The merchants in Rimbic, our market town, banded together to extort more money from the community. By pulling strings in the local government they passed a law prohibiting horses from entering the town. The reason given for the law was that the “horses are defecating in our streets and making the city folk sick.” In reality the merchants were hoping to gain a monopoly on the new road that is opening between Rimbic and Shri Khola, even if it meant destabilizing our entire village economy and cheating 80 homes of their income. They also had a tax passed saying that each horseman had to pay 10rps per day per horse. This taxes would result in higher carrying fees, which would leave the village poor with less money to buy their rice.

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