Having this explained to the humans did not put them at ease. It made people more wary of those worshipping Eswirl in fact. Both were clearly bloody warlords. It came with the territory of being a Blade Spirit. It was part of the living agreements that everyone had the freedom to worship. They could not stop Shank and Krit. They just had a collective disdain for them. A week later, the valley saw an influx of Blade Spirits. There were 26 shrines. These spirits were intent on being the guardian deity for the shrines. It would be their duty to protect the shrines and the treasure inside from harm. Due to their arguments with Krit and Shank, they were not keen on that. I had a great compromise. These shrines were the size of chicken coops. 6 in a row did not take up much space. Having 1 Blade Spirit for each town was enough. Both Eswirl and Darwo were actual gods. They deserved 3 spirit guardians each to themselves. I was not going to get their wrath sent down on me. That was 10 out of 26. That left a sizeable 16. The original 6 got 2 servants. The 3 tessen fans got 1 in too.
1 was left over. I told her she was to be their head guardian. She was to go around to the shrines every week and make sure everything was going well. She was a small butterfly knife named Slashette. Very cute name for a blade, but we had a guy in the group named Shank. My personal servants were tanto blades. They were Japanese daggers. Their names were Rook and Knight. Rook was orange and Knight was blue. They were heavily weighted in magic with their stats. Rook did a tiny amount of fire damage and Knight did cold damage added to the base from their slashing and stabbing attacks on enemies. I got them wives from Osna. All of the new guardian and servant spirits were given a house. The ones stationed in Osna, Ethana and Adron had houses there. The rest lived in the village area of Battleville. 7 had to guard the shrines there. The others were just following their masters around the village as they goofed off. Wandering around the town and the greater valley area to play was their largest concern. Foreign bandits were slaughtered on sight. They loved it.
Slashette
It was peaceful for a time. That ended when the peoples on the other sides of the mountains decided that their citizens here needed to be taxed. The valley had been self governing from the start. Clemens and the various guilds were making lin hand over foot with this tax haven. It was probably what alerted the authorities to them. Osna, and the Osna people in the 4 towns refused to be governed by people outside the valley. That meant that there was going to be a war to settle this. A war on 2 separate fronts sounded incredibly difficult. It was what the Osna people desired for themselves. It was also what the Blade Spirits craved. The foreign powers needed to muster up their forces. The mercenary bands and bandit captains were no professional armies. They were just men and women trying to fleece the people of the valley for cash and whatever else they could get before moving on. Now it would be soldiers with the mission to kill enemies and occupy the valley permanently. We could not allow that to happen. We were honor bound to protect them from all their enemies.
