The architecture of the Sovereign Imperium was built on stone, steel, and faith. But in the first year of the cold war, Zephyr learned that the true foundation of his empire was cinnaite.
Without the dense, heat-resistant ore, the industrial foundries of Ashenveil would melt their own containment vessels; without those foundries, the physical infrastructure supporting the Morreth starvation shell would crack. It was a absolutely vital structural load-bearing node in the grand equation of his civilization, and Korthane was currently dismantling it with nothing more than a fountain pen.
Zephyr stood in the center of the Eternal Forge, observing a projection of the neutral vassal state of Ghael. Ghael sat on the largest independent cinnaite deposit on the continent. For four hundred years, the Imperium had purchased their ore at a fixed, reasonable rate.
