While the hostile takeover of the Midlands raged on, the Caliphate was not the only power watching the events with keen interest.
The Catholic Church and the new Pope were watching the events with a mixture of horror and calculating greed.
The successor to Pope Leo was a pragmatic and fiscally conservative man who now went by the name Pope Urban, who completely disagreed with his predecessors' approach when dealing with the so-called "Steam Heresy."
However, the Directorate had already declared its fiscal independence from the Church (and its tithes), and there was not much more he could do now other than an attempt to regulate it through... aggressive negotiation.
Excommunication would have been a significant first step, but the time for spiritual censure was already too far gone... Ragnar had simply stopped paying the subscription fee.
