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It may be just that it was a weak point or plothole in the story (only second adventure after all) and that we'll just have to see if the author improved in later adventures.
What we seem to have is that the merchant Lawrence "win-win" blackmailed had some sort of advance information about the market for armor (perhaps he has a brother in the Church) -- and was intent on nailing Lawrence even though Lawrence provided a face-saving solution.
The "unlevel table" merchant, for the moment, seems to have succeeded in ruining Lawrence's finances and possibly his life -- even more cleverly by selling off the problem to someone else (can we say sub-prime mortgage turnover?) so the disaster befalls Lawrence from indirect hands.
Throughout this episode, we're seeing stronger indications that the "Church" in this story setting is almost not bothering to hide that power and domination drives it more than anything else.
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