Feudal Quest

Not sure what we'd use plant samples for. We don't have a botanist to identify them or anything.

Anyway, I just want to get this adventure over with, so I'll strengthen the consensus and say
[X] Plan Arkeus

Edit: Given that in the adventure lead the "Old Man of the Mountain" is noted as scaring people off with apparitions (ie. illusions), I'm going to go ahead and predict that it's actually a lady. That'd fit with how this quest has gone so far.

 

Yeah, damn, Kat? Build a bigger Keep, it's getting cramped with all you girls...

 

Both these locations are in valleys. We could do something like have Kat cause a landslide and use the confusion to snatch and grab someone important to question.

 

The Old Man of the Mountain – Part 2

Katiana sets you and Dita up with stealth wards, although she cautions you not to treat this like invisibility. Her wards should make it much more difficult for anyone to spot you, but only under conditions where you would've had some reasonable chance of hiding in the first place. If you walk out into the middle of an open field in broad daylight it isn't going to do you any good. (In game terms this is a +1 stealth buff.)

Sneaking to the site of the farming camp takes pretty much all day, and you're forced to have Katiana and the men at arms camp quite a distance away to make sure a patrol doesn't stumble across them. The weather that night is a bit rainy, making it far too dark for you to be able to accomplish anything before sunrise. Since Dita has night vision you send her for a quick look at the camp just to see what their sentry arrangements look like, and she reports back that conditions don't actually look especially favorable for sneaking in. The workmen all sleep in a couple of communal shelters, and there are guards posted at night, so it would be a bit tricky to have a conversation with someone without getting caught.

The next morning you decide to get a firsthand look at the place and try to get a feel for their activities. This reveals that the "fields" are actually flooded for some strange reason, although there do seem to be plants growing up through the water. In the middle of the cleared area stands on low mound with a wooden palisade built on top of it, which surrounds a cluster of crude wooden buildings. A couple of these serve as barracks for the peasants, while three smaller buildings house the guards, a small group of peasant women, and a guy in chainmail who seems to be in charge.

About half the peasants spend the morning working to surround more fields with the low earthen embankments that allow them to be flooded, while the rest are cutting trees to clear more land. It looks like there are about a dozen guards, of which several are always busy keeping an eye on things. However, there's far too much activity for them to watch closely, especially among the men working in the woods. You also notice several boys (aged 10 to maybe 14) running errands around the camp.

Then it starts raining again, causing a good bit of chaos. Some of the workers run for shelter, some stay under the trees, and some continue working. This is too good an opportunity to pass up, so you sneak in closer to one of the worksites and grabbed one of the older boys for questioning. As disorganized as these people are they won't notice that he's missing for at least an hour or two, and even then they may well think that he's just lost or goofing off somewhere.

As expected he doesn't put up a big fight once he gets a good look at you – peasant kids don't usually argue with nobles, and the quality of your armor makes your status pretty obvious. The tale that he has to tell is fairly revealing.

According to Hans, this is exactly what some of you were expecting – a white lotus farming operation set up by the Hand. But apparently there's some kind of official involvement, because Hans and his father ended up here after they were unable to pay a special tax that wa levied on their village last year. Most of the laborers are in a similar situation, or are petty criminals that were sentenced to labor instead of prison. They come from all over Pischia, but never more than one or two from the same village.

Hans is vaguely aware that there's another camp somewhere around here, although he has no idea what it's for. He knows that this camp has only been in operation for about a year, and he thinks the boss and several of his subordinates are foreigners.

Now what?

 

Well, unless we want to go back to Corzu and make plans for our dad to learn about this, the only thing we can do, I think, is trying the diplomacy route.

The big thing here is that this is just the sort of plans we have been told our uncle Pavel love, and as far as I know there is no ways to check with Pavel and learn whether it's really his plan or not, so we have to act like we assume this is a plot from a family member- and as such, it has our conditional support.

So, what I propose is we go in the village and talk to the man in charge. If we make sure they know we are a petran they should accept talks readily. The goal here would be to make contacts with The Hand, as well as try to garner their motives. Maybe we could have an alliance of sort.

Another option is to go back to castle Pisch and talk about The Hand to Nikolai- he could certainly introduce us to the various leaders, and doing it this way would probably be much safer. After all, even if Nikolai is doing this in secret from Pavel, he knows we can't check with Pavel for a good year.

The exception, of course, would be if Nikolai panicks and tries to have The Hand kill us during that meeting (as well as the guards he brings).

My personal preference is, of course, to try and contact The Hand by ourself right now.

I don't understand what this means.

 

@ShaperV

Questions for the boy

1) What Village did Hans come from? Does he know the name and villages others came from?

2) How long has this been running?

 

Ah, the joys of typing with a speech-to-text app. Fixed now.

Some little hamlet you've never heard of.

He's heard enough to know they come from a lot of different places, but doesn't know enough geography to be more specific than that.

Like it says in the update, about a year.

 

Really starting to feel more and more inclined to killing Nikolai, but meh, let's see how this plays out.

Actually do we know when the rumors of the mountain sage began spreading?

 

Mostly asking this so we can get Chesna to cross reference for us.

 

Why are we bothering to investigate this, anyway? We came for a mountain sage, let's go find mountain sage. We don't have the time to be sneaking all over kidnapping farmhands growing what appears to be rice, and we don't have nearly the manpower on hand to do anything with that ridiculous European ninja town.

 

That's a fair point. Given that apparently the sage is just a assassin who uses hallucinogenics to give people 'apparations', it's maybe time to cut our losses and go back home.

It's a question of deciding whether learning more about this right now is worth the trouble of letting Nikolai and The Hand know we heard about this.

Upon further thought, it might be best to go back home and come back much later. We could also send a letter home to dad telling him we have important news (not sure this is the kind of thing we can say in a letter?).

 

I agree. Let's cut our losses and get back to the keep. This Historically Accurate ninja town isn't our concern.

 

I suspect that this is an in person conversation only

 

Now that it looks as though Nikolai is definitely involved, our hands are largely tied. The potential benefits of making further contact with this organization are far outweighed by the risks.

If this is all one of Pavel's schemes then there is no compelling reason to stick our noses into it. We might conceivably gain useful contacts, but we should be able to access those through Pavel when he comes home anyway, and with a more secure understanding of the situation, costs, and risks.

If it isn't one of Pavel's schemes then poking around more would only paint a target on ourselves when we aren't capable of addressing the situation personally, at least not cleanly, due to Nikolai's involvement. We have enough on our plate anyway, as does our family.

Definitely something to talk to Pavel about though.

 

Your forgetting the worst case: that Pavel is preparing to either ditch, or worse, turn on the rest of the family.

A larger territory elsewhere? Wanting his family to move their? Sucking up all the wealth in the region?

Seems to be like he's preparing to break away from the family....

 

While i have a hard time seeing why Pavel would try to ditch the family, if he does decide to do it the correct answer is even more 'go back home, inform Dad that something weird is happening there and Nikolai/Pavel are controlling/in relation with The Hand'. It makes people with better resources aware.

Likewise, learning more about The Hand will probably be something we'll be able to do in a much more effective manner once we are married to Zarana.

 

That's what I'm thinking as well.

As for why: he's apparently got a rather large territory he carved out in the crusade. He may well have decided that, rather then split his focus, that it might be better pull up roots and move everything to his new territory.

Of course, even if he's planning on that, it doesn't necessarily mean that he's leaving the family high-and-dry, at least intentionally. Nikolai might indeed be crooked, or simply bad at trying arrange the transfer.

 

Results, August Year 1

Update - September 1, Year 1​

Dominic - Adventure: Old Man of the mountain
Dita - Adventure: Old Man of the mountain
Katiana - Adventure: Old Man of the Moutain
You abort your investigation into the rumors about a mage living in a remote mountain valley after unexpectedly finding two Hand operations in the area. The Hand appears to be operating here with Nikolai's support, but you don't know if Baron Pavel is in on the scheme or not. You're also uncertain whether therumored mountain mage is real, or just a cover the Hand was using.

Dominic - Research: Examine beastman corpses for flesh sorcery research info
Your detailed examination of the beastman corpses leaves you rather impressed with the skills of the ancient mages who created them. You suspect that it was done using something considerably less flexible than your flesh sorcery, although performing such permanent alterations yourself would require Flesh Sorcery 3. While you lack the raw power to duplicate the changes you've observed, your studies have given you some good insights into how such modifications would work.

Research Chain Unlocked - Permanent body alterations (bestial traits, enhanced senses, increased Body)

Dominic - Research: Fire Sorcery technique (flame projection)
While fire sorcery is quite good at creating flames it proves much less suited for projecting them. Fortunately you find that 'pushing' your own flames with your force sorcery is no harder than pushing anything else, and they don't weigh much. With practice you find that you can create a narrow jet of fire that shoots out several yards from your hand, although maintaining the jet requires quite a bit of concentration. While it isn't big enough to actually kill foes, it should be quite effective at setting them on fire and distracting them.

Dita - Research: Holy Sorcery technique (Imbue Holy attribute to your Sword/Arrows)
It takes Dita some practice just to figure out how to invoke her holy sorcery without creating light at the same time, a process which is considerably complicated by the fact that her holy magic tends to glow with a soft golden light even if there isn't any light magic involved.

Once she figures this out she finds it much easier to make ordianry lights of whatever color she wants, and imbuing objects or creatures with holy energy proves almost trivial. The holy energy fades very quickly, but this could still be a viable technique for archery or enhancing individual blows in melee.

Bialis - Promote to captain. Conduct minimal patrols, but focus mostly on training the troops.
Jaroslaw - Assist Bialis with training & leadership.
Bialis takes over organizing road patrols and personal escorts, which frees you from a considerable amount of detail work. During the course of the month he and Jaroslaw give both the 1st and 2nd Corzu Foot skill training, as well as recruiting all your units back up to full strength.

Bialis informs you that he plans to train both units up to Skill 2, discipline 2 over the next few months, and requests funds to upgraid them to Equipment 2 once the harvest tax is collected.

Traian - Construction Project: Improve Corzu's Roads (will promote to Treasurer when complete)
With a considerable deployment of peasant labor (200 man-months) Traian manages to clear useable paths to all of Corzu's hamlets. Simple wooden bridges have been thrown up in half a dozen locations to make it possible for wagons to reach all of your settlements, although there are still many places where small streams must be forded.

Of course, this is still a far cry from a real road system, but at least you have a shot at collecting the harvest tax now. Unfortunately the delivery of the remaining wagons and livestock needed for that effort has been plagued by delays, and Traiain has been too busy working on the roads to deal with the problem.

Traian has located two suitable sites for country inns along the road between Igal and Tamasi. He also suggests further road-related projects that could benefit the fief.

Katiana - Note: Start working on keep repair after returning from adventure
After returning from your trip to Pischia Katiana resumes work on the keep, but only makes about 3 weeks worth of progress on the proejct.

In her spare time she has continued working on her staff, and expects to finish it sometime in the coming turn. With a proper implement she'll be able to work more earth magic with less strain, and she hopes to see a a significant improvement in her construction speed.

Dragos - Appoint as Seneschal. Authorize clear grounds project.
The new arrival smoothly takes over managing the day-to-day operation of your staff, and in a matter of days has work parties out clearing the grounds around the castle. By the end of the month that project is complete, and he has begun to work out plans for making use of the space in the keep once Kat's repair project is finished.

Dragos requests that the 'Unstable Cellars' repair be completed as soon as possible, so that you can take advantage of the increased storage space to begin stocking seige stores.

Order - Reply to Boris accepting his suggestion, and in turn suggest Ezti as a marriage possibility, and that he meet her while he's in Corzu.
Order - Read book on Roman roads.
Order - Send letter to parents, inform them that you intend to court the Balzar girl.
Order - Send letter to Gavrilla. Inform her that the Balzar girl is your preference for wife.
Order - Send letter to Baron Rogatica. Tell him that beastmen were sighted heading west towards the Lim, possibly onto his lands.
Done.

Kat is quite interested in the books you've collected on Roman roads, fortifications and construction techniques,and would like to read them when you're done.

Order - Send letter to Ezti with a plan to avoid some of the large tariffs on river trade by making purchases through Dominic. Ask for any information Ezti has on a smuggling ring on the river, too.
Ezti is quite interested in such a plan, and invites you to come visit her in Bocsa to discuss the matter in person. She sounds fairly eager to see you again, for some strange reason.

Oh, and she fails to respond to your question about the smugglers. Perhaps it isn't something she wants to put in a letter?

Order - Send letters to both Lala and Chesna, asking about Chesna's debut.
Done.

Long before your letter could have arrived you receive a cheery missive from Chesna talking about how amazing the capital is. She thanks you profusely for your part in getting her there, and slyly mentions that the Czene heir is quite charming (although not as charming as you).

Order - Get a cost estimate for what a simple wood and earth fort with a barracks would cost to build
Assuming you want a cheap fort your troops can use as a local base of operations, a basic design would be a square plot about 100' on a side surrounded by a 6' deep moat. Heap the earth from the moat on the inenr side, put a wooden palisade atop that, build a wooden gate in the middle of one side and put a wooden barracks and a small stable inside. That adds up to a nominal cost of 150 SP, practically all of which can be covered with labor tax and/or Kat's time.

The downside will be that such structures need a lot of maintenance, so you'd end up paying another 10-20% of the original cost every year to keep it in good condition. It also isn't going to stand up to anything more serious than a bandit attack, obviously.

Event - Harvest Time
Harvest time has begun. For the next two months all your peasants will be working frantically to harvest their crops, and at least one NPC needs to be assigned to travel around collecting your harvest taxes. Labor tax can't be used during harvest season, as everyone is too busy in the fields.

 

So harvest time means we can't assign Kat to Keep construction for now? Or could we do something like assign the garrison to assist?

 

You can assign troops to help, or find people willing to work for cash (in Eztergrom maybe). You just can't call in the labor tax during harvest months, because that would end in starving peasant families.

 

Okay, I keep on meaning to ask these, but I keep on forgetting to:
1) Same as in the PM, with regards to the "Dita/Dominic Bastard Backup Plan", and more specifically, the reputation destruction/decrease(respectively), does that take into account Dita being known as a Priestess of Inovia or "known" as mistress of Dominic(true or falsely)? If not, how would those pieces of information affect opinion on the ploy?
2) Relatedly, Arkeus suggested the above plot might trigger a war. How likely would that be the case?
3) What would it take for Inovian worship to be viewed as "acceptable", and relatedly, what would it take to discredit, or at least significantly diminish, Khersis's standing in Borjeria?
4) Are the specialties of sorcery and wizardry different, or can you a wizardry specialty through the study of sorcery, whether your own or others?

Now, a request: please do not debate these yet, if and when ShaperV answer's my question, we can talk about the answers. I do not want another argument like last time. *shudders*

 

Here's a list, pretty basic stuff this turn. Just generally working towards getting things done mainly.

Major actions

Dominic
1) Train Flesh Magic 2/9
2) Train Flesh Magic 3/9
3) Visit Ezti

Dita
1) Research: Illusions/Stealth light magic
2) Train Woodscraft 3/4

Kat
1) Repair the Cellars, when finished resume work on the keep

Minor Actions
1) Heal up the disabled troops should they need it
2) Give the books to Kat to read
3) Tell Traian to earmark some of the harvest tax for Bialis’s requested equipment.
4) Tell Bialis to assign some of the garrison force to assist with construction.

 

Is Chesna our cousin or is that Etzi? I keep getting the two mixed up.

 

That, and other helpful information, is listed on the front page.

 

I think assigning the garrison troop to help repair the keep could be interesting, as we could further specialize that garrison troop into one that is able to take care of repairs when under sieges, especially for things like when we do decide to build a fort.

Dominic should probably not go and meet Ezti right now. It will be awkward as hell to talk to her when we can't know what we can agree to do, as if she does marry Boris pretty much everything is moot (Tax help, etc), and we can't talk for our brother when it comes to marriage either, as he outranks us. Likewise, talking about the 'smuggler' before are a habilitated to do something about them is probably a bad idea. So i'd push back meeting Etzi to when Boris arrives.

[X][X]: Train fire sorcery with Kat.
[X]:Train Diplomacy with Dita. If that doesn't fly, Woodscraft.

Dita:
[X]: Train Light Sorcery. If she believes it would also attract demons and is too reluctant to even try it, then train Light spells: stealth applications. Lowering the ambient light levels sounds like a feasible first-step on the path to stealth spells. Other classic methods include 'bend light around me', 'blur/haze effect to reduce noticeability', 'make a blinding effect to stop people from seeing anything'. Given that Dominic can use Fire sorcery to reduce fire to nothing, it seems very feasible for Dita to be able to use light sorcery to eliminate light. Hell, even 'glowing dark' could work in some cases.
[X]: Train Diplomacy with Dominic. If she flat out refuses, Woodscraft with Dominic.

Be with Kat and Dominic when training her Light (and they train Fire), so that they can give each others tip and bounce ideas off. Dita has the best spell-vision they are aware of, and the more data Dita gets about it the better. Likewise, she can probably see details that they wouldn't, and thus speed up their process.

Traian:
[X]Treasurer, focus on harvest Taxes, be accompanied with Jaroslaw and rangers.

Bialis:
[X]: Train Corzu foot 1 and 2.

Kat, while it's tempting to just hire people and have her continue working on the keep, still hasn't finished her staff anyway, so spending the next two months finishing the staff and working on other project of hers could be better:
[X]:Train Fire Sorcery with Dominic, bouncing ideas off of him, sees what he has managed and offer her own tricks.
[X]a:Magic Staff.

Dragos:
[X]Hire people and work on unstable cellars. Maybe use the Corzu Garrison.

Minor Actions:
[X]Send a letter to Etzi, excusing us not to come this month as we might be hosting family members, but assure her that we will try to come in the next couple of months.
[X]Try to use Flesh magic to keep the beastmen corpses, or what's left of them, to rot completely.
[X] Send a letter home asking our Dad how our doing the friends we had (our age) back in Korovala, and if any of them would be interested in coming to our keep. We might have to go to Korovalo ourself to convince them latter, of course.
[X] Stop with the birth control of our mistresses, try to get them pregnant and regularly analyze them with flesh magic. When it will be time to have heirs it will be crucially important to be able to see that everything is going well with them.

@ShaperV: we are waiting for an answer from our Parents and Aunt about Zarana, correct?
Likewise, adventure leads from Gavrilla should be coming soonish?
As for Dita, she only is reluctant to increse her Holy sorcery? Light is fair game when it comes to being seen by demons?

 

Going to be honest, this is pretty irritating, if you guys didn't want to meet with Ezti why on earth did you vote to send a letter to her about it? Not going now just makes us look like a flake.

Also it says straight in the update Kait is finishing her staff in the upcoming turn... and ugh, seriously taking her off repair to feed into more really unimportant fire magic?

Also the whole point of promoting the people is so we don't have to micromanage them in the order lists.

Sure is a good idea to randomly get our mistresses pregnant as well, no way that won't be a big hassle and future liability.

 

It was so that we can meet with her when Boris arrives. We might have messed up the timing. I also didn't realize how much of a bad idea it would be for Dominic to meet with Etzi before Boris arrives, as he cannot speak for Boris, but he is already taken so he will have difficulty not offending Etzi by saying he has plans he cannot talk about.

Oh, and previously it took multiple turns for details of visits to work out, so...

Unless this means she has already finished it, this is a month where:
a°) She still hasn't finished her staff
b°) We need to pay people for her to have a workforce.

Given that her working on her Fire sorcery (which is important as hell) means she doesn't need to pay more people and that she won't be at a disadvantage on her work because of lack of staff (comparatively to working on the keep), using her lack of manpower to do some other very important things makes a lot of sense.

We have been assured it won't, and learning enough fertility magic to know when and how to get our mistresses pregnant will totally pay off when we are married.

 

I suggest we just start with animal pregnancies, actually. Larger sample base, and after we've analysed the pregnancies of various different animals, then move onto humans.

It also give's data that'll be useful in later in experimenting how to speed pregnancies up.

 

We don't need to pay people (seriously how can you know that that's a possibility and not that assigning troops to it is one as well when they're in the same post?), and we do need to get this stuff done, having it worked on mundanely is going to be incredibly slow.

It keeps being claimed that fire magic is incredibly important and you guys keep failing to convince me, suffice to say that I do not think it's more useful than working towards permanent body alterations or getting our buildings finished before winter sets in.

Also I don't understand how you still have issue with understanding what's going on with the staff, it plainly says sometime in the coming turn it'll be done, and it'll speed up construction.

Succession isn't the only issue with the Bastards plan, there's plenty of others that spring to mind.

 

In order:
1) Please remember this is harvest time. No drawing upon the man-months until the harvest is finished, lest you want starving peasants.
2) What are the arguments for Fire sorcery again? I do agree that raising Flesh sorcery would be more beneficial right now, though.
3) ???
4) What issues, may I ask?