Feudal Quest

So we better make sure we can house and support as many as possible by the spring delivery.

"We identified an opportunity and our limits. Now, we could marry the girl that can extract gold from the ground, but she's a foreign sorceress and political no go of the highest order, especially as we actually prefer to marry the 1A noble next door and form a great alliance with her.
Still, that's no reason to say no to help people by taking in refugees, especially as we have lots of room for more tax payers, especially skilled crafters.
We can help boosting Corzu, which was forgotten to the point that I got the impression the little knights think they're kings by now because no one cared about them until now. It's our damn fault it's so run down - and all I ask for is a loan, a tiny part of the money that should have been invested in the last decades, and I'm even going to pay it back!
It also is my duty to help my vassals, and if that means I have to take a minor personal hit, that's worth it. The boost of Corzu's economy and the gained border security are worth the investment, probably gaining more prestige than doing my duty will lose me."

Damn, but I'm sure we can sell it to him. (that wasn't me who said that, by the way)

 

I am not sure i understand. Earlier you said we'd be looking at 10SP per person. This means that even getting 60 people cost us a year's quarter income. That's pretty much a huge saving if it negates those 600SP.

What am i missing?

Mmmh, so getting the refugees means also not being able to get in the crusade next year, as it will take hard work to integrate them fully into our fief. That is, unless we marry Ezti, then she would be more than happy to do it for us- but that would mean not taking her to the Crusade either.

I guess we could theoretically go to the crusade this year and come back with refugee in spring, but that would not only half-ass the crusade, but also probably leave the fief to the wolves.

That's... that's pretty bad. We aren't giving him any arguments for helping us beside us being a spoiled kid who is a bleeding heart. If anything, it will make us take an even bigger hit to our reputation.

I also am not sure why you are feeling we need our Dad's help for this at all.

 

Why are people trying to get our knight killed? Who cares that some of his peasants are scared of him, he's a very useful resource.

Also yes, the way I see it we can as a practical matter either take in refugees or go on crusade, I personally find the crusade to be more appealing but most people don't like it, so trying to expand our power out in the wilds is the new choice I picked as it also offers some stuff to keep us entertained (not as much in my view, but you can't have everything). I also really think if we don't go on crusade we should marry Ezti to solidify our position in the area.

 

We can't afford to settle as many people as we could if we had the money. *shrugs* The more we invest now, the more we get back later, and he looks like the most convenient/cheapest source of money.

And I'm sick right now.

 

It takes 4-6 months to prepare a wedding so we should try to get engaged next turn if we want to marry before winter. Once the beastmen are dead we will have solved all urgent problems in Corzu and it will be in our interest to marry Ezti as soon as possible.

 

[X] Crusade next Year
[X] Accept Refugees,
->[X] 500 this fall
->[X] The unusual ones
->[X] Skilled Craftsman as well
->[X] Farmers as well

[X] +1 to Charm while in Corzu
[X] Sense supernatural evil within 1 mile while in Corzu

 

@ShaperV

Question for Aunt Gavrilla

1) Do the Czene have any unmarried sons?

2) What's Grandfathers view on Inovia, the supernatural and other such matters

3) So has she heard from our other uncle and our cousin Dita?

 

Now is a perfect time to start looking into Dita's Fate

At the very least we can prove that Nikolia's been lying in his reports to Grandfather

 

Can we? Do we know what those reports contain? It could be that both our aunt and grandfather are well aware of what happened with Dita before she came to see us, and as such our Aunt could perceive such questions as dangerous.

OTOH, i wouldn't be surprised if Nikolai truly had his own personal plot with Dita that our Grandad and Aunt weren't aware of.

Anyway, if we do begin talking about Dita, an important point to bring up is that she uses Holy Magic. It's very hard to argue someone is tainted by demons when they use Holy Magic, and it's easy to prove that she does such.

 

Well, considering that it's implied that they knew Dita was connected in some way to Inovia and that the demonic taint is said connection...

Dunno man.

To be honest though, we might want to consider sending Dita and her Chosen off to the Crusades in the next year. She's planning on making it to India, and that's probably the best way to do it.

 

More specifically we can prove that Nikolia has been lying about Dita's presence in Pischa

 

Oh, i had completely forgotten about that part. If he hasn't been telling grandad that she is missing that's pretty bad, though with our Aunt here he probably had to tell her.

Do we really want to tell our Aunt about it? I am not totally against it, but i feel we'll need some real plan, because if there is a conspiracy from our Grandad, and that Dita being a Holy Sorcerer doesn't matter because no matter what he wants her dead (very doubtful, even if there is a conspiracy), we would basically be betraying her for next to nothing.

 

Noble Schemes Pt 2

"So, I have two alliance prospects for you and your brother Boris to consider," Gavrilla explains. "Your grandfather and I have been watching the political situation develop very carefully over the last several years, and these look like the two most significant alliances we might be able to negotiate."

"First, Balzar. I'm not sure what you know about the family, but their intrigue skills are legendary. They been sitting on the fence for a long time, but it looks like they're finally willing to actually throw in with us if we give them the right incentive. They have a very professional military and useful strategic position, so getting them in our camp would be quite useful. I suppose I should also mention that the barons daughter is a stunning young lady, who is highly trained in the arts of intrigue. She might be a bit of a handful, but if you can handle her properly she could be quite an asset."

"Second, Hatvan. There are a large, prosperous barony located right next to Verzi. They've traditionally been crowned loyalists, but given the situation there really isn't much hope for that to remain a viable position. His daughter isn't anyone exceptional, a bit like Chesna only not as smart and even more, ah… pneumatic. But thanks to the geography a strong alliance with him would secure Verzi and force Gurran to either ally with us or stay neutral.

"I have to say, though, that Ezti is an interesting prospect. Once Pavel gets back it would establish a solid power block for the family in this area, and put a lot of pressure on the Czenes to stay on good terms with us. We might even convince the Czene heir that Chesna would be a good prospect for him. But in the short term it could stir up a great deal of trouble with Rogatica and his allies, and potentially endanger Corzu and Pischia. I'm sure the family would back you up if comes to that, but we really can't afford to start a war with the conservative faction at this point. If we does handle that it could end up tipping four or five baronies towards the other side, when otherwise they would of been inclined to stay neutral."

"I almost wonder if would be better to pair her up with your brother. There's no way Rogatica can attack Kolarovo, so it would be hard for him to do anything but sputter indignantly. But I can see you're trying to get ahead here yourself, and I don't want you to think I'm trying to get in your way on that."

"Would you be willing to meet with Balzer's daughter and see what you think of her? They're close enough that we could arrange that fairly quickly, and I have a suspicion that you might find her to your liking."

"That seems reasonable enough," you agree. It can't hurt to get a good look at all of your prospects before you finalize anything. "But I'm not sure about that Hatvan girl. With the state Corzu is in I don't think I can really afford to have a wife who's just an ornament."

"I know," she sighs. "This would be easier if there were more men in the family, you know? Too bad my brothers have always been too obsessed with their questing and political machinations to take care of that properly. I hope your generation doesn't make the same mistake."

"Speaking of which, I hear there's been quite a bit of magic and mayhem in your schedule recently. Should I take it you're angling to be the family troubleshooter for your generation? That's a dangerous job, but we have been stuck with an annoying weakness in that area ever since that terrible affair in Verzi."

Well now. You've always wondered how Gavrilla ended up unmarried and landless at her age. She's not bad looking, and she's good with words, so it's odd that she never landed a husband. But suddenly you find yourself wondering if perhaps she's found some other way to serve the family. As a spymaster? Or mage? Or maybe both? How else would she already know what's been happening in Corzu recently?

What tack you want to take with this:
[] Tell her about your magic and your dealings with the Chosen, and see what she has to say about.
[] Downplay your recent adventuring, and move the conversation on to a safer topic.
[] Something else.

Meanwhile, you'll have an interesting encounter with Nikolai while you're there. He catches you alone after a conversation with your aunt, and quietly informs you that he's aware that Dita is staying with you.

"I have orders from the Duke to keep close tabs on the girl," he comments. "I'm not sure what you want with her, but I suppose it might be possible to persuade me that keeping her with a relative she believes to be sympathetic is the best way to fulfill his orders. Assuming you're willing to take responsibility for making sure that we can present her to him when the time comes."

[] Bribe Nikolai to look the other way.
[] Trying to con your way into becoming a co-conspirator in whatever is going on here.
[] Play dumb, and promised to return your wayward cousin to keep. You can decide whether you'll actually do that later.
[] Something else.

 

Ok so on the various topics

Marriage to Etzi brings us enough boons now and potential boons in the future that she's my number 2 option right now, preceded only by Dita.
Both of them bring lots of issues (as do all of our current favored marriage prospects), but neither of them I think is anything we can't handle.
We can't really run the possibility of Dita by our aunt, as she isn't supposed to know Dita is there, but we can run Etzi.

I propose we try and make arrangements to marry Etzi one year from now, while keeping it on the down low as much as possible (which tradition would dictate we announce it at the latest 6 months from now to be decent).
This allows us to begin working together with Etzi and have our current alliance strengthen and secured and gives us time to prepare for Rogacita's inevitable war of rage.

So what I'm thinking would be something like (for swinging it to our aunt)
[x]Propose that we marry Etzi but allow us some extra time to get our affairs in order before the engagement is announced.


Accepting the refugees is basically a growth injection for our fief. We get skilled and/or trainable workers that will be generating taxes in a year instead of having to wait several years for kids to grow up and people to slowly move in.
It will keep us extremely busy for a few months , but it is not a difficult task.
[X]Accept refugees
[X]Skilled and strange ones accepted

When they arrive we can have them screened for bad magic or disease at the port. If we still have Dita and the Chosen we should be able to deal with that issue quite easily (i.e. having them screen the refugees as they come in and curing them of diseases and curses while destroying any possible sleeper agents or outright hostile people)
Note: If we take the supernatural sensing regency, Dom can do some wonders with sorting out the special ones as they arrive and keeping track.



Regency is basically seat of power magic and if we marry Etzi it should spread to her territory as well (we may need to walk the boarders there as well, though since Etzi has already done her Regency as well we should be fine with some kind of minor ritual at the wedding)
Given our leanings towards and the overall usefulness of magic (not to mention the potential for greater regency spells to affect our fief, which will be useful if we take the refugees as well) We should bump soul. I was also going to suggest maintaining the bonus, but it says neighboring lands so it doesn't seem like we'll have it if we go too far (like on crusades).

[X]+1 to Soul while in Corzu (possibility of extending this to include Etzi's barony if married)
[X] Sense supernatural Evil (excellent for sorting out special refugees and spotting enemies that get sent after Us or Dita as the priestess before they get too close)

 

Huh. With that new post up, I'm going to vote against marrying both Ezti as well as taking in the refuges.

IF Nikolai is telling the truth, we're going to be going up directly against the Duke's order when we help Dita. I'm not sure we're going to be in a position to deal with the political problems of marrying Ezti, the costs for caring for the refuges, as well as the Duke coming down on us.

Balzer's daughter sounds like a rather interesting person though. Intrigue is always appreciated, and especially if they're working for us directly instead of anyone else...

 

I don't see why we should wait one year. We can prepare much better when we are married to Ezti since we would then have more influence over her barony and Rogatica is not going to attack during the winter.

 

As a number of players have noticed, you're pretty much getting the point where you have to make a decision about what your strategy will be for the next few years. So I thought I'd make a few final comments about what the options are and how things are likely to play out depending on your choice.

The two obvious choices are:

Hero Route – Spend most of your time adventuring, doing things like crusading in Africa, solving monster problems for your family, and/or personally helping Dita rescue her friend from India. This will cause your personal power to advance very quickly, and you will likely be able to form and maintain a very tough adventuring party. However, you won't have a lot of time to spend on elaborate schemes to build up Corzu or manipulate local politics.

Feudal Lord Route – Stay in Corzu and spend most of your time building up your position there. This will allow you to maximize your political power, and give you time to do things like taking an refugees to increase your population, but your personal power will advance much more slowly. It will also be much more difficult for you to make unpopular moves like interfering with the Duke's schemes or having close relations with heretical cults, because anyone who objects to your activities will know exactly where to find you.

Since it isn't feasible to taken a significant number of refugees if you want to go the hero route, I suggest you go ahead and talk this out and see if you can come to an agreement. Also, if anyone has further questions about how either option would work out (or has a third option to suggest) this is probably good time to ask them.

 

Re: Noble Schemes Pt 2

I'll probably go with 'Tell her'. The thing is, our family doesn't have enough sons for Gravilla not to warn us if she feels we are going against the family, so that means that we are probably important enough that she genuinely want to help us.

I don't think this option includes talking about Dita, but if we do talk about her, we should just say that she came to us hoping for a mentor, and that we found out she not only had Holy Sorcery, but that her abilities meant demons would try to assassinate her.

If we are doing something that goes against the family, it's better to know now.

I actually don't know if we should even bother pretending that we are not keeping Dita. She is our cousin and asked us to come here. If our aunt protest, that's one thing: she legitimately has family authority certified by our father and grandfather - but this is Nikolai, a mere servant of our uncle: he is an inferior trying to bully us.

In that case, we'll just tell him she came to us for mentoring, and that as a family concern, we are clearing it with said family.

Of course, if we go this way, we have a good opportunity to have told our Aunt that dita asked us to mentor her, as well that we found out that she had holy magic, and was apparently a beacon that demons will want to kill.

Another possibility would be to pretend to go along so that we learn more about what's going on with Dita, though of course we'll stay loyal to her. Is it this option:

[] Play dumb, and promised to return your wayward cousin to keep. You can decide whether you'll actually do that later.
?

That's... good to know. That going against Rogatica openly might bring trouble to our family is very important information. We'll have to be diplomatic here.

In other possibilities, i am getting the feeling it's actually possible that what happened in Verzi was our Uncle and Aunt being attacked by demons who could sense Dita, and that grandad got the whole exorcism going on because he knew it was a way to keep the beacon quiet and as such save Dita's life.

 

[X] "Perhaps I should arrange a hunt this fall with Boris and Ezti in attendance?"
[X] Tell her about your magic and your dealings with the Chosen, and see what she has to say about.
[X] Inquire on how Grandfather views Priestess of Thoth


[X] "Yet you failed to report Dita missing over the winter to the Duke." Counter attack and press Nikolia hard, Dominic has his balls in a vice grip, squeeze hard and get as much information as possible from him

 

[X] Tell her about your magic and your dealings with the Chosen, and see what she has to say about.
[X] Trying to con your way into becoming a co-conspirator in whatever is going on here.
[X] Feudal Lord Route

 

Oooooh boy, diplomatics. I like it!

Whatever we do, I really want to do the Feudal Lord Route. It's soooo interesting.

 

Feudal Lord Route is the one I prefer too.

One man can make a difference, one man with an army at his back can make a greater one.

 

My main problem with the Feudal Lord route is this:

This means that our thoughts of getting magical refugees or helping Dita become a priestess with her own church would be much harder with the Feudal Lord route.

Likewise, helping Dita rescue that gal will be hard that way. If she manages to get a church we could do it via "go with a posse of Chosen", but it seems very likely that the "Feudal Lord" route is the "Toe the Line" route.

Yes, i have some questions:

1°) The way your phrased it seems to imply that going Feudal Lord is a route that necessitate us to betray Dita if our grandfather truly is against her. Does this mean it's a route where we can't change his mind, just obey it?

2°) The way Gavrilla talked about how our Family have been 'Crusades, all the time' since the Verzi incident seems to imply, if '1' is correct, that they don't want to be in Berjoran because they don't want to obey our grandfather after what he did to their brother. Am i misreading?

3°)Given that Khersis is at least Nominally allied with Inovia i would have thought that getting a church of Inovia in our territory wouldn't be heresy- is it heretic or not?

4°) Would a 'troubleshooter/spymaster/diplomat' third route be possible? As in, we get to running our fief at least part of the time, but most of the time we are travelling the kingdom making alliances, assassinating enemies, subjugating rebellions or monsters. As we would stay in Berjoran we would have more time to take care of our fief, but we would also be harder to find, will have decent advancement because of constant adventures, and we'll be able to make alliances. Also, Dita would be a great support for this.

5°) If the previous Route is possible, it's likely that Gravilla is already doing it- we should possibly talk to her about such a role for us, and see if there is a place for a second member of the family doing such. Would such questions, in private of course, be liable to destroy our relationship with her?

EDIT:

Seems i completely misread that sentence previously, somehow reading 'troublemaker' instead of 'troubleshooter'. Ok, this really does seem like Gavrilla believes that Dita's father (or his wife) was the family's troubleshooter, and as such the odds of him being killed by our grandfather are...Small.

Am i understanding it correctly ShaperV?

If so, this means that my theory of Dita's exorcism being to 'quiet' her beacon might be true, if our grandad even did demand those.

 

Ugh, I though I'd resigned myself to feudal but seeing the two choices written out like that it makes it a lot harder to stomach. So to hell with that, I'll take an order of adventure and a side of freedom of action.

[X]Hero route

[X] Tell her about your magic and your dealings with the Chosen, and see what she has to say about.
[X] Trying to con your way into becoming a co-conspirator in whatever is going on here.

Might as well try to put that charm to use.

 

Well, you'd have to at least make the Duke think that you're toeing the line. Travel times and the limitations of medieval communications mean that you would have some room for discretion, but you'd have to be very careful about what you get caught doing.

The general attitude is that the Inovians are dangerous lunatics who fortunately happen to be fixated on destroying evil most of the time. So the church advises lords to leave them alone and let them kill monsters whenever possible, but also to keep an eye on them in case their current scheme for 'fighting evil' turns out to be something insane or heretical. You never know when the Inovians are suddenly going to decide that the ogre is a nice guy, or the dragon can be "saved", or the local bishop is actually evil because of some infraction that the church would have no problem with. Inovians have a very different (and more modern) concept of morality than most Borjerians, which tends to cause a lot of friction.

So while supporting the Chosen is not heretical, it is going to make your neighbors seriously wonder what you're thinking. To them it's like deciding to raise rabid honey badgers for living.

To some extent yes, but your freedom of action will be seriously limited by the need to appease your neighbors. If you're off in Egypt or India or something no one knows or cares about the details of how you do things, but if you're adventuring around inside Borjeria that won't be the case.

There are also several other routes you could choose, but they aren't as obvious and may not be as appealing. For example, there's definitely room to play an 'evil noble' route, using treachery and mind control to advance your cause much faster than would otherwise be possible. Obviously that's a high risk approach though, because if you get caught things could go bad very quickly.

No, at least in your family it's possible to discuss such things in private. Gavrilla will tell you that she is no hero herself, but she does have a minor talent for sensing magic and a knack for dealing with "unusual people". Mostly she handles the family's espionage and, counterespionage, with some diplomacy on the side. Her younger brother, Dita's father, was the family hero.

Gavrilla muses that you're probably old enough to hear the truth now, and sadly informs you that the whole affair was one of those unfortunate incidents of Inovian insanity. Dita's mother had some crazy idea that she was going to reform a demon somehow, and as tends to happen she managed to convince her husband to go along with it. So it was necessary to put a stop to things before they created some debacle so huge that even your family's influence would be enough to paper it over.

That's one reason the church advises people to avoid too much contact with Inovians – the crazy tends to be catching for some reason. Of course, it's entirely possible that this is because the church of Khersis is just completely wrong about a lot of things, and the Inovians tend to be convincing to people who will actually listen to them. But Gavrilla doesn't seem likely to buy that sort of reasoning. She's obviously still a bit broken up about her little brother's death, but she's too emotionally invested in believing that they did the right thing to want to think that she might be wrong.

 

I didn't really think about this until just now but based on some of the prevailing attitude I've seen from the thread thus far I'm actually somewhat concerned about whether we actually have what it takes to stick to the party line if we take the Feudal Lord route. I can easily imagine votes being made based on modern sensibilities bringing the thunder down on us.

 

[X] "Perhaps I should arrange a hunt this fall with Boris and Ezti in attendance?"
[X] Tell her about your magic and your dealings with the Chosen, and see what she has to say about.
[X] Inquire on how Grandfather views Priestess of Thoth


[X] "Yet you failed to report Dita missing over the winter to the Duke." Counter attack and press Nikolia hard, Dominic has his balls in a vice grip, squeeze hard and get as much information as possible from him

[x] feudal lord, at least for now... In time, as our power increase we can start to see where things go from there.

Yes, hero rule allows for more liberty and a easier game... But feudal lord allows for greater influence in our kingdom.

If we go hero, we will only have our personal power... If we go lord, We will have more political and economical power.

A question, what do our auntie thinks about the Mage bride prospect, with all the
Money that she can bring to our family?

 

Conflicted.

 

We should not arrange a meeting between Boris and Ezti if we are going to choose the feudal lord route. Ezti is by far the best marriage prospect for Dominic in our current situation. However it could be a good idea if we go for the hero route.

 

Yeah, both the vote about Boris and the tact that people want to take with Nikolai seem very self-destructive, I've no idea why people are favoring the combos they are. Especially with Nikolai, what we've got on him is nowhere near enough to get a good hold over him, all it does is make him completely aware we're his enemy at a time we're not at all prepared to take him out. Seems to make far more sense to make him believe we're the kind of guy he can relate to/make deals with, for instance I believe Chesna mentioned he was pretty skeevy, so perhaps we should try to present ourselves as dismissive of Dita's capabilities and pretty much only interested in her body, that seems likely to present an image that both appeals to his prejudices but also makes us seem dim enough to make him think he can manage us easily enough.

Anyway that exact approach isn't necessarily the best one either since he has seen a bit of us before this so he may notice the personality shift but trying to blackmail him seems doomed to backfire.