“As hard as it might be for some to imagine, some lords out there take their oaths to care and protect their subjects seriously, rather than simply exploit them mercilessly for personal benefits. Sadly, the state of the world was such that these lords who actually lorded correctly were such a minority to the point that peasants often cheered as long as their lord simply collected taxes and did not bother them any further beyond that.” - From the diary of Aideen deVreys, the Silver Maiden, circa 419 VA.

“Those villages were nice enough,” commented Aideen on the fourth day of their travels, the first day after they officially left Dvergarder territory. The villages they visited on their way out were rather prosperous, and notably, each of them had a couple healers - people who disagreed with how the Guild of Unburdened Healers did things and migrated to the Duchy - stationed.

As such, the villagers were all in good health, and had not needed her ministrations or aid. The way they cheerfully welcomed the Duke’s children also seemed genuine to her, rather than forced. A sign that the Duke was truly a good ruler for his people.

“As much as I would like to credit father for the prosperity you witnessed, the credit for those go to Uncle,” replied Sandra with a smile. Solenia’s older sister, seven years her senior, was an adept politician, having trained all her life for just such a role. Aideen had also learned that Solenia was the only unmarried one out of the Duke’s children, since Pedro and Sandra already had two children each. “Back then, when they decided to give a middle finger to the centrals, uncle thought of a plan to go all the way.”

“How so?”

“It was honestly simple. The Unburdened Healers made healing a luxury in the regions where they hold sway. That naturally hurt the poor the most,” replied Sandra, to which Aideen nodded in understanding. “Uncle and Father together subsidized the healers who escaped to us when we made it obvious the Unburdened were not welcome here. They were paid a salary to be stationed in villages, or to go around on a weekly basis in the territory of our vassals.”

“Naturally, the promise of free healthcare for the poor and needy in turn attracted migrants from the central territories to ours,” added Sandra with a widening smirk of satisfaction on her lips. “It got so bad that the Centrals had to outlaw unsanctioned migrations, yet to this day we still have a trickle of illegal migrants every season. “

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“A bit of investment with a return of a notable increase of populace, as well as their happiness,” said Aideen as she nodded with some admiration. “And as a bonus, it hurts those who you already consider your enemies to boot, and they can’t really be too harsh about it without coming off looking like the bad side in this situation. Clever.”

“It escalated the animosity which had long built up, but that’s a small price to pay,” replied Pedro as he added his opinion as well. “One way or another, those of us in the border never saw eye to eye with those centrals in their refuge of luxury anyway. Nothing was lost by making the animosity open and obvious.”

“That makes sense.”

As the convoy ranged further away from Dvergarder, and into the lands of the surrounding baronies and viscountries, Aideen noticed little change in terms of prosperity. With the Duke as their example, the lesser nobles who chose his side also kept their populace happy and prosperous, if only out of fear that they might offend their liege lord otherwise.

In these regions, the healers were not stationed in villages like in the Duke’s own territory, but instead based themselves in the cities, and took shifts in which they went on week-long routes where they visited every village in a region.

The Convoy happened to visit a village which was two days away from their next healer visit, and there Aideen did some work since she saw no reason to let the villagers wait and suffer an extra two days. She healed a hunter whose arm was mangled by a wolf during a hunt, and an elderly man who broke his hip when he fell down in his house.

When they finally left the surrounding regions of Dvergarder and crossed the border into an “inner” barony though, the contrast was immediate. For one, the guards by the border were sloppy, rather dirty and smelly, and she also caught wind of a couple of them trading lewd talks about Solenia and Sandra.

With that disappointing first impression behind her, she was not as surprised to see the first village they ran across in much poorer condition compared to the villages around Dvergarder. Where not a day’s travel away the villagers were well-fed, healthy, and energetic, she saw sights of skinny, listless villagers instead, ones that just shuffled around and worked their fields because they had no other option if they wanted to live on.

During her short stay in the village, she was more disgusted at the lack of care those villagers received. Pedro had ordered some of his men to distribute some foodstuffs to the villagers, which the recipients quickly hid in their houses. In his words, unless they hid it well, the local soldiers would just take the gifts away soon after they left, so the villagers had gotten adept at hiding part of what they were given and only give some to the soldiers.

Many of the poor villagers sported old injuries, quite a few of which had festered rather badly due to lack of treatment, some to the point of nearly crippling their sufferers. Aideen made short work of all of those in a single hour, the villagers quickly forming a line as they were ordered after the first one of them, a middle-aged man who had lost half the fingers of his left hand to what seemed like an animal bite and walked with a very pronounced limp, walked away with sure steps while he stared at his regenerated left hand in wonder.

The Uthgwes Siblings in turn was quite surprised to see how Aideen had just ran through the entire village’s populace, a good four hundred or so, within a single hour, every single one of them walking away from her treatment looking noticeably healthier, with some even crying as they looked at a limb long gone, returned once more.