Excerpt from Rough Draft of Setting the Board

In the third installment of Preparations for War, Joe and Asina deal with the downsides of trying to deal with the agaani rather than founding their own community. The agaani are trying to preserve a system that no longer functions, and has a laundry list of problems in the changing world of Calmena

Which was why I was in the fortress' creymal as darkness gathered. Since Jammont had claimed us for the local shagra-no, that gave us the right to socialize with the local warrior caste when the work day was over. In the gathering gloom of the short summer nights, we were exercising that right so that we could figure out how popular treason such as Jammont's would be with the warriors. If we were lucky, we might get a few opportunities to sound out the other shagra-ma, lesser officers of the garrison who would be especially important in any treasonous endeavor.

The creymal was a tradition thousands of years old. Calmena wasn't wealthy enough for taverns, inns and the like. There were two such establishments in Yalskarr now, but they were a recent addition, near the docks. Traders and travelers had always been rare, and still were on the continents that had not been cleared of demons. But the shagra-no developed their alternative - a partially sheltered outside area where the fighting caste could gather after the working day was over. Basic benches and rough tables, leather jacks, and a small ration of bad local beer, tended to by an older slave or two. The slave pens for female slaves were nearby. The main concession to change was that the light was a dim electric, rather than a torch. You could tell that changes were starting to hit Yalskarr by the fact that half the inhabitants were neither fighting caste nor slaves, but the creymal was for the fighting caste only, both men and women. The women were almost as randy as the men; it being expected of both sexes that they would breed as many children as possible. It was less common for women to rape the men of the slave castes but it was far from unknown.

Asina hadn't come along because of the customs of the creymal. I could plead having a beautiful woman at home who was waiting for me; if she appeared in the creymal it would be notice of availability (and likely of dissatisfaction with me). The mores were what they were; we were still some time away from the notion of sexual equality on Calmena, and we had too few missionaries on the planet to waste time trying to make changes the society wasn't ready for. When the technology advanced far enough, the mores would follow. In the meantime, female agaani had enough latitude of action for the female halves of our teams to control their own choices.