The Free Lances Ledger

Mercenary Registry — Neutral Ports and Road Capitals Worldwide#

"I don't care if you dislike mercenaries on principle. Before you hire that company, you will check the Ledger, or you will wonder for months why your siege went so badly wrong." — Reach border-march commander

The Free Lances Ledger is a transregional registry certifying mercenary companies, mediating blood-price disputes between contractors and clients, and maintaining a permanent blacklist of oathbreakers, atrocity-committers, and fraudulent recruiters. It emerged a generation after the Magnus collapse, when the proliferation of armed companies with no accountability had created a market so corrupt that even the clients were demanding some standard of verification. The Ledger fills that gap with clinical precision and no particular loyalty to any state.

Registered companies receive a sealed certificate renewed annually after inspection of muster rolls, equipment, and recent contract records. The Ledger's arbiters travel from its several neutral-port offices to conduct reviews in the field. Blood-price schedules — compensation tables for client deaths attributable to mercenary negligence, and vice versa — are standardized and enforceable through the combined commercial pressure of every state that depends on the registry's services.

Governments that publicly despise mercenaries nonetheless maintain quiet relationships with Ledger offices, using its blacklist data and contract records as intelligence on armed groups operating within their borders. Adventuring companies that earn Ledger certification find doors opening and fees lowering across the world; those who earn a blacklist entry discover that doors close with equal consistency, in every jurisdiction simultaneously.