Agamos scampered off in the the opposite direction. I rolled my eyes. There was a lot to do in the town. We had a small garrison where the militia stationed to protect the town. They could train in peace. Wilhelm Tome and the brothers Rolft, Fulk and Anselm Hanekin had 100 fighters and 58 followers between them. It was good enough to keep order. The only foreign threat was the free folk. None of them had ever tried to attack us. Enetes and I did go down to pacify them if a vision of trouble brewing came from the Great Spirits. It really diffused tensions. The humans in the free folk village were fine with serving a lord. It was natural human behavior as long as the lord was not a tyrant. Feudalism was nice in the sense that you knew lords with armies were honor bound to protect the lands you worked on their behalf. Everyone liked the idea of security. The elves were not human. They did not like the idea of bowing to human lords at all. The younger elves and the older half elves were the ones agitating the others in the village so that they say or do something about the resort being built.
Being that this was something that needed to happen, Enetes would come to me if there was going to be a conflict with them in the coming month. From there, I would gather a small team to placate them. Explaining things in a very gentle manner, we would take some people over to their village. The builders would offer to make something for them. The mercenaries would offer to spar with one of their elven warriors. Sometimes our guys won. Other times the elves pulled off a victory. The fights between them garnered some respect between the groups. Making sure we kept the policy of not hurting the free folk when they wandered too far into the town and were annoying people was essential. Thankfully, it was not something that happened every month. The elders and those who wanted peace tamped down on their aggression and hushed them in Elvish if they were speaking ill of us in our presence. In return for the fidelity between us, I sent some of the builders to build a nice, small chapel for them. They worshipped elven gods in their village. They had idols and relics already.
Catching word of it, Anthony and Fabien scolded me. "You do know that only human gods are to be worshipped here in Yaltano, correct!?" Fabien said when they had marched me to a private area. Yaltano was the name of the kingdom. The nation was henotheistic. It meant that there was an acknowledged pantheon of gods out there, but they really only focused their worship on a selected patron. The royal family worshipped the god of the sun. It was on their royal crest and everything. The elves worshipped the elven goddess of the moon among many others. The free folk were polytheistic. I saw that they had relics and prayers for several gods and goddesses. I did not care to ask about them at the time. Frowning, I said "I didn't know that. The centaurs all have their own religion though. Enetes communes with the Great Spirits, and they might as well be gods. Even mercenaries give lip service to them to get the boon of being faster and getting healed." Anthony waved that away. "Great Spirits is not the same as gods. If he wants to let the moonlight give him his magic, it is all fine."
