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From a Single Ember (RWBY/'After the End' CKII)

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Powerofmind said:
Is a write-in Diplomacy action to 'help' Edelweiss broaden her choice of spouse possible? Not to choose him for her, but simply to give her more than local fare?
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Yeah, as a Diplomacy Write-In, you could help Edelweiss expand her Courting Pool, so to speak. It's unusual, but far from unheard of. It'll make Gerhard a tad queasy, but, as a typical teenaged female, Edelweiss will be very pleased with the concept.

Edit: Though Edelweiss will remain unaware of what you pick, you do have to select whether or not the potential suitors you're looking for will be willing to accept a Matrilinial marriage.
 
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Powerofmind said:
Personal actions in general: I like them, but perhaps a few tiny changes...
@RedrumSprinkles Is a write-in Diplomacy action to 'help' Edelweiss broaden her choice of spouse possible? Not to choose him for her, but simply to give her more than local fare?
-I'd be tempted to replace the Marshal request with either the above write-in or diplo practice(we can always request when it's an ambition). Ten is okay, but more is better...
-I'm tempted to say we should switch infrastructure with research. We're something of a natural in the area and I do like me some tech advantages.
-Shouldn't we hire a teller? It will cost us, but we'll be sure to get someone with higher learning to replace Poppola, and it gives a shot at extra learning.
-What about firing the extra serfs in the castle?
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I like these Ideas and think we should go for them.
The only thing I am kinda against is the research instead of infrastructure for two reasons:
1) We didn't get a full view of our realm, and I would like to fix that
2) According to the current plan we are getting a tech vault this turn, lets see what is inside it and use that to boost our research next turn.
 
RedrumSprinkles said:
Yeah, as a Diplomacy Write-In, you could help Edelweiss expand her Courting Pool, so to speak. It's unusual, but far from unheard of. It'll make Gerhard a tad queasy, but, as a typical teenaged female, Edelweiss will be very pleased with the concept.
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"The more people she thinks to court, the less likely she is to pick one right away." *Gerhard crosses fingers*
doruma1920 said:
I like these Ideas and think we should go for them.
The only thing I am kinda against is the research instead of infrastructure for two reasons:
1) We didn't get a full view of our realm, and I would like to fix that
2) According to the current plan we are getting a tech vault this turn, lets see what is inside it and use that to boost our research next turn.
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In addition, are you possibly willing to consider doing a hire of a martial tutor? We could hire him, appoint him, and get an action out of him in the same breath. Even slightly below average is better than no marshal at all...
If you aren't willing to double-hire, possibly Research Rites instead of hiring the teller right off(since it also has a shot of proccing a learning increase)?
 
GUESS WHAT TIME IT IS MY FRIENDS!

Grimm Tales - A Collection of Stories
To Original Post

5 - Stardust

You want to know where Dust came from? Little one mine, such a story is very old, older than even I could dream, but perhaps I can shed some light.

Many thousands of years past, before even the Time Before, things were even more terrible and dark than they are today. In that time, men did not have the relics of the past, or the secret of Dust. And then they discovered Aura. Like a flickering candle, Aura brought new insight, new light, to the darkness of the time before the Time Before. But it also brought shadows; the Grimm. The Grimm have never changed, and never will, but in those times, men were not so clever, did not have the protective embrace of many Progenitors or the Maidens, so they cried out in desperate hope for rescue, for a savior, for anything to keep the shadows from snuffing out their flickering lights.

They begged the sun, who brought light every day. It did not answer, too concerned with the cycle of day and night, of the balance between dark and light, to aid men, who were wholly of light. They begged the world, which gave them stones for homes and soil for food, water to drink and air to breath. It scoffed at them, so stubbornly refusing to give what little of it's bounty it already gave, it would give no more! They begged the moon, which gave light even in the night. It laughed at them and their suffering, hiding in darkness for weeks at a time, pleased to see the power of the creatures of night.

They begged, and begged, and were heard, but not by the sun, not by the land, and not by the moon. Their call so loud and so filled with hope that their twilight hour would end, that even the stars heard. The stars looked upon the earth and saw, with delight, innumerable little lights, fighting the dark like themselves and tried to aid men. The clouds of the sky tried to cover them, the sun smothered them in the daylight, and the moon outshone them all, but the stars sent only one of their number, a brilliant streak of orange and red, to laugh in the face of the sun and shine in the day, to dance beyond the reach of the earth, and to strike at the laughing face of the moon.

Men were terrified, fearful, of the act of the stars, at the burning body of the moon that fell around them, and hid. When they returned, they found that the stars had granted their desire, they had found a way to help men keep their flickering candle lit.

Dust.

Beautiful, shimmering in color, and filled with the just retribution that all the stars in the sky could muster against the forces that conspired to snuff out the small lights that resembled them so much, against the earth, against the moon, against the sun, and most of all, against the Grimm. To spite the moon as it spited men, it gouged out the moon's laughing face, a reminder that to give suffering is to earn suffering in turn. To spite the land as it had the moon, what little Dust there was sprung up anew, forming crystals and caverns that would open the bounties of the earth to men, despite it's protests. To spite the sun as it had the land, the Dust glowed, and had colors richer and clearer than anything upon the earth or in the sky, even in the night. To spite the Grimm as it did all others, it gave men incredible power, power enough to wound their hides and strip their feathers, turning man's dying candle into a roaring bonfire of light to chase away the things that hid in the dark.

All this came from the stars, the little flickering lights in an ocean of night, but oh so powerful in their own unique little ways, and so much like us, bright, defiant lights, in an ocean of black.
 
Powerofmind said:
In addition, are you possibly willing to consider doing a hire of a martial tutor? We could hire him, appoint him, and get an action out of him in the same breath. Even slightly below average is better than no marshal at all...
If you aren't willing to double-hire, possibly Research Rites instead of hiring the teller right off(since it also has a shot of proccing a learning increase)?
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The first I am ambivalent about, though would prefer to get scary intrigue waifu to love status asap.
The second; as we currently just on the edge of the required conditions for the ambition to improve learning, I don't really want to. Though, that might just be me having a kind of broken window fallacy.
 
doruma1920 said:
The first I am ambivalent about, though would prefer to get scary intrigue waifu to love status asap.
The second; as we currently just on the edge of the required conditions for the ambition to improve learning, I don't really want to. Though, that might just be me having a kind of broken window fallacy.
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We only have five learning, and require 8 to fulfill the ambition. At worst, we increase our adherent trait(which might give learning), and earn 1 point of learning from the check(any more is a critical success) which brings us to 7(at most, reasonably), a safe number, at least for now. Additionally, even if we increase learning past the point of ambition, it still gives us additional learning actions, and slows down the piety decay in a more permanent fashion.

I myself am waffling hard on 'do I want a spouse action, or fix the broke-ass coucil action?' So maybe when we've got a solid plan made up, I'll make the counter-plan(with basically only that as the difference) to see what people want more.
 
Powerofmind said:
We only have five learning, and require 8 to fulfill the ambition.
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@RedrumSprinkles
We need a maximum of 5 Learning to start the ambition Improve Learning right? Which ends at 8?

Powerofmind said:
Additionally, even if we increase learning past the point of ambition, it still gives us additional learning actions, and slows down the piety decay in a more permanent fashion.
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Yeah, Im waffling between getting the Learning now and prevent piety decay, and later and getting a bonus to piety to finishing Learning with the Learning ambition.
 
doruma1920 said:
@RedrumSprinkles
We need a maximum of 5 Learning to start the ambition Improve Learning right? Which ends at 8?



Yeah, Im waffling between getting the Learning now and prevent piety decay, and later and getting a bonus to piety to finishing Learning with the Learning ambition.
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We're totally blind to the level of commitment necessary to finish our current ambition. We can only waste so much time not making learning suck less...
 
@RedrumSprinkles Now that Turn 2 is up I have some questions - wait, don't run!

The Personal Action of Spouse vs the Diplomatic Action of Befriend [Sable] - what would be the difference?

If we don't make Sable our secret Spymistress this turn how will she react? I assume she'll think we're wasting time and not be too happy with us. On the other hand if we don't make her our Spymistress can we use her Intrigue ability to boost our Intrigue actions, like keeping our Spymaster at hand?

If we have our Chancellor improve relations with a lord's court will it improve the odds of success for Intrigue actions in that court (basically having contacts already in place)?
 
Chaeronea said:
The Personal Action of Spouse vs the Diplomatic Action of Befriend [Sable] - what would be the difference?
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'Spouse' helps with stuff like heirs and life planning. 'Befriend' is focusing on Opinion+.

Chaeronea said:
On the other hand if we don't make her our Spymistress can we use her Intrigue ability to boost our Intrigue actions, like keeping our Spymaster at hand?
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Can't tell you how she'll react, but you won't always get her Intrigue bonus.

Chaeronea said:
If we have our Chancellor improve relations with a lord's court will it improve the odds of success for Intrigue actions in that court (basically having contacts already in place)?
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Yes!

Hope that helped!
 
[X]Plan: Extended Honeymoon
Personal/General:
[] Spouse: You recently met and married Sable von Grimmsbane, now Sable Stenberg. You had a good wedding night, and you enjoy each other's company so far. You two also decided to work hard at building a stable, happy marriage. Why not start right now?
[] Write-In: Appoint Sable, as our new Spymistress, but continue to employ our old one as an ablative intrigue meat shield
--Don't tell Doughta this.
--Have our wife attend council meetings as our wife, and secretly our spymistress.

I like Sable, lets make sure she likes us and has a meat shield when she spies

Diplomacy:
[] Befriend: Focus on improving your relationship with a character. [Sable]
[] Write-in: Search for available bachelors for Edelweiss

Again, Sable's rating for Intrigue is 'YES' making sure we are on her good side is a must

Martial:
[] Personally Patrol: Personally sally forth with your retinue to keep your lands safe.
[] Replenish Retinue: Your Retinue suffered some losses. It's a good idea to replenish them as soon as possible.
-10 Lien
Brings Upkeep Costs back up to -10/Turn

Our land is still in danger, though not as much as it was, lets keep it that way.

Stewardship:
[] Infrastructure Inspection: Spend some time personally inspecting your Estate, seeing if anything can be run more efficiently. Last time didn't reveal anything special, but with the grimm running rampant, perhaps you missed something.
[] Count Beans: Invest yourself in running your realm, hopefully increasing your Stewardship. Will also give you a better picture of the realm's finances if completed successfully.

We had some trouble with the ledgers last turn, lets fix that.

Intrigue:
[] Assess [Siggy al Saltzpyre]: Subtly investigate a character's skills, traits, and abilities.
[] Gather Rumors: Send out some agents to listen to the whispered word of your realm and beyond, collecting rumors, news, truths, lies, and everything in between. Allows for more accurate news and rumors, and better estimation of how things are in the world of Remnant.
5 Lien

Finding out about the new noble in town, and getting a rumor network set up without bandits this time.

Learning:
[] Hire Teller: Spend a handful of piety and an insignificant sum of prestige to hire a Teller to hopefully increase your Learning. The Teller will join you at Court.
-10 Piety
-5 Prestige

Get to work on finding a better Learning advisor.

Free Actions:
[] Name Regent: Name a Regent in the event of your untimely demise. [Ophelia Stenberg]
[] Fire Extra Servants: Your father hired an excess of help around the castle. (Gain +1 Lien per turn)
-20 Lien

I don't trust Sable, it is never a good idea to trust someone with that high intrigue, lets not give her to many openings.

Councilor

Chancellor:
[] Fabricate Claim: Have Cedar fabricate a claim on one of [Logrhorn]'s titles. If obtained, it appears as if you hold a strong claim to another's title, and a war to possess it is justified. It would be a good way to expand your territory, but it might take awhile to draw up the required documents.
--Estate of Logrhorn

Begin preparations for the Succession war.

Marshal:
None appointed

Steward:
[] Organize Reclamation Party: Terra found a bunker from the Time Before! Have her assemble a team of tinkerer-adepts, prospectors, soldiers, and serfs to recover absolutely everything of value.

Lets see what loot we have.

Spymaster (Actually Spymistress):
[] Spy (Internal): Have Doughta (Sable) look inside your own court for malcontents and malicious thoughts. With any luck, he could uncover valuable secrets, and improve your information collection for your realm this turn.

What is that fox faunus doing here? and what does everyone think of us.

Head Teller:
[] Keep at Hand: Keep Popolla around. She'll probably get into your booze cabinet, but she might be able to provide some assistance during your Learning rolls.

Maybe she knows someone a bit more religious then she is.

Huntsman Superior:
[] Teach Me, Daff!: Have Daff begin training you in the ways of the Huntsmn.

We have an ambition, and we are not being swarmed by Grimm, lets get started on the ambition.

Right, I think this is good. Unless anyone has any ideas on how to improve it, Ill be going with this.

Edit: Oops, forgot to specify who to appoint as regent. Chose our mom, as she is no longer locked in her room and because I don't trust Sable with governance over our sister. Plus giving Sable as regent basically paints a target on our back for her to kill us once we have an heir.

Edit2: Added my reasons for each in italics below each category.
 
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Okay, all, looking for feedback and help with this.


[x]Plan Chaeronea

[] Replace/Appoint a New Councilor: Appoint Sable, as our new Spymistress, but continue to employ our old one as an ablative meat shield
[] Family

Get Sabine secretly working as our new Spymistress while keeping Doughta as our official spymaster to hoodwink anyone else. Also let's keep trying to fix things with our family - Mom is still hurting from Dad's death, Edelweiss is still distant with us, and we have another sibling on the way.

[x]Befriend: Sable
[x]Speech Practice

Try to make sure things are going well between us and Sabine - I want to get the Spouse action but we really need to get our Intrigue capabilities improved with two hostile Estates on our border. Also try to improve our Diplomacy from its current level of average to something semi-respectable.

[x]Replenish Retinue
[x] Patrol Lands

We need to keep up the patrols to keep the Grimm in check in our lands, and we have no Marshal to act on our behalf. Also get our retinue back up to full strength to make our patrols against the Grimm more effective.

[x]Infrastructure Inspection
[x] Count Beans

Check out the infrastructure of our Estate to see where we can cut costs and improve productivity, try to make sense of the accounts ledgers for our Estate, and possibly improve our Stewardship.

[x]Assess [Siggy al Saltzpyre]
[x]Personally Spy

Let's see if we can get a better idea of what our newest arrival can do, and whether we can make her a Councillor or not. Also let's get an idea of who's up to what in our court.

[x]Pray to the Knight

Let's get some more Piety - I want to hold off on boosting our Learning until we take it as an actual Ambition.

[x]Name Regent [Ophelia, then Sabine, then Edelweiss]
[x]Fire Extra Servants

Get some Regents nominated in case some bad stuff happens to us, and get rid of the extra servants around the castle - we desperately need every Lien we can get.

Chancellor
[x]Improve Relations in [Loghrhorn] Court

Have Cedar continue with his work improving things with Loghrhorn. According to the GM it will help when we start infiltrating agents into his court.

Marshal
We have none, so no actions here.

Steward
[x]Boost Trade

Whatever we do, whether it's upgrade our Estate, improve our troops or work on infrastructure like the Dust mine and leftover bunker near our castle we are going to need a lot of Lien, and this should help in that regard.

Spymaster
[x]Spy (Internal): Have Doughta (and secretly Sabine) look inside your own court for malcontents and malicious thoughts.

Internal security check, with our wife secretly making sure that it gets done properly.

Head Teller
[x]Keep at Hand

Let's try to avoid having our Head Teller make things worse.

Huntsman Superior
[x]Teach Me, Daff!

Our Ambition is to be trained as a Huntsman, so let's take our first step down that path.

 
Alright, I'll put my hand in a little early. I'm assuming that, like all other 'hire to increase stat' courtiers, the strategist will also stick around after.

[X] Plan Council Turnover
Personal/General:
[] Replace/Appoint a New Councilor: Appoint [Strategy Tutor received this turn] to the position of Marshal.
[] Write-In: Appoint Sable, as our new Spymistress, but continue to employ our old one as an ablative intrigue meat shield
--Don't tell Doughta this.
--Have our wife attend council meetings as our wife, and secretly our spymistress.

Diplomacy:
[] Befriend: Focus on improving your relationship with a character. [Sable]
[] Write-in: Search for available bachelors for Edelweiss

Martial:
[] Replenish Retinue: Your Retinue suffered some losses. It's a good idea to replenish them as soon as possible.
-10 Lien
Brings Upkeep Costs back up to -10/Turn
[] Hire Strategic Tutor: Spend a handful of lien and an insignificant sum of prestige to hire a Strategic Instructor. You're a damn good leader and tactician, but you're not so self-consumed as to you think that you're the best.
-35 Lien
-5 Prestige

Stewardship:
[] Infrastructure Inspection: Spend some time personally inspecting your Estate, seeing if anything can be run more efficiently. Last time didn't reveal anything special, but with the grimm running rampant, perhaps you missed something.
[] Count Beans: Invest yourself in running your realm, hopefully increasing your Stewardship. Will also give you a better picture of the realm's finances if completed successfully.

Intrigue:
[] Assess [Siggy al Saltzpyre]: Subtly investigate a character's skills, traits, and abilities.
[] Gather Rumors: Send out some agents to listen to the whispered word of your realm and beyond, collecting rumors, news, truths, lies, and everything in between. Allows for more accurate news and rumors, and better estimation of how things are in the world of Remnant.
5 Lien

Learning:
[] Hire Teller: Spend a handful of piety and an insignificant sum of prestige to hire a Teller to hopefully increase your Learning. The Teller will join you at Court.
-10 Piety
-5 Prestige

Free Actions:
[] Name Regent: Name a Regent in the event of your untimely demise. [Ophelia Stenberg]
[] Fire Extra Servants: Your father hired an excess of help around the castle. (Gain +1 Lien per turn)
-20 Lien

Councilor

Chancellor:
[] Fabricate Claim: Have Cedar fabricate a claim on one of [Logrhorn]'s titles. If obtained, it appears as if you hold a strong claim to another's title, and a war to possess it is justified. It would be a good way to expand your territory, but it might take awhile to draw up the required documents.
--Estate of Logrhorn

Marshal:
[] Patrol Lands: Send your marshal out with some levies to run regular patrols. With any luck, the sight of your troops will instill a sense of safety and security among your people.
-Write-In modifier - Bandit Hunting: Last season's attempts at intrigue left you with an embarrassing bandit problem. Our new marshal should probably fix that.

Steward:
[] Organize Reclamation Party: Terra found a bunker from the Time Before! Have her assemble a team of tinkerer-adepts, prospectors, soldiers, and serfs to recover absolutely everything of value.

Spymaster (Actually Spymistress):
[] Spy (Internal): Have Doughta (Sable) look inside your own court for malcontents and malicious thoughts. With any luck, he could uncover valuable secrets, and improve your information collection for your realm this turn.

Head Teller:
[] Keep at Hand: Keep Popolla around. She'll probably get into your booze cabinet, but she might be able to provide some assistance during your Learning rolls.

Huntsman Superior:
[] Teach Me, Daff!: Have Daff begin training you in the ways of the Huntsman.

The core differences between my plan and everyone else's are my decisions to modify one persona action to hire, appoint, and send on patrol a new marshal in one fell swoop, rather than do a personal patrol ourselves and a Spouse action(It hurts me, too, to ignore our waifu, but she wants a smart Knight as a husband, and no smart Knight leaves such a critical council position unfilled). Technically my turn gives us one extra action immediately, and opens up more actions in the future to focus on the things we want to focus on, rather than the things it's our duty to focus on.
 
Powerofmind said:
Given previous figures provided by Redrum, the largest fleet we could amass as supreme emperor of all of atlas is between 200 and 300 bullhead VTOL personal transports, and if we're incredibly good with stewardship we might be able to cheese ~20 battleships.
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That is if we don't build a shipyard to build a lot of them quickly. It is possible to build varying levels of harbor, which grant varying numbers of ships, the same is probably true for airships.

We will blot out the sun with our armada, we just need to make sure there are heavy guns that depress below horizontal.
 
doruma1920 said:
That is if we don't build a shipyard to build a lot of them quickly. It is possible to build varying levels of harbor, which grant varying numbers of ships, the same is probably true for airships.

We will blot out the sun with our armada, we just need to make sure there are heavy guns that depress below horizontal.
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The primary issue with airfleets is that the maintenance process and keeping training up to snuff is freakishly expensive. Redrum indicated that the lion's share of the Lien and Dust costs went into pilot training and ship maintenance, not creating them. We might be able to make a bullhead ourselves, the only issue with it is that it will utterly destroy our net income to try to make regular use of it without a huge estate infrastructure or some serious uplifting.

Basically, we're sort of 'cheating' the actual technology necessary to maintain and run half of the stuff we're using, so Dust is used in inordinate and massive quantities that it shouldn't need to be used in to support any relics of advanced tech we own, and on the training spectrum, we don't have standardized training regimens or easy ways to access a large amount of skilled labor.
 
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