obsessed upstarts. He'd assumed that this would break them free of complacency and end with a reaping of snow covered waste. Instead the Coldlanders had managed to repulse all their attacks with at most minimal losses.

He'd read the reports and heard the firsthand accounts about what their steel warships could do, but as far as he was concerned that only made that more effort should have been brought to bear against them and their continued existence was as much the product of Mercantile cowardice and half measures as said ships vaunted prowess. No more was that evident than at the fiasco that the assault on Daagsgrad was let to become. If the merchant houses had committed their troops slightly sooner the city would be theirs and the final obliteration of that upstart state would be well under way. Instead House Ferlis had lost all but eight of the four hundred and forty warriors that he'd pledged to the expedition from day one as well as the frigate Sainsien. It would take years and thousands of scimitars to be able to replace the forces lost even taking on houseless gutter rats by the score. Everything about that defeat ate at him, from the gutlessness of merchants to the fact that House Valcas was now making money hand over fist rebuilding and rearming the fleet to the fact that Infrastructure managed to defy the proper order of the universe and beat Felris warriors with peasant levies. So he stewed in his own bitterness and became committed to having those machine obsessed vermin snuffed out once and for all with all Nine States falling upon it in fury.

But despite all that he still had to sleep, and despite the fact that he had to sleep he was unpleasantly woken up by base biological matters. And so he trudged in a semi conscious stupor to the lavatory. It was a quirk of the architecture of the time that Lavatories were situated well away from the master's bedchamber. Had be been able to fully audit his behavior he would have noted that having to go to the bathroom at night was a rare occurrence and that his mind resolved itself more quickly after being rudely awakened. He also would have noticed the fact that while his generally unflinching bodyguard had been standing at his post, his eyes were closed. The only thing he did notice about this odd instance was the sudden sharp penetrating pain and subsequent spreading numbness of a poisoned dagger entering his back. That shocked him into full alertness, but that soon gave way to a haze of a different sort, a burning cold sensation and then darkness.

The assassin was among the best of Valnothron's guild, no one else would suffice to go after the leader of a Great House. Even with a cloak of invisibility and a wide variety of clever tools and spells at her disposal getting Zenrith into a position where she could strike was no easy feet. It involved introducing a combination of several different subtle potions introduced to him via his cutlery and his wine that only got the desired results in concert, a similar ploy with more powerful time delayed sleeping potion for the bodyguard, careful plotting of movements plotted to within a few steps while living in the manor's cellar for a week with a specially trained weasel required to do some critical work. But the contract had been fulfilled and with that the assassin made a daring escape. For the work she had done she had earned seventeen thousand scimitars that night, which was half the total contract. While she did not pry into the matter, she had correctly assumed that her employers believed that the last thing Valnothron needed was a radical firebrand pushing for endless escalation.

Previous-Infrastructure: Part Two Hundred and Forty One
Next-Infrastructure: Part Two Hundred and Forty Three