Negaverse Omake – Highland Kingdom vs The Law
The lowlands are filled with death…and with glory for Black Eagle and the Highland Kingdom! While your chariots are outnumbered by those of the Thunder Nomads and outmatched by those of the Dead Priests, they are enough to keep the enemy busy while your heavily armed warriors demolish their weak foes. A steady stream of jewelry, horses, and Half-Men makes its way into the heartland of Macra's hills, to adorn the King, draw the ards across the fields, and pay off their war debt. Your child-villages in the lowlands suffer at the raids of the nomads, of course, but even in this things are going better than ever before. The nomads and dead priests both seem distracted by whatever is going on to their east. This could be the perfect opportunity to strike a knockout blow. However, while the war goes well, the King is growing worried. His eldest son seems to have shaken off his weakened visage, and is looking to grow into a fine heir…a fact which angers Tormod, his brother and Hills War Chief who had been favored to ascend when his son seemed sickly and likely to be taken into Macra's arms sooner or later. Perhaps the reserve warriors would be better placed at home to balance out his brothers troops…
What should your reserve warriors focus on?
[] Scatter the Thunder Nomads while they're distracted!
[] Strike at the Dead Priests corrupted home while they're distracted!
[] Protect your son- and daughter-villages from the nomads
[] Perhaps they should relieve some of the kings guards…
[] We have new concerns for our warriors to deal with … (See later options)
Meanwhile, the delegation sent to set the Hill People on the right path when it comes to trading have returned…babbling in fear and willing or even eager to be made Half-Men for their failure if it meant they didn't have to go back to the almost mythical forest home of the Ymaryn. Eventually, the King is able to get them to explain what happened and what has them so scared. Once they were all settled with enough beer to take the edge off, the King finally allowed himself to consider this newest, terrifying magic of the Hill People. Apparently, their knowledge of sacred Script was far beyond what your shamans had previously thought. The bastards had somehow wrought a grand geas upon their people, binding them with great obelisks placed prominently in the center of each settlement your traders visited, each covered in more sacred script then even your holiest sites were home to. When your people were granted an audience with their King they expected haggling, an exchange of gifts, and an resigned acceptance in light of your warriors' successes. Instead, the King consulted one of these spirit stones, transfixed by its magic for minutes before going into a trance whilst his ancestors spoke their wisdom through him. Alarmed at this display of spiritual might, your people remember little more than the general idea that the Ymaryn would accept any traders that come their way, and that if the Highland Kingdom took issue with that, then they had better do so with an army. As he called together his shamans, the King bitterly recalled all the old tales of the Ymaryn and their strange and powerful magics, and realized he had been foolish to assume their isolation made them weak.
How will you respond to the Hill People?
[] Send a grand delegation of jewelries and other gifts, to beg forgiveness for your offense (Costs Econ and Diplo, greatly improves relations)
[] Send a normal trading delegation (Costs Diplo, improves relations)
[] Ignore them in hopes that they ignore you (???)
[] Stop trading with them (Lowers Diplo, ???)
[] Send another delegation to insist on the matter, this time with warriors… (Must be paired with "new concerns" warrior option, ???)
What should your shamans focus on?
[] Send shamans to examine these spirit stones (Costs Mysticism, must be paired with a delegation from the previous vote)
[] Have the shamans attempt to construct some of these spirit stones (Costs Mysticism, locks in an Expand Holy Sites action for next turn)
[] Have them entreat the spirits for knowledge on these magics (Costs mysticism)
[] The tricks of the Hill People are not important, the shamans should focus on warding the king from evil like normal
hyrule420 said:
Wow…so much for the people wondering if there's magic or not in this quest, apparently you can make magic rocks that possess people with the spirits…
PowerofBody said:
Ok, let's not get distracted by the obvious shiny and fake magic, AF is clearly warning us that we're about to get killed by our brother…
[k] Perhaps they should relieve some of the kings guards…
[k] Send a normal trading delegation (Costs Diplo, improves relations)
[k] The tricks of the Hill People are not important, the shamans should focus on warding the king from evil like normal
Sea-san said:
Guess we're back to being the only kingdom, pretty sure if your king is being possessed by your ancestor spirits when they have a decision to make that's a theocracy…
Chip and Potato said:
Oh shit, if we can get that magic we won't need to worry about the Half-Men rebelling anymore, and we can stop dealing with people wanting to reform the system and tank our stability all the time:
[k] Perhaps they should help relieve some of the kings guards…
[k] Send a normal trading delegation (Costs Diplo, improves relations)
[k] Have the shamans attempt to construct some of these spirit stones (Costs Mysticism, locks in an Expand Holy Sites action for next turn)
Lili said:
Oh for the love of…it's just a stele, guys. It's not magic, it's a codified law. Stop taking everything our Neolithic primitives say as the gospel truth!
Candesence said:
Well damn, that explains why we keep hearing about how the Hill Elves are so focused on work…they're not workaholics, they're brainwashing themselves into magic work robots!
Unusual Michael said:
Oooh, nice,+3 econ, +1 prestige…shame about the -1 martial and -2 diplo, though :/ With the +1 from terrace farm expansion, it looks like the raids got us +2 econ, which is already pretty awesome before the +1 prestige! Was that a crit, then, AF? Or were we on the edge there? We've done a lot without getting any prestige… It would certainly help make up for that terrible critfail on the delegation! D= Let's get this shit fixed up, we have the stats to spend…and whether its magic or codified laws, we need to get a look at those stones. Either we discover incredibly powerful magic, or we get inspiration to codify our own laws, either way we set ourselves ahead a bunch
It'll hurt in diplo, but protecting the vassals should help with that.
[k] Send a grand delegation of jewelries and other gifts, to beg forgiveness for your offense (Costs Econ and Diplo, greatly improves relations)
[k] Protect your son- and daughter-villages from the nomads
[k] Send shamans to examine these spirit stones (Costs Mysticism, must be paired with a delegation from the previous vote)
Authority said:
Whether its magic or "just" codified law, its still bullshit. We get it, Academia Fruit, you think communism and elves are the best. Can you stop giving them so much bullshit? A Neolithic canal? Perfect farming techniques while we had failure chances on basic farming expansion until we got their help? Super advanced writing? Either mind control or codified law a thousand or more years ahead of RL? Fucking Cowpox Vaccination before bronze working? What's next, sanitation, ironworking before bronze, roman roads and aqueducts? The hoover dam, even???
[k] Stop cheating for the communist elves
"minaz" said:
redfur78 said:
Damn, authority, calm down—AF's said on more than one occasion that all our neighbors are based on different quest philosophies on SV. The Hill Elves sound like the hyper isolationist wonder-rush that so many people want—no military actions, no real knowledge of the world around them (I mean, can you imagine if that vote a while back had gone the other way and we hadn't explored to the south and found the metal diggers?), etc. And you're still reading too much into the hints AF gives out. They don't have vaccination, that's as ridiculous as you suggest—they probably just lucked into having a lot more cows than others, because of how they keep letting nomads in—and on that note, can you imagine how messed up their values must be if they keep taking in all these random people? They have to constantly be at negative stability…
AN: Finally got around to writing this... hope you enjoy
@Academia Nut !
Also, i just took the AU names from the lowlands omake, with the exception of my own AU self, so dont take the names to mean anything--i'm just bad at coming up with names and used that same ordering without any matching of people to argument styles
Quick Edit: In case it wasn't clear, the idea is that they ended up taking
my Unusual Michael's plan, which left the king vulnerable to an average roll on the assassination check, but also led the way to them getting access to the Law megaproject...Authority, sadly, was banned after a major explosion of a post after we cured cholera and shared it with him
...incidentally, who is authority even based off of? Whoever it is, sorry you randomly ended with a jerk for a negaverse copy <3
