Bynwyn was not exactly the sort who would consider himself to be in the running for High Chief of all things, but since his promotion to Spirit Chief he had found himself drawn into the politicking over the position; sometimes the unexpected candidate got made heir as a way to block the influence of a different faction via compromise rather than pushing into deadlock between competing candidates. Sometimes you got a dumb ass, but there were still stories of how that could bite the chiefs trying for someone particularly malleable, so competence was somewhat more promoted. Of course, Bynwyn strongly doubted his personal competence in the areas that made a good chief, but he had something of an upswell of popularity from his recent discovery, hence being catapulted into the position of Spirit Chief at the urging of the current High Chief.
Although he couldn't help but feel a slight twinge of smug towards his parents at that. While he felt that he probably was chosen by the spirits to become a shaman, there was a major issue in the way his family had decided that his interest in other boys, particularly the warrior candidates training, was disharmonious. He had been too young to really understand what the problem was, and now that he was older he also had to roll his eyes at their hypocrisy. Everyone knew that there were things that happened out in the fields and forests that were simply not talked about despite the fact that theoretically by the strict reading his parents had applied, one should go to the shamans for training due to the obvious imbalance in spiritual energies such activities implied. Ugh, hypocrites.
Fortunately, unlike some of the others who had been sent off to the shamans for relatively spurious reasons, Bynwyn had in fact enjoyed their training and doctrines and had taken to the study of spirits quite well. He was actually somewhat lucky, in that while most of the shamans preferred to memorize important tales or perform rituals to help others with their spiritual issues, he preferred to go out into the fields and forests and quietly watch how the spirits worked their magic in the world, to see the connections between birds and insects and trees and animals, all woven together like a spider's web. He found it fascinating, but up until a few years ago he had limited capacity to actually do anything with his interests. And then the High Chief had come to the shamans with reports that cows were somehow related to resistance to the scourging disease, and while he wanted the information kept to the shamans because he was afraid of what might happen if people without understanding of spirits and demons tried to apply it, he also wanted it investigated. Given that Bynwyn was among those most suited to this sort of esoteric work, the job had primarily ended up in his lap to figure out.
It had taken him decades but he had managed to piece together an idea of how the demons worked. It had taken what amounted to the spirits basically dropping a piece directly in his lap when a young woman had come to him with another complaint - turned out she was pregnant despite her protestations of the impossible, like he hadn't heard that before - but he had noticed the mark of the scourging disease on her hand, only she claimed that wasn't it, it was just a minor thing that happened that wasn't related to that disease. It had first appeared a few days ago and hadn't spread, so it couldn't be that dread plague. Bynwyn had pressed further, leaning on his ability to intimidate with political and spiritual punishment before he had finally managed to get it out that the reason she got it on her hand was because she had been handling the udder of a cow with similar marks, with her bare hand. It turned out her family was recently from a nomadic clan, and they still hadn't absorbed the full extent of the People's rules on cleanliness and purification. While he had lightly admonished her for her actions, he had made sure that she would receive extra rations of food and luxuries during the duration of her pregnancy, above and beyond the standard food ration increases. It was a valuable piece of information.
From there, it had taken years of careful study, observation, and arguing with the other shamans before he had been able to advance his conclusion. It was already known that as there were different kinds of birds, beasts, and plants, there had to be some sort of difference among the demons of disease. What exactly those differences were hard to tell and a source of vigorous argument, but Bynwyn was now leaning towards the idea that there were only a few kinds of demons, perhaps just one kind, but differences in disease were caused by variations in the spells they used. After his observations, he was now fairly certain he understood the workings of the scourging disease at least. An outbreak started when a demon cast a curse upon a person, the magic entering their body and consuming them from within to fuel its continued existence - the fact that the worst diseases were associated with fever was a clear sign of the magic literally burning them for fuel - and worse than that the curse was contagious. It ate people to spread its malevolence.
However, it was known that for the most part the worst disease also could not affect a person more than once. If a person was sufficiently strong of spirit and body the demons could not strike them again, more proof for the idea that it was a transmissible curse rather than repeated direct attack by demons. But with the observations Bynwyn had brought together, he now had the best understanding of how the curse worked of anyone in the People. Because the demons responsible for the disease could also lay their curse on cattle, but it was minor against the beasts. It couldn't consume their spirits and only caused minor, easily healed damage to their bodies. However, it was still transmissible to humans if they came into contact with the sores the disease caused, but the strength of the cow had already diminished it, so when it affected a person it was much, much less potent and dangerous. While he wasn't sure if protection would stick to a person the way fighting off the human strength curse would, he had come to the conclusion that applying the cow weakened version of the curse to a person would at least protect them from the human version for a time. At the very least, the curse/demon seemed to get temporarily warded against during an actual outbreak.
And he had proven it in the most spectacular way possible when the camps working on the canal suffered an outbreak of the scourging disease. Donning a mask of Crow in his Aspect of the Devourer, Bynwyn had plunged into the affected region with a herd of milk cows behind him. Those who had touched the sores of affected cows and developed their own minor sores were saved, but unfortunately he had run out of actively affected cows before everyone could be protected, so there was still a problem of sufficient coverage, as the sores had to be present to pass along the weakened curse. Still, he had been lauded by the People for his actions, and thus been shoved into a new, high position for his efforts.
Although as he sat in on council meetings and listened to the discussions, he discovered that there was likely another reason or two why he had been selected. He came from relatively modest means, and the chiefs had been struggling with the fact that many of the People had come to view them as out of touch and unresponsive. The High Chief didn't speak with the People, he spoke with Chiefs who spoke with sub-chiefs who might speak with the average person when they weren't speaking with elders and clan heads. While the Aspect of Crow the Devourer was terrifying, it was also the mask that walked among the common person and fought against disease and brought comfort to those in mourning. It was also the aspect that associated the most with the half-exiles, and while some shamans wearing the mask could be cruel to the corpse handlers, Bynwyn had made sure that the half-exiles working under him had received the warding first - while a desire not to see them dead was a big part, it might have been overshadowed by wanting them warded so he wouldn't have to look for new people to help haul the plague dead and to reduce the chance they could spread the curse by getting sick themselves - which had earned him major appreciation from the people he had worked with. Thus it was that Bynwyn's promotion and even potential consideration to become the next heir to the position of High Chief was in part to soothe the ruffled feathers of the People who felt ignored by the High Chief.
Of course, now that he was on the council, Bynwyn was also hearing more about the wider world that he had never thought he would encounter in such detail before. The completion of the canal was something everyone knew about and took collective pride in, in the fact that they had essentially created a navigable river by hand. While they had inevitably diverted water away from other locations - the final part of the project was diverting a number of streams to reliably fill it - the canal also watered areas that only tended to get seasonal rains, massively expanding the amount of land that could be watered as step farms or orchards, while also providing better transport of bulk goods. You could fill boats with flour and leisurely take them between Valleyhome and Redshore, and the most difficult part was the relatively short wagon trip between Valleyhome and the upper part of the canal, which only took a few days across well groomed trails.
Megaproject Completed!
Stone Age Canal
The People cut an artificial river in the hills without the use of metal. Not only does this improve the internal economy and trade, but as long as its memory remains it will be a source of pride in collective labour. Whenever the People complete a major engineering project, they also gain Art and Mysticism.
Meanwhile, the expansion to Newnet so that more fishing grounds could be brought under management had also brought new innovation and new problems. With trails out in that direction not yet cut, the simplest way to get materials to the new settlers had involved loading up canoes. At some point someone had decided to make good use of all the wood lying around and some of the principles of cart construction and had lashed together an even larger canoe than usual. More than that, they had worked out a way to catch the wind with a large sheet, and while still awkward, these new boats could go further and faster and carry more materials. They were of course also ludicrously expensive, but they expanded the capacity of the fishers incredibly, and the longer journeys people had gone on had brought them into contact with other fishing villages to the north and west of Redcoast and Newnet, little groups who were vaguely known about but mostly knew the rough terrain to the south-east as 'that place where people disappeared whenever there was a drought'.
While suspicious, it had at least been cleared up that the People were just bringing the hungry into their community and not killing them in any of the gruesome ways people had dreamed up over the generations.
Unfortunately, these fishing villages were past the hills that formed the protective bulwark against the nomads to the north, and thus suffered under endemic raids, that suddenly got significantly worse once the People started trading with them, followed by their northern settlements seeing a major uptick in attacks. It seemed that the stories of the wealth of the People hidden away deep in their valleys and demonstrated by their trade caravans had been made apparent to the greedier nomad tribes, who had decided to steal from trading partners and begin attempts to crack the shell of northern settlements and defenses. Thus far they had not got far, but just dealing with them would tie up large numbers of warriors, and they might need to be taught a lesson in order to back off.
Northern Nomad tribes have begun attacking. A minimum of a [Secondary] strength War Mission - Northern Nomads will be assigned just to defense (this is actually what happened the last time the nomads attacked, you weren't compelled to fight them because of Eye for an Eye, but because you were defending yourselves and that tied up considerable attention and resources).
While there were a number of ideas to deal with this, from the standard sorts of responses, there was a rather peculiar idea that had been floated - literally floated. The new boat had the room and speed that it could somewhat feasibly carry a horse or two along the coasts faster than walking the animals across the broken terrain of the hills, although there was some suggestion that loading the boats up with carts and walking the horses might be faster in the end. Anyway, the idea was to use the boats to mass cart warriors past the hills among the fishing villages, where they could strike out from an unexpected direction. The nomads had some idea of where retaliations from the People would have to come from due to the terrain of the hills, but by attacking from the coast the People could potentially strike civilian camps positioned to be out of the People's normal retaliation range while the warriors were out raiding. It was something of a crazy idea - the cost of producing enough boats to make it even remotely viable was enormous - and the risks to the warriors sent up the coast was great, but it had the potential to be the sort of unexpected attack that could force the nomads to back off - or at least wipe out enough tribes that others moved in to fill their place who had little interest in attacking the People and those that traded with them.
There was thus a lot to discuss and decide upon.
For the new ritual against the scourging disease...
[] Transmit the knowledge of the cow warding far and wide (Increases Diplomacy, wildcard bonus, unknowable longterm effects)
[] Introduce the idea of cow warding to the shamans for use amongst the People (Reduces effects of disease, unknowable longterm effects)
[] The ritual is incomplete, more study is required before it can be safely used on a widescale (Temporarily unlocks Scourge Warding megaproject)
Initial response to nomad attacks...
[] Hole up in the hills where the People are at maximum advantage
[] Aggressively strike out to attempt to drive them back
[] Build more boats and attempt a flank attack (Costs Econ to build new boats, which you will keep no matter the result)
New heir selection
[] Bynwyn (Poor Martial, Mediocre Admin and Diplomacy, Heroic Mysticism, accelerates Scourge Warding megaproject while alive, chance for bonus Stability)
[] Standard Leader (No modifiers)
[] War Leader (Poor Mysticism, Mediocre Admin, Average Diplomacy, Exceptional Martial)
