Talk:Reg Margin
Backstory
Reg Margin was a Mohlok peasant who lived the salted fields between the ancient city of Salomoné and Royal Forests of Bretton. Being marshy badlands, nothing much grows there and, like many of the local peasantry, Reg supplemented his meagre scratchings poaching game from the royal hunting grounds in the dark woods of Bretton.
One day, when checking his traps, he stumbles upon, a dirty, emaciated and strange alien looking creature feasting roasting a some stocks he has taken from one of Reg’s shorting gins.
Reg snatched the figure by the scruff of the neck and was about to do him in when the figure started babbling in a foreign tongue, apparently pleading for mercy. The man has dark eyes and dark hair, of a kind not often seen in the chill northern wastes.
“What did you say?” asked the great, simple giant.
The captive’s eyes widen and he says, with great reverence and in flawless high Salomonése,
“But you are of the Salomoné! One of the great Lanchmani, the legendary traders of the North! I am greatly honoured to be bettered by so great a warrior! As is your Lanchmani protocol I give myself up to thee! I humbly novate myself to you!”
What are you?
“I am a humble scholar from the Carpathia, on a mission from my king to learn the great Lanchmani ways.”
Reg wasn’t of the Lanchmani at all, but was one of the indentured peasants engaged to clear the royal sewage, but he allows the figure’s misapprehension to go uncorrected. Reg ties him to a tree and says, “Now, whoever you are, perhaps you call tell me why you are stealing my stocks?”
Borrowing them, sire, Borrowing them: I shall return them, with interest, at your command.
“Borrowing them? What are you borrowing them for?”
“To lend them to those who most need them.”
“Lend them?”
Indeed: those who need them most pay well, sire. They can return the goods when their circumstances permit. In the mean time, they will pay a good commission. We can share that. we can be Partners!”
“Who are these borrowers?”
“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.”
“Isn’t it just. The finest royal stocks! And my prices are fair.”
“Prices?”
Vlad held out his hand. “A gold coin”
“A gold coin? for my own catches?”
“Business is business! How else will we have something to share?”
With an air of bafflement, Reg handed over a copper, and devoured the stock. The two men ate and drank their fill then fell asleep by the fire.
They were 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. Two poachers. Vlad leaps to 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.