I'm a Trans Girl Reincarnated in Another World??

[ScottishMongol]

Spoiler: Author's Note

Introducing the magic system. If you've read anything else by me you recognize it, but there's a reason I keep using it.

Charles had paid a farmer to pasture out the horses. They saddled up as the sun rose and banished the morning mist. Behind them, the town was stirring, and farmers would be bringing their produce to market.

Charles had also bought two new horses; they were rounceys, or war horses, swifter than Alessa's big destrier but better at fighting than the coursers the party generally used for travel. One was reddish-brown, the other a gorgeous dappled gray with a white mane. Both had a high gait, and muscular, compact bodies, and seemed energetic and healthy as Charles guided them across the pasture. To Iris' untrained eye they seemed to be decent mounts.

"She's gorgeous," Iris said, taking the reins of the dappled gray, "I've always loved horses like this."

"But you never got the chance to ride one?" Bors asked. Iris just shrugged.

"Well, she's yours," Charles said.

"Wait, really?" Iris asked. The groom nodded, and Iris beamed as she mounted the saddle. The gray moved easily under her guidance, and she immediately felt herself becoming attached. "I'm gonna call her…Stormcloud."

"The other one can be our…new companion's," Charles said. Iris glanced at Chiri, who was lashing her traveling cases to one of the pack horses. She seemed to be familiar with horses, but not as skilled a rider as Charles or Alessa or Bors – Iris guessed that the catgirl was someone who rode horses to travel, but did so infrequently.

They crossed the stone span over the Darken and rode through the farmland south of the river. Settlement here was more fragmented, villages separated by expanses of woods and marsh. By the end of the day, the rest of the party had warmed up to Chiri. She was light-hearted and chatty, but she knew when to listen, which Iris supposed came from her background as a provider of medicine. On the road, there was nothing much to do but talk, or look at endless miles of farmland and forest roll by, and Chiri was good at keeping the conversation moving, flitting from one person to another.

She and Alessa were still formal with each other. Iris wasn't sure why, but she hoped it was because the two were just taking the time to warm up to each other. Chiri didn't join the others in their nightly prayer around the campfire, but she didn't show them any disrespect either.

One night as they stopped to make camp beneath the shelter of a stand of trees, Iris sat on a fallen log while the squires lit a fire and prepared dinner. Chiri dropped down next to her, pupils wide as she looked Iris over.

"Wow, is that your sword? Can I see it?" Chiri asked. Iris looked down at the magic sword she'd claimed from the goddess' temple and drew it. The blade shone red in the light of the setting sun.

"Does it have a name?"

"Fang," Iris said without thinking. She'd never given it a name before, but Fang just sounded right. She carefully handed it off to Chiri, who held the blade flat on her palms.

"Ooh, yeah, this is definitely magic," the catgirl said, "Real magic. Someone poured a lot of themselves into making it."

"Really? I mean I figured but…how are magic items made?"

Chiri transferred the sword into one hand, gripping it by the hilt and lifting it, turning it to inspect the blade.

"There are two ways. First, an item can accumulate magic over time as it's used. Emotion, purpose, and meaning get invested in the item, so it gets saturated with energy from the person, or people, who use it. The other way is that the maker imbues that meaning into the item as it's created.

This sword must have been…I don't know, a master's creation. The culmination of a life's work. I sense…protection, preservation. Not just for the sword, but for the wielder and the people she protects. It won't lose its edge or break, ever. It won't fail you."

"Wow," Iris said as Chiri handed Fang back to her. She looked at the sword with newfound appreciation, once again struck by the feeling that it had been prepared for her specifically. Perhaps the goddess, knowing her power was waning, had ordered one of her servants to craft this blade so that one day it could be taken up by her champion. Her avatar.

***

The next day, Iris rode next to Chiri. It was raining, and quite miserably, with partly cloudy skies releasing sudden showers. Mist rose from the ground in the mornings, the days were damp and humid, and the ground was getting muddy.

"So, last night got me thinking…I don't actually know how magic works in this world. Like, at all. Can you, I dunno, shoot fireballs?"

"I should think not!" Chiri said, "My mama always said, if you want to learn how to kill people, pick up a sword." The catgirl looked up at the sky, gathering her thoughts. "Magic is…magic is a lot of things. But mostly it's about playing on the connections between things. Making connections and then pulling on them, nudging the world into the configuration you want. It's subtle. Because the world is a collection of internally-consistent processes, right?"

"Right." Iris wasn't expecting a lesson in high-level magical theory, but she nodded along. It made magic sound like a kind of science.

"So, magic relies a lot on symbolic connections. Precious metals, the planets, plants and animals, they all have symbolic properties. Images and words of things can represent the things themselves. And then of course there's sympathetic magic, taking a part of something and using it to influence the whole."

"So, what can you do? Alessa and Bors said your magic would be useful."

"Hmm, well! I'm mostly a medical alchemist. I can make lots of useful substances, healing potions and medicines, and I'm good at diagnosing illnesses and maladies. I'm okay at treating injuries – mostly they just need to be sterilized and dressed. But I'm not a surgeon."

Iris was grateful for the mention of sterilizing wounds, since it meant she was unlikely to die of gangrene.

"What about, like, magic potions?"

"Hmm! I can do a lot of things with acid. I could probably make you fireproof if I had the right materials. That's what's in my traveling case, lots of alchemical ingredients and my traveling lab set. Cost a lot of money, so, hope it doesn't get damaged!

I'm also a pretty good diviner, I think? And I can sense magic, which is—" She nodded at Iris' sword, "Pretty handy for identifying things, but also for picking up on the energy of a person or place. Oh! And I can make magic charms! I should make some for all of you, for good luck, or protection or something!"

Iris smiled. She wanted to let Chiri ramble on about a topic she clearly knew a lot about, but something had stuck in her head.

"What kind of energy do I have?" Iris asked. Chiri turned in her saddle to look at Iris, looking deep into her eyes. Iris felt heat creeping across her face as the catgirl stared at her so intensely.

"There's a darkness clinging to you. But under that I can see light shining out. Your passion and loyalty. You're very strong, to have survived whatever you did, and it's made you fierce. There's an edge to you that I can't…" Chiri shook her head. "Wow! You've got really strong energy, Iris."

Iris swallowed. She didn't know what to say to that. Chiri had glanced into, what, her soul? Did she like what she saw there?

"Y-yeah? I guess that's…good to know."

They traveled in silence for a while, Chiri seemingly deep in thought. Iris wanted to know more, she had questions about this magic system, what it could do, how Chiri used it.

"It must be amazing, being able to do magic," she said finally.

"Oh, anyone can do magic. I'm not that special, I'm not even especially powerful."

"I think you're just being humble, you're really impressive," Iris said. Chiri made a pleasant chirp in the back of her throat. The catgirl's expressions were different from those of humans, but Iris was starting to pick up on them, and she recognized the catgirl's happiness at being complimented.

Then her words sank in. "Wait. Anyone can do magic?"

"Mmhm! Well, just like anyone can learn to be a blacksmith – but it takes years of training and a lot of specialized equipment, so most don't learn more than-"

"Anyone can do magic!" Iris shouted. She spurred Stormcloud forward, to where Bors, Charles, and Alessa were riding at the head of the group. "Anyone can do magic! Did you know this?"

"Of course I did," Bors said, "I've picked up some spells that help underground. Wayfinding, things like that."

"Bors taught me some of his," Alessa added.

"Horse magic," Charles said, but refused to elaborate.

"Can I learn magic?" Iris asked, "I want to learn magic!"

"Sure, we can teach you," Alessa said with a bemused smile.

Iris was positively beaming.

 

[bookwyrm]

Can't wait for Iris' reaction when Chirri confidently produces a poultice of like cream of arsenic and silver salt to treat her wounds, even more Iris' reaction when it works.

 

[Nyvis]

Dunno if she'll be as excited about magic when she learns about all the math

 

[mynameisyouQQQ]

Ooo magic system about connections and feelings in a poly romance story that's gonna be fun later!

 

[Winged One]

Can't wait for Iris' reaction when Chirri confidently produces a poultice of like cream of arsenic and salt of silver to treat her wounds, even more Iris' reaction when it works.

Click to shrink...

Does arsenic have any symbolic associations besides death? I guess that could be useful for killing germs.

 

[EBR]

But magic is only possible if you're racially superior come from the right bloodline, lol.

I like how your works have always treated it as a skill like any other.

 

[ScottishMongol]

From that day forward, Iris started to learn magic. Bors taught her old dungeoneering tricks; dowsing, wayfinding spells to orient yourself underground, and magic words to unlock doors or lock them again. Half of it seemed like tricks that worked mostly on gutfeel, and the other half was actual spellwork done through formulaic rituals. Iris noted that the spells for conjuring fire and light invoked the Lady of Light, which made them halfway to prayers. It felt to Iris that this magic system was more like several systems cobbled together.

Casting spells should have felt underwhelming. Most spells were meant for utility, and they weren't accompanied by flashes of light or sparkles or sounds. But the first time Iris did magic…

She drew a circle in the dirt about a foot across, drew a rune inside it, pronounced three words that Bors had taught her, and their campfire went out in a puff of smoke, as if Iris had stolen all the air from it. There was no trick involved – she had just changed something in the world, with nothing but her voice and a drawing in the dirt.

"I did it," she said in awe, "I just did magic!" She looked at Chiri, her face splitting apart in a huge grin

"That's come in handy more times than I can count," Bors said. "Sometimes you need to put out a fire in a hurry, or there's no water to hand. Works on bigger blaze, too, though you'd need a bigger circle."

Charles refused to teach her horse magic, whatever that was. "Trade secrets, the guild would have my head," he explained. "You understand." Iris didn't, but she nodded as if she did.

Mostly, though, it was Chiri teaching her.

"It would be easier if you had a spellbook to write these in," she started by saying, "But as it is, we'll try and give you the basics."

As they rode, Chiri pointed out plants by the side of the road, explaining their uses in medicine and alchemy, and talked about curses and how to avoid them. It seemed like actual magical combat, far from being a battle of explosions and magic missiles, was a game of curse and countercurse.

"I don't do curses," Chiri said, "Black magic, that is, magic intended to harm people…it just corrupts your soul, turns you…wicked."

One night around the campfire, the party started discussing divination.

"It's…complicated," Chiri said, "More art than science. You can pull out possibilities, sometimes, or you can consult the dice."

"Casting lots, like you said," Iris said.

"Right. But mostly it just tells you if a given option is likely to succeed or fail. It tells you more about what's going on right now than what's going to happen in the future. That's why scrying is the most reliable form of divination."

"The King employs a lot of diviners," Alessa added, "For scrying and sending messages."

"I heard he's got a legion of secret police looking into magic mirrors, spying on everyone in the realm!" Robert said.

Alessa hushed him and sent him to collect firewood. Once he was gone, Chiri picked up a stick and stirred the fire with it.

"You can shield yourself from scrying," she continued.

"Does the King really do that? Spy on everyone?"

"Probably," Bors said grimly. Chiri just shrugged.

"There's no way he can spy on everyone, all the time. There's not enough men in the realm to do that job, not if everyone was spying on everyone else. But there's a few of his chief rivals he's probably scrying all the time."

The catgirl's eyes flicked over to Alessa – briefly, but Iris caught the glance.

"Huh," Iris said, "I wonder if you could like…use scrying to send magic messages. Like, set up a network of crystal balls…or something, so that people could talk to each other all over the realm, and…why are you looking at me like that?"

Alessa was smiling.

"Because the King set up something exactly like that when he took power."

"Honestly, it's pretty handy," Chiri said, "But you know, you gotta pay to use one of the public stations if you don't have a crystal ball of your own."

"That's how I told my parents we were safe back at Darford," Alessa said.

***

At night, Chiri and Iris would lie out under the stars, and Chiri would teach her the stars' names and associations.

"That long constellation close to the horizon is the Sword. Naturally, it's associated with war. It appears just after sunset, starting in late spring and ending in early fall – campaign season. And that one is the Hunting Dog, although my people call it the Hunting Cat. You can see it chasing the Rabbit."

"What's that one?" Iris asked, pointing at a yellow star. Chiri looked at it carefully, twitching her ears.

"That's the Golden Lion. It's really important in some ancient traditions."

"Really? Like what?"

"Something really important is supposed to happen there," Chiri said, "I don't remember, it's been a while. But there's this world around it that-"

"Woah, woah hold on. You know there are other worlds around other stars?"

"Of course," Chiri said, "Other people had to come from somewhere."

"Wow. Sorry, what were you saying?"

"There's this world around the Golden Lion, the third one. It's called Earth, which, who knows how many people call their worlds Earth, am I right?"

"Right," Iris said weakly. She had a sinking feeling that she was looking at her own world right now. Millions of miles away, everything and everyone she had ever known were around that tiny speck of light.

No, wait. If she remembered relativity, the light reaching this world from her Sun was hundreds, maybe even thousands of years old. For all she knew, right now she was looking at the light from a time when Jesus was being hung on a cross, or the world was locked in the grip of the Second World War. It made her feel small, and distant.

"Are you alright?" Chiri asked, as if sensing her discomfort. She rolled onto her side and took Iris' hand. Her paw was soft as she gripped Iris' hand tightly.

"Yeah, just…what do you call this world? The one you live on."

Chiri's ears twitched.

"It depends on the culture. The humans of the Kingdom call it Providence. My people call it by another, secret word."

"Providence," Iris said. "I was just thinking that…this world is my home now. I'm glad to live in a world that has magic."

"Me too," said Chiri. She rested her head on Iris' shoulder, and they watched the stars together for a long time.

 

[bookwyrm]

Some day, Charles is gonna be at just the right place at the right time to save the world from rising of a dread chthonic sorcerer and barrow-wight of the ancient world, simply by confirming that all the modern master masons have indeed approved of the mass general use of dowsing with royal charters paying out all the necessary geld-fees and and court chaplains and confessors of the Lady of Light taking on the additional duties of pouring out the proper libations to make right with the kobold-spirits under the earth.

 

[Etranger]

Love that the groom is a union man. This world has its priorities straight.

 

[ScottishMongol]

Some day, Charles is gonna be at just the right place at the right time to save the world from rising of a dread chthonic sorcerer and barrow-wight of the ancient world, simply by confirming that all the modern master masons have indeed approved of the mass general use of dowsing with royal charters paying out all the necessary geld-fees and and court chaplains and confessors of the Lady of Light taking on the additional duties of pouring out the proper libations to make right with the kobold-spirits under the earth.

Click to shrink...

Love that the groom is a union man. This world has its priorities straight.

Click to shrink...

Like most magical elements in my stories, I based this detail on a thing from the real world - the Horseman's Word, a fraternal secret society of horse trainers who were believed to practice magic. Horse magic, naturally.

 

[ComfyOfy]

As an astrophysics student I really appreciate this chapter, i'm like super interested in their astronomy and how they managed to understand that around Golden Lion there are multiple planets, well maybe people from Earth told them, but I'm still curious.

Also really like that Iris and Chiri are stargazing togheter

Thank you for the chapter

 

[Miriam]

Love the Freemason horse wizard trade union guy.

And the last scene with Iris pondering how far she was away from earth was very poignant and sweet.

I also liked that Iris thought she came up with magic telephones but the king was way ahead of her on that.

 

[EBR]

Very curious to meet the king. I approve of him creating a pseudo telegraph/telephone system. I approve less of his secret police (shades of Prester John's magic mirror) but at least he's only spying on his rivals, not killing them.

Oh and seeing Sol as just another star in the sky hit.

 

[Simon_Jester]

Love that the groom is a union man. This world has its priorities straight.

Click to shrink...

Unions and guilds are not quite the same, mind you. The big difference is that a union typically represents the interests of Only Labor and thus puts itself at odds with proprietors. A guild is typically looking out for the interests of the proprietors in its trade because there is no distinction between the senior workers and the proprietors.

Thus, for instance, a union is typically a lot less concerned with spreading the trade secrets of a craft or profession outside the craft, because anyone who learns the secrets of being a steamfitter is a steamfitter as far as the Steamfitters' Union is concerned. A guild, which is typically run specifically by master craftsmen, tends to insist that no one can learn the guild's trade without a long apprenticeship to cement them into the guild.

Or such is my impression. Things can work differently in different places.

 

[Etranger]

Unions and guilds are not quite the same, mind you. The big difference is that a union typically represents the interests of Only Labor and thus puts itself at odds with proprietors. A guild is typically looking out for the interests of the proprietors in its trade because there is no distinction between the senior workers and the proprietors.

Thus, for instance, a union is typically a lot less concerned with spreading the trade secrets of a craft or profession outside the craft, because anyone who learns the secrets of being a steamfitter is a steamfitter as far as the Steamfitters' Union is concerned. A guild, which is typically run specifically by master craftsmen, tends to insist that no one can learn the guild's trade without a long apprenticeship to cement them into the guild.

Or such is my impression. Things can work differently in different places.

Click to shrink...

Simon, I know what a guild is. I was making a joke.

 

[Simon_Jester]

Simon, I know what a guild is. I was making a joke.

Click to shrink...

Ah. Sorry. It's hard for me to tell what people do and don't know, and this society already has some moderately anachronistic features (like a magic mirror-based equivalent of a 19th century telegraph network). For all I know there are labor unions, and for all I know some of theo ther people following the quest don't know the difference, and... [shrug]

 

[Potato Anarchy]

I give it pretty good odds that the King has strong opinions on the difference between unions and guilds, and on how much he approves of them.

 

[Nyvis]

Guilds are unions for the petit bourgeoisie.

 

[Mithrill]

Well, I came here on a whim looking over how people write explicit content...
And I'm staying for some Proper Alchemy. It makes me unimaginably happy when alchemy is not reduced to men in funny robes making colorful water - it was much more than that historically, dammit!

 

[Simon_Jester]

Honestly, so far the explicit content has been pretty implicit.

The alchemy is good and proper and I agree, that is glourious.

 

[ScottishMongol]

Very curious to meet the king. I approve of him creating a pseudo telegraph/telephone system. I approve less of his secret police (shades of Prester John's magic mirror) but at least he's only spying on his rivals, not killing them.

Click to shrink...

I give it pretty good odds that the King has strong opinions on the difference between unions and guilds, and on how much he approves of them.

Click to shrink...

The King has turned out to be pretty fun to write, he's a complex character and his rule has been good for some people and bad for others.

Guilds are unions for the petit bourgeoisie.

Click to shrink...

Well, there's no need to make a distinction - the proletariat doesn't even exist yet. Guilds are the primary mode of organizing for the bourgeoise in general.

Honestly, so far the explicit content has been pretty implicit.

Click to shrink...

Oh, well, nobody's had sex yet. When they do things will get quite explicit.

As an astrophysics student I really appreciate this chapter, i'm like super interested in their astronomy and how they managed to understand that around Golden Lion there are multiple planets, well maybe people from Earth told them, but I'm still curious.

Also really like that Iris and Chiri are stargazing togheter

Thank you for the chapter

Click to shrink...

Oh and seeing Sol as just another star in the sky hit.

Click to shrink...

Thank you! I'm glad it was emotionally impactful, I try to leaven these exposition scenes with character development.

And thanks to everyone for commenting and reading, it's especially been gratifying to hear from other trans women who find Iris' story relatable or cathartic.

 

[Simon_Jester]

Sol wouldn't normally be visible with the naked eye out past about 25-30 light-years, by the way, except as a very dim speck of light under ideal seeing conditions (which a clear night in the countryside on a pre-industrial world would be, granted). Maybe out to forty or fifty light-years

Beyond that, shenanigans may be involved.

 

[ScottishMongol]

About a week after leaving Darford, she had her first victory in a practice bout against one of the squires. They were sparring in a field by the side of the road, dancing back and forth amid grass cropped close by sheep.

Their blades clanged together – they were dull practice swords. Iris battered Robert's blade aside with her sword and hammered against his shield. He tried to bring his sword back up, but Iris locked blades with him. From there, it was easy to use her superior height to bear him down, pressing on him until he was forced to one knee. Then she raised her sword in two hands and swung it down, crashing it against his defense again and again until he was on his back in the mud. He dropped his sword and raised his shield in both hands.

"Yield!" he yelled. Iris stepped back and let out a whoop.

"Yes! Yeah, I did it!" she cheered, thrusting her sword in the air. Then she realized what she'd just done. "Oh my gosh, Robert! Are you okay?"

"Yeah, I'm fine," he said, taking off his helmet and grinning, "I've been hit much harder."

Iris was concerned by that, but she didn't know what to say. Instead, she turned to Alessa, who was smiling as well.

"Congratulations, Lady Iris, you beat my squire. You really have been improving. Now you can try yourself against me."

The rest of the party had stopped whatever they were doing to watch. Chiri was sitting on a low stone retaining wall, twitching her tail as she watched Alessa don her helmet and square up against Iris. Bors whispered something to Charles, who laughed.

"Get her, Madame Alessa!" Alexa called. Iris grimaced and looked to Chiri for support, but the catgirl just shrugged.

Iris sighed and turned to face Alessa. If she was going to survive in this world, she was going to have to learn to fight, and if she was going to learn to fight, she was going to have to face actual fighters.

The two saluted each other. With her face hidden behind the visor of her helmet, Alessa was impassive and inscrutable. Iris wore her own magic armor, and the battered half-helm that she'd gotten when she first joined the party.

Alessa moved first, and she was quick. Iris brought her blade up, but Alessa batted it aside in a second. The tip of her practice sword hovered an inch from Iris' throat.

"Dead." She swung it again, and it touched the gap in her armor over her femoral artery. "Dead in seconds." She stepped in closer, switched her grip, and pressed the sword's tip against the underside of Iris' arm, where there was another gap over her armpit. "Very likely dead."

"What the fuck," Iris gasped. Bors clapped and laughed sardonically.

"Very good, Madame Alessa! Couldn't have taught you better my own self."

"You did teach me, old man," Alessa laughed. She took off her helmet and tried to look sympathetic. "Sorry, Iris. I just wanted to make it clear how far you have to go. I'll go easy on you tomorrow – I want you to learn, after all. But from now on, you spar with me."

Iris swallowed, licked suddenly dry lips, and nodded.

"I'm looking forward to it, Alessa. I won't stop until I can beat you too."

Alessa's smile grew.

"That's Madame Alessa."

***

"Where does magic…come from?" Iris asked one day.

"Everywhere," Chiri said. She had been inspecting a flower, and as she straightened up and brushed off her dress, she gestured around her. "It comes from the sun, the stars. It comes from the natural cycles, the growth of plants and the habits of animals. But the most powerful sort of magic comes from human emotions. There's kinds of magic that take that and transmute it into power. I mentioned magic items, but there's other kinds.

Sometimes it's for good – a lot of religion is about harnessing collective faith and rapture, positive emotions. Sometimes it's bad. Black magic comes from raw human suffering. Some places are absolutely saturated in it, if enough suffering takes place there. They become cursed."

Iris still didn't know much about religion in this world. Heck, she didn't know much about religion in her own world. She had been an atheist, a reaction to growing up in a small town dominated by bigoted fundamentalists. But now that there was a goddess in her head, she felt like she should start taking it seriously.

At the same time, she got the impression Chiri wasn't a cleric, and didn't know much about clerical magic – how that differed from Chiri's brand of magic, or any of the other traditions stapled together into this magic system, Iris couldn't tell.

"Hey Chiri? Can I ask you something?"

The two walked back to the rest of the party, who had been watering the horses by a small stream.

"Of course," the catgirl said. She reached out and squeezed Iris' hand.

"What…what's it like here for the catfolk? Alessa said some stuff about your people, it seems like they aren't treated well."

Chiri was silent, but she kept holding Iris' hand as they walked.

"My people aren't seen as full humans. I mean, we used to be! We were just people who turned themselves into a different form. But that was hundreds of years ago. I think things used to be better before the Great Plague.

During that…a lot of people blamed us for the plague, for no good reason except we were different. My people haven't forgotten the violence…the pogroms. It was a dark time. The Church put a stop to it, or tried to, but by that point…

In some cities we're restricted to living in certain neighborhoods. And the guilds all bar us from entry, which restricts the jobs we can do. It's better in some cities, of course, and some individuals treat us well."

"Has the King not done anything to help you?"

Chiri shrugged.

"In the capital, sure, and settlements where his writ runs like Darford. We have the protection of the law and more freedoms. But he hasn't taken on the guilds, or the cities where we're treated poorly."

Iris didn't like the sound of that. It sounded like the King had only tried half-measures. Maybe the King had his reasons…or maybe he just didn't care.

"And despite the Church saying we have human souls, we follow a separate tradition. So we can't marry humans, unless we convert to their religion first."

"That sounds awful," Iris said. She looked over to where Alessa was collecting their gear. "I think Alessa's fine with you, though."

Chiri snorted.

"You don't know the Harcourts well, do you? They're too cunning when it comes to business to make enemies of us."

Iris raised an eyebrow at that, but Chiri didn't elaborate.

"Hey," Iris said, taking both of Chiri's hands and looking into her eyes, "Where I'm from, there are places where…where it's illegal to transition, where I might be discriminated against just for the way I want to live my life. Where…where I could have been murdered or left homeless. That's why what you did for me…it means a lot. I know that people can be cruel. But nobody's going to mess with you while I'm here. On my honor."

Chiri leaned in and kissed Iris' cheek. Her whiskers tickled.

"Thank you, Iris Penny."

 

[ptbptb]

Chiri leaned in and kissed Iris' cheek. Her whiskers tickled.

"Thank you, Iris Penny."

Click to shrink...

Incidentally, Iris probably doesn't follow the same religious traditions as the rest of the humans and might be open to conversion? What are the religious beliefs and practices of the catfolk like?

 

[bookwyrm]

The really fucked thing is that, at least historically, such projects of deliberately building out newly politically organized growing royal settlements such as Darford expanding out from a collection of logging camps, also really really meant updated royal charters and dramatically expanded legibility to the state. The court able to keep civic life from being dominated by guilds that close everything off to Jews and widows Catfolk, here, but also, put guilds down in general, and operate much more directly and uniformly in conjunction with the king's overall mercantilist policies, the closest medieval approximation to a free market to goods from the capital while being a captive tariff-walled source of production in return.

And with the king seemingly being your classic uplift-focused character of almost futurist line goes up industry is progress, it seems likely that here too, a looot of the time, the frame of ghettos to greater or lesser degrees of like mandatory regular Lady of Light sermons and Catfolk badges in public and extra taxes and such as a solution/"solution" to preventing pogroms is set as an inherently pro-business economic growth viewpoint. Something very much wrapped around the high aristocracy and necessary sinews of finance to mobilize the state, as set against the interests of artisan guild-folk and cyclically indebted country squires and minor barons and such.

And of course, if you had even a sliver of a suggestion to maybe accept Catfolk members as new lodges and secret societies pushing against entrenched guild-rule morphing into just differently-noble patricates and such, or even as og guilds themselves as still vital and dynamic expressions of their communities, then the degree to which public franchises and gild-rights are being opened up to everyone is getting really Ciompi Revolt in here. At which point a lot of the great magnates and clerics that had otherwise occasionally had moments of genuine chivalry trying to prevent pogroms and dismiss blood libels will call out for the cavalry to ride down the lot of you unthinking brutes and disorderly malcontents.