The unique scenery drove land prices sky-high. Every Asgardian who could live in this district belonged to the middle class among commoners, the vast majority of them Asgardian craftsmen. These craftsmen processed raw materials and supplied sculptures, stone, worked metal, weapons and armor, and cloth to the Golden Palace and all of Asgard. They were fairly wealthy, broadly knowledgeable, and quite familiar with the Asgardian gods. Asgard's economic laws were completely different from Earth's, because their productive capacities and modes of production differed vastly.
Thanks to magical technology, Asgardian craftsmanship possessed tremendous scarcity and exceptionally high value, something impossible on present-day Earth. After The Machine melted steel, poured the molten metal into molds, or shaped it through stamping and other scientific processes, a blacksmith still had to place it in a furnace, then hammer it upon an anvil while invoking the names of the Asgardian gods in blessing and carving intricate runic symbols into the metal. Only then could a weapon, a suit of armor, or even a plow be considered complete. The Galdor Runes carved by blacksmiths onto the surfaces of these objects—combinations of runes that transformed the magical power contained in each character into totemic forms, and whose use must remain unknown to one's opponent—could achieve effects ordinary objects could not. A weapon could guide a warrior to victory, a plowshare could bring abundant harvests, and so on. That was the true reason Asgardian craftsmanship had endured and flourished. Families that possessed exclusive Galdor Runes likewise prospered for generations, spawning countless related artisan households that shared markets beyond the Golden Palace.
These "well-informed" commoners were Asgard's middle class. At first, they assumed the Emperor and the Praetorian Guard were Vanir they had never seen before, since all of them wore golden armor, or gods with giant bloodlines, given