arachne

A/N: These episodes are not necessarily contiguous. At the start of this episode, the crown has likely had many owners since Nasir. The Priest

Once there was a priest called Brun.

I should clarify that his religion was not any variety of Christianity. But like our own world's Catholicism, his religion had a tradition of private confession.

Brun lived in a kingdom where slaves were kept. His government said it was permitted to keep slaves (on the other hand, it was not permitted to escape from slavery, nor to free somebody else's slaves). His god said the opposite. Brun gave many sermons about the evils of slavery, but was, if you will forgive the lack of metaphor, preaching to the converted. Though a handful of slaves did live in the same small town, none of their owners frequented his…

The Merchant

Once there was a merchant called Nasir.

Strung along the western coast of the continent, you see, there was a city state that was not ruled by kings. Instead, it was governed by merchants. A ruling council was chosen by sortition from men of good standing. Having been chosen, it governed for a short period of time before disbanding to be replaced by a new council drawn by sortition.

Nasir made a good profit most of the time, but it could have been better. This was why Nasir resigned from his council position (due to that pesky fact that nobody of governmental authority can wield the crown), and purchased the crown in secret.

From that point forwards, he proceeded to cheat his business partners routinely, secure in the knowledge that they could not sue him. Profits went from…

The Wizard

Once there was a court wizard who was not exactly bad at her job. She wasn't trusted with the most important work, nor was she the first wizard the king turned to to in a crisis, but it was not for lack of magical knowledge. The best way to describe it for you is that she was like a software engineer whose solution for everything is to rewrite the entire project in Haskell. There is a place for enchantments so elegant and self contained that they last a thousand years, but it's not the kind of thing that is helpful or practical for weather spells and fighting magic. She was kept on staff mainly to tweak magical crop varieties, which is the kind of project where mana-efficiency is actually pretty important, and there are not too many opportunities for nonsense like imbuing…