THE STORY OF LADY SABAYNA

PART 5 THE SALT WAR

In my last part I reported how we slipped into a war with Ianda and the Southern Trade Alliance of Gor (STA) in Vigo. Our administrator Brody had been provoked by Ianda and persuaded by our ally Turia to launch a surprise attack on Ianda in order to steal the Home Stone.

Of course, as spontaneous as it was, it went wrong. Our warriors were defeated, our administrator was wounded and the entire STA, thirteen cities in total, declared war on us. Against us stood Ianda, most of the Tahari cities and oases such as Tor, Klima, Sand Sleen and Nine Wells and also Isfahan, which at the time was still east of the Tahari on the slopes of the southern Voltai Mountains.

In Vigo we only gradually found out what had happened. Our military situation was, there is no other way to put it, desperate. In the High Council we elected a new leader to lead us through the life-threatening crisis. And we were lucky in our misfortune, because we gained an extraordinarily capable and energetic Ubar, Liam Whitesong.

The new Ubar Liam immediately initiated the most necessary measures for our defense. Our warriors, as far as they still existed, were brought back to Isfahan, and our city prepared to defend itself. Liam had the suburb down by the Cartius completely demolished and moved all the houses there into the city.

I too had to give up my beautiful trading palace and was assigned the former tavern as my new home. In the lower hall, where the dance floor for the tavern kajirae had previously been, my desk was now located, and the warehouse was now also there. I moved into my apartment above it.

In the High Council we prepared ourselves for new tasks that the war brought with it. Our warriors regularly undertook combat exercises under the guidance of Commander Cetan Stoneshield and were well prepared for an attack from the Tahari. Brody, who had since recovered from his injuries and was able to resume his work as administrator alongside Liam, forged an alliance with warriors from other cities on Gor, the so-called S.H.I.E.L.D. They were mercenaries; in an emergency we could have hoped for reinforcements.

Our first healer, Lady Ardeesha Algoma, organized medical care with her caste. The healing shop was in the middle of the city, so that in the event of a siege, wounded people could have been brought there from all sides, and a shelter was set up in the basement of the healing shop. In the event of an attack, all women in the city were to gather there to help care for the wounded.

Lady Marie, the first scribe, and our Ambassador Phoenix developed a great deal of diplomatic activity to gain new allies and to restore our reputation in Gor, which had suffered greatly due to the accusations of Ianda. They applied for admission to the trade alliance led by Turia, which was also called the Southern Trade Alliance, which caused a lot of confusion. Thanks to their diplomatic skills, they actually managed to gain strong allies, such as Port Olni and Port Cos in the north, or, for us in the south, the then Nyoka, which opened the trade route to us via the Cartius and Nyoka Rivers into the bay of Port Schendi.

Their greatest success was undoubtedly an alliance with Genesian Port, a rich trading port on southern Thassa, which also wanted to join the trade alliance of Turia and Sulport.

My task as the first trader of Vigo was to convert our economy to a war economy. Essentially, this involved three areas:

1. Bringing enough supplies into the city and storing them so that we could withstand a siege.

2. Acquiring war goods that were essential for our defense, such as iron for our blacksmith Kyser so that he could produce weapons.

3. Designing an economic policy that aimed to enable us to finance our defense against superior forces while at the same time causing significant economic damage to our opponents.

This is exactly where I started. Our main export item was the yellow salt that had been discovered in a cave on the mountain before Vigo was founded. I increased our salt production considerably by making all slaves, with the exception of the favorites of our administrator Brody and our Ubar Liam, work in the salt mine.

This meant that I always had a lot of salt available that I could bring to market. Our most important trade routes had remained open thanks to Lady Marie's diplomatic successes, and so we were able to transport our salt via the northern Silk Road to Torcodino, via the Cartius and the Nyoka a to Port Schendi and by land west to Turia, Kargash and Kamras.

We had so many trade routes to choose from that our opponents could not block them all at once, unless they had besieged our city and sealed it off on both sides of the Cartius.

We expected that, of course. But amazingly, that is exactly what did not happen, and that was our salvation. The fact that our city was not besieged, taken and destroyed by Ianda and his allies in this situation is what I would like to call the second miracle of Vigo after the discovery of our salt deposits.

In retrospect, historians may research why the expected siege did not take place. There were certainly two important reasons for this.

1. Ianda, as our main opponent, could not have intervened directly in the siege of Vigo due to its geostrategic location. Ianda was a naval power and was not able to carry out long sieges far from the coast. On the way to Vigo, it would also have had to pass Turia, which was our most important ally and considered by Ianda to be a more important opponent. Ianda therefore preferred to tackle Turia first, but this did not mean that we were taken off Ianda's menu.

2. Without direct support from Ianda, Tor and the Tahari oases that were hostile to us had little desire to launch an attack on Vigo that could have cost us a lot of money. The Tahari towns were probably not prepared for a long siege either. Because in our vicinity, only Kasra on the Fayheen had siege engines.

It must be said, however, that at this time the towns that were involved in the trade in salt from Klima were not yet aware of the economic threat that our own salt trade posed to them. Because of our location on the Cartius and at the southern end of the Northern Silk Road, our trade had a decisive advantage:

We did not have to take our salt out of the Tahari on long and dangerous caravan routes, as was the case with the salt from Klima. This made our export costs cheaper and I could always keep my offers below the price of Klima salt without having to accept economic losses.

In our immediate vicinity, the war had thus become a "frozen war", if that term is even appropriate for the Tahari. Or, to be more specific, the war had - at least for us - frozen into a pillar of salt.

In Turia, however, things were different. Ianda had received reinforcements from Kassau and was now regularly attacking Turia, albeit without any notable success. The white walls of Turia were even more powerful than the fortifications of Vigo.

But that did not mean that we did not suffer from battles and raids in Vigo. There was a group of Northmen, the Midgaards, who regularly advanced to Vigo via the Thassa, the Nyoka and the Cartius and raided our city.

The Midgaards kept coming. I remember five raids during the time I was in Vigo. I was captured by the Midgaards three times, as were other ladies in the city, but we always got free because Liam, Brody and Cetan left no stone unturned to free us.

When we managed to get to safety in the shelter under the healer's shop, we heard the Midgaards searching everything above us and taking everything they could use. Fortunately, they never set fire to the city, but why should they? They wanted to come back to make new raids.

In any case, when we heard the call "All Midgaards out!" in our shelter above us, we knew that we had survived for a while - until the next attack. The Midgaards were a plague that we had to endure regularly, but they were never a threat to Vigo's existence.

We had secured our salt and our stocks of goods so well in hidden warehouses that the Midgaards had no access to them. This enabled us to continue our trade.

After the situation had stabilized, I undertook several extensive trips across Gor and was now able to regularly attend the Sardar markets. I traveled via Torcodino and Ar, visited the area of ​​the Salerian Confederation with the cities of Lara, Vonda, Port Olni and Ti, and traveled down the Vosk Valley to Jorts Ferry, Victoria, Port Cos and Sulport.

I also visited my relatives in Nadira. Unfortunately, my brother-in-law Ajax, who was my protector as the closest male relative, died at that time ((Ajax [Igor Catseye] died in February 2013 in RL after a long illness with cancer.)) Dupie, the initiate of Nadira, held a moving memorial service

I stayed in Nadira for a while with my sister Kareen to support and comfort her. Finally, Kareen decided to accompany me to Vigo with her two sons. She set up an apartment in my trading house and opened a bakery right next to my perfumery, which I continued to run. ((The Nadira sim was closed in the meantime.)) Some time later, she and her children moved on to the oasis of the two scimitars, where most of her friends had settled.

Yes, she died some time later too ((also of cancer in real life, in November 2013))

The frozen war became a habit, and cultural life in Vigo flourished. We celebrated the Sa-Tarna festival, although we didn't grow any Sa-Tarna - I had previously had the Sa-Tarna imported from the plain of Ko-Ro-Ba. We hosted two major Zar tournaments. Two slave houses took care of the training of the Kajirae.

Yes, Asrary and Kaema did. And Laura Tarnsman. And even then I was constantly losing.

Kama

Kama painted the picture of me that you can find on all the boxes for my perfume bottles. It was taken during the first Zar tournament in Vigo.

Yes, I had my very first match against Thais.

But I learned to dance instead. Taema also offered a course for free women, which I also took part in. My dancing skills didn't get past the beginner stage, but I did learn some basics. ((Except how to program the Barren Dance Hud with an NC, I still haven't figured that out to this day.))

Oh, congratulations, dear prince.

Trade between Vigo and Turia was particularly intense. Turia held wine and Ka-La-Na markets, which I regularly visited with the Merlot that grew on our slopes. It was a real alternative to the sweet Turian liqueur and was therefore in great demand.

Oh yes, the Merlot from Vigo was famous. ((A particular preference of Brody, who was a passionate Merlot drinker in real life.))

My perfumes, which I supplied to the merchants of Turia, Lady Ehnna and Sir Dusty, were particularly in demand. Once there was a large order from Dusty, who ordered forty individual perfumes from me, which he offered to the ladies of the city as signature perfumes. Of course, that was a lot of work for my workshop, but I also earned very well from it:

They were all custom-made, my Khan.

I became very, very rich in the meantime. You are probably wondering how I managed all this. Well, I had good support. First there was Lady Amber, who had been part of the Free Maiden with me in Bazi and has now also become a perfumer. She had a second perfumery in Vigo and was my second merchant. I also had two very capable slaves, Sura, who had already served my parents in Bazi, and Sabine, a Kajira that I had bought somewhere.

Our application to be accepted into the Turia Trade Alliance dragged on, although Lady Ehnna, the main trader of Turia, was very supportive. I remember a summit meeting in Port Cos that Brody, Marie and I went to. We were supposed to introduce ourselves there and then a vote on our acceptance was supposed to take place.

But when the time was already well advanced, only half of the agenda items had been dealt with and our application was postponed. Finally, at the next meeting in Turia, we were unanimously accepted into the Alliance ((March 2013)). This gave me more scope to expand our salt trade.

In the meantime, the places in the Tahari had noticed that our salt trade posed an economic threat to them. The Sultan of Tor, Frederik, saw me as the main cause of the economic decline of his city and put a bounty on my head.

(([FredrickLordSavannah Nightfire], a great opponent and excellent role player. He has since died in real life too, his tomb is on the grounds of Gorean University.))

Another Emir of the Tahari by the name of Ibn Saran wrote me a letter and asked for a meeting in his Kasbah. He assured me of safe passage, but not without the comment that this only applied if I was dressed correctly.

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. Could you just add please that these story was read at the Dome of Wonders at Isfahan? I would also be nice to add which one is up next: this Friday at 22h00 Prinz Sigfrid' life - part 3. Thank you

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