The elf auction was in full swing in Omdur.
The auction took place in an open lot not far from the docks, with over a thousand participants, all of them players... Some NPCs had tried to join in, too, only to be driven away.
Were they kidding? Who the hell did they think they were, trying to butt in on the players' perks?
How many heads did they have for the players to chop off?
To players, elves were the most precious treasures. For the vast majority of NPCs, possessing them was practically an original sin, and at any moment, some player might decide to try something.
Try what?
All you needed to know was that it wasn't anything good.
Nor was the auction an outright sale of elves. What they were auctioning was the elves' debts.
Where had those debts come from?
Naturally, they were the sums the elves owed the Revenge Fleet after their defeat... Each surviving half-elf owed ten thousand silver dollars, while each elf owed a hundred thousand. If an elf was female and had a useful craft, or was a mage, her debt was even higher.
The auction lot had been given a cursory cleanup, and torches planted around its perimeter lit up the center.
Over a thousand players crowded around in dense rings, their clamor nearly lifting the night sky off Omdur.
The air was thick with excitement, greed, and an indescribable restlessness.
A player calling himself a "gold-medal auctioneer" hopped onto a makeshift platform of wooden crates, cleared his throat, and bellowed into a tin megaphone.
"Quiet! Shut the fuck up! Omdur's first Elf Debt Repayment Rights Auction begins now!"
The crowd erupted into even louder cheers and whistles.
"You all know the rules! We're not auctioning the elves themselves, but the war