The Red Wizard recruited by Creed remained nameless to even Creed, who dare not ask him his name, for one day, when it was spoken, he would appear, much like The Black Hand, and wreak havoc upon those who dared to use his name. The Red Wizard was creating fear of his name already. With the mass genocide scheduled to kill everyone imprisoned for trying to flee the region, as well as those who tried to hide from the rule of the Harpers, Bidi would need to intervene to save tens of thousands of lives.
Being the curious person she was, Bidi, having heard news of the rise of The Red Wizard in Frithe, wanted to know who the man behind the rumor was. While she hadn't heard of the planned genocide, she suspected something treacherous was going to come from his rapid rise to the top of the Harper organization. Suspecting something from the wizard, she would use Leona's aid to try to infiltrate the gang and determine what exactly they were planning. Frithe was too silent in recent days for there not to be a plot brewing.
The Red Wizard presumably knew The Black Hand, or at least Bidi surmised. Otherwise, the wizard wouldn't have known how to deny the agents a pathway to his mind. Sensing he was plotting something with Creed, Bidi tried desperately to link with his mind, even if just as an inactive passenger.
Bidi was well aware of Alacazza's attempts to recruit all sorcerers for the devil's growing army. While she thought most had fallen to the darkness, she could still link with a few of them. Most of the sorcerers Alacazza recruited blocked her link to them, but that also meant The Black Hand had no access to their every thought. Unfortunately for Bidi, she would have to find them the hard way to attempt to lure them back into the light. The only saving grace for Bidi and Leona, however, was that wizards had been freely practicing magic for years, and magic always left a trace other wizards could follow. The more powerful the magic, the clearer the pathway.
The alliance Creed had with The Red Wizard was disturbing to Bidi. Despite her ability to link with him, the newspapers in Frithe covered everything Crees wanted them to know. The control of the media Creed had created mass panic amongst those who denied Creed as their leader. Even those who accepted Senator Tate, who didn't bear the Harpers mark, were persecuted. Only Harpers were truly safe, and this created a surge of membership, despite the loyalty of the new members only being out of fear.
With almost all of the population marked and pledged as a Harper, those few thousands who escaped west were now isolated from Frizian society and had to produce everything on their own. The lack of trade, created by the danger of traveling the roads, caused the Frizian escapees to live almost as if they went back thousands of years in time.
The escapees had no access to advanced weaponry to defend themselves, no advanced medicine to cure their diseases, which on the road, some had picked up common, but deadly, viruses that had cures in Gerak, which were known as quake illness and malpie malady. Without the access to modern medicine, those who couldn't beat the viruses died. While the rate of survival for these ailments was high, it still wiped out dozens and dozens of escapees. Another thing that made life difficult for the escapees was the lack of farming equipment and the hardened, rocky soil in the west which yielded must less edible crops than in the central and eastern areas of Frithe.
Creed and the Frizian army he now controlled marched for Faxley only a month into his term. Unsure if Bidi had withdrawn her troops, but relatively certain she had, Creed went to occupy the rich farmland. The strategic decision to control the farmlands of Faxley left the Harpers with a better trade route to Tortu, which was now the only region that would trade with them.
Bidi spoke with Senator Redding to place high tariffs on goods coming from Frithe to force Gerakan people to buy local products. While there were some goods that could only be procured from Frithe, they were few and far between. The tariffs would eventually become an embargo to try to cripple the Frizian economy. As the only self sustaining region, Gerak could afford to not trade with the other regions. Bidi would, once again, weaponize the flourishing economy of Gerak.
While the Gerak economy would thrive, the Frizian and Tortu economy were taking a massive pounding. The Frizian economy used to control the global economy, but with the introduction of the florian, the average Gerak citizen was now three to four times richer than the average Frizian citizen, and even more than that compared to the average Tortu citizen. The strength of the florian, which was backed by the gold standard, made the concept of money change forever. And if the Frithe people were to stay afloat through the embargo, they would need to adopt a new system of money other than the gold standard, which was both inconvenient and dangerous to carry large sums.
Within a few months of the embargo, which was greatly harming the primary investor for the Harpers, Lucious Knightgale, Creed realized his people were now becoming malnourished. Frithe didn't produce much food other than grains. They had nothing but bread, and that wasn't a balanced diet. There were hardly any fruits or vegetables that could grow in the Frithe climate, and his only trade partner, Senator Benra, was even more desperate for a more balanced diet, as about ninety percent of Tortu was desert.
The lack of trade flowing from Gerak forced Senators Tate and Benra into desperation. Frithe and Tortu hardly had any cattle. A huge portion of meat came from Gerak. The lack of cattle in Frithe and Tortu, as the areas couldn't support much cattle, unlike Gerak, meant only the elite people in the senators' regions were able to eat meat. While Creed was unaffected, he watched as his common Harper began to lose weight rapidly. And eventually, at current consumption, all of the cattle Frithe and Tortu did have would be gone, and not even the elite would have any meat.
After a few months of the embargo, Creed became upset. He was having to place rations on the food they had, which left the prisoners starving. If they died before The Red Wizard could commit genocide, the wizard's cunning plan for immortal life would be jeopardized, so he would speed up the process for the genocide.
The newspapers the senator didn't control had expert journalists working to uncover the truth. And a few of them caught word of the genocide Creed and The Red Wizard had planned that would occur sooner rather than later. Creed thought of it as a cleansing of Frithe, but The Red Wizard saw it as a way to manipulate power.
While the genocide wasn't supposed to happen for months, the journalists reported Creed had plans of the mass murder in only a few weeks. The prisoners were the first to feel the affect of the embargo, as they were now only getting a morsel of bread a day as a meal. They were so hungry, and the prisons were already way past capacity.
Finally hearing of the plan Creed and his wizard had, Bidi had no choice but to launch a mission to rescue the Frizian citizens who were trapped in the prisons. But she was weary to lose her men. It was incredibly hard to break someone out of prison. It required a special clearance. And even if they could get into the prisons, how would they determine which people were truly innocent and which were there for committing heinous crimes. There were so many risks involved, but Bidi couldn't let almost ten thousand citizens die.
