#poor Billy inheriting Rhea's function and her desk seeing all those drafts around

[randomnameless]

Reading some stuff about money made me wonder, how GM is even generating enough ressources to pay their knights + take care of the monastery (elderly + orphans) + manages to run the Officer’s Academy (I suppose they have to pay for the staff dedicated to the students, like those guys cooking and all) ?

Tuition fees and donations can only work for a time, but given how Rhea shelters Remire villagers in a heartbeat (TFW the Empire cannot offer shelter to their own people and have to default to the Church - why can’t the Lord ruling over Arundel take care of them - oh wait) - they must have a way to earn much needed money.

And then I remember, GM tries to be as “western world” historically accurate as it can, but no one talks about brewing beer. GM has canonically cured ham “magically” aged for maximum taste, but they don’t brew beer like monasteries are, supposedly, known for?

So, with that in mind :

Fodlan AU : Rhea’s plans to raise money in times of duress :

Sell Pegasi dung (3k!)

Brew Beer and have a special ops team dedicated to protect the brewers and their facilities from random fires happening or knights who want to drink for free

Listen to Manuela’s advice and sell a calendar with popular knights

Take an alias and write smut

2. Would have led to Beer Wars though, Adrestia claiming the Church is, once again, opposing them by brewing cheap and pathetic beverages : imports of GM Beer would be severely punished (Adrestia tries to promote its own production of wine - in Boramas - but sadly young people think it’s trendy and “daring” to drink banned stuff, so there’s a demand for GM’s beer in the Empire). Difficult discussions would be made with the Alliance about tariffs - if the Monastery wants to sell its beer on its territory, it would have to pay tariffs and no, the Eastern Church isn’t an existing commercial branch of the Central Church so they cannot pretend they already have access to the Alliance’s market through them.

Still, Gloucester Sr might think it’d piss the Riegans, so he’d allow beer importations on his territory - the roundtable would still complain “we’re supposed to have an open market with the same foreign trade policies you can’t decide something on your own!”

3. Manuela is ahead of her time - Ferdie still has his Manuela calendar his Dad bought him when he turned 12, but it’s not a lewd calendar or anything of the sort! Ludwig kept the lewd ones

4. Rhea did not write the one about Cethleann, but when one of her previous novels was published, the cardinals wanted it immediately burnt and/or called “heretical work” ; pissed that everyone was criticising her prose she told Aelfric she wrote this and it will be published - Aelfric went WTF but had to recognise how her plan ultimately worked, the novel didn’t sell well in Faerghus, moderately well in the Alliance (they tried to use it to promote “cultural exchange” with Almyra) and surprinsigly well in the Empire, even if it only circulates in the black market

This was obviously veto’d by Seteth (when he returned) who prefers to write his own novels, for children, and use the benefits for the Church. Rhea argues it is not financially profitable, the “Little Green Riding Hood” only earned 2k in 3 weeks while “Saintly Perversions”, one of her worst-selling bodice rippers, sold 7k in 1 month, and that’s only for the sales in Enbarr. Hopefully, the Empire declaring war on the Church put an end to their argument.