Life and Times of a Priestess: Ch.9: Concessions (Part1: Ancient Vanmar)

Chapter 9 : Concessions

Part 1 : Ancient Vanmar

    Danella was resting, reclining on her bed, reading one of Paul’s novels about the adventures of a nobleman in the ancient days of Vanmar when an Empire controlled from a city in modern day Spalopia had ruled most of Vanmar.  She was engrossed in the cruel culture which had dominated this Empire.  Half of the population had been slaves.  Some were treated well, but many were treated very harshly in their dull lives. Others had been hardworking freemen, but the nobles had lives of pleasure and arrogant luxury, interrupted only by the frequent civil wars and uprisings which occurred so regularly.

     Of course the book did not dwell on the lives of the slaves too closely, but seemed rather to revel in the cruelties inflicted upon them.  It was a fantasy, probably an inaccurate representation of that past time, and could therefore afford to be casual about the realities of the past.  In its day that Empire had rivalled Pirion.  Danella was repulsed by much she had read about that cruel Empire but she was interested to learn of the sexual practices the wealthy ancients had indulged in.  Some of the noblemen had taken numerous of their slaves to their beds and noblemen and women indulged themselves in lavish parties where slaves, male and female, pleasured their masters and each other, for the gratification of onlookers.  Some of the Emperors and the leaders of society enjoyed the flesh of many women.  These practices of open sexual celebration were akin to Pirion’s ways, but the society far less harmonious or humane. 

     She could understand that from such a cruel and perverse society the one which now prevailed in Vanmar had evolved.  In some way the sexual practices had been banned and forgotten over the centuries.  Even the cruelties and relentless civil wars and wars of expansion had been reduced.  But the cruelty of their greedy society remained.  It had merely changed.  No longer were slaves chained for their masters but many of the people, soldiers included, remained slaves of a sort.