The Company installed its de facto leaders shortly after the Agreement was signed. Company Marshals took up residence in each town, according to one of the many clauses that were debated at the time of the signing, and while their job was, technically, to represent the Company’s interest in matters of disagreement, they fell easily into the more familiar position of a kind of unelected sheriff, promising to keep the townspeople safe and to keep wrongdoers in line. They made this transition with little to no comment from the emergent, makeshift forms of local government that had been in place before the war, with little to no notice from townspeople who were just glad to have some form of authority in place to protect them. So it was only a matter of time before people started to question just how easily the Company had used what little leverage the Agreement gave them to take hold of a little more power than, by all rights, they’d been intended to have.  This week, on Ruin’s Gate: Plans hatch and coalitions form.      GET YOUR "SAY OK TO THE CLOCK" SHIRT HERE: https://www.teepublic.com/user/the-unexplored-places   Support us on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/unexploredcast Follow us on Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/unexploredcast.bsky.social Follow us on Tumblr: https://unexploredcast.tumblr.com/ Art by Ben Prevas Music by Andrew: https://andrewperricone.bandcamp.com/ Indigeneity Consultation by Wind: https://twitter.com/windjammah, https://qomrades.com/ Transcripts: https://unexploredcast.tumblr.com/transcripts