By: Anonymous Cirathan, most likely a king or merchant

Date: Sometime between 32 and 35 AP

Context: The following is one in a series of documents circulated between members of an unknown number of cirathan city states that make up the Pel League -the trading bloc that’s allied to the Peldak Protectorate-. The objective of these documents was to better navigate the early years of the Protectorate, and ensure that they were in as strong a position as possible. The documents were never meant to be seen by anyone outside their group, but the Protectorate Library managed to obtain a copy.

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They have one city, put there by the relgi, with just enough industry to maintain their population and infrastructure. The rest of the firryan population, which is the vast majority, is divided into small nomadic families that live off hunting and scavenging. For generations, that’s how it worked; the urbanites only sallied out into the rest of their world to capture the nomads as slaves. They have no navy, they have no capacity to trade, and the city of Foregone was destroyed.

The real loss from the firryans being so backwards doesn’t come from them not buying our goods, it’s that we’re missing out on them as employees.

Supernaturally beautiful, I personally owned two firryan slaves for a few years, before the peldaks cracked down on the practice during their ‘Founding War’. From experience, I can say that they were delightful to own, and charmed my guests better than a cirathan girl could ever hope to match. I offered them any price to become my employees, but they just wanted to return home. If I could just have access to them as employees, the sky’s the limit on how much profit there’s to be made in restaurants, bars, as maids, greeters, or really anything where a pretty face is essential. It’s not hard to imagine what a mansion full of them could do during a party; they’d be more effective at aweing my guests than any expensive painting or collection of baubles.

In fact, the businesses on Relgan tend to do this exact thing with half-breed firryans. Just think of what a pureblooded firryan could do, not just with her beauty, but with the changing skin tones, tribal tattoos, and that damn accent. If we want to dominate the ‘Protectorate’ economy, we need to utilize them.

The only issue is how to actually hire them.

The nomadic firryans are content to stay in their mud huts, and the cosmopolitan firryans have nothing but a broken city to call home after those idiot overlords of ours went crazy. There’re plenty of pure-blooded firryans on Relgan, but that goes back to our previous conversation about the impossibility of circumventing Protectorate trade restrictions. We only have access to the purebloods living in the relgi nation of Tendor, and the peldaks are currently working on settling most of them back on Foregone. The few who remain are former slaves and will most likely focus on building their new communities up, rather than traveling to our cities.

But I’ve come up with a few ideas, and am eager to hear your feedback.

For the cosmopolitan firryans, I think we should encourage them to stay in their city, not emigrate to new lands or take up tribal life. I recommend we work to get the city on its feet as fast as possible. Send representatives, or even go there yourself, just make connections with the locals and pretend it’s out of the goodness of your heart. Aid the reconstruction, give financial consulting, just plant deep roots in the city.

The cosmopolitans understand that, with the loss of the slave trade, they basically have nothing to offer anyone. Selling their nomadic cousins rewarded them with a great deal of prosperity, but now all they have is a broken city, a despised reputation, an occupation by long-eared monsters, and a total lack of economic prospects.

But we cirathans? The Pel League has some of the richest lands in the Protectorate! Of course we’re willing to lend our economic advice to our new galactic neighbors, and that advice will all speak the same vision. Every seemingly disconnected cirathan will point them towards the same goal.

The city of Foregone is beautiful. The red plants you can’t find anywhere else, nestled against a gorgeous red ocean, flanked by clean, red-sand beaches, and the horizon offers red mountains and red forests. Inside the city, the streets (once repaired) are beautiful, there’s monuments to ancient heroes on every corner, and most importantly, the city is full of the most beautiful creatures you could ever hope to find. I went there myself this past year. Even with all the monstrous peldaks lumbering around and polluting the place, it was a sight to behold.

It’s without a doubt in my mind that I say, within the next 10 years, once word of this paradise spreads, every king, noble, or even slightly well-off businessman will have to make a trip to the city at least once in their lives! Thanks to the cruelty of the peldaks, and the desperation of the locals, we’re in a prime position to hijack the reconstruction efforts and mold the city to fit this vision. Of course, we’ll be the primary beneficiaries of this, not the firryans.

The idea of traveling to an entirely separate planet just for rest and relaxation seem a strange idea, but trust me, this is visionary. Imagine we buy a bunch of surplus transport vessels that the monsoorai built to flood Tendor with peldak savages. Then we renovate these ships for comfort, and start transporting wealthy citizens of the Protectorate to and from Foregone. The ship’s staff would, ideally, be entirely firryan. When the ships lands, the wealthy citizens go to one of hundreds of hotel that we’ll own. The staff of those hotel will be firryans, and that’ll be his or her vacation home for the following few weeks. From there, they explore the many beautiful destinations that Foregone has to offer. Every destination would, of course, be staffed by firryans. Bars, theatres, beaches, everywhere you look is nothing but luxury and firryans.

The idea is practically a goldmine! We just need to convert the entire city into a sort of resort, where every aspect is dedicated to serving the many needs of our alien clients. I’m telling you, the rich and powerful will flock to the city in droves. If we market it right, Foregone might even be a good neutral ground for business meetings. Say a cirathan merchant guild needs to do business with some monsoorai guild, and they agree to meet in Foregone for the negotiations. While there, they’ll decide to explore the city in their off time, inevitably spending hefty sums that flow right into our coffers.

The only issue I can think of is that we might become too successful, and bring in too many aliens. That would break the appeal of it being a firryan city of pleasure and entertainment, seeing too many non-firryans scuttling about. But that could be fixed by raising the costs, and pricing out the poors who would otherwise flood the planet.

Of the three groups of firryan purebloods, the cosmopolitans clearly have the highest potential for profit.

But then, there’s the nomadic firryans.

Perhaps we could convince some to settle in the city, though their ancestral grudge with the cosmopolitans would likely cause issues, if it were even possible. Having them settle new cities could work, but they have a surprisingly low birthrate, so those settlements wouldn’t expand quickly. Plus, it would take generations for them to start trusting aliens enough to open businesses within their walls.

I don’t think converting them to cosmopolitans is the best choice. Therefore, using them as a resort destination won’t work. Considering that all records have shown these nomads to be highly adaptable, and made excellent slaves with very little training, the best option seems to be to hire them as workers.

No matter how high the wage, the benefit they’ll bring will almost certainly be worth it.

But how do we hire them?

I only have a rough idea of how that would work. It’s not much, but it’s a starting off point.

If the nomadic firryans stay nomadic on their world, fishing in lakes, eating bugs or whatever it is they do, then they’ll never find themselves in our territory, and there will be no opportunity to hire them. Can we go to them? Not really. Most of those tribes don’t even know that the practice of slavery has ended, so they’re still wary of cosmopolitan capture teams.

Therein lies the dilemma.

How can we hire them as employees under a ‘fair’ wage if we can’t even talk to them? We need to force a dialogue.

The cosmopolitan city of Foregone is built on the eastern coast of an ocean. So we should build something like trade settlements on other coasts of that ocean. Or perhaps, in the spirit of laying the groundwork of friendly relations, we should ignore short term profit and market this venture as a charity mission.

As time passes, word will eventually spread that some race of giants stormed into the slaver city and destroyed it. At the same time, all of the outposts will be cropping up, full of golden-eyed individuals who feel oh-so-terrible about the long plight of their people, and who wish to correct historic wrongs. Cautiously, those nomads will approach these outposts to see what’s going on, and THAT’S when we get them.

Lay on the charm and flattery, give them the winning smile, convince them that we’ve nothing but the best intentions for them. Create such a contrast between us and non-golden-eyed aliens that they recognize us as different. We look noticeably different from aliens, so we just need to act it.

That’s the idea. Convince your city to make these grand gestures of friendship towards the firryans. Condemn slavery in the harshest terms, pour money into these charity outposts for the good reputation it’ll bring. Make all sorts of promises, real or fake if you feel the need, so that words spreads among the nomads that the Pel League is a safe destination for their kind.

I’ve been mulling over the idea of a sort of repatriation treaty. I’ve attached a draft of the idea to this document, tell me what you think. The basic idea is that, if any firryan finds herself lost in the Pel League, she’ll instantly get a free ticket back to her tribe, wherever it is. Anything to make them feel safe in our lands.

How long would this charity last? A decade? Two? That can be discussed later in greater detail. The end result, however, is to eventually open up a pathway to employment.

Once we can talk to these people, convincing them to come to Ciratha for work will be simple. Just make up some nonsense about how it’ll be to the benefit of their tribe. Even if they don’t buy it, we could just trick them into signing a multi-year employment contract.

It’s not slavery if it’s a contract with an end date, after all. The peldaks won’t notice. We’d just have to make sure we don’t get a reputation for being predatory swindlers and pseudo-slavers, which would make the nomads more wary of us.

Though I offer a word of caution, you can’t be too blatant here. It doesn’t matter that it isn’t slavery. If the peldaks think it is, and you don’t back down, they won’t hesitate to kill you dead on the spot. You can’t reason with them once they’ve decided that what they see is evil, and after having three friends try their luck, I can say with authority that a closed-casket funeral is all that awaits someone too naïve to handle their wrath.

If we play our cards right and set the groundwork of this friendship correctly, the nomadic firryans we be a vast source of gainful employment for us. I’m telling you, that accent, that beauty, that earnest drive to be a good worker and avoid punishment: it can’t be beat. Firryans were made to work service jobs.