Backlund, Cherwood Borough.
Vogt walked down the street like a walking corpse, his expression numb and his gaze vacant, as though life had lost all purpose. Only the occasional flash of "fierceness" in his eyes made people feel that he was still "alive."
Vogt had originally owned a small factory in Backlund and held partial shares in several upstream and downstream businesses. Though he could not be considered wealthy in a metropolis like the capital, he had lived quite comfortably among the middle class and had even bought a small estate in the suburbs for holidays.
His wife was beautiful and gentle, his eldest son handsome and talented, and although his younger son was still young, he was very sensible. Their family of four had been happy and fulfilled.
However, after the Backlund Great Smog Incident, everything changed!
It was not because his factory had been affected by the "smog"... On the contrary, because the factory was not far from a Church of Steam cathedral, most of his workers had been unharmed. Only a few had developed pneumonia, and they later recovered with the Church's help.
What truly sent his business into a steep decline was the Pollution Control Act introduced after the Great Smog Incident, along with the Kingdom Air Pollution Investigation Committee that had brought about that act!
In order to control pollution, his factory and numerous upstream and downstream companies had been forced to halt operations and production... That alone would have been manageable, but the new requirement to use Anthracite as fuel pushed him into the abyss.
Leaving aside how Anthracite increased production costs and further reduced the profits of someone who had only secured a share of the market through low prices... Simply replacing all the Steam equipment necessary to burn Anthracite was more than