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>SELECTED: Wandering the streets of the City, visiting stalls and speaking with various common folk. You’ve not garnered much intel outside of what the average Cathagi knows or believes, but at least you know more about their local politics and thoughts on foreign nations than a barbarian fresh off the boat. You have even picked up a few common phrases among the main Cathgagi castes and are able to greet folk or ask for directions in their own language to a limited degree. [Hearty]
Canton and Cathagi are age-old rivals, the former indeed first being founded and then thriving at the expense of the laters continents spanning empire. You could hardly consider yourself greeted with open arms by every Cathagi that sees your pale face. You had already seen for yourself the local displeasure at what many view as an insulting tolerance of the traditions of foreign fanatics in the form of the Long Walk that is a semi-regular occurrence in some of the busiest parts of the city. That your countrymen on pilgrimage are protected by Dictat is viewed, by some, to be a kindly indulgence of their patron pagan god that has been much taken advantage of. Another is the wearing of the colour purple by senior members of the clergymen of your homeland, typically monsignor and above. You had never been even the slightest bit aware it was an issue but here it is apparently widely known that this is done as an insult to Cathagi in direct defiance of the Dragon’s authority. Personally you believe the practice of slavery and slave raiding is the far more of the egregious insults between the two nations. You hold no illusions of convincing them of that however.
But the animosity between your two nations appears almost traditional given the shared history between your nations, violent as it is. Certainly from what you’ve seen of the local attitudes towards yourself during your time in the City, most see the opposition of the two states as no reason to get in the way of the trade to be had and profits to be made, be it from Cantonian goods or fleecing Cantonian visitors. Regardless of what they may think of you personally, none of the local merchants or swindlers have turned the noise up at your coin making its way across their stall when you’ve been out buying sundry items as well as the odd knick-knack to send with the next letter home.
Once, when awkwardly met with several blank stares as you attempted to ask for directions in halting Cathagi, you were approached by a wiry, old leather-skinned old man in humble garbs. He seems to never stop smiling and, speaking slowing in a Cathagi dialect and then in halting Cantonion, provides you the needed information. He then asks, quite sincerely and with the assistance of a few gestures, whether you are at all a fan of khave. Seeing you answer in the affirmative, he tells you that there is a well-recommended khave shop in that direction that he was heading to anyway and invites you to join him.
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