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Description
Things can't be doom and gloom all the time. Too much misery just breeds apathy and every tunnel has to have a light somewhere at it's end.
Just because life outside the valley is by and large an abject nightmare for Beastkin, largely doomed to lead a life bound in irons or forever looking over their shoulders , doesn't mean it's a non-stop torment-fest . After all, if the deck was that stacked against them, they'd never have any real chance or means to lead a different life than that of a slave.
Your average person really doesn't care that much beyond their imitate circumstances. So long as they can keep fed and out of boredom, what's to really bother about? A farmer only needs enough to do between crop yields to keep from going mad, and their plots will provide them activity and employment. A builder seeks predominantly to build or mend something, and so on. Sure, some of the larger institutions, like guilds or the government, bay benefit greatly from enslaving Beastkin, for a vast number of reasons, but this is at it's most common around the major population centers, a province's capital and their largest and/or growing towns. When it comes to smaller villages farther and farther from the sight and arm of the law, things tend to boil down to their simplest.
"Sure, Beastkin are supposed to be less than people, but what's that got to do with us out here?", asks any hamlet villager. Their bigger concern is tax, the winter season, and the occasional complication with bandits. Unless that runaway slave or collection of free Beastkin coming to trade suddenly decide that armed robbery is a better business practice, they don't really need to care. That's for the lords and their laws to largely fuss about.
And this is just the pendulum at the lower apex of it's swing back. At the far end of disdain and contpemtp is kindness. Sometimes it's "true believers" that think no thinking being should be bound as such, but they are sadly few and far between.
More often that not, its true believers of a different kind; those who are so pragmatic or take their oaths so seriously that the details are irrelevant. The villager asks "what do they have to do with us?" A doctor will ask "are you ill?" The most common ally to any unbound Beastkin outside the valley is a person who's oath to their station is more powerful than any prejudices society at large may have. After all, illness cares not for the shape your legs and face, or how much hair is on your body, it will infect what it can reach and it's reach is long. Why should a doctor discriminate against their patients when a spreading unwellness will not? Gold is gold, and it's properties don't change based on the hand that holds it. Why would a merchant, or any worker or hireling, care about who's spending it on them if they aren't being forced to care?
Take away the surface details, and there isn't much difference between any Beastkin and your average human. They've all got bigger things of some kind to worry about...

If you want to read the story in question, jump in right at the start Here

Art by Principenegro

Description
Things can't be doom and gloom all the time. Too much misery just breeds apathy and every tunnel has to have a light somewhere at it's end.
Just because life outside the valley is by and large an abject nightmare for Beastkin, largely doomed to lead a life bound in irons or forever looking over their shoulders , doesn't mean it's a non-stop torment-fest . After all, if the deck was that stacked against them, they'd never have any real chance or means to lead a different life than that of a slave.
Your average person really doesn't care that much beyond their imitate circumstances. So long as they can keep fed and out of boredom, what's to really bother about? A farmer only needs enough to do between crop yields to keep from going mad, and their plots will provide them activity and employment. A builder seeks predominantly to build or mend something, and so on. Sure, some of the larger institutions, like guilds or the government, bay benefit greatly from enslaving Beastkin, for a vast number of reasons, but this is at it's most common around the major population centers, a province's capital and their largest and/or growing towns. When it comes to smaller villages farther and farther from the sight and arm of the law, things tend to boil down to their simplest.
"Sure, Beastkin are supposed to be less than people, but what's that got to do with us out here?", asks any hamlet villager. Their bigger concern is tax, the winter season, and the occasional complication with bandits. Unless that runaway slave or collection of free Beastkin coming to trade suddenly decide that armed robbery is a better business practice, they don't really need to care. That's for the lords and their laws to largely fuss about.
And this is just the pendulum at the lower apex of it's swing back. At the far end of disdain and contpemtp is kindness. Sometimes it's "true believers" that think no thinking being should be bound as such, but they are sadly few and far between.
More often that not, its true believers of a different kind; those who are so pragmatic or take their oaths so seriously that the details are irrelevant. The villager asks "what do they have to do with us?" A doctor will ask "are you ill?" The most common ally to any unbound Beastkin outside the valley is a person who's oath to their station is more powerful than any prejudices society at large may have. After all, illness cares not for the shape your legs and face, or how much hair is on your body, it will infect what it can reach and it's reach is long. Why should a doctor discriminate against their patients when a spreading unwellness will not? Gold is gold, and it's properties don't change based on the hand that holds it. Why would a merchant, or any worker or hireling, care about who's spending it on them if they aren't being forced to care?
Take away the surface details, and there isn't much difference between any Beastkin and your average human. They've all got bigger things of some kind to worry about...

If you want to read the story in question, jump in right at the start Here

Art by Principenegro