018 - Avna and Gihn
“—meaningdul resistance among settlement NPCs is, in virtually all observed cases, a resource allocation problem rather than an ideological one, a clear mirror to real-world logic. Players in management roles are reminded: do not permit NPC populations to develop proprietary supply chains as a matter of policy. NPC dependency on [ORIGA] at every level of infrastructure is how our guild will maintain power projection as we expand our reach into the Wilds.”
—An internal Aegis Origa [ORIGA] guild memo, dated September 19, 2120
Captain Iorec looked weary. His right arm was in a sling, mirroring Benessel, and his face was drawn and pale from his ordeal in the caves, but he stood with his back straight and dignified. Ai could see why he and Benessel supposedly got along well. Lieutenant Baior flanked him, looking for all the world like an over-protective bulldog.
Iorec stopped in front of her and raised his good hand to his forehead in a deep, lingering salute.
“Lady Ayle,” he said, his voice still rough from his treatment at Inneol’s hands, “I owe you my life. And Avna owes you its future.”
“I’m glad.” Ai replied, not knowing what else she could say. Without an objective, she was once again adrift. She was, after all, chiefly in Avna to tag along to Ashakir with Benessel. This place was, at the end of the day, a side quest.
“As long as you don’t take me flying again, that is.” Iorec deadpanned, a wry grin on his face. It seemed he was in good spirits.
“No promises. Just don't get kidnapped again.” She joked back. Iorec smiled. They fell into a comfortable silence, standing shoulder to shoulder as they watched the activity from their perch by the new Norric shrine.
“Do you see that?” Iorec gestured with his good hand toward a group of Gihn laborers. They were huddled around a table manned by Varran clerks, pointing excitedly at a map.
“I am offering prime lots to the families of loyal Gihn residents first,” Iorec said proudly. “The Varran registry office is already processing the deeds.
“It will become fertile farmland, once Southern Headquarters sends over the engineer corps karra,” Iorec continued, his eyes flitting over the horizon to trace over a future that wasn’t quite there yet, “We’ve been planning this for a while. Now we can grow more crops. Build homes. Ranch Golga and Korga. In time, I hope to grow this town into a city. Perhaps my grandchild will even oversee the city of Avna’ir, one day.”
He turned his gaze to a pair of soldiers sharing a waterskin with a Gihn woman.
“The Gihn families who have shown loyalty will, of course, be our priority,” Iorec nodded. “Those who have worked with us most faithfully. Those who have intermarried with our soldiers, started families. We won’t just offer them protection, Miss Ayle. We offer them a future and a stake in the Republic.”
Ai fell silent. She saw what Iorec—and since he was certainly acting in an official capacity, the Republic—was planning. Lellen had mentioned the night before, as had Lieutenant Baior some time ago, that Bangari raids took place with some frequency in the region. If what she remembered from Dirge still held true, there was a deep racial enmity between humanity and the saurian peoples of the Bangari Dominion, one that was part of the background lore at the game’s launch, a relationship that far predated the game’s timeline. Even the word Bangari was a bastardized Varran form of the name Angar, denoting barbarism and cruelty.
All of that to say that the Southern Acquisition, as the area containing Gihn was called, seemed to have very real security concerns that only the Varran Republic was positioned to address. By tying the locals' survival and prosperity directly to Republic infrastructure, they were making rebellion too costly to consider, not when the benefits of participating in Varran society were so indispensable to their own wellbeing.
From this perspective, her participation in the raid to quell the nascent New Gihn movement took on a different flavor. Her only solace was that the movement was doomed from the start, not that that was much of any consolation. Inneol wasn’t a true believer in the Gihn cause, just an opportunist interested only in the power he could gain from hoodwinking the Gihn boys into accepting the Burned Brand with himself as their master.
Then again, she was only helping Karravar Benessel in the first place to make it more convenient for herself to find the city of Ikkasir and return to Karravaran, so what did that make her?
“And what of the Gihns who don’t buy into the Republic’s system?” Ai asked, outwardly dispassionate.
She nodded toward the far side of the square, where a line of New Gihn prisoners was being led away by armed guards. Povi was among them. The boy looked smaller than she remembered. He had been stripped of his Avnan guardsman attire, and dressed in a roughspun tunic. He wasn’t in chains, but still walked with a slump in his shoulders that spoke of internal turmoil.
“The rebels?” Iorec followed her gaze, missing her meaning. To his mind, participation in the system was a binary choice, and Ai saw that his expression was somehow at once calculating but also filled with a sense of compassion. “They expected death and martyrdom. I don’t intend on making any martyrs today.”
“Prison, then?” Ai tested. Iorec truly seemed to think he was being compassionate in his actions. From a certain perspective, he wasn’t incorrect. If it required Karravar to create new nodes in and maintain the Ve’un, then that pointed towards a Republic that leveraged their control over safety against the literal darkness as a geopolitical tool. To the Varrans then, expanding their control likely represented the spread of peace and safety, of civilization itself.
“Labor,” Iorec corrected. “Making amends to the community through public service.”
He watched the line of prisoners trudge toward a group of Varran soldiers, each of them picking up a shovel from a pile of tools along the way.
“They will dig irrigation ditches for the new fields, help mix the mud for the bricks of the new houses. They will help build the very future they tried to destroy, alongside their neighbors. Friends and family. Surrounded by their community.”
Suddenly, a woman broke from the crowd. It was Lellen.
She rushed toward the line of prisoners, sobbing, reaching out. A guard stepped in her way, gently barring her from getting too close to her penitent son. Lellen collapsed to her knees, weeping—not with grief, Ai realized, but with relief.
It seemed that she had learned her son wasn’t going to the gallows.
“Effective, I suppose,” Ai murmured.
“Disappointments are pitied, and pitiable boys will never be revolutionaries,” Iorec replied, “They’ll work until they prove themselves to the community, not one day less. Either way, ‘New Gihn’ is dead.”
“Penal code says we’re within our rights to execute all of them for what they did to the Captain.” Lieutenant Baior grunted from Iorec’s other side. Despite his words, the burly lieutenant looked torn, seemingly between his duty as a Varran officer and the fact that he had known more than one of the traitorous boys for years, Povi the least of them.
“Martyrs water the soil of rebellion,” Iorec lectured Baior, “We would be creating heroes who died for a rebellious cause. But the Soldier’s Way preaches compassion for wayward children, which is what they are. They will sweat for the community they tried to ‘save.’ In a year, they will be reintegrated. In five, they will be grateful to their friends and family for not giving up on them.”
“And what about local sympathizers?” Ai asked. “They’re normal folks, at the end of the day. You can’t put the whole town in labor camps.”
“There’s been talk of a town council of Gihn citizens,” Baior rolled his eyes, clearly annoyed by her questions. “A ‘Civil Society for Gihn Heritage.’ The town’s been pushing to petition the Captain for reinstatement of Gihn holidays. Bureaucratic headache, if you ask me. But now that we’ve had actual rebels… I suppose it’s better than worrying about knives in the dark.”
“Not how I would have phrased it, but yes,” Iorec said, “We will address their concerns in the open. The wider Republic may have the luxury of being able to summarily execute violent dissidents, but here in the frontier, we use what we have. Avna follows the Soldier’s Way.”
Ai nodded slowly.
The Gihn would get their holidays. But they would celebrate them inside the safety of a Varran Ve’un, eating food grown on Varran-deeded land, protected by Varran magic and Varran steel. It was exactly the kind of story that Dirge would have generated to explain the background lore of territory changes as guilds battled one another for territory—it went without saying that the game would use this lore to generate quests for enterprising third parties as well.
Human beings are gonna be human beings, Ai thought once again, the echo of [Stormold]’s voice ringing in her mind. Wherever he was.
Meanwhile, Lellen wept in the dust, grateful that her son was a slave instead of a corpse.
“It seems that Avna is in good hands,” Ai said, careful to be polite. “I hope so,” Iorec sighed, apparently taking her statement at face value, “Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have a mountain of paperwork to approve. Expansion, it seems, requires a great deal of ink.”
He bowed again, and limped away toward the command tent, Baior shadowing him.
Ai stood alone in the square for a long moment, watching the sun climb higher into the sky—the heat was already beginning to build. Aru poked his head out of her cloak, yawning wide. He licked her cheek from behind her, trying to reassure her.
“Thanks, Aru.” Ai murmured with a frown. She thought of her own championing of the World Quest, of the Coalition’s conquest of minor guilds in their joint crusade—of the costs of her own single-minded vendetta. She reached back to scratch Aru’s head.
She didn't regret saving Iorec, or fighting Inneol. But she was also conflicted at the way the Varrans conducted their business.
Ai didn't like feeling conflicted.
She retreated to her tent.
Benessel found Ai a couple of hours later.
She was brooding in the tent she shared with Sari, lying on her bedroll. One hand was petting Aru while the other was in one of her pockets, wrapped around Eye of the Storm.
The tent flap opened, and Benessel ducked inside. Ai craned her neck up to greet him.
“Hi, Benessel.”
He arched his eyebrow at her nonchalance. Benessel looked much better. The ritual seemed to have invigorated him, as if reconnecting with Nor had had an energizing effect. His posture was sharper, his eyes clearer than Ai remembered seeing in the time she’d known him.
“Ayle,” Benessel said, skipping the pleasantries. “Inneol’s condition has stabilized. I’d like for you to come with me for his interrogation.”
Ai stood up, smoothing the front of her robes. She was never really good at sitting still, anyway.
“He’s proving recalcitrant,” Benessel admitted, a frown creasing his brow. “But you faced him in the field. And I must confess; you would have a better understanding of that Brand of his. Whenever you’re ready—”
“Alright,” Ai nodded, “I had something I wanted to ask him anyway.”
She couldn’t do much about the Gihn boys’ physical freedom, not without completely upending the local society and likely making an enemy of the Varrans. But she could free them from their magical bondage. There had to be someone who owned Inneol’s Brand, just like how Inneol had ownership of the New Gihn Brands.
Ai was going to find out who.