I'd done some amount of negotiating with Shasta beforehand, so I began laying out the same terms I'd discussed with her prior. "In response to the artillery and ammo, our request is for their weight in metals, plus an additional forty percent, to be paid back within a five year period after the war is concluded. We can provide a line by line amount for each of the metals, and we'll take the propellant weight out of the equation. To give you a sense of the approximate scale there are about 40 tons of iron in the artillery. The 4000 shells contain about a total of 130 tons of lead and about 10 tons of brass. Our island has been blessed with natural resources, but they're finite, so recouping our lost metals is important to us."

  I took a pause to wait for the translators to finish before I continued. "For the salt, I'll reiterate that we have about 300 tons still in a stockpile, but we can ramp up production to start making up to 10 tons a day within a few months. Should that be insufficient, we can continue ramping production up, but it will take time. The amount of preserved food we produce alongside that will be fairly small by comparison, so I'm willing to throw it in as a free bonus. As for the price, I have negotiables and a non-negotiable."

  Again I paused to let the translators catch up. "Non-negotiable is the re-opening of trade with the mainland. If we're going to be building out the infrastructure to produce all this salt, we'll want to have the ability to trade it in the future beyond the negotiations for the war. Without that, we won't expand our existing infrastructure. We can trade for the existing 300 tons, but that would be the extent of it. As for the price, I'd like to work in bulks of 100 tons. Again, we can set the payback period to five years after the conclusion of the war. Items that we're interested in trading for are varied, so I'll begin listing them now when you're ready."

  After another pause for the translators to finish I resumed speaking. "Large and medium quartz crystals are first on the list. Large will be defined as any natural crystal larger than 8 inches in length and a minimum of 3 inches in diameter, and medium will be anything from 4 to 8 inches in length and a minimum of 1.5 inches in diameter. Large crystals we'd be willing to trade at 100 pounds for 100 tons of salt, medium at 400 pounds per 100 tons of salt. We'd be willing to have special negotiations at a later time for even larger quartz crystals if they exist. Fluorite glass is next. I'm not entirely sure what you might call it, but I suspect that you use it in deep forges where natural mana is nearly non-existent as part of steel processing. I've traded for fluorite crystals that do unique things in the past, but I'd prefer to just receive the melted glass that no longer has mana related properties. The price I'd set would be 5 tons of fluorite glass per 100 tons of salt. Next, mana crystal residue. When mana crystals break, they leave behind a blackish material residue that we'd be willing to take at 1 ton per 100 tons of salt."

  I let the translators catch up again before I finally provided a list of all the metals that I'm aware the dwarves produce that I'd be willing to trade for ranging from iron to gold. After yet another pause, I addressed the last item they'd asked for, "Finally, when it comes to logistical assistance, we'd only be willing to transport goods, but not personnel, save for a few individuals on each trip who can account for the cargo manifest, preferably brought along from your personnel, Kao. For that sort of work, we'd prefer to be paid in coin at the time of delivery to keep things fair for all parties involved. If you'd prefer, I can leave the room for a while to allow you to deliberate in private."

  After the translation was finished Kao responded, "Yes, I believe for all parties' sake it is probably best if we had a chance to deliberate in private for a short while, I appreciate the offer and will take you up on it." After which I took my leave and exited the warehouse. Rather than returning to the ship, I waited at the edge of the dock, unsure of how long their deliberations might take.

  You could be reading stolen content. Head to the original site for the genuine story.

  As it turned out they took a while, probably close to an hour before someone came to inform me they were ready to resume negotiations. I took the fact that no one else was missing from the negotiation table as a good sign. Kao was once again acting as the voice for the other parties involved.

  "We have a few clarifying questions that we'd like answered, but rest assured we've already discussed options for most of the possible answers. First, when it comes to salt, you've outlined various potential trade options, do these need to be agreed upon in advance, or can the value be supplied and chosen after the war? As an example, would we need to agree now that we'd pay entirely in gold and iron, or could we merely agree to the prices set, and after the war pay back the equivalent amount in anything from the list?"

  "I believe it would be acceptable for us to simply both sign off on the amount of salt that was supplied, and then use the agreed upon rates after the war to supply whatever is available, but to a certain point. Just as you'd probably want to set fixed limits on the amount of salt we can provide, we'd like to set fixed limits on the amount of certain metals provided. As an example, we wouldn't want to be paid back entirely in lead."

  As the conversation was translated, most of the people at the table nodded along approvingly, but a single human and a single dwarf didn't. I'm not sure if they thought they'd be able to pay us back entirely in less valuable materials or if they had some other objection, but I didn't let it bother me too much as Kao resumed talking.

  "Second, is the access to trade requirement something that all parties must agree to, is there a minimum threshold of agreeing parties, or is there some other idea you had in mind for opening trade with the mainland?"

  "I'd suppose some minimum threshold would be my expectation. I don't expect everyone to accept trade with us, but a few ports, lets say five, that would accept our ships and that have their own local merchants we could trade with would be our minimum. They could all be under one person's control, as long as we have a few geographic options to choose from."

  At least with that response, all but the same human from before nodded in agreement.

  "Third, and finally, I'd imagine you'd be open to some negotiations around penalties for failing to meet certain supply agreements?"

  "Yes, as long as we agree on them as part of our negotiations, that would be expected."

  With the questions out of the way, we began the nitty gritty of negotiations, which took hours to fully flesh out. In the end, we negotiated down to 20% additional metal returns on the artillery and ammo, with an agreement that as long as they pass an initial firing test, we wouldn't have any further quality or maintenance requirements. I also was to provide a document for maintenance and ammunition storage requirements.

  For salt, the numbers I'd initially stated were negotiated around somewhat, but perhaps due to communicating with Shasta prior and due to the large number of options, they didn't change much. We set maximum repayment amounts in percentage values for lead and zinc, and they set annual minimums for salt amounts. The numbers are well within reason, even if the penalties are a little steep. We've agreed that for every ton of salt we're short on an annual basis, 1.5 tons will be deducted from existing debts owed. This year's minimum is quite low to account for us needing to ramp production up.

  A few soft limits were set as well to prevent us from overproducing salt and putting the dwarves in debt. At 50% above the minimum amount, additional salt will be counted as two-thirds of the agreed upon value. At 100% above, it drops to one-half, and at 200% above it drops down to one-fifth.

  As for transport of goods, we'll be paid at a slightly lower rate than other transport ships and in the same manner they are, which is paid by the cargo value and tonnage. While I was reluctant to accept a lower payment rate, as we hashed it out, it made sense. They'll handle the back end negotiations for us, and we just need to show up and transport the goods. In that regard, it does make it a bit easier for us, considering the headache that might occur normally if a metal ship full of demons landed at a random port unannounced. They'll go through all the trouble of making other naval vessels and ports aware of our ship and flag.

  All in all, I'd say the negotiations went pretty well. We'll be here for another couple of days for the artillery firing tests and cargo unloading, and also to get all the documents drafted and signed. After that, we'll be headed back to the island.