With the last remnants of the regular Kasan army surrendering, it is time to plan the shackling of the “free state”. I require all of the creatures in the country to properly integrate into Viirad so they may fight my next wars. In addition to soldiers, I need to rapidly expand the educational system to properly make my workers more productive. In the coming years, this will feed labor into the engineering sciences which I require for research and development of better industrial tools and weapons. I have no formal diplomatic ties nor business ties with other nations, and I am sure other nations will not be willing to export expertise or equipment to me even if I were to mind control the appropriate Kasan businesszebras.

That is the downside of fame, or perhaps more accurately, infamy. Zessa’s story about me has spread my name, but purely in a negative light. The Watchers are fully capable of performing industrial espionage, but the only way I will be able to compete with the developed nations of the world on the battlefield in the long term is a sufficiently built up research and industrial base of my own.

With the objective clarified, the problem of how to get there remains unsolved. I have been spreading the Barradian climate across my occupied territories, which has been effective at keeping the creatures compliant, but that is merely a reduction of resistance rather than a full integration. I could perform the same train journey I did in Viirad except across Kasa, but I believe there is opportunity for something else as well.

Kasa, while still being far more rural than any developed country, is far more urbanized than Barrad ever was. If what I desire is ponypower, the cities are relatively small areas for me to cast my spell on that can provide the warm bodies my army needs. There is some concern with wasting the most productive and educated on the front lines, but I can filter those creatures out. The benefit of having a mind controlled population is that one can use the honor system and have it not be exploited for a longer period of time. Simply asking the conscripted if they have valuable skills attained in higher education will work as they are incentivized to be honest to their goddess. Of course, imitators and charlatans will arrive seeking easier lives, but as long as the opportunity is only presented to the mind controlled, the filter will be accurate enough.

Specifically in the case of Kasa, these urban creatures will be far more educated than the ponies that currently make up the bulk of my bureaucracy. Mass mind control of all of them and directly incorporating them into the mechanism of my state will be highly desirable, especially as the country has doubled in size.

In any urban population center, about a third of the population is fit for the army. The rest are children, the elderly, the infirm, and the highly skilled. While overall, the number of 18-34 year olds is less than the one third number, cities tend to have more young creatures. Applying this to Kasa, I can conscript a hundred thousand creatures from the cities relatively quickly.

As for the rest, the older generation can steward the younger and both can work in the factories. This will likely be disastrous for population growth as I am, in essence, destroying both generations while removing most of the breeding age creatures from the equation, but the sustenance of Kasan cities is not my concern, especially in the short term. Perhaps when I control more of Griffonia, I will need to maintain a more sustainable population growth rate, but my immediate concern is replacing my ponies lost in the war with Kasans and absorbing their knowledge and institutions into Viirad.

Time continues to be of the essence. A newspaper from Austurland has just published an article written by the Jarl herself. In the article, Bylgjasdottír denounces me by name as “evil incarnate”, and my actions an “affront to deerkind”. She also says something about how the deer minority in Kasa deserve freedom, which I find to be highly hypocritical given those deer are mostly thralls liberated by the Skapatoria who probably have no love for the country of their enslavers. It matters not - their state is illegitimate. All deer should be under my stewardship. To me, this merely rings of their economic loss from no longer having Kasa as a helpless raiding target.

I will invade them as soon as the army can move to the border. They have only recently begun to modernize as Viirad has, and my troops should make quick work of them aided by my magic. Once I control all of southeastern Griffonia, I must turn my attention north to Wittenland. I estimate a year before they attempt to reclaim the Barradian lands from me. In that year, I must conquer and integrate Austurland for their industry and ponypower or else face the wrath of a modern army without the tools to combat it.

Now this is interesting. I am currently in a prison in Fyrport where agitators have been rounded up. One prisoner is of particular interest to me, as she was reportedly taken off the streets babbling madness. Her name is Áltu Kexá, and is apparently quite famous. I had not heard of her myself, but the garrison troops, who are local, informed me that she is a prolific poet. From what I gathered from conversation with them, she was a popular “speaking truth to power” sort of writer who advocated military intervention to spread freedom to the oppressed. Apparently, she was once one of 4 candidates running for First Commander, but her overly belligerent tone was off-putting for some voters.

The point is that her life’s philosophy and work has been entirely dedicated to liberating slaves and calling for military action against Barrad, Austurland, the Gryphussians and et cetera for the sake of the individual freedoms of the creatures there, something that puts her quite at odds with my mind control. From my observation, she got caught in one of the mind control spells I used offensively, but whether it fully took hold or just partially, I don’t have enough data to determine. She is currently languishing on the ground in a fit, having long fallen out of her wheelchair. Having 2 paralyzed legs seems to have not hindered her thrashing in the slightest.

According to the guards, she has these periods of violence and shouting followed by periods of silence and stillness, where then somezebra usually puts her back in her wheelchair. Listening to her ramblings, there are mentions of my name, but also a lot of “No!”s being said alongside half-poetic metaphors of who knows what. I doubt she has even noticed me. It is time to take a more personal look.

Upon entering the holding cell, she still shows no sign of noticing my presence. I approach her close enough to where I take up most of her vision, but her behavior still does not change. Dissociation perhaps? I give her a greeting, and that is enough to rouse her from her stupor. She reacts rapidly, an expression of what appears to be fear streaking her face before her shouting takes on a new volume. She takes her hooves and covers her eyes, shouting something about “apparitions” and “witchcraft”. Clearly, she doesn’t think I’m real.

Taking a look in her mind, I can see the source of the conflict. Though her outward behavior is similar to the partially affected creatures, I can confirm that the spell has entirely taken root in this instance. This is the first of such occurrences where a full application of the spell has not led to a desirable outcome. From her thoughts, it appears her ideology, being thoroughly ingrained and uncompromising, refuses to believe the thoughts I have added are legitimate, causing this turmoil.

In previously observed mind controlled creatures, I have seen that they find justifications for their own new ideas. In my interactions with them, it was clear the desire not to have a mental breakdown allowed for what would usually be leaps of logic. In ideologically neutral creatures, I found they could easily embrace worship without much conflict, while those ideologically opposed would carve out exceptions or subtly change their ideas in order to remain compatible. There is a self-serving bias in seeing oneself as consistent or level-headed, leading to the mind controlled coming up with ideas that will allow them to keep their sense of self.

Áltu, in contrast, does not appear to have that same desire to fit in. That is in line with a story one Kasan told me of her where she is said to have written poems insulting the one who commissioned her poems, reading them aloud at a party with him present. Social conformity is not one of her priorities. I’d wager this type of response is more likely to occur with these ideologue artists than with normal creatures.

This one is a lost cause, but perhaps I can learn from this experience to inform ways to deal with other creatures who may be on the fringes. One key aspect of passive mind control is that it doesn’t necessarily maintain itself. As the creature goes through life, they may experience things that cause them to learn and change their ideas, their worship of me potentially being one of them. In Áltu’s case, she was pushed over the edge of her self-identification, causing the perception and conflict with my influence. For most creatures, their ideologies do not seem to be as strong, but Áltu’s existence suggests others may be closer to breaking down or even reneging on their loyalties than others.

For those who have difficulty negotiating the contradictions of whatever philosophy they may hold true with loyalty to me, they require a system of encouragement to make them want to move towards greater loyalty rather than a path of lesser loyalty. Too much social pressure to project loyalty will likely lead to performative loyalty with internally unresolved conflicts that will then grow. In contrast, validation of the feeling with support could resolve the issues, leading to self-directed change in the direction of greater loyalty to me. At this moment, I cannot spare the resources to develop such indoctrination programs, but I shall let it be a guiding principle for the future as I further develop my burgeoning empire.

I leave Áltu to her misery. I came to Fyrport to begin reorientation of the entire population, not just her. The plan is thus: mind control each major city and then go on a train ride around the country mind controlling along the way. Once that is complete, the much slower task of allocating labor resources can begin with most urban Kasans being directly incorporated into the army or civil service. I will also have to have Eadmund and the others take control of the factories with the less fit members of society taking over production. This will then be followed by nationalization of education for improving productivity with the most educated being directly conscripted into research related to warfare.

Author's Note

When the tooltip for "Shackle Kasa" in game said that one third of the population of each city would be conscripted with their victory point wiped out, I was wondering what that would actually mean. This is my interpretation of how this happens with the factories still being there to use.