The Dirrium nobility pre arc:
The interior of Leornars's private study in the Avangard district was a shrine to cold, hard data. While the rest of the world slept, the air here hummed with the soft, blue-white light of archival mana-crystals.
Leornars sat at his desk, his silver pen spinning rhythmically between his fingers. Spread before him wasn't a map of lands, but a map of a person: Viscountess Mishima.
"Report," Leornars murmured, his eyes never leaving the shifting financial charts floating in the air.
Stacian stepped out of the flickering shadows of the bookshelves, dropping a heavy, leather-bound ledger onto the desk. "I've finished the deep-dive into the Mishima lineage. Three hundred years of 'Silt-Pass' dominance. On the surface, they are the backbone of the textile trade. Beneath the surface, they are a crumbling pillar held up by nothing but pride and outdated contracts."
Leornars tapped a crystal, and a complex web of red and gold lines projected into the air.
"Every noble has a foundation," Leornars said, tracing a line. "For some, it is land. For others, it is blood. For Mishima, it is Relevance. She is terrified of the world moving faster than her caravans. Look at the logistics."
"She lost 12% of her gross profit last quarter to lowland rot," Stacian noted, pointing to a jagged dip in a graph. "She's been hiding the losses by taking high-interest loans from the Northern Syndicate. She's masquerading as a titan while her vaults are filled with IOUs."
"Pride is an expensive mask to wear," Leornars remarked. "She values the appearance of the monopoly more than the monopoly itself. She wants to be seen as the gateway to the North. If she loses that status, her social standing in the High Council vanishes. She isn't just protecting a trade route; she's protecting her existence."
Leornars pulled a small vial of shimmering Aether-Glass Varnish from his vest and set it on the desk. It caught the mana-light, sparkling like a trapped star.
"We will not offer her gold," Leornars decided. "A woman in debt is suspicious of charity. We will offer her Efficiency. We will show her a way to turn that 12% loss into a 40% gain. We will give her the tool that makes her 'indispensable' again."
"And the 'Waste Clause'?" Stacian asked, her silver eyes glinting.
"We've confirmed through the environmental audits that the Silt-Pass runoff contains trace amounts of Deep-Iron dust from the ancient mountain veins. She sees it as sludge that ruins her workers' boots. I see it as the raw material for our Golem legion."
Leornars stood up, his seven-foot silhouette stretching across the wall. "She thinks she's looking for a business partner to save her family name. She doesn't realize she's looking for a liquidator."
"Shall I prepare the carriage?" Stacian asked.
"Yes. And ensure the varnish is the high-bonding variant. I want the 'anomaly' to be irreversible by the time she realizes she's signed away her sovereignty."
Leornars clicked his pen—a sharp, final sound. "Let's go meet the Viscountess. It's time to balance her books."