Research into Melandra and Blatt (Filamine Trade)

Date: 27/06/437 ADW

Participants: Noska, Ravik, Riga, Trick (and a sulky Bethany, Flem, and Marrah)
Where: The Library-Museum

The research starts very slowly.

The paperwork on Melandra Valor is very subtly... compromised. Dates are misfilled, minor inconsistencies are clear between copies, entire pages feel like they are missing where none should be, and where the subject matter appears to have been utterly innocent. It feels like someone has been quietly tampering with the records for years, either in the library or with the originals from which these copies were taken. How it escaped the library's notice, however...?

Even so, a picture emerges, if slowly.
She was the daughter of older nobles, but whose riches dangled by a thin thread, like a river drying. Their title remained, their estate stood, but it was all a shell. What stands out isn't inheritance, but intent- the work of her life since early adulthood was focused on rebuilding and establishing her presence- not her family's, but hers- amongst the elites of Nayora.

While a large chunk of machinery still runs on steam, and therefore requires a lot of coal and other fuels that stain the sky, arcane innovation has found ways to enhance the process, rather than replace it. Many modern factories now rely on magically treated furnaces, rune-etched pipes, components that react to the ambient Weave and subtle adjustments. The smoke still rises, and some say these components are in part to blame for the ashfall, but one cannot deny the rise in efficiency and fall in costs.

Thing is, these systems are not cheap to acquire. Most often, factories that have them were built by old magnates, or upgraded with significant investment. For a smaller up-and-coming entrepreneur, it is nearly inconceivable to have an array with even one rune-treated furnace.

Melandra just so happens to have heavily invested into the production of such catalysts. Refinement, distribution, patenting, even the creation of generic alternatives. She owns converters. She owns storage batteries. She owns the plants where those batteries are housed.

What appears at first to be vertical integration slowly resolves into something closer to control.

Her business boomed in the years before her rise to Baroness. Riga and Ravik find many mentions of investments she had made over the years- buying a bakery, loans to factories, acquiring the deeds to homes in the Iron Quarter. It all feels rather random, but with the suspicions and knowledge you have, it gnaws at the back of your brain- it is almost as if she is trying to create no obvious pattern.

Then comes the first real link. Not Melandra herself, but a business heavily indebted to her to the point one could simply say she owned it.

This business purchased an empty factory, which became a small alchemical laboratory. Records show too few employees for its size, unusually flexible and unstable income reports, and a strange refusal to mingle with and hire workers affiliated with the GMEC. The laboratory burned down around three years ago- accidental. But reports at the time, which seem to have led to dead ends, speak of foul play. Workers in the area speak of strange figures entering the factory at night, and one, dismissed as drunken drivel, spoke of a "faceless man, head shining against the moonlight as if it were metal".

The factory never reopened.

With a new point of interest in sight, the group marches on, latching onto this laboratory for more information that could shed a light on their wider doubts.

It does not take long for Trick and Ravik to uncover something of import near a section Riga gad bookmarked earlier, before learning of the laboratory.

It seems the owner of the business used to acquire the laboratory was linked to something else. His husband owns a fishing business that operates out of Nayora, but has permits to fish down and upriver. It seems they often make trips to nearby settlements, and- after the purchase of a larger ship some time before the laboratory burned down, applied for and acquired a transportation permit, which allowed them to bring in larger volumes of merchandise to and from the city as a recognized merchant.

Looking through an old chart, it seems their trips over the last year have been rather focused on bringing merchandise marked as coming from one specific village, Vinndamme.

Noska: There are many crews using giant goats to haul merchandise from Vindamme to Troval, too.