Blood Shaper

Book 4: Chapter 1

The Parliament of Avalon’s physical location had shifted several times in less than a year. Originally it had been a coopted meeting room in the government building that had contained Kay’s office. When the first round of elections finally finished they’d moved into a building made for them near the cliff face that had enough seating for the two dozen or so members that they’d had at that time. It was a fairly simple building with seating for everyone and a small balcony above the actual floor that representatives would go to in order to speak, which was really just a space in between the tables. When the third or fourth population boom hit Avalon, they’d needed a lot more space in a short time in order to properly represent everyone, and several members of the Ministry of Building were taken off other less vital projects to create an actual Parliament.

A few months of feverish work and another wave of elections led to The Parliament of Avalon, a massive half-dome shaped building that stuck out of the cliff face that the city sat below and inside, with half of the inside space of the construction inside the cliff and half in the dome that hovered over the ground about three hundred feet below. Kay had already been nervous about having a government building hanging over a fatal drop, making it an even bigger target than it already was to any enemies who wanted to wipe out a big portion of Avalon’s government, but then people had started arguing over who got “the privilege” of building their homes and businesses underneath the building.

He’d been in more than one long standing argument with several people over the need for safety and over the need grandeur before the tumultuous week that had culminated in him being abducted and turned into a vampire just a couple of weeks ago, but the predicted consequences of his transformation had led to him putting his foot down. Upheaval and conflict were coming their way. And Kay was not going to have a big building floating over part of his city that would come crashing down to destroy anything beneath it when an enemy shot at it. He’d had Earth Mages and Earth Manipulators from the Ministry of Construction use the materials from the parliament building to help make the defenses they were construction on the plateau at the top of the cliff and had another parliament building made farther down the valley, inside the cliff, and much closer to the ground.

The new Parliament was just as grand as the last one, which was to say it was decent and getting better as Avalon had more money and time to devote to luxuries like better decorations, and wasn’t a massive hazard in form. They’d kept the same spherical design, with tiers of seats spreading out in a circle and balconies above that with more space for representatives. Kay sat on his own balcony at the mid point of where the sphere started to curve up again, right above the entrance. Where the other balconies were rounded platforms with space for a fews seats and a table, identical to the seating areas on the ground, Kay’s was twice as wide and had elegant engraving on it, making it look like it had been assembled together out of impressive materials instead of being extruded from the surrounding stone with magic.

Kay sat in a comfortable chair that could be called a throne if you were feeling generous. It was big and relatively fancy, but Kay had made sure it was a chair and not a throne. He’d gotten away with that because the seat for him in the audience hall that was being built for his palace was definitely a throne, and none of his bitching about that had changed a thing. At least he’d gotten his way in making sure that the palace was as much a government building as it was his private residence.

Behind him and to either side were a semi-circle of other chairs that were less fancy, but just as comfortable, that sat a step lower than Kay’s chairs, set aside for his Ministers. While Kay wanted to set up a democratic republic for the government of the city he’d founded that was well on its way to becoming his own nation, he’d had to adapt to the realities of the world he’d found himself in and the desires of the people from that world. In Torotia, might still made right in many ways, and the ruler of a place most often was the strongest person there. A massive majority of the time that was balanced with that same strongest person being a literal defender of the place they ruled over. As massive as the planet was, there had to be a whole host of exceptions to that simplistic rule, but it was broadly accurate none the less.

Kay wasn’t technically the strongest person in Avalon, though he’d definitely reached top ten of people physically there and top three of people who were citizens of Avalon, but he had some extra oomph in his pocket that had led to him being in charge. Not only was he one of the founding members, but he was a Class Line Progenitor, a person with the title of the same name that indicated him as discovering a brand new Class under the System, giving him access to new sources of power and Skills that weren’t known before and giving him a built in shortcut that let him skip a lot of the tedious grinding people needed to do in order to discover good Class advancements or combinations.

All of that had led to his baby country being a constitutional monarchy with him and his Ministers as the executive branch of Avalon, the representative Parliament as the legislative branch, and an appointed judicial branch that was being expanded and tweaked as Avalon grew in size and population. Kay wasn’t a huge fan of parts of the constitution, such as the bits where he could veto any law he wanted with there being no way to overturn the veto, make any he law he wanted with no way of getting rid of it, make any judgment on any criminal or person accused of a crime at any time he wanted, or overturn the constitution any time he wanted and rule as an absolute tyrant at any moment with no real consequences.

Sadly for him, that was pretty much the way of the world of Torotia. The fact that he was letting any of his citizens have any kind of representation at all was seen as a good thing, and was similar if not identical to what most of the larger nations In this part of the world did, but it wasn’t the norm if you were looking at every polity out there. Might made right, the strong ruled, and the weak obeyed. It didn’t help that the System had a system in place that oversaw leadership of nations, including noble titles, Noble Titles, capitalized because of system shenanigans, bonus to individual people based on their leaders, and bonuses to entire nations based on their leaders that all focused on one single person being at the top. The System literally didn’t recognize forms of government that didn’t have one person in a position of power giving orders to everyone else. That didn’t mean that you couldn’t have a government like that, it just meant the world was heavily skewed towards having a king, tyrant, despot, lord, or whatever you wanted to call them.

Thus, Kay was the Blood Mayor of the city of Avalon and was probably going to become Blood Lord or Blood King or something as Avalon expanded from being a city with a few towns and villages around it into a capital city of a nation. The former pirate port that Kay and his military had taken over was growing quickly and would soon be the first full city under Kay’s rule outside of Avalon itself, and that would probably trigger the transition of his title and Title.

So all of that to say that Kay had absolute power if he wanted to, and he didn’t. As part of showing that he didn’t want absolute power, he made sure that he actually listened to his parliament and gave them real legislative power. A large portion of that showing included physically attending sessions of Parliament when he didn’t have some kind of emergency getting in the way. And a majority of the time that was boring.

The biggest reason Kay had dropped out of college and stopped trying to become a politician back home on his version of Earth was that the version of America he’d been born in and lived in had been incredibly corrupt, and he’d decided he didn’t want to be part of that cesspool. A smaller, key part of it, was that it’d involved sitting around listening to other people argue about the most inane things that didn’t actually seem to matter any.

He understood that the representative of the section of Avalon that was next to the large lake down in the valley with them felt that the regulations around fishing in said lake were important, since a big portion of his constituents were fishermen or women, or otherwise involved in the fishing trade from the lake. He also knew that the species representative for the Seafolk, a species of people that shapeshifters who could switch between a from that was basically human and one that was very similar to a mermaid, not to be confused with the Merfolk who were mermaids and mermen, who’s entire species needed to go swimming on the regular and didn’t want to get hurt by people fishing in the lake, felt the fishing regulations were equally as important but for different reasons. Both had very good justificatons to be passionate about the topic.

Neither of the reasons they were passionate about it had anything to do with who was allowed to construct fishing boats in the limited number of building slips they had on the lake shore! The two things they both had stock in, when and where people where allowed to fish by trawling or with nets, had been dealt with to the apparent satisfaction of both parties! But now they were fighting about a topic that was only tangentially related to their focuses, with no benefit for anyone. Who cared if someone needed a more specific Class like Boat Building over Ship Builder? It only changed very small details about what the final product was or could do, and honestly seemed like discrimination against people for not having the “perfect” Class for any given situation, and-

Wait a second, Kay leaned back in his seat and furrowed his brow as he thought to himself, Isn’t that Class discrimination?

He leaned over to his Prime Minister. “Hey, doesn’t what they’re arguing about count as being Class discrimination?” He asked, checking with her to be sure before he spoke up.

“Yes it does,” Amanda whispered back, “That would be considered unconstitutional as discriminating against less specific Classes in an area that both Classes work in.”

“Why didn’t you say anything?”

“You need to pay attention to what’s happening and be able to make realizations and decisions about things like this on your own. What are you going to do if I’m not here during a session and something like this comes up again?”

Kay restrained a sigh and the argument that Amanda was always at Parliament when it was in session, because she was right. Just because she’d been to every session so far didn’t mean she’d be at all of them. He leaned forward and grabbed his gavel, ganging it twice against the spot on his chair made for that.

The argument on the floor halted and everyone turned to look at him.

“Trying to limit specific actions, jobs, careers, sales, or any other expression of one’s Class to only be done by certain Classes is illegal, outside of requiring a Class to be involved in the action in the first place. It is legal to require that someone has a related Class, you can insist that someone with only a Baker Class can’t build your boat, but saying that a Boat Builder can and a Ship Builder can’t is discriminatory. I’m settling this in Representative Keel’s favor.” Kay turned to look at the Seafolk representative, “Representative Pearlfloater, if you are that worried about fishing boats being built that could be unsafe for any swimming races we have, speak to the Ministry of Construction’s vehicle department. All boats, carts, ships, and such are inspected for safety, and we can make sure that includes safety for anyone that is swimming near them as well.”

She blinked at him once, the nictitating eyelid that was the one giveaway that she wasn’t a human briefly flashing into view, before she bowed to him, “Thank you, my lord.”

“Safety is an important factor in all facets of life, and we won’t devalue the safety of one species that lives here over another, but we also will not engage in discrimination either.” Kay look around the room, “Are there any more topics of discussion for this portion of the agenda. No? Well, then,” He glanced down at the schedule he had to see what came next, “That actually brings us to the end of the agenda and scheduled topics of discussion. Does anyone have another topic to add outside of the agenda?”

No one lit the small magical lamp at the edge of their table to ask to be recognized.

“Very well, then I hereby call this session of Parliament to be adjourned.” He banged his gavel three times and stood up. All the representatives stood and bowed to him once, he returned a much smalled bow to them and headed for his private entrance and exit behind his balcony, with the two ministers who’d come with him to the session following behind and his detail of Blood Guard, his combination bodyguards and personal troops, spread out around them.

“What’s next on my schedule?” He asked Amanda.

The young human woman pushed a small lock of her brown hair out of her face and gave him a stony-eyed glare. “If you had accepted one of the numerous applicants I had gathered to be your personal assistant you could ask them instead of making your Prime Minister keep your schedule.”

“And how many of them actually made the cut to be my personal assistant?”

“Two of them!”

“And both of them were so focused on the other one being their rival that picking one of them would have made the other one useless. I’d rather wait to pick my personal assistant and keep both of them as excellent members of my staff than to lose one of them.” He countered, “Not what’s next on the agenda?”

“That meeting that you wanted to have with everyone.”

“Oh good, we finally get to talk about the world shaking information I got when the System ambushed me in my bath.”