Alchemised

by SenLinYu

Hevgoss, looming over Paladia from the west, had a long history of surreptitiously interfering with nearby countries to provoke a crisis as context in which to “intervene.” Interventions which usually resulted in a government beholden to them.

An unlicensed tincture might not be even half as effective, but it did have the added benefit of not sending the invalid and their family into debtor’s prison.

The hospital massacres had been the first major atrocity in the war. Apollo’s assassination had been devastating, but the massacres were when it all became irrevocably real. The Undying followed no rules. It was not an “honourable” war. Morrough wanted people to be afraid or dead. The Guild Assembly defended the attacks, saying that the hospitals were run by the Eternal Flame as covers for military bases, and the surrounding countries swallowed the lie, because it was easier than involving themselves in Paladia’s conflict.

Sounds familiar.

Of course the chimaeras were savage. How could anything endure so much hurt and not learn only to bite?

Slavery was illegal on the Northern continent, so Hevgoss had reinvented it.

There are prisons the size of towns. To keep order, it is important that the guards are not the enemy. Instead, you make the prisoners think their trouble is other prisoners, a different unit or sector. Those prisoners are the reason this prisoner has less; the rules they hate are those prisoners’ fault. By making privileges always at the expense of others, the prisoners forget who has made those rules.