INTRODUCTION

The study of history is a matter of evidence and inference, but there is
still an art to writing sustained historical narratives. One must
examine the paltry facts that have survived the wrath of the ages,
consider the ways in which they might fit together, and draw conclusions
about the lives and deeds of our forefathers. That is no easy thing to
do. I must plainly admit that there is room for a certain degree of
error in this work, for I have been compelled to take facts and figures
from a variety of sources and use them to construct the story of a man's
life. I can say with certainty that Indii Exet was one of the great
scions of Hallifax, and I can list the details of his geneology,
education, and financial life with great certainty. The strands that
connect those facts are conclusions that I drew from them, and I cannot
say with certainty that my judgment is infallible.

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Indii Exet came into this world nearly one century after Hallifax joined
the Celestian Empire. It was an era that produced many champions of the
state, for Hallifax still sought to expand its power among the minor
tribes and villages that were outside imperial authority even as it
turned its attention towards imperial politics. Trade blossomed as wars
shrank into mere skirmishes and the imperial forces suppressed banditry
throughout the Basin of Life. Such was the world that welcomed Indii at
the moment of his birth.

His family had no great fame of its own, but it did have a small
ancestral fortune. His father was distant kin to the Oolin family
through an illegitimate son, while his mother came from a long line of
moderately successful financiers. Indii's early education came at the
hands of private tutors who trained him in the twin sciences of
mathematics and economics, but his later schooling came from the
Sentinel Company. Indii was not the sort of man who wanted a life of
idle indulgence provided by his parents. He swore that he would not
touch so much as a single coin of his inheritance until he had proven
that he could earn his own fortune. He enlisted in the Sentinel Company
in order to win a fortune of his own, and his superiors soon noticed his
keen mind and trained him to execute covert operations.

His time with the Sentinel Company was brief. He had no desire to build
on the legacy of others, and so he took his leave of the Company as soon
as he felt that he could stand on his own. He took both his training and
his wages from his time with the Sentinels and set out to build his own
reputation and fortune.

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Indii's time with the Sentinels taught him three valuable rules of
business. First, that people will more readily hand over their
money in return for the hope of a great gain than for any sort of fair
exchange. Second, that it is better to get paid twice for one service
than it is to get paid once. Third, it is better to own the means of
production than it is to own the things produced.

Those three rules guided his business to great success. He began by
travelling to the city of Celest and arranging games of chance. When he
hosted private parties, he would take a share of the betting pool for
himself. When he played against individuals, he chose only those games
which favoured him. He even developed several games of his own which
favoured the house even more strongly than traditional games. That sort
of thing would never have found success in a place like Hallifax, where
mathematical literacy was the norm, but it made him a fortune among the
faithful of Celest.

He soon expanded his business into usury. He interrogated the poor who
wished to borrow from him at great length, in order to make sure that he
could recover his investment, but he eagerly loaned money to the
powerful even when they could not pay him back. In doing so he placed
them in his debt, and from time to time he would offer to forgive that
debt in return for special services. Priests were his favorite target
for that scheme, for they held debt to be sinful and shameful. He would
never forgive their debts, for he instead preferred to blackmail them
into doing his bidding with the threat of revealing their shameful
secret. That was a technique that he had learned from the Sentinel
Company, and it served him well during his time in Celest.

Indii's newfound political influence paved the way for expansion into
production. He purchased farms and mines from lords who could no longer
afford to maintain their lands. The lords had ancient pedigrees, but
Indii had gold, and lineage has always given way to wealth.

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Fools seek wealth for wealth's sake. Wise men seek wealth for the sake
of power. Indii was no fool. He turned his attention from the pursuit of
material goods to the pursuit of power as soon as he had attained enough
money to do so. He did not neglect opportunities to expand his business
empire when he saw them, but his focus shifted entirely to the
application of economic force for the empowerment of Hallifax.

He began with the usual methods. He bribed officers and officials to
defect to Hallifax, he tempted others to sell access to confidential
documents, and he made inconvenient imperial laws disappear. That was
useful, but it did not satisfy him. Indii longed to express his power on
a larger scale and apply it to bring new lands and people under
Hallifaxian dominion. That would have been an easier thing in ages past,
but the emperors of Celest frowned upon that sort of thing within the
Empire. Few people lived outside of imperial rule in those days, and
those who did were weak and scattered, but those people were his only
option.

He first looked to the dwarves, but he rejected them out of hand. The
dwarven kings were a great power in their own right, and they had long
been rivals of Hallifax. The wealth of the mountains was theirs. They
would never submit to Hallifax of their own free will, and not even the
richest and mightiest of men could force them to kneel with gold or
steel. The submission of the forestals was both undesirable and
unattainable. That left only those tribes on the mountains who were too
isolated to join the Celestian Empire. Their lands were nearly
worthless, but their people were not. Indii knew that they could be
valuable additions to the Collective if they could be compelled to swear
allegiance to Hallifax.

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It was the race of the Igasho that caught Indii's eye. They were poor
and scattered, but the great strength of their limbs had the potential
to strengthen Hallifax. Indii went among them and offered them not only
his friendship, but great gifts of tools and gold. They accepted his
gifts and his friendship, but none among them would swear allegiance to
Hallifax.

That delayed Indii's plan, but it did not stop him. He hired a troop of
dwarves who had been cast out of their kingdom to raid one of the
smaller tribes, although he bade them take care not to harm any living
thing, lest the tribe be destroyed. He then found a band of young
igasho who wished to avenge the raid, and he supported their ambitions.
Raids begat raids, and soon the dwarves were preparing to exterminate
the tribe.

Indii then went to the chief of that tribe, an old man by the name of
Ahtquan, and offered his support. He claimed that the igasho were
entirely in the right, and that he would engage the Skylark Company to
come to their defense. Ahtquan had little hope of success on his own,
and so he readily accepted the offer.

Indii then went to the head of the dwarven punitive expedition. He
bought their loyalty with gold, and he ordered them to plunder the
igasho and burn their village while killing as few as possible.

The soldiers of the Skylark Company marched into the mountains, but they
did not do it with any great haste. Indii and the Skylark officers made
sure that they met with unfortunate delays in the mountains. They
arrived after the dwarves made their attack on the village, but they
still arrived in time to put the dwarves to the sword. Indii recovered
the bribes that he had paid to their officers from their bodies, and
then he offered sanctuary to the igasho. Their homes had been burned,
their wealth had been plundered, and they would not survive the winter
on their own. Ahtquan had no choice but to accept the offer and bring
his people into the service of Hallifax. A few gifts to the dwarven
lords and a few veiled threats of imperial reprisals were sufficient to
buy peace with the dwarves at that point, and thus the conflict reached
its conclusion.

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It is dangerous to use the same trick twice. Indii allowed himself to be
satisfied with the victory, and he turned his attention to other
matters. He bribed officials and blackmailed lords to influence imperial
policy, but he never again went so far as to start a border war on his
own initiative.

Indii eventually grew old and retired from public life. He never
married, for his knowledge of spycraft made him altogether too paranoid
to pursue any sort of romance. He preferred to adopt an heir in order to
continue his family line, which went on to serve in the Sentinel Company
with distinction for several generations.