Talk:Reg Margin

Backstory

Reg Margin was a Mohlok peasant who lived the salted fields between the ancient city of Salomoné — more or less on the site of the modern Lehmangrad — and the Royal Forests of Bretton, backing onto the Ferrous Mountains. Being marshy badlands fed by the stinking runoffs from those darkened, misted hills, nothing much grows there and, like many of the local peasantry, Reg supplemented his meagre scratchings by poaching game from the royal hunting grounds in Bretton Woods.

One day, when furtively checking his traps, he stumbled upon a strange intruder feasting on some stocks he had stolen from Reg’s own shorting cage — his long “longbox”.

Reg snatched the youth by the scruff of his filthy neck, drew him up to eye level and stared into his dark, glittering eyes.

The boy babbled in a foreign tongue, apparently pleading for mercy. Reg held up a giant finger to the intruders lips and he quietened.

“Now,” said Reg, “I might be possessed of no great capacity for knowing things, nor figuring things, but I’m a dab old hand at believin’ things, and surmisin’ about things, and I believe an’ I surmise that, what with them dark eyes and that tousled dark hair, worn in that foreign-looking way and, added to all of that, that strange way you have of saying things, that your kind is not from these parts?”

The captive’s eyes widened and he said, in flawless, if archaic, high Lanchmani:

“But, good sir, you speak in the tongue of the Lanchmani! You must, a noble merchant be, one of the Royal City of Salomoné! I am so very greatly honoured! As is your Lanchmani protocol, I give myself up to thee! I humbly novate myself to your service sir!”

Reg furrowed his colossal ginger brow. “Who, or what, little man, are you?”

“The name’s Paripasu. Vlad Paripasu,” he squeaked. “I am but a humble scholar from Carpathia. I have journeyed many arduous months from my mountain home in search of the wisdom of the great Lanchmani, and to learn their ways.”

Now Reg wasn’t of the Lanchmani at all, but was an indentured peasant engaged on a pittance to keep the city’s engine running and royal sewerage system clean, but he figured there was no call to disabuse his captive of his sense of grandiosity.

“Well that's as may be, see, but, humble scholar or no, you be still pinching my stuff. And we can’t be having that.” And with that, taking a thick hemp rope from his sack, he bound the Carpathian trickster to a tree.

“Ah no, no, no,” muttered the little fellow, as Reg bound him hand and foot, “I fear I am most misunderstood.”

Reg had it in his mind that the odd little fellow was scheming or plotting something. “Seeing as you seem a cunning little fellow —”

“Pinching, sir? Stealing? Oh, no, no, no Sir! But I can see why you might be confused —”

“I en’t confused — not so as no more than normal, least anyways — so how’s about you tells me why you be stealing my stocks?”

“Borrowing them, sire, Borrowing them; I swear upon my father’s life I am no thief.”

I shall return them, with interest, at your command. ’Tis my business.”

“Business? Who has business is stealing another fellow’s stocks?”

“Borrowing sire!”

“Have it your way: who has business borrowing another fellow’s stocks?”

“To lend them to those who most need them.”

“Lend them?”

“Indeed: they who need them most pay handsomely and strong, sire. They can return them when their circumstances permit. In the mean time, they will pay a good commission we can share betwixt us. We can, my friend, be Partners!”

“Partners!” with that Reg roared with laughter. “Who are these “borrowers” of your stocks, little man?”

“Well, now — for example, you look hungry, right now, sire —”

“Oh, that I am. Hungry. Very hungry.”

“So aren’t you pleased that Vlad Paripasu, your friendly lender, is here to make a market for you!” The man held out a tin cup of the the steaming stock.

Reg took it and eagerly took a long draught. “Oh, Vlad, it is very good.”

“The finest royal stocks! And my prices are fair.”

“Prices?”

Vlad held out his hand. “One gold ducat”

“A gold ducat? For my own catches?”

“Business is business! How else will we have something to share?”

Somewhat baffled, Reg handed over a coin, and devoured the stock.

He was rudely awakened not two hours later by the King’s Guard, conducting a routine audit patrol of the King’s hunting grounds.

“What have we here?” said the watch commander. A greasy poachers.

Vlad, still bound to the tree, calls out in Reg’s defence, explaining to the King’s guard that far from Reg having stolen the game, he had in fact just dispossessed thieves of it and was returning to the King. When pressed, Vlad explains it was a nasty-looking Romanian thief.

“Well, who are you, then?”

“I am a victim too! The thief kidnapped me. Reg here rescued me. He is a hero.”

The King’s guard show clemency and appoint Reg and Vlad to guard the forests which they do in return for a generous stipend. Vlad becomes Reg’s consigliere, for the cost of a portion of the King’s Rent (paid first of course). Vlad squirrels away his share, selling it at a mark-up to the other villagers who in turn pay fealty to reg, who pays a slice to Vlad.

Vlad in time persuades the villagers to mind the forest, persuading them for a small fee that they may enjoy the beauty and nature as long as they take nothing and keep an eye out for hunters and poachers.

Vlad in the meantime ingratiates himself to the king, with fantastic but delusional presentations about the forward wealth of the kingdom, entitling him to a yet greater share of its present wealth, and warning him of great dangers in Romania, and encouraging the king to send his army into the Carpathians, where they are beset by brigands and vandals. One day Reg stumbles across the Synthæse.

The children of the forest, had been watching from the shadows, they saw everything. They used their dispersed magic to create a great storm that destroyed Vlad’s short positions , which diffused and evaporated into the chill night air, as a spirit might ascend to heaven. The castle walls were wrecked, the fields ruined and the peasants from the salted badlands — the Mohlok people — were left to pick up the pieces and start again. Among their number was Daniel Grade,