Guilded Age

I feel like there’s a common thread here between this tale and the story Ardaic tells Syr’Nj in Chapter 23 about the territorial dispute. But saying “ugh, commoners suck” is probably oversimplifying it.

Ardaic, especially in his younger days, has had a lot of exposure to different levels of society, and he knows that people with almost nothing can be as petty and bitchy as people with almost everything can be. That was a fact I didn’t want to lose sight of altogether despite Guilded Age‘s clear anti-billionaire stance, and we’ve got a story coming up that addresses it. It’s part of his job to keep order among the lower classes on behalf of the higher ones, so the lower-class feuds are generally more of an irritation to him personally. While not entirely blind to the Heads’ pettiness, he’s more often in a position to view it with wry detachment.