After a few months in-game, Clemens returned to the village. Like he had said, he brought several other traders with him. He was surprised at the amount of people living in the town. Clemens was a halfling. The other traders were of many different races. They were allowed to set up shop in the still abandoned houses in the village district with us. Among the 10 of them, they established a small trading company here in the valley. It was actually the first of its kind. No other guild had been established. They called it the Spirited Trade Company. Clemens was elected as their first leader. Being that we still had the space to build out, we let the competent traders handle that. I did not want to do it. I also did not want to pay for it. With the money they brought with them and the money made by trading their goods, they had more than enough to hire builders to construct a guild hall for them. Because the dragon built his town in such a way to incorporate us, Battleville had the chance to spread really far. As they were tradesmen, they contacted a bank, and some artisans to come in.
Battleville therefore became the center of economics in the valley. The money would circulate here eventually. Osna, Ethana and Andron wanted to compete. Ethana got an excellent adventurer's and tanner's guild going. Osna had an apothecary and thieves' guild due to the much higher density of bandits. Andron had other artisan guilds stationed there. We had cobblers, painters, hatters and sculptors. They had carpenters, bards, tailors and brewers. Working together was a must, but we each had our own claims to fame and monopolized them. It allowed us all to have our own pride as we interacted. When enough people gathered in an area, people wanted to be able to worship. Several shrines were built all over the valley in order to satisfy those urges. The Osna people sponsored a shrine in each town for their traditional god of the valley. Another was set out by the river to pray to that deity. The trading company had a massive temple built to their goddess of wealth. The mercenary companies all pitched in to build a small temple to the gods of war that they worshiped.
It was then that the acolytes and clerics of those deities moved in. They were of a whole different class of person. They were treated with due respect. The Osna people elected among themselves who would man the various shrines to their gods. That took a sacred ritual to accomplish that. Once that was done, they built small houses near the shrines to be able to be closer to the gods. I was not aware they had to do blood sacrifice of animals for this. Even the fish were brutally gutted for the river god in full view of everyone. There were definitely some that thought it distasteful. Everyone was allowed to worship as they saw fit. That did not mean people did not call them savages for it. Aydin was mayor of Osna, so the temple to the god of the valley was just as big as the one made for Reshon, the war god of The Lucky Lions. That fact was not lost on the others. Andron, Ethana and Battleville did not have this problem. The Osna gods were marginalized as much as possible. Shank and Krit saw all of this and felt jealous. They all wanted in on the action. I sighed deeply.
