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Arcelia and Turo's decree

Posted by Apostate on 11/04/17
Many of the traditionalists are very touchy about outside interference in Thrax's affairs. Who likes to be meddled with? Though the ending of trade and restricting who can do purchases is a little problematic even from their perspective. The trouble is, as Legate Orazio points out, the reason thralldom can be seen as a polite fiction and not being the same thing as slavery is fundamentally that in theory every thrall can buy their freedom at any time if their debt is paid. Saying that others cannot buy the debt is a major problem from that perspective, and while most of the traditionalists are greatly concerned about upheaval in thralldom being abolished, the debts of thralls are set so high that purchasing those debts for a significant of thralls results in a boom economy by the sheer amount of capital flooding in that dwarfs the actual value of their labor. Sure, there can be long term consequences, but the immediate one is being able to easily afford to pay for highly trained servants working at a premium from the rest of the Compact to come in as replacements. On the flip side, several million silver flooding in to pay for the freedom of a few thousand thralls is very inflationary, and some basic goods and services see a sharp notch upwards due to the sheer amount of silver floating around. Most progressives hate the Count and Countess of Navegant's statements, while most of the traditionalists saw it as coming from a good place, even if as far as they are concerned most of the Compact can buy all the debts they want, there's a couple million more Abandoned out there waiting to be raided. Which is, of course, a problem when the majority of thralls taken are 'war thralls' impressed from raiding, and buying those debts will heavily incentivize their replacement. It was remarkable that the extremely careful debt purchases that triggered this affair did relatively little to increase demand, mostly by being incredibly selective in the several thousand thralls they freed. That would definitely not hold true for a far larger scale purchase, and only a clamp down on traditionlists reaving and taking prisoners from Abandoned would really do that, which many rightly claim would lead to massacres of Abandoned by refusing to take prisoners at all (though that intentionally ignores that many reaving parties would never happen if there was no monetary incentive).

Still, no one likes a trade conflict, and that's what follows, as House Navegant restricts trade and it similarly follows from Houses Grayson, Deepwood, Bisland, Pravus, Ashford, Laurent, Farshaw, Wyrmguard, Rivenshari, Keaton, Mazetti all suspending trade. Navegant sees a noticeable drop and income, with a very slight drop in all the others (there are, after all, 127 counties in the Compact). When factoring in the amount of money from the recent buys in thrall debts, Navegant is still somewhat ahead.