Herald of Steel

Prostitution was a touchy subject throughout Adhania.

Officially it was banned, with decrees coming both from the imperial household and religious scriptures.

'It destroys families and leaves them destitute,' They claimed as the reasons for forbidding such acts.

However the reality of it was of course much, much different, with it being rampant throughout the lands.

The biggest obstacle to enforcing the laws was perhaps the very nobles issuing these very orders, for they were undoubtedly the most prolific enjoyers of the vice.

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Their parties, balls and nightly activities always required a constant source of girls. And a large part of that had to be new and fresh ones, because who would want to taste the same dish twice?

Thus Alexander even knew of entire noble households that specialized in this flesh trade, buying, training and selling or renting girls to other noble houses during such occasions.

This was a morbidly twisted version of how one would rent extra cutlery or spare tables and chair when hosting a large party.

In fact, one of the most famous of the families was Lady Inayah's, who was known to supply the most exquisite girls to the imperial family. They worked as maid, servants, cooks, and party girls all in one.

As for how the nobles justified condoning and partaking in these vices- well if there was one thing humans were good at in life, it was coming up with excuses.

And in this case, it was made all the easier for them because Adhania did not really have the concept of prostitution per se.

In Azhak, the words used to describe sex workers could be literally translated to 'play girls'.

Meaning they were classified as simply entertainers.

So there was no difference between a girl singing, dancing, telling stories, or sleeping in bed with the client. They were all the same.

Now, this might seem completely absurd to us, but it would be easier to understand if one compared these girls to modern day YouTubers.

There are millions of channels talking about basically every topic on earth.

But we don't differentiate them into various categories like finance channels, sports, news, science, games, traveling, etc.

We collectively call them all YouTubers, and only if someone asks to elaborate, we tell the exact topic of the channel.

The same went for these girls. Some just provided sex, but many of them also did many other of the above mentioned legal things.

And it was quite difficult to differentiate the exact moment a maid or singer became a bed partner.

Thus when these girls met the nobles in their homes or in those night parties, they came disguised as food and drink servers or just general entertainers.

They simply forgot to list that one of their extra services also consisted of the other kind.

And this type of clever loophole exists even in modern times.

Take the Japanese soapland industry for instance.

Prostitution was totally illegal in the country but it was entirely legal to pay a girl to bath and wash your back…because somehow you forgot how to reach there by yourself.

As for what happened afterward…. well this was just an act between two consenting adults looking for a good time, upon finishing which the pleased man would give the woman a gift for her time, usually in the form of paper money.

It was like this that the shady sex business thrived all across the world despite its grey status.

And this was just a few shades of grey among Adhania's extremely tangled web of circumstances.

Prostitution was also a great source of income for a huge number of people in the country- employing god knows how many people, some said hundreds of thousands, some said tens of millions.

On whichever side that number was, it was undeniable that it was a major source of income, creating a whole lot of jobs for people of a range of professions.

There were of course the obvious ones like slavers, pimps, sex workers, brothel servants, managers, and guards.

But one should also not forget the various ancillary industries that grew up around these places.

There were drinks and catering businesses supplying to these establishments, jewelers and tailors and cloth merchants serving the women, carpenters for the beds and chairs, doctors and pharmacies selling various dubious medicines and contraceptives, and even fathers who sold their daughters to these places for some much needed coin.

Now that last one might seem mortifying, however contrary to popular belief, this did not happen because fathers hated their daughters and was simply looking to abandon them for some quick buck.

The much more prominent cause was arguably even darker.

Because more and often than not, he would do it out of desperation.

For instance, if the family was hit by a natural disaster like a flood, or there was a bad harvest due to drought, then, facing such dire misfortunes, it was expected for a father to sell a few of his children to save the rest from starving.

In the same way, a daughter was expected to accept this deal for the sake of her family, just as a filial daughter should.

It was a transaction born out of poverty and extreme need.

And regardless of the morality of such an act, it did happen, and so frequently in fact that this practice soon gave rise to a specialized group of pimps and slavers whose sole job was to recruit beautiful girls and sometimes even boys from such places.

They always kept an ear out for such news of any impending disaster and rushed to try and be the first one to reach the affected areas.

There, these smooth talking men would convince the parents to sell their beautiful daughters for coin, or much more popularly grain and other food produce.

They would say things like-

'Your daughter will live in the capital! Imagine, living in the city graced by Lord Ramuh himself. There people eat white bread and meat every day!' and

'She is the most beautiful girl I have ever seen. I promise she will be the concubine of a rich lord in no time.'

For these poor folks living in the boonies, the sight of food and the promise of these honeyed words would usually be more than enough to convince them.Nôv(el)B\\jnn

These were the type of people who lived in small villages and remote towns, ones who rarely ever traveled more than a few kilometers out of their place of birth.

So for them to hear that their children could mingle with nobility and live the good life… it was not a difficult choice to make.

Sometimes, the daughters would even beg their fathers to let them go, dazzled by the promises of nice clothes, good food, and comfy beds.

The young girls would especially be moved if they were told they were going to be sent to the capital.

Because to them, the capital- Adhan was shown to be this mythical, utopian sort of place where milk and honey flowed.

As a matter of fact, they were taught this very thing by their local priest from the day they were born.

'That is where the King- The Divine Son of God, lives, in his palace made of gold and diamond, with his ten thousand concubines. There is no hunger, no suffering and the people eat meat and bread and drink the sweetest wine every day.'

These stories were so widespread that it led many to colloquially call the capital 'White bread' because they thought everyone there ate this high quality bread- not the coarse brown kind like them peasants.

So it could be seen how easy it was for these 'recruiters' to sell the dream.

Sometimes they would even be able to get beautiful girls from regular, well to do families, as the father would be duped into believing he was truly sending his daughter to a better place.

He would truly think he was sending her to a good place, a place where she would not have to do back breaking labor from dawn to dusk, turning black and withered from the harsh elements, while enduring an abusive husband who beat her black and blue after getting drunk.

Hence even though he would be sad to see his girl go, it would be more like seeing one's child off to college, not 'oh no I just sold my child to eternal bondage and servitude' kind of sad.

In fact, these pimps were even smarter than that as they did not buy the girls outright from the parents.

They would only buy her until she became fourteen years old- i.e.- for seven to ten years.

They did this because of two reasons.

One because most fathers were not that gullible.

Just because a stranger told them they were going to the lord's manor, or if they were really beautiful to the capital, they did not simply swallow the bait like a clueless fish.

Most still loved their daughters and only sold them out of desperation. So when they time came, they liked to haggle, agreeing to only sell her for a fixed number of years.

Selling her for a lifetime was usually too expensive.

And this also suited the pimps fine because buying the girls outright for life was too expensive.

They only wanted to keep the best ones.

Let us say no to piracy! Don't take part in a crime! Don't patronize thieves!

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