Hey, can you tell us what the hell is going on north of the White Mountains? I've been hearing all sorts of crazy shit's been going down.
Crazy's right. The Brumyivans, Alanyivans, and Rusmysians are all getting into a giant clusterfuck, from what I heard. Merridge itself is half on fire, if you can believe it.
Wild.
Ugh, if only I was young again. I hear everybody that got in on the Transulinian trade routes are busy getting crazy rich on the Kataltin trade corridor.
Nah, you really don't want to go over there. The colonists are scuttling around again, and I heard that there was a Dragon army on the way.
Seriously dude? Like the last dragon army that got killed?
Well, yeah, that didn't count. Besides, they're really just coming back for round two anyways, and they're definitely getting the help of those filthy shiteaters.
Iiif you say so.
That wedding was delightful, wasn't it?
Oh yes, it was quite the feast. Did you notice how the two families seemed to act?
Relations that close can only mean bad things for their enemies near them, which is good for us Antiguans, eh?
The wedding is probably real, as that seems like a firsthand account. What it means for us is unclear, but there's a good enough chance of it being bad for us/good for the Duke that we should be cautious about getting intrigue-ed again.
The Transulinian trade routes just opened up during the crusade, and are supplying needed lumber for Oskaria. I think it's a safe bet that it's pretty profitable right now.
The dragon army could be real, or and the news of the invaders fighting each other could be lies propagated by the invaders to distract anyone who actually cares to stop them. I'm not sure if there's enough resistance left in Oskaria after the king's death to make that worth it though. It seems to just be us, possibly some bandits, and maybe Emir Valios. Plus any resistance is now decentralized and unable to coordinate now that the king is dead. So I'm guessing that there's actually a dragon army coming.
It's possible that the dragons are actually getting the colonists on their side, since all they'd have to do is promise to not be absolute tyrants to them, but that really doesn't sound like their style. More importantly, the people here are extremely racist. Between believing that the dragons are stooping to parlaying with lesser beings and believing that people are just being racist, I'm gonna assume it's probably the racism.
On second glance, it seems that there's a lot of different rumors about Merridge. That sounds like someone is intentionally spreading rumors to muddy the waters. The question then is whether Merridge is where the invaders are attacking first or just a distraction from the real attack.
It seems to just be us, possibly some bandits, and maybe Emir Valios. Plus any resistance is now decentralized and unable to coordinate now that the king is dead. So I'm guessing that there's actually a dragon army coming.
We are going through their territory and while the bandits may not be following the law, but it seems that they seem more Robin Hood -esque than truly evil.
Well that and we seem to share a common enemy.
OK, that's a valid reason, as long as we spend as little time as possible on things that don't involve specifically chasing down that bastard regent and nailing his ears to a tree. Which, it should be emphasized, is our priority. Pull a Trump on us, will he...?
Disregard the looted caravan. Continue pursuit of the others, who the townsfolk say are just ahead. DC: 10. Cost: 0 Budget.
[] [Martial] Search for Bandits
If the bandits ransacked this caravan, they may have answers, and punishing bandits is simply a good thing to do. DC: 25. Cost: 0 Budget. Will greatly increase Bandit Meeting DC.
These are not explicitly stated as blocking one another. I would assume, but...
[X] Plan: Making sure we keep our Boss
-[X] [Martial] Give Chase
-[X] [Diplomacy] Bandit Meeting
--[X] Add Free Action to Bandit Meeting -[X] [Free action] [Diplomacy] Contacting Vivien
-[X] [Intrigue] Message to the Bandits
-[X] [Learning] Ink Dating
-[X] [Stewardship] Infrastructure Survey
-[X] [Free action] [Stewardship] Reading Vassal Contracts
-[X] [Piety] The Country Spirits of Antigua
[X] Plan The Ministry Strikes Back
-[X] [Martial] Give Chase -[X] [Diplomacy] Contacting Vivien
-[X] [Diplomacy] Bandit Meeting
-[X] [Intrigue] Message to the Bandits -[X] [Learning] Ink Dating -[X] [Stewardship] Infrastructure Survey -[X] [Stewardship] Reading Vassal Contracts
-[X] [Piety] The Country Spirits of Antigua
-[X] [Piety] The Ancestral Spirits
Right, decided to put Reading Vassal Contracts in place of the free action, so the only difference between this and the winning plan is Ancestral Spirits vs an extra free action on the Bandit Meeting.
Edit: Seems like I forgot how to role. NOOOOOOO!!!!!!!
Edit 2: Holy damn that took a while before I found where the role dice button was located. Seriously did they change the location? That said 96 not bad, not bad at all.
Edit: Seems like I forgot how to role. NOOOOOOO!!!!!!!
Edit 2: Holy damn that took a while before I found where the role dice button was located. Seriously did they change the location? That said 96 not bad, not bad at all.
Edit: Seems like I forgot how to role. NOOOOOOO!!!!!!!
Edit 2: Holy damn that took a while before I found where the role dice button was located. Seriously did they change the location? That said 96 not bad, not bad at all.
I am a very happy man right now. Not only did I get to roll, I also got a crit. As for the choice. Considering the random event roll was a 10 and RER are not to be messed with. Let's pick that Random Event Roll Mitigation.
Piety
The Country Spirits of Antigua
DC: 22. Roll: 24 + 2 (Blessings of Oskaria) + 9.6 = 35.6.
Random Event Roll: 10
Revival of the Beasts of Autumn
Before Agueda had left to personally visit Vivien, he asked you to pay attention to the size of the economy. Pay attention to the number of granaries, of the size and production of the mills, and the number of buildings you could see. He had every faith in you, and Oskaria itself was providing backup.
[Trade: Commerce: 50 + 100 = 150. Required: 80 (Lowered by Circulation of Coin)]
That does not mean it was a difficult task.
The evidence stares you in the face no matter where you look.
The roads are paths in dirt, but the mere fact that they are wide and completely free of vegetation everywhere you look tells you that a vast amount of traffic must pass through the same areas, so much so that the roads do not grow back. Many lead off the main paths between villages - towards fortifications and castles you were fairly certain had been recently constructed. Despite the traffic however, you notice a conspicuous lack of shrines and temples, at least, for the solidity of the paths.
The granaries in the villages that you have seen along the way are tall and numerous, with few mills for the amount of land. Yet each mill has positively massive inputs and outputs, which screams wrongness, for even small mill-scale grindstones require vasts amount of labor energy. The size of the wheels implied by the amount of wheat being carted in is completely incongruous with the amount of workers you see coming in and out of the secretive mills, which suggests a different power source - and yet the winds are weak and many mills are away from the river.
Turning your eye away from the centers of civilization reveals only more alarming notes: the forests stop abruptly, immediately overtaken by farmland. The people seem to be cutting down the old-growth forests and simply paving over the land with more farmland, with scant evidence for the sacred groves and shrines to nature that should be there to appease the great spirits of nature. Even the rivers are brown and muddied where they should be clear and drinkable, and the river spirits are the absolute last spirits that any people can afford to offend.
Yet the lord of these lands has seen fit to do so.
It does not escape your attention that you have also seen a proliferation of stone fortifications and bulwarks appear all over the landscape, the sorts of building projects that could be completed relatively shortly and yet would massively hinder any attacking army...from either Etrella or from deeper in Oskaria. Worse, if your suspicion about why all these forts are made of such small stone is true, they must have quite literally mandated Oskarians rip up their own roads in order to build these fortifications.
Damning, if you could find the proof in words or testimony on whose orders this was.
Especially because in the middle of correcting the lack of nature shrines, the spirits of nature send you a message in their typically blunt and powerful manner - by sending you a great elk and expecting you to follow.
You made to follow, and many of your followers also tried.
The elk simply glanced at them, and many halted in their steps, looking between you and the great elk.
You nod towards the elk, and shake your head at your followers, placing one hand on the hilt of your sword.
"I will not be harmed," you promise.
They shakily accept as you stride after the great elk, leading you through the borders of the devastation.
Great oaks stumps jut out of the ground, where the lumbering was not quite complete. The great elk takes you close enough to see the great oaks, close enough to see that the number of rings is almost beyond your ability to quickly count. There must have been at least two hundred, enough to suggest it had outlasted not only King Julius but also all the Wyvern Wars - and it was unceremoniously chopped down, along with many of its brethren.
You knew the people who were supposed to live here. They should be your second-cousins twice-removed - they'd never do something like this, not without honoring the sacrifice.
What had happened here?
The elk plods on, gracefully stepping around all the beasts of the forest, scrabbling for purchase in the denuded forest. Even here, you see the light you exude marks you as an intruder - birdsong stops, the chattering of squirrels ceases, and the forest stills as you follow the great beast into the green. As you progress, however, you hear the sounds of the forest return, the forest shaking and moving again with the steps of the woodland animals and the flight of birds.
At last you come upon a peaceful spring, flowering in the midst of summer. Despite your foreign presence, the wild animals go on about their lives just as normal - some birds are even so bold as to perch upon your shoulder. Golden sunlight suffuses the cool clearing, illuminating the crystal-clear headwaters for a river that eventually becomes the muddy Bythnia. The smell is fresher than you can remember, and the birds are so joyous you can almost hear the catch of a song. Yet you know that this place too will become mere meat and lumber and firewood for the hungry people at the bottom of the river.
But the elk has wanted you to see something else, and leads you away from the clearing down the river. You come down by the river, witnessing where the forest gives way to the logging camps, cutting down swathes of forest without the shrines for nature. They're staffed almost entirely by the short greenskins your parents had told you stories about - casually violating the forest all around them.
Except a memory of Agueda brings you up short.
These greenskins...did they belong to this place? Did they know about the right rituals, or were they forced here?
You take your hand off your sword and choose to look at the elk meaningfully.
The elk huffs and postures angrily at them, threatening to charge once, twice, and only angrily calling off the third charge when it saw that you would not follow. Disappointment emanates from its form, but you do not acknowledge the disappointment.
Angrily, and yet still possessed of the grace that allows the elk to step between root and creatures of the undergrowth, the elk storms down the river, past where the river becomes muddy from debris and corpses swept into the river. There you see something: black hateful curses congealing in the river upon the corpses and washing onto the muddy banks. Upon the banks the curses gather and layer, mud and debris of the forest blending together over the carcasses left to rot. You do not recognize the form at first, but as the layers of hate and curses and evil gather, it becomes clear:
You are staring at a Beast of Autumn.
The elk turns and glares at you. All around you, the forest seems to quiet and dim, dark treetops concealing where the Beasts of Autumn might yet emerge from their slumber. The elk huffs angrily, once, twice, and the third time it takes one step with all the force of an unstoppable mass.
A shard of the Aurora cleaves through the air by your hand.
The two of you square off against each other. You take one step right, the elk takes one step left. Calculating eyes meets cunning eyes as the elk gauges whether to attempt killing you to sate the hatred coursing through the countryside, while you gauge whether you could kill enough to clear a pathway to civilization. The silence remains as the two of you take careful steps, never once taking your eyes off each other. As you rotate, you sweep through the forest in your peripheral vision, gauging your chances of being able to steer your way out of the unknown forest. Across from you, the elk gauges whether it can survive your might.
The two of you reach the same conclusion. You sheathe your sword as the elk angrily huffs and walks in a different direction. One you're fairly certain leads you back to the rest of the group.
Night falls, and yet it falls uneventfully, your trip through the dark forest lit by the high and mighty Star of Oskaria still burning bright.
Your followers had apparently waited all day and much of the night for you - when you return, you are met with raucous cheering. Behind you, the elk blends into the forest as if it had never been.
But you have received the message:
Correct the sins conducted against nature, or the Beasts of Autumn will be unleashed as nature's furious vengeance.
Diplomacy
Contacting Vivien
DC: 10. Roll: 20 + 2 (Blessings of Oskaria) + 8.2 = 30.2
You reach Vivien's estate midway through the month. Her family lives in a great manor, which means that in theory, there are many places she could be, in practice, she's only likely to be in one wing of the house. Likely one of the lower floors to reduce the amount of walking a noble has to do, and likely towards the rear of the manor, facing the gardens.
Also likely to be the only one in her family burning the midnight oil at ground level.
Okay, maybe one of three.
You'll never admit you guessed wrong twice.
It doesn't actually count if no one ever saw you.
Regardless, Vivien is in her room, hunched over a desk with ink and quill. When you knock on the window, she almost physically jumps in the air, before angrily stalking over to the window as you cling to the side. She slams the window grates hard - ooh, internal double-sided bronze hinges, very fancy - mere hairs in front of your face. The wind blows your hairs back and buffets your eyes - likely a petty retaliation for knocking on her window in the dead of night.
"Well that was almost bad," you helpfully remark.
"Agueda, I'm really not in the mood for this," she tersely says. "Why are you even here, anyway? You have literally no reason to show up, now that I'm not even the Finance Minister anymore," she bites off. "Though it really wasn't like I could make you listen anyway..."
"May I come inside first? It's a little...drafty out here," you say, gesturing at the window.
"Your sense of humor is untouched, unfortunately," Vivien drily notes. "Very well," she says, pinching her nose. "You may as well come in."
"Got it, boss," you casually respond.
"I'm not your boss," Vivien tiredly replies. "I thought Finance Minister was my first big chance I got, but no, it's back to being a prize horse when it benefits the head of house, I guess."
She glanced over at an open chest, and from this distance you can tell it's her paperwork from the Finance Ministry.
"I really should get around to getting rid of those," she wistfully says.
"No, you're still my boss, and the case is still on," you retort.
"Oh?" Vivien says, turning towards you. Her gaze is full of hunger. "How? I received the official, regent-stamped letter practically the day after the royal messengers proclaimed the king dead - the regent didn't even care enough to send the message with royal priority," she says, voice quavering. "So how are you so confident?"
[] "I have proof that the order is illegitimate."
-[] What proof do you have?
[] "Just trust me."
bunch of stuff unwritten because it's five and I want to sleep - will probably write the rest over today and tomorrow maybe
anyway, it's time to finally fulfill the promise of the original post and start being Ace Accountant
We should have an autopass for this option we took, so I think we're safe to say that we have evidence that the order was given while the king was still alive.
[X] "I have proof that the order is illegitimate."
-[X] Show Ink Dating proof that the order was given before the king died.
We should have an autopass for this option we took, so I think we're safe to say that we have evidence that the order was given while the king was still alive.
[X] "I have proof that the order is illegitimate."
-[X] Show Ink Dating proof that the order was given before the king died.
Except Agueda likely left the group before they completed any of their actions, meaning he doesn't know the result of Tekla's Ink Dating. Assuming it would even show that the missive was written before the king's death, for all we know it might turn out that it was not. We'd basically be bluffing to her face and hoping that Tekla gets the result we hope for.
"How? I received the official, regent-stamped letter practically the day after the royal messengers proclaimed the king dead - the regent didn't even care enough to send the message with royal priority," she says, voice quavering. "So how are you so confident?"
[X] Given the speed by which this order was supposedly sent, you strongly suspect that it was in fact written before the King's death, which would make it illegal. Tekla has ways to date ink, so you're currently having him look into that. No, you don't have any strong evidence yet but you do have an avenue of attack. On your way here, you passed through Antigua, one of the Duke's own territories. What you saw there has you convinced that you can get the Sejm to strip the Regent of his rank for dereliction of his duties. You just need enough time and freedom to actually collect the evidence.
The speed that at which everything happened should at the very least be suspicious enough to have her give us more time.
Also holy damn good thing I got that crit. I mean it didn't stop the beasts of autumn, but imagine if they started causing chaos this turn already. That said I find this really suspicious. Everybody should know what happens if you piss of nature in this world and yet the lord of this land decides. "Hey, let's do it again." This is beyond incompetence, this is beyond greed, this is sabotage in its purest form! Forts being build in record pace, nature being pissed off? Should be pretty obvlious the lord of the land is trying to weaken Oskaria by summoning the Beasts of Autumn, the people of the land are having a good time, so they're not likely to stop him and the greenskins take over for all the jobs where the lord thinks the Oskarians are unlikely to go along with. He's hiding the prosperity of the land probably to ensure the government doesn't get suspicious or to have a legit reason of not doing anything against it and/or to dodge taxes. Black money that in return can be used for further sabotage.
On the bright side. That means we're on the right place to look for proof. Hopefully before the bomb truly explodes and the Beasts of Autumn return in full glory.
[X] "The regent didn't even care enough to send the message with royal priority?" "How did it get here so fast from the front lines of the crusade?"
We have no proof, but well, there is clearly something strange and likely illegal going in.......
