1.
They acted as though it were a day like any other. In the dimly lit office, sunlight pouring through the shutters, Yulja squared off against Mayor Ghastkill. The major of Nashkel tried vainly to rescind his offer, his feeble backpaddling serving only to incense the 'sweet tempered' maiden further. Palms flat on the desk, she leaned in, her sharp nose all but scraping the bulbous mass that barely passed for proboscis. His right porous nostril was a caved in ruin, and his left wheezed like the broken bellows of the town's abandoned smithy. Nine hundred gold split six ways instead of a stake of the mine? A one-time payoff? A 'small fortune' indeed! Pwah! What did this ignorant, lumbering oaf take her for?
Those wretched miners would prove their worth. There was, Yulja noted, kobold ichor still on her boots, and with a crooked smile that never touched her eyes, she hefted it and set it against the desk, her leather britches straining. The mayor's gaze drifted to the appropriate stain, and mutely, he relented. Yulja's toothy grin broadened.
Trade was booming. Six months after Yulja and her compatriots had cleared the mines, Yulja's boots remained where they had that very first night they returned: on the tavern tabletop. Electing to stay long after her companions had gone on their merry way, Yulja wanted for nothing, or so she decided. With her newfound position as a majority shareholder, she forced Ghastkill to send for mercenaries from the south, a motion that was supported by all the surviving townsfolk. While bandits plagued the roads north, trade with Athkatla continued as soon as the snows blocking the pass melted. With that melt, Yulja insisted that Ghastkill post vacancies and offer town lots for any willing to come and work the mines. Now the 'demons' were slain, there was no reason good, honest work wouldn't be appealing, especially now the roads north weren't safe. Bounty hunting, to Yulja, qualified as 'good, honest work'. And so, the first few caravans trickled in.
Ghastkill argued the town had no money, but no one else knew that. The last of the coffers were spent paying off Yulja's companions, companions who felt the need to investigate further and travel north to Beregost, as if the route south from Beregost to Nashkel hadn't been dangerous enough… But Ghastkill wasn't the smartest and Yulja refrained from telling him so. Patiently, perhaps overly patiently, she explained that the Flaming Fist, headquartered in Beregost, set the bounty on bandits and they, the frontier mining town of Nashkel, separated from the rest of Amn by the mountains, wouldn't pay so much as a copper piece. Besides which, they weren't going to pay anyone in gold: they were going to pay people in iron. There was a reason the current trouble was named the 'Iron Crisis'. Sure, iron wouldn't fetch much in Nashkel but in Beregost, where iron was so scarce it was worth a tenth of its weight in gold… and who would clear the roads to risk this vast fortune? Those same mercenary bounty-hunters. Sometimes, it was amazing that Ghastkill was elected mayor to begin with, but that was the trouble with political connections, she supposed.
With the reinforcements, a palisade was erected around the town, the stockade manned at all hours, and the bandits kept at bay. A circus came to visit, drawn by the swarm of bored sellswords in dire need of entertainment, and with that circus came Aerie, Yulja's most recent purchase.
