Update - August 1, Year 1
Dominic - Hunt Threat: Beastmen
Dita - Hunt Threat: Beastmen
Sir Bialis - Hunt Threat: Beatsmen
Jaroslaw - Hunt Threat: Beatsmen
Rangers - Hunt Beastmen
1st Corzu Foot - 5 men at arms, 20 spearmen, 15 archers: Hunt Beastmen
2nd Corzu Foot - 5 men at arms, 20 spearmen, 15 archers: Hunt Beastmen
Most of your forces spend the month hunting beast men in the wooded terrain of Western Corzu. The beast men don't seem to have a central camp, so this campaign will be a series of skirmishes rather than a single big battle. Finding your elusive enemies in such wilderness is difficult, but by the end of the month your men have recovered 11 beast men corpses and probably wounded or killed quite a few others whose bodies were never found. The surviving beast men seem to have fled the area, probably by crossing the river into Rogatica.
Your men suffer several casualties during this campaign, but only two of them are fatal. This is a very good performance, especially considering how poorly equipped your men are. Morale is high, and Bialis observes that the men have gotten some good combat experience. But most of the credit for the success goes to the fact that you had four named characters leading the men.
Dita did particularly well, and seems to be developing a real talent for this kind of wilderness fighting. Her mobility and enhanced senses have been very useful for locating your enemies before they become alerted to your presence, and Jaroslaw opines that she would make an amazing ranger with a bit more training.
Dominic - Meet with Zarana
Already reported.
Dominic - Research Flesh Sorcery (Healing)
With further practice you have managed to improve on your copy of Emma's regeneration. You can now induce rapid healing that allows the subject to recover at 4x normal speed, although maintaining the effect requires a few minutes of attention every 4 to 6 hours. Unfortunately, further improvements will likely require a higher level of flesh sorcery.
Dita - Train Swordsmanship
Training succeeded.
Katiana - Finish Granary
Katiana finishes the granary just a few days behind schedule. The new facility can store 20,000 SP worth of grain in relative safety. Katiana is eager to get back to renovating to keep, in hopes of finishing the job before winter so you can all have a bit more living space.
In her spare time she has started working on a proper wizard's staff to replace the temporary one that she used when you went after the witch. She hopes to complete this project in a couple of months, at which point she thinks that shall be able to speed up her construction work considerably.
Traian - Prepare for Harvest
Your accountant has revised and updated his plans for collecting and storing the harvest, and placed orders for the necessary transport in Eztergrom. About a third of the wagons have already been delivered, along with draft animals to pull them. The rest are due to arrive over the course of the coming month.
This is been a fairly expensive project, in both money and manpower. There isn't room in the keep to store the wagons or pen the oxen, so he was forced to call in some of your labor draft to construct the necessary facilities in the nearby hamlet. So far this has cost you 230 SP and 24 man-months of labor tax.
Corzu Garrison - 5 men at arms, 20 spearment, 10 archers: Garrison
No problems with the garison.
Order: Talk to Dita about Tavi
At long last, you finally managed to get Dita to open up to you about this. But the story she tells is rather disturbing.
Dita herself does not know all the details, but apparently her mother made quite a few unusual contacts during her time as a Chosen. When Dita was 12 one of these beings contacted her mother seeking help.
Sumata was a rakshasa high priestess of Kali, a dark goddess of creation and destruction. By virtue of her position she was the spiritual head of some rakshasa kingdom in darkest India, leading her people in the worship of Kali's aspect of destruction. But after centuries of evil her clashes with the Chosen, and in particular Dita's mother, had somehow led her to want a better life for her daughter.
According to Dita, luring evil creatures to the side of Light is an old and honored tradition among the Chosen. While Sumata was too powerful for her nature to be changed, the same was not true for her daughter Tavi. So Dita's mother organized a secret Inovian ritual designed to reverse the young rakshasa princess' magical nature, turning her into a creature of Light instead of Darkness. Sumata intended for her daughter to reign as high priestess of Kali in her aspect of creation, and lead her people away from their destructive habits and into a brighter era.
But such alignment-changing rituals require a link with a being of the desired alignment in order to be permanent. After meeting Tavi and having the whole situation carefully explained to her Dita volunteered for this job. She and Tavi became fast friends almost immediately, and when the rakshasa girl (rather predictably) collapsed in a fit of self-loathing after the ritual Dita swore that she would always be there to be her conscience.
Then a party of rakshasa and demons arrived to recapture their wayward priestess and her daughter. With two chosen and the Lightbringer (the Inovian angel responsible for watching over this world) present in the keep this led to quite a battle. But Sumata died in the fighting, and then the witch hunters showed up. The rakshasa recaptured Tavi and fled, and you know what happened to Dita's family.
Since then the combined efforts of human witch hunters and Tavi's tender relatives have drastically weakened the sole bond between them, to the point where they can no longer communicate through it. Dita can feel that Tavi has been subjected to a brutal series of magical corruption rituals, and forcibly transformed back into a creature of darkness. But every now and then the two girls still manage to connect in their dreams, and Dita is convinced that Tavi is desperately awaiting rescue and a chance at redemption.
Oh, and the deadline? Among the rakshasa the office of high priestess is hereditary. When Tavi turns 18 she will be ritually dedicated to the goddess, and married to her brother (who will be the temporal leader of the kingdom) at the same time. Whether she becomes high priestess of Kali the Creator or Kali the Destroyer depends entirely on what her magical nature is at the time, but once the initiation is done she'll be stuck with whatever her alignment is at the time.
Order: Call up Ditrik to help hunt the Beastmen
Ditrik arrives with reasonable promptness, and doesn't seem to have any objection to hunting beastmen. He proves to be a fairly skilled hunter, although he certainly doesn't have the tactical or leadership skills of your own military retainers.
Order: Analyze Dita's Magic
Dita's magic is a bit like the residual powers that the Chosen would retain if she lost her divine blessing after having served for several years. The power is actually part of Dita, not being granted from some external source. This is rather interesting considering its holy nature, since it confirms that Dita was actually born as a supernatural creature of good. You suspect that it might be possible for her to strengthen an ability by training it extensively, in a manner analogous to buying up a sorcery level. However, this could obviously be rather time-consuming.
Dita does seem to have something that vaguely resembles the connection to a higher power that the Chosen enjoy. However, it's much smaller, almost vestigial. This puzzles you for a bit, until one day you happen to catch her while she's meditating on those visions from Inovia trying to figure out how the whole business of giving the Chosen assignments is supposed to work. The connection is a bit more active at that point, leading you to suspect that it has something to do with being a priestess. But even then there's nowhere near enough energy involved for it to do much.
Order: Analyze Katiana's Magic
Katiana's personal magic has a very different feel to it than Dita's, being aspected towards earth and air instead of light and holy power. But it's tied to her body and life force in a way that's somewhat similar. As long as she doesn't make a habit of depleting her magic she's unlikely to ever get sick, and will generally enjoying enhanced health and longevity. She's also a bit more durable than a normal person, and would probably be more resistant to hostile magic even without her wards.
Those wards, however, are a work of art. She has multiple levels of protection against numerous types of magic, including a lot of stuff you've never actually seen. You can definitely see why Atalaya's magic didn't seem to be able to affect her. Unlike the Chosen's magic resistance this is a multilayered defense designed so that she can allow people to heal her or do divinations (like this project) without leaving herself vulnerable to death spells, mind control, or other nastiness.
Order: Write a letter to Boris inviting him to visit Corzu
you get a reply from Boris saying that he's tied up at the capital investigating prospective suitors for the next couple of months. However, he'd like to come out and visit in late September or early October if that works for you.
News: Chosen Activity
Inga stops by once to pick up her new chain mail, and tells Dita she's headed north to make a sweep of Scandinavia clearing up monsters that have popped up while she was in Anatolia. She mentions that she intends to tell Brisen, the third active Chosen, about Corzu while she's there, but since Brisen mostly covers Brittania she may not actually visit. Emma visits twice early in the month, then says she's been called off to Subotica and parts west. Dita has started meditating and praying to Inovia on a regular basis, but hasn't gotten the hang of this vision thing yet.
Event: Your Seneschal Arrives
Dragos, the seneschal your father sent you, arrives near the end of the month ready to get to work. But there is one embarrassing complication – you're out of rooms. Presumably you'll work out some way to rearrange things to fit him in, but this is definitely a sign that you need more space.
