Bynwyn felt broken and beaten down by his decisions, by the mistakes he had made as High Chief, but even as his joints hurt and his hair fell out he threw himself into the one thing he knew he could do well, his mind not succumbing to the same softness of the body but rather growing sharper with use. The fire of purpose burned within his breast and he wouldn't let simple age slow him down as he hurled everything he knew into getting this project completed. He wasn't sure he could in fact see it completed within his lifetime, although he was fairly certain that it would be mostly done except for the establishment of the final holy sites. Although, he supposed that the final test would be how well it was transmitted to the first generation of shamans after he was gone.
Unfortunately, as time went on, Bynwyn knew that his mind was going from a bonfire to a white hot coal - still as intense, but greatly diminished. The things outside his focus on the project were harder to keep track of, and he knew that he was perhaps unwisely delegating things. Somewhere along the line he had been presented with a petition for one of the merchants to take a collection of privately collected luxuries and rent some of the larger boats to travel out to the far west. He honestly didn't remember doing it initially, but people definitely complained about it, and it would be something that he would have had to have approved, so he must have done so. Ah well, the situation was eventually well resolved well enough when the boats returned, their loads of dyes and dyed cloth exchanged for loads of metal.
The beads and bars of silver, gold, and a new metal called lead that was mostly notable for its remarkable softness and density were curiosities, but the knives and axes of copper were more interesting to Bynwyn. While not as sharp or able to retain what edge they had as stone, when they bent from working wood or stone one could simply stop and straighten or sharpen the tools in a remarkably short time, rather than having to hope a stone edge broke in a salvageable way or start from a new stone entirely. The trade mission had also been shown some of the woodwork of the Metal Workers, which suggested that their use of copper tools - apparently in the core territories of the actual Metal Workers rather than their trading partners copper had replaced many stool tools - allowed for different ways to shape the wood that were at best stupidly difficult to do with traditional tools. Bynwyn was also pleased by the fact that needles could be made from copper and carefully purified with flame, far superior for cleanly piercing the skin than bone or wood, and far less likely to shatter than stone implements.
The man who had organized it all, one Twythulmyn of the trader clans, was of course hailed as a potential new heir - Bynwyn had lived a long time and the current heir was competent enough but also on the older end of acceptability while Twythulmyn was full of youth and life like Bynwyn had once been - and Bynwyn had to weigh the pros and cons. Twythulmyn was young and ambitious and would take up the mantle of High Chief early, perhaps before he was entirely ready, but then again perhaps he could undo some of the deterioration Bynwyn had inevitably allowed to set in with his increasingly narrow focus. Still, hard to say, especially with this new proposal the chiefs had brought to him.
With all of the new holy sites being built, they were taking inventory of the old ones and were finding old records stashed away for safe keeping. Mostly just grain tallies, but the chiefs had been assessing them and had realized something: they were in many instances managing similar numbers as High Chiefs of old, but major decisions that affected them still needed to be run past the High Chief first. News was coming up from the south of the Highland Kingdom and the Dead Priests forcing lowland villages to submit to them, the Dead Priests much more effective at it than the Highland Kingdom. Many people from the scattered remnants of the Western Confederacy who could were creeping further north, and already there were people starting to till fields at the camp where the People watched the lowlands from the badlands at the end of the cataract, not quite ready to come to the People for aid, but definitely trying to get as far away from their neighbours as possible. The Chiefs were asking for more responsibilities and necessary rights to be able to better respond to all of the problems they encountered.
So it was that Bynwyn mustered up all the focus he could to consider the new proposals before the council. One of the more interesting ideas was to empower each of the largest settlements to have their own council like that of the High Chief, essentially making the High Chief and High High Chief... honestly, they would probably just import the term 'King' from the southerners, it seemed to fit better at this point. There would be times when everyone would meet, but the local chiefs could spend more time addressing local affairs while the King and High Council worked at the biggest projects.
New Heir?
[] Twythulmyn (Mediocre Martial, Average Econ, Heroic Diplomacy, probable two turn lifespan)
[] Standard
There has been a proposal to build more boats
[] Yes (Consumes Econ, establishes permanent oversea trade route with Metal Workers)
[] No (No change)
Increase rights and responsibilities of local chiefs?
[] Maintain status quo
[] Small increase to local power (Various effects, alters action spread)
[] Large increase to local power (Changes government type to Early Ancient Provincial Kingdom (Elected), alters action spread, completes prereqs for Scourge Warding early, miscellaneous effects)
