"...Cheri, your disaquaintence is only natural. one cannot know everything and expecially not within the minimal concentration of time you have had available to you, but as for financial resources..."
He appears faintly amused.
"...Cheri, my pocket watch is genuine eighteenth century AD fare, one of fifteen transported upon the Bretonia to it's new-found refuge, and certainly in a superior condition to the other fourteen. The price? Invaluable; no price is worth paying for it. The price of the mercenaries who purloined it? Extortionate. They are all now highly-wealth landowners. The dent to my fortune? Marginal. So this petit construct is hardly going to prove unduly strenuous, is it now?"
"...Non cheri, the true predicament resides in the telling, as it were; the necessary diplomatic frisking, the shillying, the discourse, the rhetoric. To elaborate; the individuals and cooperation's we will have to hustle to provide resources for this grand monument to the grandiose. That's where the horror lies."
THE SYNDIC LEAGUES
(A co-operative of Rheinland's Shipping Unions, retired from a life of piracy.)