@Imperial Fister I just looked over the numbers and realized that 1/4 of the price in Food might be way too much food depending on local prices...can we assume that we won't take more food than the ship can hold and will take the remainder in coin without changing the wording?
 
My condolences for the bureaucracy of the school.
The chapter was fine though, if a bit short.

Did we ever ask Blackhand what he and Hal's shard talked about?
Yep, here are the answers:
'It wasn't really a conversation. It was more like... I don't really know how to explain it other then that I don't think it's possible for two versions of myself to exist in the same place at the same time.'

'I think that if one learns, the other must forget. Which is annoying.'
Gotta start the mail service so we can swap knowledge with Hal about the fylgja stuff.
"You will address the King as 'Your Highness'," the graybeard at King Alfred's side growls out as his iron-encased arms fall to the weapons on his belt—which is a rather interesting idea, to armor ones' arms in iron, "Or, alternatively, King Alfred. He is your better and you will show him the respect he deserves."
Ah, gauntlets, how I want them.....

More fuel for Halla's Nordic plate experiments.

[X] You'd prefer the deal in some other product or service (Write in)
-[X] You came here for food, and the King can probably get a better deal from his subjects than you can. Ask for 3/4 the value of the whetstone trade in coin, and the rest in food.
-[X] (Optional) Haggle on the Wolf Pelts (Opposed Silver-Tongue Check)
--[X] We will flatly not accept anything less than 20 pounds no matter what. We'd rather just not make the deal on them.

[X] Accept only the mercenary offer

The ship tour smells too much like when the dwarves taught humanity how to forge, thinking we wouldn't teach it to each other. :p

And yeah, knowledge for knowledge is fair. Gotta admit though, I like the fact he tried to take the shot.
But Eric is also on the ship and when two nerds start talking shop, secrets will..... Slip through.
 
[X] You'd prefer the deal in some other product or service (Write in)
-[X] You came here for food, and the King can probably get a better deal from his subjects than you can. Ask for 3/4 the value of the whetstone trade in coin, and the rest in food.
-[X] (Optional) Haggle on the Wolf Pelts (Opposed Silver-Tongue Check)
--[X] We will flatly not accept anything less than 20 pounds no matter what. We'd rather just not make the deal on them.

[X] Accept only the mercenary offer
 
Just had a neat idea.

Winchester is a prosperous city with a lot of trade, so whilst we're here we should buy a bunch of Forged Iron, so we can make mail shirts for Tryggr, Trausti, Stigr, and Stigandr. They're our huscarls, and it's good to reward their loyalty, especially because we haven't spent a social action with them in quite a while. Also, being able to equip our own retinue with mail is a pretty amazing statement of our wealth and prestige. Our perk from Cindershoot Owl even makes it much easier for us to do it quickly.

Buying that much Forged Iron would certainly be expensive, but we're going to net over two of silver once we've taken away the cost of food for the valley. Even assuming higher-than-Asvir prices (and logically they might be lower because this is a trading center) of 1 oz silver = 2 oz Forged Iron, that would only be 750 ounces of silver. This isn't counting whatever we'll net from looting the Thanes. It's not a bank-breaking expense for us, it's not coming out of money we have any other pressing use for, and properly equipping our men and showing our appreciation for them is a good investment.

I don't know if we want to do this later, via merchants, or try to negotiate the purchase here where we might get a better price?
 
I mean...most Vikings are pretty mercenary, I doubt we're the first to come to trade, even if it is rare.
I think this scenario is a lot rarer that you might think:

1) Rare for vikings to show up to court, specifically.
a) Rare for them to show up in a friendly manner.
2) Rare for them to also own a boat.
3) Rare for said boat to also have talkative shipwrights.

All combined, Alfred is getting a lot more out of this than usual... Which is something he would know, because he has a person in court quite literally looking at our ship for the things inside it for Alfred to know. So Alfred knows exactly what he's getting out of this deal, and it's more than has been evaluated.

When considered as such, it really is very rare and distinct.
 
Just had a neat idea.

Winchester is a prosperous city with a lot of trade, so whilst we're here we should buy a bunch of Forged Iron, so we can make mail shirts for Tryggr, Trausti, Stigr, and Stigandr. They're our huscarls, and it's good to reward their loyalty, especially because we haven't spent a social action with them in quite a while. Also, being able to equip our own retinue with mail is a pretty amazing statement of our wealth and prestige. Our perk from Cindershoot Owl even makes it much easier for us to do it quickly.

Stigmar has Mail already (we can and should reforge it to make it better, but that doesn't take iron just an action). And, technically, Stigr is not our Huscarl. He just hangs out around the place. I'm not against buying enough forged iron to make those three Mail Shirts plus enough for Helms for everyone though. Not in principle. This would be 1610 oz. Forged Iron, by the way (1250 armor, 360 Helms including ones for Abjorn and Halla). We do have some at home so we could make that an even 1600 or even 1500 if pressed.

Making armor for people is definitely on the agenda, though, once we get the iron together.

Buying that much Forged Iron would certainly be expensive, but we're going to net over two of silver once we've taken away the cost of food for the valley. Even assuming higher-than-Asvir prices (and logically they might be lower because this is a trading center) of 1 oz silver = 2 oz Forged Iron, that would only be 750 ounces of silver. This isn't counting whatever we'll net from looting the Thanes. It's not a bank-breaking expense for us, it's not coming out of money we have any other pressing use for, and properly equipping our men and showing our appreciation for them is a good investment.

Okay, here I'm against things because if it's more expensive than Agder why would we buy it here? We can do that as soon as we're back in Asvir. It's not like we're gonna be smithing on the ship. In fact, it takes up significant cargo space, so we really don't want to get it here unless it's notably cheaper.

I don't know if we want to do this later, via merchants, or try to negotiate the purchase here where we might get a better price?

Definitely later. Whether we even want to do this here depends heavily on prices.

I think this scenario is a lot rarer that you might think:

1) Rare for vikings to show up to court, specifically.
a) Rare for them to show up in a friendly manner.
2) Rare for them to also own a boat.
3) Rare for said boat to also have talkative shipwrights.

All combined, Alfred is getting a lot more out of this than usual... Which is something he would know, because he has a person in court quite literally looking at our ship for the things inside it for Alfred to know. So Alfred knows exactly what he's getting out of this deal, and it's more than has been evaluated.

When considered as such, it really is very rare and distinct.

I mean, if they show up, they likely own a boat. How else would they get here?

And who says Eric is talkative? He certainly doesn't speak English and while Alfred may speak Norse, nothing about our history with our brother says he's wildly talkative with new and dubious people.
 
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Stigmar has Mail already (we can and should reforge it to make it better, but that doesn't take iron just an action). And, technically, Stigr is not our Huscarl. He just hangs out around the place. I'm not against buying enough forged iron to make those three Mail Shirts plus enough for Helms for everyone though. Not in principle. This would be 1610 oz. Forged Iron, by the way (1250 armor, 360 Helms including ones for Abjorn and Halla). We do have some at home so we could make that an even 1600 or even 1500 if pressed.

Ah, forgot Stigandr, and wasn't including the helms. We could certainly offer to reforge Sitgandr's mail and roll it into the same set of actions.

But yeah, that seems reasonable!

Okay, here I'm against things because if it's more expensive than Agder why would we buy it here? We can do that as soon as we're back in Asvir. It's not like we're gonna be smithing on the ship. In fact, it takes up significant cargo space, so we really don't want to get it here unless it's notably cheaper.

Because there's a limit on how much iron we can buy in Asvir, I think? That might have been due to the Dwarf war, but I don't imagine the Asvir blacksmith necessarily keeps a few thousand ounces in inventory. Waiting to do it in a shopping trip also drags things out further and risks us forgetting, and so on. But honestly I would expect it to be cheaper here given that this is a large trade hub, and our region is not noted for especially cheap iron.

Given the ludicrous cargo capacity of our ship, and that 1 Unit of cargo is multiple ounces, I don't think the cargo space it takes up is a hugely significant concern.

Definitely later. Whether we even want to do this here depends heavily on prices.

We could phrase it as a conditional, looking for the best prices. What about this:

[X] You'd prefer the deal in some other product or service (Write in)
-[X] You came here for food, and the King can probably get a better deal from his subjects than you can. Ask for 3/4 the value of the whetstone trade in coin, and the rest in food.
-[X] We'd also to purchase 1600 oz of Forged Iron, and would appreciate an introduction with a merchant who has fair prices.
-[X] (Optional) Haggle on the Wolf Pelts (Opposed Silver-Tongue Check)
--[X] We will flatly not accept anything less than 20 pounds no matter what. We'd rather just not make the deal on them.

[X] Accept both offers

(Voting for this since I haven't voted yet.)
 
I suspect we can get a better price for iron directly from the dwarves than buying from Alfred who bought it from.... where do christians get iron, anyway? Too late to ask Gabriel. The christian smiths probably guard their secrets at least as closely as ours do, damnit.
 
I suspect we can get a better price for iron directly from the dwarves than buying from Alfred who bought it from.... where do christians get iron, anyway? Too late to ask Gabriel. The christian smiths probably guard their secrets at least as closely as ours do, damnit.

This was brought up before (by me) and the long and short of it is we run into issues if we try and buy too much Forged Iron from the Dwarves at once. We can keep up the current arrangement, but a big bulk purchase isn't really practicable, because we'd need to trade food, and selling that much surface food at once causes... issues.
 
Ah, forgot Stigandr, and wasn't including the helms. We could certainly offer to reforge Sitgandr's mail and roll it into the same set of actions.

But yeah, that seems reasonable!

Okay, so, this is me being pedantic: Stigandr and Stigr are the same person (our childhood friend the lucky archer). Stigr is just a nickname for Stigandr. His brother (our Huscarl who has mail) is Stigmar.

Because there's a limit on how much iron we can buy in Asvir, I think? That might have been due to the Dwarf war, but I don't imagine the Asvir blacksmith necessarily keeps a few thousand ounces in inventory. Waiting to do it in a shopping trip also drags things out further and risks us forgetting, and so on. But honestly I would expect it to be cheaper here given that this is a large trade hub, and our region is not noted for especially cheap iron.

There's a maximum, but it's not low enough to prevent this. The blacksmith definitely has enough Forged Iron around to make 6 Mail Shirts, and that's all we're looking for here. I'm fine with looking around and seeing prices, but if it's much more expensive it's not worth it. Especially since I'm pretty sure you're overestimating our money.

The price in Agder are 3 oz. silver for 8 oz. Forged Iron (or were pre-war) and 5 oz. even during it. 4 oz. (the price you quote) would possibly be worth it...but it'd also be north of 70 pounds of silver. And we're probably only gonna have 100 or so after paying the crew. Maybe more like 120, but it's a huge fraction of our money...if the price is too much higher than that it's not worth it.

Given the ludicrous cargo capacity of our ship, and that 1 Unit of cargo is multiple ounces, I don't think the cargo space it takes up is a hugely significant concern.

I mean, that depends heavily on what else we pick up, doesn't it? 1500 oz is actually 250 capacity all on its own, for instance.

This was brought up before (by me) and the long and short of it is we run into issues if we try and buy too much Forged Iron from the Dwarves at once. We can keep up the current arrangement, but a big bulk purchase isn't really practicable, because we'd need to trade food, and selling that much surface food at once causes... issues.

Strictly speaking, we can, with Goods alone, get 192 oz. of Forged Iron next turn...but yeah, no huge bulk purchases like this.
 
This was brought up before (by me) and the long and short of it is we run into issues if we try and buy too much Forged Iron from the Dwarves at once. We can keep up the current arrangement, but a big bulk purchase isn't really practicable, because we'd need to trade food, and selling that much surface food at once causes... issues.
We can't pay in silver? We know dwarves value it.
 
Stigmar has Mail already (we can and should reforge it to make it better, but that doesn't take iron just an action). And, technically, Stigr is not our Huscarl. He just hangs out around the place. I'm not against buying enough forged iron to make those three Mail Shirts plus enough for Helms for everyone though. Not in principle. This would be 1610 oz. Forged Iron, by the way (1250 armor, 360 Helms including ones for Abjorn and Halla). We do have some at home so we could make that an even 1600 or even 1500 if pressed.

Per IF on Discord I was actually slightly wrong here in that Tryggr, Trausti, and Stigmar already have helmets (though whether they are the superior mail-necked variety is unknown). Which drops the total by around 150 oz of iron to 1450. Just for the record.
 
On the wolf pelts: Alfred wants them. He just doesn't realize that they'd be useful for his naval ambitions so he doesn't know he wants them. Halla doesn't know he has naval ambitions until after the trade deal (afterwards she'd figure it out).
 
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