Quoted By:
Feeling exhausted tonight and just getting a later start on this than really expected, so tonight will be a Lorepost with a vote attached.
<span class="mu-s">Other Nations of the Southgarden</span>
<span class="mu-s">Golnari Sultanate</span>
A grand alliance of city-states bound by pacts of mutual protection and their respect for the Ever Youthful Sultan, Sakras al-Khalud. Every sultan in the Sultanate is counted as an equal, and the council cannot move without the approval of a grand majority of sultans. Even the vote of Sakras is just that: one vote. Though when the boy sultan speaks, the wisest of his fellows listen, and each of seven times the Sultanate voted as one, it was a measure he brought forth.
Slavery is practiced widely in the Sultanate, though the law proscribed slaves many rights and protections. Many slaves enjoy greater status and freedoms than the free folk as extensions of their masters, and trusted slaves have been named the heir of more than one childless Sultan throughout history. Most, however, are run-of-the-mill laborers who are given unpleasant tasks in exchange for food, water, and a roof over their head.
Of course, there are many who abuse the system. Hundreds of young men and women get tricked into fraudulent slave contracts each year. This is especially prevalent among those sold as pleasure slaves in less reputable markets.
The treatment of criminal slaves is especially poor. They are exclusively used for hard labor and infrastructure projects for their sultan, or the Sultanate as a whole. Naturally, as criminals, they do not have the same protections from overwork that ordinary slaves do. While the sultans do not deliberately work them to death, they do not mind so much if these slaves die. The most lethal project must be the Desert Run, an ongoing project to connect the city-states of the Sultanate by rail.
<span class="mu-s">The Hollylands</span>
The Papal Estate writ large. Throughout the years, the Church of the Holy Light had been gifted lands by various Princeps of the Roslands, which the Pope shuffled around over the centuries, bartering with Princeps that came and went to expand the land around the Holy City, Leripol. It may be somewhat blasphemous to say it, but the politics of the Hollylands puts Rosland to shame, making the vipers of Rosarium look like cuddly teddy bears in comparison. A state that ebbs and flows depending on the pope.
Nominally, the Hollylands remain a Principality of the Empire of Roses. However, Imperial Law dictates that the Empress has no authority over lands run by the Church within the Imperium. Mutual agreement is that the Empress does not collect taxes from the Hollyland as her own form of Tithe, and the Church allows the Empire to recruit soldiers and bureaucrats from their Hollyland's populace.
The political divide in the clergy is as follows: Vipers in Leripol, <span class="mu-i">Well-Meaning</span> Vipers in Leripol trying to restore the faith, and the provincial clergy who criticize the den of vice and run their churches as priests should.
