December, 1361 DR.
Winter had arrived in the Sunset Lands. Midwinter was upon them, and ice and snow covered the entire territory.
But celebrations or not, labor service still had to be performed.
Since more than half the year had already passed when the viscount arrived in his territory, Aaron announced that half the territory's labor-service days would be waived as appropriate, with boon work substituted instead.
Labor service had always been one of the worst avenues for nobles to exploit commoners. In theory, peasants owed their lords sixty to eighty days of service each year. They had to bring their own food and tools and report to the village headman or steward early each morning. The work quotas were grueling, and any tasks left unfinished had to be made up the following day.
Labor service was exhausting. Plowing, hauling, sowing the lord's fields, harvesting, threshing, and storing grain were already finished, but peasants had plenty of other obligations: dredging rivers, repairing roads, and building fortifications, for example. Under Cormyr's laws, peasants lacked freedom in many respects. They could not brew alcohol at will or freely leave their territory. They could not sell livestock without their lord's permission, and in theory, even every wedding required his approval.
This was the so-called "right of the first night."
Naturally, in an enlightened autocracy like Cormyr, the right of the first night had almost never been successfully exercised. Under pressure from the Three Gods of Justice, Lathander, Chauntea, and Lady Firehair Sune, the first document every newly appointed lord had to sign renounced that right. They also had to promise Lady Firehair that any couple whose families consented could hold the simplest possible wedding ceremony by paying a cleric two copper coins-with no upper limit on what they could spend.
Paladins, with their