"Are they the only one in town?"

"The only thing that's properly a gang, but a lot of the other factions I mentioned have similar attributes."

"How do the mercenaries work, how do they recruit?"

"They find people who know how to use a weapon and seem dependable and want the pay?"

"Just, anyone meeting that description."

"Approximately? They don't tend to be very picky, why?"

"Contrast with a caste thing from home."

"Ah."

"What are the nearest other settlements that you wind up receiving diplomats from?"

"Wilder, Priest River, Sugar Town, and New Magnollia."

"....I can guess that Sugar Town grows or processes sugar maybe. Do the others have distinguishing features?"

"Sugar Town doesn't actually do that, maybe it once did. They are known for making whiskey, actually. Wilder is the next largest city in the area after us, and I spend a non-trivial amount of my time trying to keep them from turning into the place people go after they go here to trade in the things we've banned, like slaves and goods that were stolen in Kenton. Priest River is a new community that is trying out some nice things that will definitely fail. New Magnolia is a bit farther away, and I'm not thinking of any distinguishing features."

"What's Priest River trying?"

"Punishing any violence with exile and sharing all property."

"...is the first one necessarily doomed? If they're small enough?"

"They're something like a hundred twenty people, and I think the best long-term outcome if they keep those policies, which they seem really set on, is that a gang raids them badly enough that they have to go join another place."

"They might want to be a protectorate? They could still enjoy a lot of the benefits I imagine they're looking for with those policies while accepting the protection of another polity."

"That would be difficult if they weren't nearby, I guess I can see if guaranteeing them some amount of autonomy can get them to move closer and pay us in some way."

"They're portable? I'd expect in a society this poor for a lot of the wealth to be in things like established agriculture and buildings."

"They're new enough that it still wouldn't be a huge cost for them to move."

"Huh. - both of their rules sound like worthy small-scale experiments to me but it's sort of alarming that they're doing both at once, if they fail that really limits how much data you can get from that because it could have been either thing or a combination -"

"I think the median case where they fail a large portion of them die, but yeah it would be better if they only tried one experiment and not two, and also if they kept records about how it went, which I doubt they are."

"Lots of experiments have the chance to kill people, but if you don't do them you miss out on every experiment-gated technique to save them."

"I really like you."

"Thank you!"