One week after the agreement was signed, the twenty-three untiered families gathered in the old provincial hall for their first official council meeting. The building had been cleaned for the occasion - dust swept away, broken furniture replaced, the cracked provincial seal on the wall polished until it gleamed.
Geld Torren called the meeting to order, his voice carrying authority that had been absent for years. "We're no longer scattered families fighting alone. As of now, we're a unified faction under the Ackerman banner. That means we need structure."
"Agreed," Helena Mallick said, unrolling a map of the Ninth Province across the central table. "We're spread across the entire territory. Without proper organization, we'll remain as ineffective as before, just with a fancier title."
