Feudal Quest

Ah.

That's something i would have liked to know sooner, as both those things are very big divergence on real life stuff (Bastard have been historically a very big potential of heirloom and a threat to any brother/sisters).

So, another question: You are saying people might speculate that we are gay and it would hurt our rep- are you saying it sees being gay as a bad thing? That's also very weird historically as beign gay being a bad thing was more or less only unforced by the christian church, in most other cultures it was considered in more interesting ways. E.G greeks where only the person receiving was considered 'badly', and only if that person was old, as it was considered 'good' for younger men to be taught like that by their mentor/superior officers, etc etc.

This looks a bit like it's christian-kind of culture, except for the whole sex guilt and the fact that bastard aren't a very significant threats.

 

Gay nobles don't produce heirs unless forced to and as such are likely conisdered liabilities.

 

...Why wouldn't they produce heirs?

There is nothing weird about gay nobles marrying a woman and having heirs wit hher. It's not like marriage isn't already a form of trade for alliances/etc.

Gay Nobles (whether men or women) have been producing heirs for forever, even if they have men/women on the sides.

Hell, it was actually considered better in many cultures to be such a Noble, as there was no risk of you getting bastards, and as it was relatively easy for a bastard to inherit, it went against the whole point for a marriage (trade/alliance).

 

As you noted in your plan it would take 16 actions to level up Swordsmanship. As far as I know we don't benefit much from partially leveled Swordsmanship so it would be better to train one skill at a time.

 

in case you missed that Bastards don't inherent in this setting meaning that its more of a disadvantage to be gay and for it to be in the open because that is going to reduce your value to your family if its discovered before they marry as the number women who would cooperate.

Also all it would take is one or two succession/inheritance crisises caused by a gay noble either not marrying or the noble's wife get knocked up with with another noble's kid because the gay man wouldn't take her to bed to sour the whole group for the nobles.

 

Okay, a few potential things I think are way more important than learning to sword or sorcery better:

This may be connected to the Poacher or Smuggler problems we have, or as suggested may simply be prospering due to avoiding taxes. Something needs to be done, but the people actually out killing out peasants are more pressing.

This is a real problem. We could either confront this fellow ourselves after we've done the boundary marking, or kick this up the chain of command to our Father. The former might net us either gold (hush money) or a reputation of handling things ourselves as necessary, the latter brownie points with the family.

I think this is what Traian (and ourselves, and perhaps some of our guards for added clout) should address this turn; make sure to make a headcount of the unmarked hamlets as well. The River Tariffs are also beset with problems (the Pirates, the Smugglers and so on) but will depend on our boundary marking in the spring. And the river is iced over now, so that problem will keep. The Sava river might go to our neighbor on that side, I want to say Pischia? It's contested, anyway. Which means that while we might lose out on some 1000 SP if we lose it, we would also not have to worry about those problems.

The Labor Tax will see some grumbling, but we need those local work hours to get the Keep grounds back in working order. Promise a reduced tax (by a third, say) for the first year, that should take care of the Keep and perhaps the Poor Roads without alienating the peasants. Keep grounds this turn, Poor Roads next turn (hopefully by then Bialis will have rooted out the Bandits).


We should also send Bialis or Jaroslaw and some of our new recruits out on patrol; take perhaps half of our more hardened men-at-arms and half of the new archer recruits, leaving ten for the protection of the Keep? Those Bandits won't clear themselves, and that's specifically what the Patrol option is for. We might also catch Beastmen, Poachers or Smugglers, but the Bandits are the most likely. We know the area of farms they're hitting. Poachers and Smugglers we might find a use for sparing; Bandits should be slain on sight if they don't surrender immediately.

If we can sweep up the Bandit Problem, next turn I wouldn't mind seeing Bialis meeting with the Landowner Knight as our right hand representative.


No Adventure Hooks just yet.

 

I was talking about historically there, not in the quest.

And i don't get the end of your sentence at all?

Lol, there are much bigger odds of this happening because of a straight marrying someone he doesn't like, not a gay doing so.

Some of it makes sense. While i do think getting one action of training a 'post' is good, the majority of the quest should be about taking care of our fief.We are a lord here, not a murderhobo.

However, we were flat out told by the DM in a recent-ish post that our men can't go travelling anymore as it's too cold (yes, we should have been told in the update, but heh). So most of this is impossible.

This is why i want adventure hooks, as at least Dominic can go outside (fire magic helps).

 

No but this means January / February are going to be our "Train Intensely" months.

As for the issues with our Uncles barony, technically we should be kicking it up to our Grandfather the Duke. I'm going to suggest waiting until after we've done a full survey in March and then put together a report that basically goes "We suspect shenanigans. Here's our proof, do you wish us to proceed any further"

 

We suspect Shenanigans from the old accountant though, not from our uncle. As such, well, he is an 'inferior' and going through our grandfather for dealing with him would just show a lack of decisivity. If we suspected our uncle it would be something else, but even then it would be better to go through our father.

 

We hold our fief through our Grandfather, not through our father. Lines of command are pretty clear, we report directly to the Duke.

More importantly the issue is that our Uncle is off fighting a Crusade for 10 years, Nikolas is his appointed regent.

Without the proper orders from the Duke we're going to be do diddly to effectively clean up this mess. We literally can't examine this corruption in our Uncles Barony without the Dukes permission.

The critical point is we are giving the Duke our honest report and then going "Shall I kick this fools teeth in for you, or will you be sending your own leg breakers" in politer terms of course.

 

The lines of commands are not so clear:

Yes, our grandfather is our ultimate authority. But the one who has gifted us the estate is our father, and our grandfather is IMPORTANT. He doesn't have time to take care of every 'minor' detail in all the estates that belong to him.

I would think that before we go to him things should be seriously more important.

 

Random thought, I believe we learned this through grandfather's ledger. Maybe he already knows.

Anyhow, I suppose I didn't realize how very cold winter was around here, if we can't even pull patrols. I guess training sorcery and swords and such is fine, then.

Feels like a waste of a month, is all.

 

'Feudal' is a term that covers several dozen cultures spanning about 800 years, so you have to expect some variation even before throwing in real magic and a somewhat different religion. I'll be happy to answer questions about this sort of thing as they come up.

The critical point here is that the mothers would be commoners. If you have a dalliance with a noblewoman that would indeed be a major risk, because any child she has would be a potential heir regardless of your marital status. But if the mother is a commoner her children can't inherit unless you marry her and legally recognize them.

A lot of Borjerian culture can be explained by noting that their god is real, he's not shy about telling his priests what to preach, and he's a fairly stereotypical male warrior deity. So the religion resembles Catholicism in a lot of ways because Khersis is kind of an intolerant, warmongering bigot.

Being gay is't actually illegal in Borjeria, but there's considerable social stigma against it. It's the sort of thing that makes all the other noblemen uncumfortable with having you around, which would lead to a lot of little social disadvantages that add up to a significant problem.

That seems like a plausible line of research. Magical birth control has been done before, there's just never been a way to mass produce it.

Correct. Training to increase your level is a different action than training to discover a new ways to use your sorcery.

Correct. It actually does say that in the update - down at the end, under 'Other Events'.

Yes, being able to start fires instantly on demand helps a lot. You can still go adventuring with a small party even in the dead of winter, which is a big advantage over most nobles.

Basically you're going to have 2-3 months every year where most people can't do much of anything outdoors. Your two best options for productive use of that time are to either go adventuring, or do a lot of training.

There are several good points in all of this, but also some confusion I feel I should clear up.

If Nikolai is really cheating on the tax reports you have a very delicate situation on your hands.

Normally if a crime occurs on your own land you'd be the one to judge the case, but if someone else's vassal defrauds you in an indirect way like this you'd have to complain to his lord for redress. But in this case that would amount to complaining to Nikolai about his own behavior, which isn't going to get you anywhere. In theory you could write to Pavel, but he obviously trusts Nikolai or he wouldn't have left the man running Pischia.

Currently you owe fealty to your father, while he and Pavel both owe fealty to your grandfather the Duke. So you could write to your father for help and see what he can come up with, but he'd be facing the same challenge. Ultimately he could complain to the Duke about it, but that's the nuclear option - your grandfather is a busy man who doesn't tolerate nonsense, and if you're going to involve him you need to be very certain you can prove your case. You also shouldn't go to him directly, because that would be going over your father's head in a rather insulting way.

Scary side thought here: what if Nikolai is doing it on Pavel's orders? That's the kind of thing that could spark an internal war in the family, which would be bad for everyone.

So what can you do?

Well, obviously you want to take steps to prevent any further theft. If you investigate on your own maybe you can find proof to take to the duke - there are probably a lot of commoners involved in various parts of a scheme like this, and they have a lot less legal protection than another lord's personal retainers. Maybe you can put enough pressure on Nikolai to make him prosecute a few confederates, and recover some fraction of the money from them.

Alternatively, you could try to cash in. If Nikolai is stealing from Corzu to line his own pockets, he's probably doing it to Pischia too. Maybe you could blackmail him in return for your silence, either for money or other concessions. Maybe you can figure out where he keeps his money, and rob him back. Maybe there's a larger scheme going on, and you can uncover a secret conspiracy of some sort.

Or maybe you just smile and nod and play along, and one night when there aren't any witnesses around you gut the bastard and bury him in an unmarked grave.

 

ah, that's why they don't like magic.

 

Thanks for the answers, it wasnt super clear on the feudal chain of command

In any case assembling a report for our father is still on the to do list.

Investigation first and then we can decide to either gut him or go all the way to the top.

 

That's my kind of protagonist.

EDIT: I guess I should actually get involved instead of making one sentence comments.

Dominic
[X] Train Swordsmanship with Bialis in an attempt to relieve winter-borne boredom.
[X] Train Force Sorcery by trying to move Bialis' sword while he's using it, not realising that it's actually a really dangerous thing to try with the possibility of accidental swordings. That's what you get for being an eighteen year old male.
[X] Train Flesh Sorcery. Even without accidental swordings, it'll be good to help not die from things.
[X] Train Fire Sorcery. It's winter, after all. If fire magic's going to be useful in any season, it's going to be this one.
[X] Train Flesh Sorcery.
[X] Visit Atalaya Bartok in Tamasi and ask her about her confrontation with the foreign sorceress.

Sir Bialis
[X] Train Dominic in Swordsmanship.
Jaroslaw
[X] Train Archers.
Traian
[X] Uh... I don't know. Do some bookkeeping or something?

Staff
[X] Lay in enough firewood to last several weeks, in case you get snowed in.
[X] Clean, refurbish and restock the stables, so your horses will be happy and well fed. (Cost: 4 SP)
[X] Set up and stock a chicken coop, so you can have fresh eggs and a bit of meat now and then. (Cost:3 SP)

The firewood is an obvious priority, with the majority of Corzu's "roads" snowed in, as are the stables -- we don't want our one, valuable, warhorse to be harmed by a harsh winter. Chickens are nice, and I'm going with that over pigs because moving a herd of pigs in through the snow would be too difficult.

1st Veteran
[X] Garrison.
2nd Veteran
[X] Patrol the road between the Keep and Tamasi. With it left the only passable road in the fief, we should keep some attention on it, even if it's just so we know when or if it snows over like the rest of them.
1st Archers
[X] Train with Jaroslaw.

 

Is there any benefit from having partial progress in another level of Swordsmanship? If not there is little reason to begin training it now. It takes 16 actions to level up so we would be much better of training one skill at a time.

Regarding whether to adventure or train. Having more magic might be of great help with solving our Haunt problems so our first adventure should be attempting to reqruit the sorceress. Being more skillled in sorcery ourself would probably help with giving a good impresssion to the sorceress so the best order to do things in would probably be

Train sorcery
Reqruit the sorceress
Solve Haunt problems

Remember that the sorceress also suposedly had an encounter with the Witch of Tamasi so she might also be able to help us solve that problem. For the other problems of our fief I would recomend we do them in this order

Kill beastmen before they breed
Deal with the bandits
Deal with the pirates

The poachers are a lesser problem but we can deal with them first if we are not yet prepared to deal with the more dangerous problems above.

 

Don't forget that the Church has an adversarial relationship with magic. Actively recruiting sorcerers could lose us the opportunity for magical healing (and an afterlife).

 

I don't think just hireing a sorcerers would have a large impact on our relationship with the church. There are no powerful priests anywhere close that we know of and we might be able to do some healing with our flesh sorcery.

Do we even know if there is an afterlife? Also the fact that we practice sorcery ourselves would probably have a far larger impact on our afterlife.

 

The fact that we know God exists, and he straight up tells people how he wants things to go, suggests there is.

 

The GM has referred to the region's main deity as a warrior deity suggesting he has rivials and uses his priesthood to keep them out..

 

No, completed levels are all that count.

Dominic has had daily weapon practice since he was eight, so he's quite familiar with training safety issues. Like any sensible person he normally spars with wooden practice blades, which are a lot less dangerous.

This seems reasonable. There are local priests in Tamasi and Igal, but they aren't going to be eager to speak out against you unless you start acting like an evil overlord or something.

If you hire a sorceress or openly use your own magic eventually the Church will send someone to investigate, probably a witch hunter or paladin. But being a noble means they can't go after you unless they find clear evidence of something blatantly evil like demon summoning, and you can extend the same protection to your personal retainers.

How this affects your rep is just a PR issue. Magic will make some nobles uncomfortable, but as long as the things you do with it don't look like crazy evil stuff you can spin it as 'we're using good magic to fight evil' or something like that.

Pretty much everyone believes there's an afterlife, and what god you worship controls where your soul ends up. Good Khersians go to heaven, the Egyptian gods have their own afterlife domain, witches and demon worshippers get dragged off to hell, and who knows what Inovia does with those crazy people who try to worship her.

 

Edited suggestion to account for disappointingly safe training system.

 

January Year 1 Orders​

Dominic
- Train: New Flesh Sorcery Application (endurance/recovery buff)
- Train: Flesh Sorcery Level (1/4)
- Train: Flesh Sorcery Level (2/4)

Bialas
- Train Archers (Discipline)

Jaroslaw
- Train Rangers (Skill)

Traian
- Create plans for collecting the harvest tax yourselves

Staff
- Lay in enough firewood to last several weeks, in case you get snowed in.
- Clean, refurbish and restock the stables, so your horses will be happy and well fed. (Cost: 4 SP)
- Set up and stock a chicken coop, so you can have fresh eggs and a bit of meat now and then. (Cost:3 SP)
- Clean and refurbish some guest rooms, in case you get important visitors. (Cost: 10 SP)

Veterans
- Garrison Corzu Keep

Archers
- Train Under Bialas

Rangers (newly formed)
- Train Under Jaroslaw

There was quite a bit of discussion about Dominic's training time. I ultimately had him go with flesh sorcery because just about everyone wanted to work on that, while none of the other options got more than one or two votes.

 

A week into January you’re well into your training, and glad that you decided not to do any traveling this month. A series of snowstorms has dumped more than a foot of snow on the ground, and now even the road to Tamasi is impassible in several places. Bialas keeps leading the archers on morning runs through the snow, calling it ‘good training’, but even he makes sure to get the men back indoors to warm up on a regular basis.

The household staff is making good progress on their projects, although two of the maids have started flirting with you whenever the head maid isn’t around. You idly muse that you’ll have to decide what to do about that sometime soon, but for now it’s amusing to watch.

Then one evening you’re preparing for bed, when you hear an odd thump from your study. Grabbing your sword you move to investigate, when the door opens on its own to admit a strange apparition.

No, wait, it’s a girl.

Her hair is blonde, which is fantastically rare in Borjeria, and heavily dusted with snow. Her dress might once have been suitable for a noblewoman, but most of the skirt has been torn off and the rest is ripped and tattered. Her bare feet are blue with cold, and a blast of frigid air follows her into the hall.

Her wild blue eyes fix on you, and widen. “Dominic!” She breathes. “Thank the goddess. Please, you have to help me! You’re my last hope.”

With a start you realize you recognize her face. This is your cousin Dita, the daughter of your father’s younger brother Kasper. You haven’t seen her in… five years? Six? Not since the trial where her parents were executed for harboring a demon in their castle. That was the biggest scandal the family has ever had, and it was only her young age that kept Dita from being executed as well. But in the end she was ruled a victim of dark magic and demonic possession instead of a participant in her mother’s witchcraft, and remanded into your family’s custody. She’s been kept out of the public eye ever since, in hopes that people will forget about her.

What could she possibly be doing in Corzu?

Choose Dominic’s reaction:
[ ] Paranoia - It’s obviously a monster pretending to be your cousin. Kill it!
[ ] Suspicion - No doubt the girl is involved in another dark plot of some kind. Better figure out what her game is, and deal with it accordingly.
[ ] Self Interest - Well now, this could be an interesting opportunity. What kind of help does she need, and what is she willing to do to get it?
[ ] Compassion - The poor girl is obviously desperate, and she’s family. Of coourse you’re going to help her.
[ ] Write In

 

[X] Investigate: Don't jump to conclusions, find out what the fuck is going on.


did she just say Goddess? she's being hunted as a heretic isn't she?

 

[X] Investigate: Don't jump to conclusions, find out what the fuck is going on.

 

[X] Self Interest - Well now, this could be an interesting opportunity. What kind of help does she need, and what is she willing to do to get it?

 

ShaperV, what do we know about various Goddesses? This might help us make a decision.

 

Our flesh sorcery allows us to get a vague sense of a person’s emotional state and physical condition by touching them. This might allow us to discover valuable information (though touching her might be dangerous if she is some kind of monster).

What do we know about the monsters that look simmilar to humans? Are there any ways to reveal their true nature (no reflection in mirrors etc)?