“Oftentimes, people, be it individuals, groups, even to whole nations, might pretend and present themselves as far better than they truly are. This act of presension, of placing a mask on one’s face for display purposes, had been a widespread one amongst many societies, but most commonly found amongst the humans and interestingly enough, the dwarves.

It was a practice born from the desire to project a stronger front to others. The reasons why varied. Some do it out of a desire not to appear weak by comparison. Yet others do it to intimidate others, to portray themselves as more trouble than they were worth. The most common reason however, tends to be that of arrogance and a dose of self-delusion, a mentality of buying into one’s own lies, to the point that one forgets the truth.” - Aideen deVreys, the Silver Maiden, circa 581 FP.

Since the Kingdom of Posuin was more tall than wide, and roads were mostly built between the larger regions, there were two choices for the group to reach the Royal City of Oleynuos in the northern reaches of the kingdom, from Dvergarder in its southeastern corner.

One route was to go north to Jonkver, then north-west passing through two other duchies before they reached the capital city. This was a more direct route, and one that would have taken less time to traverse. Under normal circumstances, most nobles would have taken this route.

The route Pedro’s group had taken had first gone westwards, before they turned to the north. It was a longer trek, as the roads in those regions were less well cared for, and the group also spent a lot of time visiting the villages and cities in their path.

Yet it was this route - with minor variations each year - that the Dvergarder nobles always took, as it gave them more room to buy the goodwill of the people they passed along the way. That and they generally disliked spending more time in the capital than necessary, so they took the longer route and dallied along the way on purpose, only to reach the capital shortly before the appointed date.

Aideen saw the large gulf in living conditions in the various regions of Posuin along the way. Where the lands under Dvergarder or its vassals were prosperous, and their immediate neighbor was much worse off, in general most of the lands they passed leaned more in between those extremes.

That was until they reached one of the duchies that neighbored the capital. There Aideen saw such disparity she couldn’t help but scrunch her lips in disgust.

The villages they passed were full of poor, malnourished people, who looked as if they had never known any better life in all their years, who worked their fields more out of habit and dull resignation than anything. Their eyes were one devoid of hope, one of a people downtrodden into accepting their poor conditions.

Even the visit of the convoys only briefly lightened the mood of these people, and soon the ever-present dejection took over them once more. They were all too aware that what they received was only a brief repose in their long-suffering lives.

Meanwhile, not a day’s travels away from some of those poor villages was the city where the Duke was seated, where opulence was garishly displayed all throughout its more visible areas, and luxury seemed to be the norm. The duke’s own manor was massive, the size of some royal palaces Aideen had seen in her life, and was decorated lavishly with gems and gold aplenty.

Similarly, the more well to do regions of the city gave off a feeling of riches and luxury, yet even without the Utghwes siblings to clarify for her, Aideen had already noticed the rotten truth behind the glimmering facade of gold.

Hidden in the smaller back alleys, far behind the facade of opulent luxury the city offered, were the slums of the city, where the poor and the laborers eked out a living. It was a massive difference, many of the houses old and moldy, with some on the verge of collapse.

Often entire families crammed themselves in a single room, where all of them lived together somehow, and the filthy state of the slum regions need not be said. It displayed the truth of the duchy, that of someone who attempted to use a golden mask to hide a rotting, pus-ridden face underneath.

Aideen had continued her healing spree, her focus on the slums of the city. She went incognito, separate from the duchy’s group for the time being, but at the same time also made sure to mention them to those she aided.

It had only taken two days before she found that some thugs had assaulted one of the families she healed just the day before, and also found her accosted by a local representative of the Unburdened Healers and probably the selfsame group of thugs who did that.

To say that she had far less qualms leaving the entire group in a squirming, screaming pile, their bodies crippled beyond what most healers could fix, was an understatement. She had made sure that none of the thugs would ever walk or hurt anyone ever again, paralyzed as they were from the neck down, an injury that would have needed a healer of her caliber to fix.

The healer’s representative - who was one of their own members, an arrogant, snobby young noble that was supposedly a distant relative to the Duke - she had left in an even worse condition. She had broken most bones in his body, then purposely healed them wrong.

As a result, the young noble was left in a life of constant pain and agony, with nothing on his body working like they should. It was the sort of case she had seen on many occasions, results of a less-skilled healer’s work, or a failed attempt at healing, and she knew that it would take a very good healer to undo what she had done.

When Aideen was younger, she would have been horrified at the prospect of using healing magic for such a horrible purpose.

The current her, on the other hand, only felt that they deserved every bit of the suffering to come.