Merchant Lords of Petrina

  While many merchants are unscrupulous, prone to shady deals and addicted to the glimmer of coin - the Merchant Lords of Petrina are anything but. To them, filled coffers is just a target on their backs and money without investments is just negligence of the power they are privileged to wield.   These lords emerged long ago within the founding years of Petrina, the city. Being sworn into Ysand’s domain as the rightful lieges of the Petrinian inhabited region, these men and women would return from a nomadic survivor’s lifestyle to something more closely related to their culture’s roots.   As traveling traders, the most successful among the merchants also made a name for themselves as skilled diplomats and court advisors. Eventually their fame and wealth allowed them to establish a commune of villas within the Petrina mountains, that serve as a hotspot for international diplomacy when it comes to handling trade agreements, noble disputes and sometimes holding civil courts to solve disagreements between common guild representatives and lesser merchants.     Despite living the high life of upper class aristocracy, the commune of Petrina’s elites is not some walled off town for the rich alone. Anyone despite their class or status is allowed to approach the Merchant Lords and request their presence. Even if it is through one of the many educated servants that may speak for them.   This noble class has built an entire subculture among them of mercantile strategy games and internal debates on how to further the glory of the Golden Empire to its own citizens.   In fact their careful movements of building trade routes, maintaining reasonable prices per supply and demand, as well as founding countless projects of infrastructure - has made the Holy Imperator himself recognize their hearts and efficiency. He decreed that the Merchant Lords hold court among themselves once every decade. Here they vote for a representative that will serve side by side with the Imperator for the coming ten years, as his personal advisor within economic and domestic affairs.   Currently, the title of Consiliarius Magnus Commercii goes to the head of the Amareus Family that also serve besides the likes of Dominus-Legatus Mortifer Stahlmann as his equal that handles civic affairs, where the High-Legate oversees Petrina’s military power.     In history, both old and recent - the Petrinian merchants have no shortage of heroes that have truly embraced what it means to go in honour of Ysand.   Even though the Merchant Lords commonly have large military regiments at their disposal there has not been a single one of them famed for combat prowess, but rather how they claimed power and renown with pacifism.   The name of Saint Bacchus is one example of a Petrinian Merchant Lord that conquered the hearts of the Golden Empire’s people by aiding the thirsty in a time of drought. Teaching them how to refine muddy water into clean wine. Then invested in the poor villages by building vineyards and breweries before pitting them against each other and established companies by stoking friendly competition and healthy rivalry.   The Amareus family head, Sextus Amareus is also a saintly figure, yet controversially so. Embracing a self-indulgent personal interpretation of Ysand’s teachings, that intentions matter more than actions.   Despite his lustful nature and typical behaviour of having too much drink at parties, he is also the Golden Empire’s best diplomat who has saved countless lives by tempting and seducing women in power, while taking the men on long drunken benders - in which he tricks them into signing non-aggression agreements while completely smashed. Or acts of pure eccentric craze, in which he took out two feuding lords to a hunt that eventually ended up a bonding experience over gambling hats.