NOVEL NEXT Chapter 190 Tyrosh
The 'Kiss of the Breeze Goddess' headed south, and after nearly a week's voyage, it finally crossed the Myr Sea and approached Tyroshi, one of the nine free trade city-states, the northernmost island of the Stepstone Islands.
During this period, Ian lived a regular life of feeding dragons/learning foreign languages - practicing sword skills/transformer abilities - learning foreign languages every day.
In addition, he also communicated with Celia and Rohr respectively.
From the former, he learned that Celia's second main mission was to become a high priest of the Red God. She had already completed this mission when she was in Pentos.
Her main mission three, like Ian's, is also a series of missions, which mainly consists of acquiring a certain number of believers, converting (physically converting or converting) a certain number of senior pagans, and forming a certain number of B-level or above-quality religions. The army consists of three indicators.
In addition, the epic victory in Ian's mission group was replaced in her mission group with destroying a religion with more than 500,000 followers (note: making the number of remaining believers no more than 500), from her mission In terms of difficulty, Ian can't imagine what kind of battle would be considered an epic victory by the system. Anyway, the standard cannot be as simple as in Total War.
The task of ruling a city with a population of 500,000 in Ian's task group has not changed in Celia's task. She also obtained the same task, in the same direct way as the Papal State ruled Rome in history. Rule, without retaining secular power, which frustrated Ian's hope of getting double points for every city with a population of 500,000.
An interesting point is that although Celia’s profession is a priest of the Red God, the mission does not require her to obtain followers for the Red God. On the contrary, the standard for believers is to ‘regard Celia as a representative of that god’.
In Ian's opinion, this is no longer a hint to the players, but an encouragement to the players to become magicians and create their own religion.
Theoretically speaking, this is indeed much more difficult than preaching to an existing god. After all, it means that the player cannot get any help from the church. But for Ian, this matter is not a big problem, because it is very important for missionary work. The support of the secular regime is the most important thing.
As we all know, physical missionary work is the most effective way of missionary work. As long as she wins military victory, all of Celia's tasks will be easily solved.
This is probably the point of player alliances. Cooperating in different areas to earn points is far more efficient than lone wolf players who can only earn points in one area.
From Rohr, Ian gained very little. Although Rohr led troops in the disputed area, that was already ten years ago. In recent years, he has been wandering around Westeros. This is also the beginning of Ian's career. The reason why he and Case were 'in the zone'.
Rohr did have some friends in Myr and Tyrosh, but after ten years, whether these people could be found, Ian believed that such friendships had no value.
In contrast, he hopes that his new captain Kolu can regain some power.
…
Shortly after Daeron told himself that he was almost to Tyrosh, Ian saw the shadow of the port city on the horizon.
As the coast approached, Ian gradually saw clearly the high wall protecting the city. From a distance, it looked like an indestructible fortress.
It is said that Tyrosh's inner walls are made of fused black dragonstone. Ian doesn't know what the so-called dragonstone is, but his intuition tells him that it can't be dragon crystal obsidian and it can't build a city wall.
Under the command of Darren, the Kiss of the Breeze Goddess methodically began to retract its sails and slow down to meet the inspection of the Tyrosh customs boat.
Ian's boat was loaded with some groceries that were generally profitable. These were things that Celia had put on the boat when she bought it. The original owner of the boat had no background and could not get those hugely profitable goods that were monopolized by the powerful.
The situation was urgent at that time, so Ian did not make arrangements for the cargo and allowed it to stay on the ship.
But that's okay, compared to empty ships or transporting hugely profitable cargo, hauling some groceries is the least noticeable.
What Ian didn't expect was that reality quickly hit him in the face.
Just when the customs officers checked the groceries in the cabin, and Ian thought that they would lose interest and just collect some favors and leave, the other party unexpectedly asked for a bribe that would make the ship's voyage equivalent to nothing.
Only then did Ian remember that it was written in the original book that the Tyroshi people were famous for their greed.
While Darren negotiated with the customs officers, Ian was always watching from a distance not too far away and was not in a hurry to say anything.
A protection fee that is already sky-high for an ordinary captain is just a little change for Ian now, but the dilemma in this matter is that if they really give this money, it will inevitably make the other party Doubt it, and if you are unwilling to give it, then the other party will definitely cause trouble.
The solution must be to give, but how to give and how much to give, Ian didn't know these issues in his mind, so he stood aside silently, waiting for Darren to solve it.
It is Ian's style to let professionals deal with professional issues. He is usually very humble in areas that he is not familiar with.
Soon, Darren and the customs officer completed the conversation, and Darren finally paid half of the amount requested by the other party. Most of them were silver coins, and only a few gold coins and copper coins.
It turned out that Darren had been prepared.
After the customs officers left Ian's ship and returned to their boat, Ian came to Darren's side.
"The amount of customs clearance fees was much larger than I thought. I thought it would be enough to only pay one-quarter to one-third of the price they asked for. The profits of our goods are not high. How could they charge such a sky-high price?" Come?" Ian asked in a low voice.
"It is precisely because our profits are not high that these little shrimps dare to blackmail us. The port will never lack ordinary captains like me," Darren said helplessly, "For those ships with real background, they are all honest Clear customs and let them go. Otherwise, if the captain of the Illyrio Chamber of Commerce or someone else goes to the Lord of Tyrosh to complain about them, none of them will be able to eat and walk around."
It was really a reality. Ian laughed. He should have thought of this kind of thing, but for some reason, he just ignored it.
Is it because this kind of shrimp is no longer worthy of my eyes?
Ian's usual thinking habit is to put himself into the perspective of each character he interacts with, think about what he would do if he were him, and then speculate on all possibilities from the two factors of 'purpose' and 'conditions'.
But he didn't do that just now, he just thought about the problem from his own perspective.
This incident had no consequences, but it made Ian wary. He found that with the reminder of power and status, he seemed to be inevitably becoming arrogant.
Arrogance is a dangerous twin.
After taking a deep breath, Ian readjusted his state. He saw that Darren had left behind the deck to direct the work of reefing the sails and lowering the anchor, so he waved to summon Bronn and Dorian to his side.
"When entering the harbor this time, your mercenary team and all the sailors on the ship are not allowed to disembark without my order." Ian ordered them.
"Can't get off the ship?" Bronn was the first to object. "Do you know what Tyrosh is most famous for?"
"Mercenaries, slaves and the garden of lust." He immediately asked and answered himself.