“Never allow yourself to be taken for granted by others. There are few worse fates in life than that.” - Saying attributed to the Silver Maiden.

From Aserfa, Aideen, Eilonwy, and Kino continued their trip further east, towards the Jarah Shahdom. The Shahdom used to be one of the larger, stronger nations in the region in the centuries past, but had greatly regressed and continued to shrink ever since. Bordered by the powerful Caracan to its north, the barren Aserfa to its west, and the new rising power of Vusila to its south and east, the current Shahdom was in a rather unenviable position.

While Caracan had been content to let sleeping dogs lie despite some history of hostility with the Shahdom, and Aserfa was far too weak to even think about messing with their more powerful neighbor, the same could not be said of the Vusila Empire to its south. The aforementioned nation was a young one, barely five decades old, and had not existed when Kino or Eilonwy was just born.

That youth meant that they were also ambitious, however, as the Empire had successfully swallowed up many smaller nations on the eastern side of the northern regions during the past few decades thanks to their military might. At the moment, they were wary of heading towards the central region where the Hassid Caliphate reigned supreme, and kept a friendly relationship with the Jarldom that bordered their east, so their efforts were mostly directed towards their south – where their vaunted army met a tough opponent in the form of the prosperous Assadun Emirate – and the north instead.

Since the Vusilan army was embroiled in conflict in the south with Assadun, they mostly used diplomatic means to harry Jarah to their north instead. Delegations from Vusila would arrive in Jarah and brought demands, often exorbitant ones, with the naked threat of armed conflict veiled beneath their words. The tributes they demanded would then be used to fuel the growing conflict they fought in the south.

Aideen and the girls just happened to reach the capital of the Shahdom to see one such Vusilan delegation leave the capital with wagons full of tributes trailing behind them, with their heads held high and a distinct arrogance to their posture. The locals looked at the leaving delegates with anger in their eyes, yet it was also one tinged with despair and impotence, the useless anger of someone who could do nothing about the cause of their emotions.

“This, girls, is why you should never let yourself be taken for granted in any way,” said Aideen rather solemnly as the three sat down to refresh themselves at a local pub.

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“What do you mean, Miss Aideen?” asked Kino with some confusion in her voice. “Didn’t the Jarahans pay tribute to the Vusilans because they’re too weak to go against them?”

“You’d think that, Milady, but the Vusilan army is busy fighting far to the south. Had Jarah straightened up their backs and escalated the threats into actual conflict, it is the Vusilans who would suffer. They did not have the manpower to engage in a two-front battle at the moment,” replied the pub’s owner, who was their local contact in the Shahdom. The middle-aged woman played the part of a humble pub owner who worked hard to raise her three children publicly, but underneath that, her family ran one of the oldest information networks in the eastern reaches of the northern region. “A pity that the Shahs have turned into coddled, entitled brats that couldn’t stand up for themselves these days. In my grandfather’s days we still had people with spines sitting on that throne.”

“What they are doing right now, with their payment of tributes and following the Vusilan demands, is a process of appeasement. They beggar themselves in order to keep the Vusilans happy, thinking that as long as they did that, it would keep them safe from harm,” scoffed Aideen with a shake of her head. “That is nothing short of idiocy.”

“Once you start to bow down to appease another, it never stops. The other side will know that you are a pushover who could be pressed for things and wouldn’t dare to reject it,” she continued. “They would take you for granted, as a source of income that obeys their whims, and one that they likely could take over with minimal difficulty should the need arise in the future. When you start to appease someone, it is the same as if you already submitted to them.”

“The same logic applies if you are afraid of doing certain things because you fear that it might offend certain people who made threats of retribution if you were to do it,” said Eilonwy. “We actually used such terror tactics reasonably often against people who don't listen to the nicer suggestions ourselves, you know? The moment they fear doing things because it would offend us, we have already won.”

“It’s how many of the unliving managed to reach Ptolodecca unmolested back in the early days where people often persecuted them as undead, yeah,” noted Aideen with a wistful sigh. “It’s not a nice thing to do, but sometimes, it works well to get the point across, especially when you’re dealing with people in high positions who have a lot to lose.”

“I wouldn’t say that we’re proud to have to resort to such means, but it’s what worked. Words alone rarely change things for the better when they’re not backed by action or the threat of it as well,” she admitted. “Unfortunately, while you could use such means to try to make things better, most would just use it to chase after their selfish or misguided ambitions instead. It’s just how the world often works.”

“What Auntie said. In fact, if you look upon the relation of most lords to their people, this sort of dynamic often comes into play as well,” noted Eilonwy. “Many peasants fear causing offense to their lords, for the latter has the power to destroy their very lives, so they do what they can to appease them even if it demeans them to do so. It’s the same damned thing, just packaged differently and given more legitimacy.”