May 2017 Challenge: The Scandal of the Sunburst Angel

**Straf** · 05-15-2017, 08:54 PM

Over 700 years ago, between the Merchant Uprising and the Civil War, the merchants traded with the Five Empires for exotic goods and spices. Heading the other way were wool and valuable ores of tin, copper and iron. On occasion the robust little horses from the scrub lands in the south were shipped across as they made excellent plough animals for the amount of fodder they consumed.

At the time the produce for trade belonged entirely to the aristocracy on whose land it was produced. The goods were traded in the exchange houses for chits entitling the holder to a share of the returning cargo. The merchants and ships' companies took a fee and a small percentage of the value, the lion's share went to those with the chits. These chits quite often changed hands many times to settle debts, often gambling related, and were quite often exchanged for currency. Depending on the goods promised many were traded up in value so the original holder and many after him could make a tidy profit on the promise of the sales value of the returning cargo.

It happened once that one of the finest vessels left for the Five Empires with the promise to return with many fine goods such as silks, exotic perfumes and the revered Masaatic Filigree work. The Sunburst Angel took no wool nor ores for her belly was laden with gold and silver, the returns promised were a thousand fold for the Masaatic jewels were the most sought after and therefore expensive in the world. A gentleman whose lady was adorned in such splendours would be highly in favour among the loftiest aristocrats at court. The perfumes of Lanor-sk-Il fetched high prices in the markets as they made excellent gifts for the Princes and Dukes and their ladies.

After several months the investors moved their lodgings to the capital to await the return of the Sunburst Angel in anticipation of the riches they would surely acquire. There they waited, and waited some more before finally winter set in and the shipping season was over. The Sunburst Angel had not returned.

Then rumours began to emerge of a whaler ship that had spotted the Angel being pursued by pirates close to the Karan Isles, and suddenly the mood was one of despair. However a minor lordling from the midlands offered the aristocrats a lifeline. He offered gold and silver for the chits having secured the funds using his family home, Shepford Hall, as collateral, a modest but strategic holding that included the fording revenue from the sheep droving. He offered the chit holders one tenth to one fiftieth of their face value, the majority of whom decided to cut their losses and take his gold.

The rumours of the piracy had damaged the confidence in the shipping lines and only the more traditional goods continued to be traded so when, one spring evening a ship pulled into the harbour showing herself as the Sunburst Angel filled to the brim with the finest and most exotic goods, young Dawson the Lord of Shepford was suddenly sitting on the largest fortune in the land. Of course many smelled a rat but there was not a hint of evidence of foul play. Indeed it was Arrol Bryngaur, the captain of the Angel, whose own testimony and that of his crew about the ship being waylaid for essential repairs in the Five Empires and missing the end of the shipping season, that was believed. There was no connection found between Dawson and the skipper nor his crew and many deemed him a foolhardy young chancer who happened to get lucky. That his family was suddenly elevated to be the wealthiest in the land was here nor there.

It wasn't until 200 years ago that the true story had been revealed for there had been significant collusion between the Shepfords and the captain Arrol Bryngaur through a chance encounter in a tavern. Bryngaur became the Fleet Admiral of the Bryngaur Shipping Line who worked almost exclusively for the Shepford Trading Company, which remains the largest company in the world. The very nature of trading and economics changed from mercantilism to capitalism, the world changed significantly, thanks to one dastardly plan devised in a tavern in a dirty street behind the docks!

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