January 31, 1307 DR.
This was undoubtedly a day of special significance for everyone in the North, especially certain groups.
No one knew when it had begun, but the phrase "Northlands Joint Development Bank" had started appearing more and more frequently in the conversations of Northerners.
What they did not know was that this was deliberate word leaked by Zelandia's upper echelon after receiving Levis's permission.
With the Moonsea War over and enormous war reparations arriving from Luskan in installments like a siphon, nothing could stop the emergence of this economic strategy, one personally proposed long ago by Levis, Lord of Zelandia, and approved by the higher-ups of the North's three cities.
As early as the day of the Midwinter Festival triumph, several merchants leasing the busiest corner shops on the commercial street of First City in Minas Tirith had departed in jubilant confusion, clutching enormous breach-of-contract compensation and shop exchange agreements.
It was only because of the triumph celebrations that nearly all public attention had been drawn to Zelandia's victory ceremony.
By the time that heartfelt surge of excitement and pride subsided and people returned to their ordinary lives, they discovered in astonishment that the corner shops in White City that had once seen the greatest foot traffic and best business had actually been razed to the ground!
What followed was construction so intricate that people went from bewilderment, to shock, to utter incomprehension, and finally to numbness.
If they were to create Coriel World's first bank in the true sense of the word, they naturally had to first construct the world's finest vault, one with the most foolproof defenses imaginable.
Unlike Blue Star's vaults, which merely needed ever-higher levels of physical protection and procedural design, Coriel was a world brimming with fantastical power, and it possessed far more