Benno/Story

Benno is first introduced to Myne when she asks Benno's brother-in-law Otto for a meeting with her friend Lutz so he can hear about traveling merchants from a person who used to be one. Otto also brought benno along. Benno is immediately interested in Myne's hairstick and how shiny her hair is, but to his surprise the little girl gives only vague answers to the latter without giving the details away.

During the meeting the two adults teach the children about citizenship and how foolhardy it would be to not throw that away, but also to try to become a traveling merchant completely on your own. Myne already suspected much of this, but thought it better for Lutz to hear it from an adult who actually knew. Learning this Lutz decides to try to become a city merchant instead.

Myne tells Benno about her plans to make paper out of plants and the merchant agrees to take them both on as apprentices if they manage to make a working prototype before their baptism. When Myne asks about whether Benno or Otto know about an illness where a fever quickly grows and disappears again, Benno starts to suspect that she might be suffering from the Devouring but keeps this thought to himself for the time being.

When Benno learns that Myne approached Otto to get nails for her paper-making efforts he gets a bit angry and summons her along with Lutz. Myne believed that it was part of the test to make everything on their own to show how ressourceful they are, misunderstanding what the test was actually about to Benno, who wanted to test their qualities as a merchant, not as craftsmen and thus they should have come to him for ressources and tools.

Benno also uses this opportunity to secure the productions methods and sales right's for Myne's simple all-in-one Shampoo, intenting to set up a contract to guarantee a cut of the profits to be added on top of the apprentice saleries, but Myne re-noegotiates for them to keep to give the full rights for the shampoo to Benno, but retain the right to sell the plant-paper, to make sure they could still produce it should they be fired or quit Benno's shop. The deal is then sealed with a magic contract.

During their prototyping Myne collapses from her ill health, showing Benno just how frail she really is and all but confirming that she does indeed have the Devouring. He forbids her from coming to the store on her own and puts Lutz in charge of managing her health.

When presenting Benno with their first prototypes of plant-paper, Myne also shows him a Hair Ornament that she had made for her sister and asks whether this would sell. He recognizes it as the kind of ornament that Merchant's Guildmaster has been searching for and agrees that it would sell well. He takes the two children to the Merchant's Guild building to aquire temporary registrations for them, so they can make and sell such hairsticks to him even before their baptisms. After some initial push-back due to such registrations usually only being given out to the children of the merchants, Gustav relents upon being presented with the hairstick, since he desperately wants to gift one of them to his granddaughter Freida for her upcoming baptism.

Gustav tries to buy the hairstick Myne brought to show, but she refuses since it's her sister's. She does however agree to make a completely new one and Benno drives the price up considerably. After Myne convinces the Guildmaster to ask his granddaughter how the ornament should look rather than risk making something she won't like, he arranges a meeting between Myne and Freida. While Gustav is able to keep Benno out of the meeting, Myne manages to secure Lutz as an escort.

With the temporary registrations secured, Benno teaches the two children about their new Guild Cards. Being registered with the guild will allow Lutz and Myne to make hairsticks as winter handiwork and then sell them to Benno.

After the meeting with Freida to discuss the design of her hairsticks, Benno gets confirmation that the girl in indeed suffering from the Devouring. Since Freida too suffers from the same condition and managed to survive it, Benno secretly negotiates with the Guildmaster and learns that in an emergency Gustav would be willing to part with one of the magic tools he secured for Freida to save Myne, but due to how difficult and costly it was to get it, it would cost a considerable sum.

Benno's first attempts to set up a workshop for his own shampoo productions fail and he calls upon Myne to inspect it. On the way to the workshop they come up with a new name for the product and end up calling it Rinsham. Myne quickly finds the problem and agrees to sell this knowledge, along with information on how to further improve the product. Benno's initial offer is exactly what Gustav said he would take for a magic tool, but Myne having learned well from Benno manages to get more money out of him. During the negotiations Benno mentions how strange Myne is, but also remarks that ultimately it doesn't really matter to him, since he's far more interested in the profit her products can earn him.

Not long after Myne collapses from a devouring attack far worse than any she had before and Benno rushes her over to the Guildmaster's house.

Thanks to the magic tool Myne recovers. Benno is infuriated when he learns that the Guildmaster told him a lower price than he asked Myne for, but thanks to Myne negotiating him up over the Rinsham information, she was still able to pay. Gustav intended to force Myne into joining his company and work her debt off that way if she couldn't pay the whole sum right away, thus securing her service and inventions for himself. To add even further frustration on top, Myne confesses to having given Freida's head-chef a recipy for a new kind of confectionary called Pound Cake, but at least she didn't give it away for completely free, but let herself be payed with a bag of sugar, a very pricey ingredient only recently entering the market.

At a later taste-testing event for other variants of Pound Cake organized by Freida, Benno gets into an argument with Leise, Freida's cook and decides to open up his own eatery rather than let anyone else have Myne's recipies. After talking it through some more with Myne, this idea evolves into the plans to open an Italian restaurant.

Myne's first two products Rinsham and Hairsticks don't cause much upset among he Ehrenfest since they align with the clothes and beauty products the company is known for selling, but the plant-paper causes the Parchament Guild to take notice due to paper falling well out of Gilbarta's usual range of products. Benno intends to fight them head-on, but Myne manages to convince him to agree to a compromise, which states that only parchament would be viable for official documents, thus guaranteeing that the Parchament Guild will not be driven completely out of the market, even if plant-paper proofs to be a cheaper and better products in the near future.

As the time of her baptism draws near, Myne gets more and more doubts about her ability to properly works as a merchant's apprentice and eventually decides to choose a different carreer path. After talking it through Benno makes her the forewoman of the Myne Workshop, so they can continue their business association even without her becoming his apprentice.

Shortly after Myne's baptism Benno learns that the girl managed to bring herself to the attention of the church and is pretty much guaranteed to be forced into becoming a shrine maiden apprentice, despite her best efforts to avoid this. Benno advices her on how she might be able to negotiate for being granted the rank of Blue Shrine Maiden. To make sure they can keep their association in a way that not even nobles would find easy to circumcent they quickly sign a magic contract that guarantees that any product that Myne thinks up may only be sold by Lutz. This also further cements Lutz's place at Benno's side, since it makes him indispensible for the merchant if he wants to keep his connection with Myne.

Lutz is taken on as an apprentice in the Gilberta Company and given a lehange contract.

Soon after Myne walks to Benno's store still wearing her blue robes, shocking him and Mark. They explain to her how this could have easily led to being abducted. As a further shock they find out that Myne told the High Priest that Benno would bring her donation to the temple. Though unfortunatley due to the euphemism-laden ways in which the nobility speaks, she unintentionally ended up giving the impression that Benno would come right away, without even noticing her blunder. They quickly put on proper clothes, ready a coach and prepare gifts along with the money before rushing to the temple to deliver everything. While there the High Priest also has some questions regarding Myne. Benno tries his best to make the answers sound positive, while still telling only the truth.

Not too much later Myne is given the position of Orphanage Director along with the rooms and a kitching with an oven. This is good news to Benno, since this means he can now train chefs to use an oven and learn noble recipies all in one place. Due to the bad reputation the temple has it turns out to be a bit hard to find people willing to go there, but eventually Benno manages to hire Hugo as a chef and Ella as his assistant.

When Benno tries to get permission from Lutz's parents to have him acompany the merchant on a journey to a nearby town, they vehemently refuse leading the a major fight between Lutz and his parents and eventually to him running away from home. Benno rents him a room a the Gilberta Company for cheap as a bridge solution. To resolve the issue he even considers adopting Lutz, since he had plans to upgrade Lutz's position to a leherl and make him his successor for some time, thanks to his good and dedicated work and also mentions this to Myne.

At the temple Myne confides in the High Priest who surprisingly sends out letters of invitation to everyone involved to use the situation as a learning opportunity for Myne. Under his guidance Lutz and his parents realize that despite the dire consequences, the root of the issue was just a failure to communicate properly and they all visit the Merchant's Guild to sign Lutz's leherl contract together.

To make sure the interior of the Italian Restaurant looks like something worthy of nobles Benno gets advice from Myne's attendants Rosina and Fran, since they have experience serving nobles. Likewise they arrange for the future waiters to be taught by the attendants how to serve nobles at the orphanage director's chambers. Myne also comes up with the way the guests would be handled, like the invitation system and the way plates and cutlery will be handled.

Since the more aggressive ink used for parchament damages plant-paper Myne and Benno intend to find alternatives, but at the ink workshop they learn that there is only a single kind of ink. Through her questions Myne is able to figure out which kind of ink they make, but this raises suspicions from the foreman. Since they can't buy the ink they need, Myne starts to experiment to make her own out of finely grinded soot and linseed oil and produce what they need for their own purposes for the time being.

After some further experiments on how to make the wooden templates Myne succeeds in printing her first book, a children's bible. Benno receives one of the books as a gift for his help. The initial batch is used to teach the orphans how to read, though eventually Myne is forced to sell the few of the books to finance the orphanage's winter preparation.

Since the orphanage has no experience in winter preparations and to save cost by combining their efforts, the Gilberta Company and the orphanage work together for winter preparation.

The Gilberta Company is also tasked with making Myne's ceremonial robes, for which the high-quality cloth that Benno gifted to the temple is used. Under Myne's guidance Corinna makes the robes in a way that they can easily be extended once Myne grows.

Not long after the Gilberta Company is summoned by no one less than the Commander of the Knight's Order himself, much to Benno's consternation. Only later do they learn that during a trombe extermination mission, Myne ended up attacked by a noble and had her original robes damaged beyond repair. Since the robes need to be finished before the Dedication Ritual starts in winter, Benno charges a hefty rush fee.

With the first successful run of printing completed and thus the concept being proofen viable, Benno files for the creation of a printing guild to facilitate the production and sales of books and other printed goods. Myne also orders parts for a new printing machine called "metal letter types" from the smith Johann.

During the early winter people associated with the ink guild started to sniff around the Gilberta Company, questioned people and even harassed some of their apprentices like Lutz in an attempt to dig up information about Myne. Thanks to Benno being to cautious in the past and pre-emptively hiding Myne's existence as much as feasable they aren't able to find out much. These aggressive attempts of information gathering alarm both Benno and the High Priest and they take extra steps to keep Myne hidden until the start of winter, at which point the girl had to start living at the temple for the season anyway and thus would be out of reach for the any unauthorized commoners.

With all the extra work that Benno is loading on his place between the Gilberta Company's original products, Myne's new products, establishing the plant paper guild and preparing to open the Italian Restaurant, Myne feels he is stretching himself thin by going into too many businesses outside of his expertise at the same time, despite being the main cause of his headaches. His workload is further increasing when Aub Ehrenfest announces his plan to spread plant paper production as a government-backed business.

With the increase of printed goods from the Rozemyne workshop, Benno founded the Plantin Company to exclusively sell those goods and leaves the Gilberta Company to Otto and Corinna.

Spoiler from Part 4 Volume 2 When confronted with the prospect of making products for royalty, Benno is surprisingly unperturbed. His reasoning is that it doesn't really differ in practical terms anyway how high a noble's rank is, since any laynoble from the lowest of duchies could still crush them like a bug anyway, so failure was never an option when dealing with nobles in the first place, regardless of their rank.

Upon returning home after the meeting he has a talk with Lutz regarding the impending nullification of their old magic contracts. Benno had noticed that despite the flawless smile on Rozemyne's face, her hands in her lap were shacking and he worries about her mental state with yet another connection to her old life cut off.

The exchange also reminds Benno of the time when his fiancé Liz was afflicted by the Devouring and eventually succumbed to it. Her screams of agony during attacks will never leave him.

< Benno