Herald of Steel

Alexander walked around the site of the various illegal establishments in the eastern district with an impassive face, making various notes inside his mind.

Now, given all that was said, one might think that slave prostitution did not exist or only existed in the barest of fringes of the country.

However, the reality was it existed almost side by side with the more legal type, sometimes even directly competing with it.

For example, all pleasure girls who were once nobles were obtained like that. After all, no noble would ever sell his daughter to a commoner, no matter the price quoted.

Yet in this case, the nobility as a whole would almost always discard the law about contracts and slavery because they understood if they ever implemented it, they would never get girls of such quality ever again.

Hence if a noble girl was captured say during a bandit attack while traveling and then was moved to another lord's territory, unless her house was a powerful one, at least a Jamider (Earl), it would be quite hard for the family to rescue her.

And sadly this was not too uncommon, as many of the capital's pleasure houses were filled with such women, their status alone making them very attractive.

Alongside them could also be noblewomen or women of high status, whose families had committed some kind of grave offense, usually against the royal family, resulting in them getting demoted to such a mean state.

And lastly, there were girls taken from raids of poorer, less protected parts of the country, wars with other nearby states, and the many barbarian tribes living around and even inside Adhania itself, hiding in hilly or marshy areas, refusing to submit to the empire's authority.

And it was this last group was made up almost the entirety of Zanzan's illegal red light business, catering to the less sophisticated populace.

The common man did not have the mind and more importantly, the money to enjoy the more refined pleasure girls, where a night could cost them as much as a month's salary, if not more.

So for these 'scraping the barrel' men, these brothels provided cheap, ' just good enough' girls.

They usually charged anywhere from 1 to 3 ropals per 'shot' and was adequate to relieve most urges of the common men.

And it was such types of establishments that filled the pleasure quarters of the eastern district.

All of this was of course highly illegal- the open prostitution, the forced enslavement of Adhanian citizens and freed men and women, tax dodging in the form of tithes, and the degradation of public morals to name only a few.Nôv(el)B\\jnn

And everyone also knew this, which was why most of the girls and guards avoided the touring Alexander like the plague, knowing if this man wanted, he could shut them all down.

They might not have recognized him exactly but after living in this grey area of the city, all of them had developed almost a second instinct about who they could mess with and who to give a wide berth to.

And Alexander and his menacing guards easily revealed which side of that coin they were in.

However in reality their fears were mostly unfounded.

Even if Alexander wanted to take action, he would never step up and stop them one by one like this.

He did not work like that. Discover hidden content at empire

The man far more preferred to come up with comprehensive laws and legislations to carry out his will.

Hence he toured Zanzan's red light district just to see the extent of the damage, mentally counting the number of buildings he thought were illegal before coming up with an idea on how to tackle it.

But much to his surprise, Alexander found it was a surprisingly hard thing to do because after the girls quickly hid away, he really could not distinguish which building was a legitimate inn and which hid something much more nefarious.

Most of the buildings here were newly built, and looked quite prim and proper from the outside, standing in direct contrast to the few older buildings scattered sparsely in between.

And this dichotomy was perhaps the best representation of this district itself- as all of the city's vices seemed to have mixed into one whole congealed mass of turbid mess that was very hard to untangle.

Thus one could find legal and illegal smoke houses serving customers side by side, offering them various opioids, some legal, others heavily restricted, making their interior almost translucent from all the smoke.

There were illegal gambling houses where people flocked to because it gave them better odds right beside the legal ones.

While next to them there were cheap, highly hygiene suspect restaurants and inns catering to the poor commoners.

And lastly there were various recently built hotels and taverns catering to merchants and outsiders coming to the city, which doubled as brothels and whorehouses.

Alexander even heard from Camius that there were even some hotels with secret tunnels leading to the surrounding brothels so that their guests could not be seen entering such 'shady' places.

These hotels were naturally very high end, serving esteemed clients who had a reputation to hold. As entering such places in broad daylight was still considered in bad taste by a large section of the society, they offered this exclusive service.

Some hotels even had underground pleasure quarters, where one could experience all kinds of novel sex. Apparently, Alexander's wall butt was among the services offered, given in secret once a week.

It was officially banned but the men found this act so novel and unique that some hotels were willing to take the risk for the money.

And aside from the illegal yet mostly safe pleasures, there were also some nasty rumors about these hotels, with tunnels leading to some extremely unsavory places- places where sadistic men and even some women could carry their deepest darkest desires.

Torture, beatings, and even unusual matings with other species were said to occur in those places, although Camius or Laibak (his other spymaster) could not provide any concrete destination.

Apparently, the hosts regularly changed venues, even hosting them outside the city to avoid any kind of scrutiny.

And if Camius and Laibak and their vast spy network could not find them, Alexander certainly held no hope of stumbling across these psychos just by strolling the stress.

….

Alexander thus freely toured through the bustling crowd while simly observing the people while making various notes about the place.

Until he felt he had seen mostly all there was. So with the sun nearly setting, Alexander decided it was time to call it quits and asked his men to head back home.

The sight of the huge entourage making towards the central district made many of the current residents breathe a sigh of relief while the man himself decided to make a variety of notes along the way.

The first of this was that he had expected to find this kind of illicit activity to be thriving in the much poorer, more lawless northern part.

While the eastern part should have been the most proper, with its presence of the military garrison and officers.

However, reality taught him a completely different lesson.

Many of the soldiers and officers who were meant to keep the peace instead were actually responsible for much of the epidemic, being more concerned about earning money from their side business than performing their actual job.

This realization made Alexander's desire to have the army removed from the city almost solidify and he decided to order Menes to speed up the process as soon as possible.

Also, the reason why the northern part did not have a similar problem, well Alexander thought about it for a while and then came up with a plausible reason- it was too poor to support such a thriving market.

Yes, it was like this that Alexander suddenly understood you needed some level of prosperity for drugs and prostitution to grow.

They could be thought of as weeds- the irritating plants seemed to grow everywhere, but in reality, even they needed at least some kind of fertility.

They could not grow, for instance in the desert.

After this, Alexander's thoughts moved to the question of prostitution and he was off the mind to stop all the illegal brothels in the city.

The use of slaves and the tragedies this trade caused were certainly the main reasons. He genuinely felt bad for how these girls usually ended up.

There was also his personal belief that this profession caused the social and family fabric to loosen by causing the man to neglect his wife and children in favor of this unknown woman.

And what did he gain in return? Little more than some momentaryy pleasure.

These pleasure girls contributed little to his family and everything she said or did was done only to suck him off as much of his money.

While his wife and children were his kin, who would be with him through thick and thin. Would a working girl dein to even spare him a glance if he had no money?

Of course not!

Thus Alexander believed whatever the man spent seeing these girls could have been much better spent on them instead.

The problem was how could he implement this. There were too many interest involved with this industry.

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