No matter how carefully or how well Jason explained the situation and the plan to defend the Free Nation against the Krizian there would always be those who simply would not understand, because they simply couldn’t get it into their head the idea that actions in some far away place had to be taken to allow their lives to continue, or whether it was because they thought that there was no need to stand against the Krizian Empire. Even if they were a threat, they thought there was no need to unite against such an enemy. The Free Nation was formed as a trade and legislative government. That required some minor military unity to enforce the rule of law in the land, but there was no need to form an army and fight against some external force that most of them would likely never be affected by. And if the Krizians did attack them in mass then they would use their new found technologically advanced weapons to deal with them. Jason put this reasoning up to the fact that the city-states of the Free Nation and their people had lived their lives, defended their walls, lived in peace or war, as a single unit, found all within their city. Anything outside of their realm was of no concern of theirs and when it came into their realm they would deal with it. The Free Nation had started to move them away from this limited mode of thinking, but it was a slow process that would take generations to fully take.

The first few months went by with no problems. The city-states that disagreed with the actions that Jason was taking went along with what he told them. He had never done them wrong and no matter how ridiculous the actions that he had told them in the past it had always turned out to benefit them, but this time they understood what Jason was asking and doing. They didn’t agree, but it wouldn’t hurt them to do what was ordered. This did not last long. The resources and credits that Jason asked for soon began affecting the citizens of these city-states. They went from prospering, able to afford anything and everything they wanted, but as the months passed it was soon the case that they could afford only the bare minimum of what they needed and soon after that they found themselves having difficulties even earning enough to survive or provide for their families. This was happening in every city-state in the Free Nation, exacerbating the belief that what Jason was doing was the completely wrong way to handle the situation. While the younger generation was willing to trust Jason, they had no power in their government. It had always been good times as long as they had been part of the Free Nation and they wanted to believe that this hardship would pass in time. The older generations, however, heard rumors that the newer city-states in the Free Nation were being grown and improved with the goods Jason was taking from them which only served to anger them that much more. They were quick to use the hardships as a reason to turn on Jason, organizing their armies to blockade the trade routes. They were careful not to kill those that they stopped, but if the traders were carrying anything they could use they took it without mercy. Over a third of the Free Nation broke away in this fashion.

The rebellion was quite the conundrum for Jason. he could take action against them, forcefully taking them over, but doing that would only make the situation worse. It would drain the morale of the soldiers, kill some untold number of them, and it would forever taint the nature of the Free Nation as an entity joined freely of governed’s own will. If he did nothing, trade would die and the improvements that Jason was building would come to a stop. It had already been slowed and fallen behind schedule, risking that the Krizians would grow to rival them before they were able to establish good enough defenses to ward off the attacks that were sure to come. If he ordered it, the soldiers from the city-states that didn’t rebel were willing to take over the territories that were. They no more recognized the other city-states as part of their people than the ones that rebelled. It was only that they believed in Jason more than them and their alliance with him had paid off greatly, enough that they would not break off their alliance for such a small matter. Some ran active campaigns to keep the masses from rebelling, even lowering their own local taxes to ease the tension, while others simply didn’t send the requested credits or resources to the capital, the Free City. Jason had assumed that this is what all the city-states would do, that if he pushed too far, they would just reduce the levels of output to sustainable levels, not rebel and turn away from the system that had improved their lives vastly over the last several years.

The Free City sent out troops to the rebelling cities. They were under orders to protect the traders from any thieves they encountered along the way. Their mission was to squash any and all attacks on the trade routes by the rebelling cities. In the past this might have been harder to do. There were no roads or clear paths cut through the forests. Almost every settlement was isolated from every other settlement, but now, under the orders of Jason and his council efforts had been made to make roads between every city that joined the Free Nation. They hadn’t been able to build roads everywhere yet, but most cities had them, and since it was a Free Nation project the Free Nation paid for their construction and upkeep, despite each of the cities greatly benefiting from them. These roads and the traders gave Jason the leverage he could use to quell the problems with the rebelling city-states. The soldiers were ordered to suppress the problems on the roads, but beyond that leave the cities alone. He also sent messengers out to each of them to inform them that the roads would be off limits to them. If they no longer wished to be part of the Free Nation they would not be forced to remain, but the Free Nation would not tolerate attacks on their citizens or the usages of their roads by any. For the majority of the rebel cities, this reply to their actions were acceptable and reasonable, but many were startled by the conclusion that they wanted to leave the Free Nation. They didn’t. It had been a great boon to them. They just wanted a redress to their grievances and to make their citizens lives better. They hadn’t grasped how a republic worked in full, leading them to the rebellious actions, but now they didn’t know what to do. There was always a path of redress. Jason and others had made sure that there was always a way to challenge a decision and have it heard as fairly as possible, but in this case it did not need any such system. They only had to communicate their issues and Jason would do his best to solve the problem, but, again, this way of thinking was new to the peoples of Debris. It was far from the first thought they had. None, or almost none, had experience with foreign relations and intergovernmental decorum.

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The other, smaller, group of rebels took offense to Jason’s message. They would not allow him to dictate what they would and would not do. They were not his subjects to be ruled over and have their goods taken from them. The time they had spent within the Free Nation made them believe they were much stronger than they were in reality. They had faced no danger for nearly a decade. They had gained access to mighty weapons and they had built those roads that the Free Nation claimed as their own. It was true that their citizens did indeed initially build the roads. They were hired by the Free Nation to do so, but that didn’t matter to them. They were looking for a reason to fight, to rebel, and use what the Free Nation had shown them to expand their own power. They had gotten a taste of empire building from the Humans and fell prey to its temptations. Instead of trying to figure out how to put what had gone wrong right again, they began attacking neighboring cities and unlike the Free Nation, these new nations were not benevolently allowing their conquests to decide whether to join them or not. In the best case scenario only the governors and soldiers died. In the worst, the entire city was burnt and almost all of the survivors were enslaved to the highest bidders in these new kingdoms. Each battle weakened the Free Nation whether the city was able to fend off the former allies or not. Meanwhile these kingdoms grew stronger with each victory. They incorporated their conquests into their territories and moved to expand further. Eventually, they encountered each other and battled to standstills or united under one banner.

Jason had no choice but to finally take action against the renegade kingdoms. He made no requests of troops to be sent from other cities, taking the opportunity to show that he had the military capability to combat these rogue states within their borders and put them down with force if necessary and to show that part of the duty that he, and they, accepted when they all joined the Free Nation was the protection of all of their shared territory and not just their own city-states. The Free City had expanded to many thousands who pledged allegiance to it and swore to fight under its banner. He didn’t need all of the forces he could muster, but took all but those who were needed to operate as a guard and police force to keep things running smoothly.

The trek to the first rebel kingdom took several days. They stopped at no other settlements along the way. This first kingdom was smaller than what the other had managed to put together so it was easy to go straight for the capital, avoiding the conquered cities. Jason had chosen to attack thing kingdom for several reasons. The first was proximity. The second was size. And the third was that it was known that this city had a celebration which all of its citizens took part in which required them to pull back to their capital from the territories they had taken which meant that most, if not all of the enemies soldiers were behind these walls. Jason’s army formed up in several lines half encircling the city. The enemy guard gave warning of their arrival. They waited and then the gates opened. A man that looked like noble rode out on a creature that was similar to a horse, having the same body plan, but close up it would never be mistaken for one. Behind him the gates shut. He headed right for Jason, not in a hostile way, but to suggest that he was a man of power and import.

“Are you out here to surrender?” Jason asked.

“No, I…”

“Then. Are you the leader of this city?” Jason knew the answer. He’d seen this man before at a number of the senate meetings. He was one of those that was hard to convince until he experienced the luxuries of the Free City. He would have sent a delegate to avoid that first trip, but his settlement did not have someone that could be sent back then, nor would this man have trusted such a person. After that first time though, he had made it a point to vacation in the Free City as much as possible. Not a single person wished that he would save for his own people. Jason had only asked as an insult and to be clear about who he was dealing with.

“Of course I am the leader of this Kingdom and you will address me with some dig…”

His words were abruptly cut off. Jason knew the type of man this was and he was in no mood to waste time with such a petty worthless man that would cause the death of so many others. His sword sang through the air cleanly removing the man’s head from his shoulders. He resheathed his blade, took the horse-like creature as his own, and began to ride towards the gates that the man had come out of. To everyone’s surprise they opened, welcoming him in.