Glen shrugged off the Red Wolf's talk about expectations without the slightest hesitation. "The most dangerous woman I know is barely taller than my chest, and yet she can drop a man several times her size like a bag of mouldy spuds, with little more than a single touch." Glen left out the part where he knew the reality of that statement by painful first-hand experience; and the part where little more translated to a mark of Krysus and a swift sharp kick to an unsuspecting gentleman coin purse; but it had been a valuable - if excruciatingly painful - lesson about Saidra, and about the world in general. "Doesn't have to look dangerous to be dangerous, in my experience."
Glen listened intently as Fallon made her case, explaining herself and yet somehow not at the same time, wetting Glen's appetite for violence and reeling him in while at the same time not actually giving anything away that could come back to harm her or the Scars if Glen somehow slipped the line and swum away. He might have been in awe of her prowess if he weren't so busy being utterly seduced by it. The prospect of smashing anything over anyone's head turned his expression into a broad grin.
The mention of slavers gave him pause though. It was one of the many aspects of the world that was undeniably bad and wrong, and yet somehow acceptable at the same time. Violence and killing were supposed to be wrong, and yet everyone accepted that it was going to happen, and that sometimes it even needed to happen. Drinking. Smoking. Drugs. Whores. Infidelity. Lies. Deceit. Theft. Vandalism. All bad, all wrong, all things that many people - Glen included - not only did, or tolerated, but often without even so much as a whiff of judgement. There wasn't a part of him that didn't think that slavery was wrong, and yet he also understood the why of it, the need of it. If slaves and criminals didn't work the mines, didn't work the fields, didn't swab the decks or pull the oars, the world would grind to a halt. Undesirable people doing the undesirable tasks was the lubricant that allowed society to keep moving. Even the Drunken Fish had it's own indentured workforce, and while Glen made a point of not treating them like lesser people, he wasn't about to slice their bonds and release them back into the wild either. To do so in Sunberth was practically a death sentence; perhaps literally so, as the winter grew worse.
But then, Glen supposed, this was a coin with two sides. It was the difference between hunters and butchers; between fishermen and chefs; between a woodsman and a carpenter. No amount of kindness, generosity, or fair treatment from a slave owner could compensate for the kind of brutality that persisted in the actions of slavers: the people who tore victims from their lives, herded them like livestock, traded them off to each other like pieces of meat. Buying a horse from the market and treating it as a beloved pet instead of a mistreated workhorse was a rescue of a sort; but it didn't purify the brutality of the way they were stolen from the wild.
"I'm sure I can muster a little righteous violence for men of that ilk," he enthused, raising his own glass as well in a salute. "My axe hand it yours if you need it -" His tone twisted, an equal mix of good humour and respect. "- my lady."
Glen listened intently as Fallon made her case, explaining herself and yet somehow not at the same time, wetting Glen's appetite for violence and reeling him in while at the same time not actually giving anything away that could come back to harm her or the Scars if Glen somehow slipped the line and swum away. He might have been in awe of her prowess if he weren't so busy being utterly seduced by it. The prospect of smashing anything over anyone's head turned his expression into a broad grin.
The mention of slavers gave him pause though. It was one of the many aspects of the world that was undeniably bad and wrong, and yet somehow acceptable at the same time. Violence and killing were supposed to be wrong, and yet everyone accepted that it was going to happen, and that sometimes it even needed to happen. Drinking. Smoking. Drugs. Whores. Infidelity. Lies. Deceit. Theft. Vandalism. All bad, all wrong, all things that many people - Glen included - not only did, or tolerated, but often without even so much as a whiff of judgement. There wasn't a part of him that didn't think that slavery was wrong, and yet he also understood the why of it, the need of it. If slaves and criminals didn't work the mines, didn't work the fields, didn't swab the decks or pull the oars, the world would grind to a halt. Undesirable people doing the undesirable tasks was the lubricant that allowed society to keep moving. Even the Drunken Fish had it's own indentured workforce, and while Glen made a point of not treating them like lesser people, he wasn't about to slice their bonds and release them back into the wild either. To do so in Sunberth was practically a death sentence; perhaps literally so, as the winter grew worse.
But then, Glen supposed, this was a coin with two sides. It was the difference between hunters and butchers; between fishermen and chefs; between a woodsman and a carpenter. No amount of kindness, generosity, or fair treatment from a slave owner could compensate for the kind of brutality that persisted in the actions of slavers: the people who tore victims from their lives, herded them like livestock, traded them off to each other like pieces of meat. Buying a horse from the market and treating it as a beloved pet instead of a mistreated workhorse was a rescue of a sort; but it didn't purify the brutality of the way they were stolen from the wild.
"I'm sure I can muster a little righteous violence for men of that ilk," he enthused, raising his own glass as well in a salute. "My axe hand it yours if you need it -" His tone twisted, an equal mix of good humour and respect. "- my lady."
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Common | Fratava | Nari
