Can anyone explain, why does the Bazaar need the concent a cities rulers, to bring the city down? Why does it have to seduce them with promices and sacrifices(mr. Sh__), instead of just activating the stone pigs/bats?
The Masters are merchants, not thieves. A ruler trading their city for something they love or desire is a strong love story in itself, and helps legitimize the Masters’ rule. An alliance with or control over the old leader lets them use the preexisting power structures to control the city more effectively. People can keep following the same rules and institutions they grew up with, more or less, and the Masters don’t have to invest in an independent government to rule over the city.[li][/li][li]
edited by Gul al-Ahlaam on 9/14/2017
Also, I assume there are Laws about this sort of thing.
I’m pretty sure 1, stealing a whole city without consent would cause open and vehement rebellion, and they wouldn’t have that city for very long much less get any love stories out of it, and 2, the terms of the Bazaars contract to do what it’s doing likely dictate that it must receive consent. Violating that contract (at least openly on the surface…) would have very bad consequences. For the Bazaar and the entire Earth as well.
edited by Addis Rook on 9/14/2017
My hypothesis (based on vague impressions from several obscure sources) is that the contract which is signed is of a similar nature to Laws.
If they just stole the cities, people back on surface would have a reason to figure out a way to avoid it happening to them, which would mean trouble. Maybe the Masters could beat up one cityful of people, but could they hold back a concentrated effort from topside powers to remove the interstellar chthonic threat?
Well it’s hardly within a ruler’s legitimate power to sell an entire city’s populace away. I’m certain it adds a bit of complacency to perform a farce transaction, but my guess is it’s mostly just the Masters being the Masters.
An out of universe explanation was the Bazaar used to be sort of capitalism fueled before being changed to wanting love stories iirc, so it might be an artifact of that.