Prosperiticers

PROSPERITICERS

Wealthy.

That is the first word most people in An'kor use when speaking of the Prosperiticers.

It is also an understatement.

The Prosperiticers are a human-descended people whose civilization possesses wealth on a scale that makes the riches of other nations look almost ceremonial. A Prosperiticer is born into a standard of living that foreign nobles may spend their entire lives trying to obtain. Even a farmer may own land, goods, jewelry, tools, servants, and reserves worth more than the treasuries of kings elsewhere in An'kor.

The strange part is that nobody remembers why.

A Nation of Plenty

Prosperiticers did not diverge from their human ancestry through mutation, curse, machinery, or some dramatic physical transformation. Most remain close to the old human form.

Their transformation was cultural.

For as long as their surviving history can remember, the Prosperiticers have lived surrounded by abundance. Fine metals, precious stones, elaborate architecture, rich clothing, imported goods, enormous estates, full storehouses, and personal possessions that would be treated as royal treasures elsewhere are ordinary features of life.

This does not mean Prosperiticers do nothing.

Farmers still farm. Builders still build. Merchants still trade. Craftspeople still work. Soldiers still train.

The difference is that labor is rarely understood as the thing standing between a citizen and starvation. Occupation is more often tied to family tradition, duty, reputation, ambition, influence, or the desire to produce something worthy of one's name.

When almost everyone is wealthy, wealth alone stops being enough to distinguish one person from another.

So Prosperiticers compete over other things.

Rarity. Prestige. Political influence. Military rank. Family reputation. Great works. Exceptional craftsmanship. Exclusive possessions. Access to powerful people. The ability to protect what one has.

A foreign king may look at a Prosperiticer farmer and see unimaginable riches.

Another Prosperiticer may look at the same farmer and see a man with an embarrassingly ordinary house.

The Forgotten Fortune

No one knows where the wealth came from.

Not metaphorically.

The Prosperiticers genuinely do not know.

Their oldest surviving histories already describe a prosperous people. Records speak of estates, treasuries, inherited fortunes, magnificent cities, and families whose wealth was already ancient when the records were written.

There is no remembered beginning.

Some claim their ancestors discovered an impossible deposit of precious material. Others believe the wealth was inherited from an older civilization, granted by some forgotten power, stolen in a war erased from history, or produced by a method that has since been lost.

There are dozens of theories.

There is no accepted answer.

Most Prosperiticers have learned to live with the mystery. Their wealth exists. Their parents possessed it. Their grandparents possessed it. Their oldest known ancestors possessed it.

That has usually been enough.

But among historians, strategists, treasure-keepers, and the more suspicious noble families, the unanswered question remains uncomfortable.

If no one remembers where the fortune came from, no one can be completely certain that it truly belongs to them.

Guarding Prosperity

Prosperiticers will tolerate many things.

Threatening what they possess is not one of them.

Their civilization has spent generations surrounded by peoples who know exactly how wealthy they are. Prosperiticer leaders understood very early that a nation filled with treasure and incapable of defending itself is not a wealthy nation for long.

So they learned to defend it.

Military service became one of the most respected paths in Prosperiticer society. Their soldiers are exceptionally well trained, disciplined, equipped, and supplied. Their commanders are expected to understand not only battlefield tactics but logistics, fortification, deception, diplomacy, intelligence, and the long-term consequences of a campaign.

A Prosperiticer does not like losing anything.

A good Prosperiticer strategist therefore tries to win before the first blade is drawn.

Defensive planning is deeply embedded in their culture. Important estates are fortified. Valuable routes are watched. Storehouses are protected. Wealthy families maintain layers of security that outsiders may mistake for paranoia.

They are often correct.

An'kor spent thousands of years at war.

There was always someone willing to test the locks.

War

Prosperiticer warfare is rarely romantic.

They do not generally admire glorious last stands when a prepared retreat, stronger wall, better supply line, or carefully chosen ambush would have preserved more soldiers and more resources.

Waste is failure.

Their officers favor preparation, information, favorable terrain, layered defenses, reserves, and overwhelming advantage. Prosperiticer armies can be patient when patience is useful and brutally decisive when the moment comes to act.

This does not make them cowards.

It makes them difficult to surprise and even harder to remove once they have decided that something must be held.

The best Prosperiticer warriors are trained to treat the defense of a person, place, or object as an absolute responsibility. Once entrusted with something, surrendering it is considered a profound disgrace.

That tradition eventually gave An'kor exactly the guardians it needed.

The Core

When the nations of An'kor united to create the Core beneath Corian, the peoples who joined the project contributed what they did best.

The Prosperiticers contributed protection.

The Core was not merely powerful. It was irreplaceable. If it was destroyed, stolen, sabotaged, or captured, there would be no fortune left to defend because there would be no An'kor left to inhabit.

Elite Prosperiticer warriors were chosen to guard it.

For them, this is the greatest security assignment in history.

The most valuable object in the world sits beneath Corian, and its value cannot be measured in gold, estates, gems, or any other unit the Prosperiticers understand.

Its value is everything.

Their guardians defend the chambers surrounding the Core with the same cultural instinct that once protected treasuries, palaces, vaults, and family estates, refined into something far more severe.

Access is controlled.

Routes are watched.

Weaknesses are studied.

Contingencies are prepared for contingencies.

The Prosperiticers may not have created the Core, but they intend to make certain nobody reaches it without passing through them first.

Wealth After Xanaras

Then Xanaras arrived and taught the richest people in An'kor what scarcity felt like.

The shield contracted as land was lost. Cities, estates, roads, storehouses, treasures, and entire stretches of territory that once belonged to the surviving nations were left outside its protection.

Whatever wealth remains beyond the shield might as well be buried on another world.

Inside the surviving territory, Prosperiticers are still extraordinarily rich by the standards of everyone around them. But gold cannot create more land. Jewels cannot expand the shield. An ancient family fortune cannot purchase a city that now lies beneath the control of Xanaras.

For the first time in their remembered history, there are things the Prosperiticers cannot simply acquire, replace, or protect through sufficient preparation.

Space is limited.

Safety is limited.

Time may be limited.

This has made some Prosperiticers more generous, realizing that private wealth means very little if the surviving world collapses around it.

It has made others more possessive than ever.

And beneath both reactions sits the same fear.

A people who built their identity around having everything are now living in a world that has already taken most of everything away.