To the Spiritual Brilliance Foundation:
   Thank you again for giving me the chance to do good.
   Sometimes you have to break a few bonds to make a useful product.
   The story goes that Bhalgura is a deprived community because no one wants its mixed ores anymore. According to the merchants controlling the only airship route in and out of Bhalgura, prices are low, and reductive metallurgy allows pure metals to be converted one way or another, so what matters most is metal purity. Decontaminating metal is much harder than projection or rejection, so Bhalgura is doomed to suffer low prices.
   Based on the accounting manifests on their airship and the records of the locations they sell to, which I have enclosed hand-copies of, I have strong evidence that this story is a fable. While decontamination is still difficult, mixed ores are more viable now than ever before, as they can easily be separated into lead and quicksilver, then reconstituted into alloys in demand. Because the merchants control the only route in and out of Bhalgura, they also control the flow of information; this letter is well-concealed. They have, thus, told this fable in order to enact monopoly power over Bhalgura and make an incredible amount of guilder by impoverishing it. It is by no coincidence that their airship is well-armored. I suspect it’s to project strength as much as it is a contingency plan against revolt.
   More to the point, enclosed are accounting calculations for converting impure metal into pure lead and quicksilver, and a transcript of the long argument between my companion Tosa and the merchants about how Bhalgura should profit from implementing it. In summary, they flatly refuse the idea of Bhalgura having any transactional pull in the relationship at all. I suggest that an honest merchant would be delighted to trade more valuable commodities on the limited space of their airship rather than demanding a client to know their place.
   We have a plan to change this state of affairs. For that, I request gold permissions rather than iron permissions.



TOSA: So, what if they don’t say yes?
JOCELYN: It doesn't matter if they say yes. We do the plan regardless.
JOCELYN: This is only to give them proof of what’s going on…asking for permission is just to make me feel better.
TOSA: I’ll drink to that.