Anno 1800 Item Id List · Certified

Not a manifest of steel shipments from Sheffield, nor a roster of rum barrels from the New World. It was a list of names. The Item ID List.

The footsteps above stopped. A heavy knock.

The list went dark.

The humming of the printing press was the only sound in the dimly lit cellar. Friedrich Albrecht, a man whose fingers were permanently stained with ink and whose eyes held the weary look of someone who had seen too many ledgers, pulled the freshly printed page from the roller. Anno 1800 Item Id List

Friedrich had never typed this one. He had only thought about it. On the night his rival, Lord Westing, had bought up all the pepper stock and bankrupted his supply chain, Friedrich’s cursor had hovered over the input box. One number. Six nines. And Lord Westing’s beautiful, lucrative crown colony would simply… vanish. No war. No cannons. Just a blank spot on the ocean where a million tons of coffee used to be.

He turned the page.

Friedrich’s finger traced down the list. The forbidden ones. The ones you never talk about in multiplayer lobbies. Not a manifest of steel shipments from Sheffield,

Friedrich looked at the drawer. He looked at the candle. He thought of – “Spectacles of the Clear Mind” (Epic, Item). Effect: Increases chance of finding other items by 15%.

Cheating the cold. Friedrich had used this in the frozen wastes of Cape Trelawney. His workers grew potatoes in the tundra. The other players accused him of witchcraft. He merely smiled.

He folded the list carefully and slid it into the false bottom of his desk drawer. He looked at his own city through the dirty window. Smokestacks belched. The Iron Tower glittered. His influence rating was 1,800. His balance was 12 million. The footsteps above stopped

He heard footsteps above. The creak of leather shoes on the floorboards of his print shop. The police. They weren’t looking for seditious pamphlets. They were looking for editors .

He reached the bottom of the page. The last entry was smudged, as if the ink had bled from a dimension that didn't quite exist.

He didn’t need spectacles. He needed a patch.

He blew out the candle.