The Stolen Lands have, for time immemorial, resisted any and all efforts at settlement. Rumours speak of people vanishing in the night, buildings and settlements torn apart by wandering monsters and impossible storms, and other, more fanciful things.
But despite the seeming impossibility of such an endeavour, the Stolen Lands have a mystique about them that will always draw the brave, the curious, and the foolhardy.
On the planet of Golarion, in the eastern reaches of the continent of Avistan, between Brevoy to the north and the squabbling self-titled lords of the River Kingdoms to the south and west, there sits a strip of land claimed by both but conquered by neither. A bountiful wildland of marsh and river and forest and mountain, brimming with untapped resources that could form the core of a new nation to stand apart, to match or surpass its neighbours, if only it could be tamed. The subject of fierce desire in the highest halls of Brevoy and the Riverlords alike, and of curiosity and idle musing in the thoughts of adventurers, treasure hunters, and fortune-seekers in half of the inns and taverns of Avistan.
The Stolen Lands.
Aptly named, for none who have ever tried to claim the region in truth have ever succeeded. Armies that march in inevitably retreat, whether in good order or in tatters. Would-be settlers vanish into the wilderness never to be seen again. The ruins of dozens of attempts to put footholds into the region can be found in the gutted, abandoned ruins of settlements, mines, and forts, their people fled or worse. Despite centuries of effort, barely a handful of hardscrabble outposts exist at the edges of the Stolen Lands - none of them more than a handful of years old - and the region is otherwise the domain of monsters and small nomadic groups, the latter largely comprised of the desperate or the foolhardy.
And now despite this, you have come to stake a claim on these lands. Whether you will be any more successful than those who came before remains to be seen, but you have the gumption to take that risk.
Who are you?
[Pick One Each]
[] [Name] Write-in
[] [Gender] Man
[] [Gender] Woman
[] [Gender] Write-in
[] Optional: Appearance (write-in or image)
[] [Ancestry] Human
As unpredictable and varied as any of Golarion's peoples, humans have exceptional drive and the capacity to endure and expand. Though many civilizations thrived before humanity rose to prominence, humans have built some of the greatest and the most terrible societies throughout the course of history, and today they are the most populous people in the realms around the Inner Sea.
[Gain the following trait: Sharp-Witted - +2 Diplomacy, +1 Intrigue]
[] [Ancestry] Elf
As an ancient people, elves have seen great change and have the perspective that can come only from watching the arc of history. After leaving the world in ancient times, they returned to a changed land, and they still struggle to reclaim their ancestral homes, most notably from terrible demons that have invaded parts of their lands. To some, the elves are objects of awe—graceful and beautiful, with immense talent and knowledge. Among themselves, however, the elves place far more importance on personal freedom than on living up to these ideals.
[Gain the following trait: Worldly Knowledge - +2 Learning, +1 Stewardship]
[] [Ancestry] Dwarf
Dwarves have a well-earned reputation as a stoic and stern people, ensconced within citadels and cities carved from solid rock. While some see them as dour and humorless crafters of stone and metal, dwarves and those who have spent time among them understand their unbridled zeal for their work, caring far more about quality than quantity. To a stranger, they can seem untrusting and clannish, but to their friends and family, they are warm and caring, their halls filled with the sounds of laughter and hammers hitting anvils.
[Gain the following trait: Proud Traditions - +2 Stewardship, +1 Martial]
[] [Ancestry] Goblin
The convoluted histories other people cling to don't interest goblins. These small folk live in the moment, and they prefer tall tales over factual records. The wars of a few decades ago might as well be from the ancient past. Misunderstood by other people, goblins are happy how they are. Goblin virtues are about being present, creative, and honest. They strive to lead fulfilled lives, rather than worrying about how their journeys will end. To tell stories, not nitpick the facts. To be small, but dream big.
[Gain the following trait: Dauntless Enthusiasm - +2 Martial, +1 Learning]
[] [Ancestry] Gnome
Long ago, early gnome ancestors emigrated from the First World, realm of the fey. While it's unclear why the first gnomes wandered to Golarion, this lineage manifests in modern gnomes as bizarre reasoning, eccentricity, obsessive tendencies, and what some see as naivete. These qualities are further reflected in their physical characteristics, such as spindly limbs, brightly colored hair, and childlike and extremely expressive facial features that further reflect their otherworldly origins.
[Gain the following trait: Fey Lightfoot - +2 Intrigue, +1 Spirituality]
[] [Ancestry] Leshy
Guardians and emissaries of the environment, leshies are immortal spirits of nature temporarily granted a physical form.
Leshies are "born" when a skilled druid or other master of primal magic conducts a ritual to create a suitable vessel, and then a spirit chooses that vessel to be their temporary home.
[Gain the following trait: Wildspeaker - +2 Spirituality, +1 Diplomacy]
[] [Ancestry] Write-in (subject to GM veto): Choose any 2 attributes (Martial, Diplomacy, Stewardship, Intrigue, Learning, Spirituality), gaining +1 to each.
What is it that separates you from your peers? [Pick Two Traits]
[] [Trait] Strategist
The planning and movements of battle and war come naturally to you. [+3 Martial]
[] [Trait] Charismatic
Oration is the art of speech, and you are an artist most excellent. No matter the situation, you have a way with people. [+3 Diplomacy]
[] [Trait] Deceitful
A rumour in the right place can deflect almost any danger one can imagine. If that's just onto someone else, well, that's just how it goes. [+3 Intrigue]
[] [Trait] Administrator
Politics, poetry, promises - all lies, and more importantly they are luxuries compared to the cold reality of numbers and statistics. With a pen and a ledger, you can change the course of wars, nations, and the world itself. [+3 Stewardship]
[] [Trait] Scholar
Experience may be the greatest teacher, but you prefer a good manual as a first resort. [+3 Learning]
[] [Trait] Acolyte
You have a greater than average respect for the larger forces of the world. Where some might shy away from things beyond mortal ken, you find comfort. [+3 Spirituality]
[] [Trait] Duelist
You've thrown down the gauntlet a few times in your life, and each time you've walked away unbowed. [+2 Martial, +10 Personal Combat]
[] [Trait] Attractive
You have the looks to feature in many a sordid fantasy, and the charm of the most troublesome of bards. [+2 Diplomacy, +10 Fertility]
[] [Trait] Cunning
Like a fox. [+1 Martial, +2 Intrigue]
[] [Trait] Engineer
You've studied architecture and siegecraft, and know all the best ways to raise a building and to tear it down. [+1 Martial, +2 Stewardship]
[] [Trait] Horticulturist
You're an able gardener and are something of a scholar in the science of agriculture. You've even bred a cultivar or two of your own, in your time. [+1 Stewardship, +2 Learning]
[] [Trait] Mystic
Through your own research, you've been initiated to the mysteries of the cosmos, the spirits and monsters of this world and the next. [+1 Learning, +2 Spirituality]
[] [Trait] Lawful
Rules are what separate civilized people from beasts, monsters, and worse. Law is immutable and must be upheld. [+4 Stewardship, -2 Diplomacy]
[] [Trait] Honourable
No treachery nor subterfuge from you. The straight path only, unto death. [+2 Diplomacy, +2 Stewardship, -2 Intrigue]
[] [Trait] Hedonist
Eat, drink, and make merry, for tomorrow you may die. [+2 Diplomacy, +1 Intrigue, -1 Stewardship, -1 Spirituality, +10 Fertility]
[] [Trait] Sage
The world's wisdom is at your command. Shame about everything else, though. [+1 Stewardship, +2 Learning, +1 Spirituality, -1 Martial, -1 Diplomacy]
Of course, not all notable features are positive ones. [Optional: Pick one Flaw and gain an additional slot for Traits from the above list]
[] [Flaw] Frail
Due to injury or ailment or random misfortune, you're not well-suited to fighting or leading troops, nor… other physical activity. [-1 Martial, -10 Fertility]
[] [Flaw] Arrogant
Everyone seems to think you're an insufferable ass for some reason. Can't be true, of course, they just can't handle that you're right. [-1 Diplomacy, -1 Spirituality]
[] [Flaw] Credulous
"Follow you into this dark, isolated alley? Don't mind if I do." [-2 Intrigue]
[] [Flaw] Spendthrift
Haggling is for misers, budgeting is dull, and you can always make more money, right? [-2 Stewardship]
[] [Flaw] Unlettered
Be it lack of education or a disability, you struggle with reading and writing, and you'd rather do anything at all rather than pick up a book [-2 Learning]
[] [Flaw] Cursed
You really shouldn't have back-talked that witch. [-1 to all stats, -10 Fertility] [Allows an additional bonus Trait for a total of 4 Traits]
No one who hopes to make anything lasting comes to the Stolen Lands without an expeditionary force at their back. You are no different in this regard. From where do you hail, and how did you assemble an expedition? [Pick One Origin]
[] [Origin] River Kingdoms
You are an envoy (or perhaps an exile) from one of the many petty states that constitute the River Kingdoms, either to expand the domain of one of those lords or intending to carve out your own. The River Kingdoms are commonly derided as a den of scum and villainy, and the upjumped hubris of tinpot dictators - and indeed the River Kingdoms comprise one of the largest collections of lowlives and brigands (per capita) outside the notoriously pirate-infested Sodden Lands. Coming from such a tumultuous background, you have a working knowledge of both regular statecraft and the many ways your home fief and others might undermine and attack one another, and with such knowledge comes the means to defend yourself. Of course, being forewarned is not in and of itself a deterrent, and it is highly likely you will have to weather attacks from rival Riverlords as well as whatever dangers you might find in the Stolen Lands.
[Gain +2 to Intrigue; begin with a network of informants placed in the River Kingdoms; will be at risk of attack from the River Kingdoms within 2 years]
[] [Origin] Brevoy
Coming from Brevoy to the north, you are receiving patronage and a charter from a Brevoyan noble family looking to expand their influence and curry favour with the crown. Your patron's coffers are the largest you would be able to find easy access to at this far edge of Avistan, and their support is the surest. However, your patron is looking to expand the borders of Brevoy or at least to create a favourable subordinate, so you must tread carefully if your dream is indeed to achieve independence and be more than a simple colony.
[Gain +2 to Diplomacy; begin with a favourable trade connection and income stream from Brevoy; actions may be restricted, more difficult, or carry additional risk if they go against Brevoy's interests or seem to do such]
[] [Origin] Independent - Mercenary Company
Your place of birth is irrelevant. What matters is what you have made of yourself, and you are proud of it. You captain a remarkably large and successful mercenary company - perhaps you've fought from one end of the River Kingdoms to another, or campaigned in Numeria, Galt, or the Worldwound, or perhaps even further afield. Whatever your origin, you've known battle, victory, defeat, the rush of adrenaline and the crush of grief both, the clink of cold gold traded for cold steel. With time however, alongside experience, money, and more than a few scars, came the desire for something more. You wanted more than just being a nomadic soldier for hire, and now you turn your thoughts to leadership on a grander scale. Of course, while those of your company who share your vision and joined you on this last march make for a fearsome fighting contingent, an army does not a state make. Your numbers (especially those with the skills needed to establish a more permanent settlement) are few, and drawing the necessary people to your banner will be difficult.
[Gain +2 to Martial; begin with a bonus to army quality and advisors; certain actions will be made at a penalty or with reduced effect until manpower/skilled labour shortage is compensated for]
[] [Origin] Independent - Druidic Circle
You are not a representative of any nation nor any single people, but the leader of a circle of druids and other folk aligned more with the rhythms of the natural world than the pulse of industry and civilization. While some might consider the state of the Stolen Lands merely an example of the dangers of the untamed natural world, in a world that is already amok with wild terrors that claw at the edges of civilization, you know better. What is happening in the Stolen Lands is no natural force, but something stranger, and it has drawn your attention. Of course, to prod at an enigma in this world is often enough to draw attention oneself, and your community is liable to draw the focus of whatever force defends the Stolen Lands sooner than it might otherwise.
[Gain +2 to Spirituality; begin with more advanced Spirituality (druidic) actions available; immediate risk of attack from esoteric threats in the Stolen Lands as druidic magic is detected]
[] [Origin] Write-in (subject to GM veto; appropriate attribute, bonus, and downside will be determined)
And finally, where have you chosen to plant your flag? [Pick One Territory]
[] [Territory] East Sellen River
This tributary of the Sellen runs broadly north-to-south through the Stolen Lands, connecting Brevoy and the River Kingdoms to an extensive trade network that accesses most of the markets on the eastern expanse of Avistan before finally spilling out into the Inner Sea far to the south. A settlement on the Sellen then is poised to have easy access to river trade, as well as bountiful fishing from Hooktongue Lake, though such a visible location means that it will be impossible to stay under the radar for any length of time, and similarly easy access to the river makes defence… complicated.
Immediately off the southern border that defines Brevoy's practical domain, the Greenbelt is a perfect example of the Stolen Lands' strangeness. Despite the lack of a land barrier, Brevoyan settlers have never managed to claim the area long-term. Despite this, the Greenbelt presents prime potential farmland, and is abutted to the west by the expansive forest known as the Narlmarches, which gives any prospective settlement access to both abundant lumber and game. In addition, the region grants easy access to Brevoy for future trade. Of course, this bounty has hardly gone unnoticed, and the area is infested with brigands - who camp in the Greenbelt and take advantage of local superstition to stymie pursuit between raids - and other, worse creatures.
Glenebon is a harsh and unpleasant territory in the far western expanse of the Stolen Lands, characterized by rolling, craggy hills and badlands, scrub and grass, and not much else. Lumber is scarce, the soil is dry and thin, water is difficult to find without digging wells, and the local wildlife is both lacking in quantity and highly unpleasant in character. Logically, it would be a terrible place to settle, but for one fact: the region, being the foothills of the Branthlend Mountains, is rich in mineral wealth, much more accessible than most anywhere else in the region aside from the much more treacherous Tors of Levenies to the east. And for the truly intrepid (or perhaps foolhardy), there is always the possibility of forging a land route through the hills, past the mountains, and into the strange techno-barbarous land of Numeria.
West of the miserable, stinking swampland known as Hooktongue Slough is another expanse of easily arable yet unclaimed land - broadly similar in character to the Greenbelt, though this area trades the sheer variety of resources available there for relative anonymity, as well as the dubious but valuable products of the Slough. Hooktongue Slough is the only known source of several rare and highly sought-after botanicals - including the azure lily, the pollen of which acts as a powerful paralytic and is greatly valued by assassins and brigands of all stripes - and a settlement poised to exploit the area could enrich itself quite easily. Of course, such enrichment would have to be careful to avoid the attention of the Riverlord domain of Pitax to the west. Pitax's famously megalomaniacal king has done the domain no favours in terms of its strength or influence, but even as it is, a fledgling settlement could easily find itself crushed or subsumed if he desired such.
Dauntless Enthusiasm - You are a goblin, often derided by the longshanks in their big cities as little better than vermin. Well, you don't care what they think, you have wit and ferocity and friends to impress! [+2 Martial, +1 Learning]
Druid - You are one of those who hear nature's call. You stand in awe of the majesty of its power and give yourself over to its service. [+2 Spirituality]
Engineer - You've studied architecture and siegecraft, and know all the best ways to raise a building and to tear it down. [+1 Martial, +2 Stewardship]
Horticulturist - You're an able gardener and are something of a scholar in the science of agriculture. You've even bred a cultivar or two of your own, in your time. [+1 Stewardship, +2 Learning]
Sage - The world's wisdom is at your command. Shame about everything else, though. [+1 Stewardship, +2 Learning, +1 Spirituality, -1 Martial, -1 Diplomacy]
Strategist - The planning and movements of battle and war come naturally to you. [+3 Martial]
Cursed - You really shouldn't have pissed off that witch. [-1 to all attributes, -10 fertility]
ATTRIBUTES
MARTIAL: 11 + 2 + 1 + 3 - 1 - 1 = 15 - You're an able general, if the need should arise.
DIPLOMACY: 8 - 1 - 1 = 6 - What the fuck is tact?
INTRIGUE: 11 - 1 = 10 - You've engaged in a spot or two of skulduggery in your time.
STEWARDSHIP: 11 + 2 + 1 + 1 - 1 = 14 - You know your math well.
LEARNING: 16 + 1 + 2 + 2 - 1 = 20 - You don't think it's conceited to say that you're extremely smart, and you love putting your ideas into practice.
SPIRITUALITY: 13 + 2 + 1 - 1 = 15 - You're in tune with the rhythm of the world.
Martial Advisor
Almandine (Diplomacy Advisor/Privy Secretary)
Almandine
Your diplomatic secretary, an elven woman of unclear origin - though from her bearing and her accent you suspect she's an exile or a runaway from Kyonin and almost certainly some kind of noble, to which you're inclined to shrug and leave alone. It's none of your business where people are running from or why. What matters is that she clearly knows all the interminable diplomatic bullshit you don't have the tolerance for and could probably talk a troll into stepping into a raging bonfire given enough time. That said, she's an unapologetic lush, and with a tongue loosened by drink or smoke she has… bold opinions about how useful some of the less immediately practical druidic practices are.
TRAITS
Worldly Knowledge - Almandine has the indistinct agelessness of an elf, and could be anywhere between fresh-faced youth and older than your ancestors out to the seventh generation. You suspect she's on the older side of that curve, based on her experience.
Courtier - Almandine has clearly spent time in a noble court or two. She has a talent for using a great many words to say absolutely nothing, except when she looses a single vicious observation that cuts through any defences and straight to the heart. [+2 Diplomacy, +1 Intrigue]
Hedonist - Almandine could live a long time as an elf (you don't actually know how old she is) but her real focus is clearly on having a good time. That she remains functional most of the time is probably more the result of your current supply situation than anything else.[+3 Diplomacy, +1 Intrigue, -1 Stewardship, -1 Spirituality]
ATTRIBUTES
MARTIAL: 10 - Almandine clearly knows how to fight, though it's obviously more due to a thorough education than a natural inclination.
DIPLOMACY: 16 + 2 + 3 = 21 - You're half-convinced she could sell salt to someone adrift on the ocean and dying of thirst.
INTRIGUE: 14 + 1 + 1 = 16 - Court politics can get pretty brutal. You don't doubt she has a skeleton or two in her closet, but they're well hidden.
STEWARDSHIP: 12 + 1 - 1 = 12 - She can balance a budget and draft a contract well enough.
LEARNING: 11 + 2 = 13 - Almandine isn't a great reader outside her area of expertise, but she has a practically encyclopedic knowledge of everything to do with formal correspondence and manners.
SPIRITUALITY 7 - 1 = 6 - Almandine openly (and loudly) doesn't have much of a care for spiritualism of any sort - which includes all of your druids, sometimes. It's concerning.
Karth (Intrigue Advisor/Spymaster)
Karth
Karth is the First Ranger of the troop that came with you to the Stolen Lands. They and the rangers they've trained have worked with your Circle for several years now, and they were willing to accompany you into the Stolen Lands despite lacking any obligation to do so - when you asked why, Karth only said, wryly: "Why does any gnome need an excuse to go on an adventure?"
An enigmatic, androgynously beautiful gnome with a shock of blood-red hair, Karth is especially adroit as a hunter, a tracker, and a scout. You're not quite certain whether they extend that skillset to other parts of their life as a deliberate ploy, or if it's the other way around, but they have an admitted tendency to size people up like they're deciding how best to kill and field-dress a bull elk. Frankly, Karth is more than a little unsettling, though they manage a certain eccentric charm despite that. The gnome reminds you of nothing so much as seeing a great cat or other large predator in the wild - dangerous and worthy of respect, but remarkably relaxed.
TRAITS
Fey Lightfoot - Unsettling as they are, Karth shares the typical gnomish enthusiasm for new places and new experiences, and a bone-deep spiritualism that makes them remarkably self-assured and stable. [+2 Intrigue, +1 Spirituality]
Predatory - Karth is an extremely skilled hunter. They claim that a lot of the principles also apply to understanding how people think and act. It's moderately unnerving at times to share space with someone who on some level sees other people as potential prey. [+3 Intrigue, +1 Martial, -2 Diplomacy]
ATTRIBUTES
MARTIAL: 15 + 1 = 16 - As befits a senior ranger, they're quite dangerous.
INTRIGUE: 16 + 2 + 3 = 21 - They're an expert in spycraft, and have an impressive grasp of all the ways an infiltrator could harm you - and how they might be countered.
STEWARDSHIP: 8 - One of Karth's more 'humanizing' traits is how consistently terrible they are with money.
LEARNING: 11 - They're decently well-read.
SPIRITUALITY: 10 + 1 = 11 - They honour Erastil.
Stewardship Advisor
Tybalt (Learning Advisor/Chancellor)
Tybalt
Your chief wizard and Chancellor of your intended college. Tybalt is a catfolk man, grey-muzzled and scarred, with one arm ending at the shoulder and a limp you suspect to be at least partially affected. He's past his prime but still capable, with a long career as a mercenary behind him and the scars to reflect that. You wouldn't necessarily expect a hardened killer with the self-proclaimed title of 'Ashmaker' to be an able educator, but he seems intent on kicking the 'young bucks' into shape - apparently considering it his duty as the only formally trained wizard among them. Apparently he considers this to be 'retirement.'
TRAITS
Curious Cat - Catfolk have something of a reputation for being dauntless explorers and remarkably friendly with even total strangers, and Tybalt doesn't seem to be an exception to this. [+1 Diplomacy, +1 Intrigue, +1 Spirituality]
Mercenary Veteran - the Ashmaker has fought across half of Avistan, from joining the last Mendevian Crusade to a short stint as a bodyguard in Galt, and he has a story (and a scar) to show for every job. [+1 Martial, +1 Diplomacy, +1 Intrigue]
Sage - Long careers lead to great accumulated wisdom… and bad knees. [+1 Stewardship, +2 Learning, +1 Spirituality, -1 Martial, -1 Diplomacy]
Spendthrift - Sellswords (or sell-spells) aren't often known for their robust budgeting skills. [-2 Stewardship]
ATTRIBUTES
MARTIAL: 16 + 1 - 1 = 16 - One doesn't spend as much time fighting as Tybalt has without acquiring at least a modicum of strategic sense, and Tybalt was very good at his job.
DIPLOMACY: 10 + 1 + 1 - 1 = 11 - Being a successful mercenary (especially alone) requires being able to find work and negotiate one's own contracts.
INTRIGUE: 6 + 1 + 1 = 8 - One doesn't acquire the title of 'Ashmaker' by being known for subtle action.
STEWARDSHIP: 15 + 1 - 2 = 14 - Tybalt's lived hand-to-mouth before, and he doesn't care to repeat the experience. Despite his penchant for personal extravagance, he keeps his house in order.
LEARNING: 16 + 2 = 18 - He's quite smart. More focused on practical applications (which is to say, blowing things up) than you are, but no slouch.
SPIRITUALITY: 10 + 1 + 1 = 12 - There are no atheists on the battlefield, even among wizards, and Tybalt has a healthy respect for divine and primal traditions.
Rakka (Spirituality Advisor)
Rakka
Your long-suffering but good-humoured Second Druid, Rakka is a piebald ysoki with the genial air of someone's favoured grandmother - though unusually by the standards of a ysoki of her age she has no children of her own. Despite her greater experience and attunement to the Green Pact, she didn't protest your selection as the successor to the position of First Druid of the Circle, and has been a steadfast ally and quite able at helping manage the junior druids (and smoothing over ruffled feathers among those who agree less with your more radical ideas). While the two of you occasionally butt heads - you being the radical, her the conservative - she is nonetheless willing to entertain many of your ideas, and has often provided a useful sober perspective on your wilder impulses.
TRAITS
Hoarder - Given the ysoki proclivity for large families and tight spaces, it's no surprise that they value canny budgeting and providing for the group as a high virtue. [+2 Stewardship, +1 Intrigue]
Mystic - Rakka is extremely well-versed in the magical lore and history of the Circle, as far back as you have records for. [+2 Spirituality, +1 Learning]
Orthodox - She's very comfortable with established tradition. Less so with anything new. [+4 Spirituality, -1 Intrigue, -1 Learning]
Unlettered - Rakka is almost entirely illiterate, and can only reliably read and write in Druidic. [-2 Learning]
ATTRIBUTES
MARTIAL: 10 - When the need arises, Rakka will answer the call to defend herself and others.
DIPLOMACY: 14 - She gets people in a way you never have.
INTRIGUE: 13 + 1 - 1 = 13 - Rakka is more than a little tricksy, when she wants to be.
STEWARDSHIP: 13 + 2 = 15 - She's a natural when it comes to organization.
LEARNING: 10 + 1 - 1 - 2 = 8 - While not a fool by any standard, Rakka is fundamentally incurious.
SPIRITUALITY: 15 + 2 + 4 = 21 - That Rakka isn't First Druid is more due to personal preference than lack of ability.
Militia footmen - a collection of farmers and people who have volunteered to defend their homes with more enthusiasm than outright skill, your militia at present are mostly armed with a motley assortment of antique or improvised weaponry, armoured with layers of cloth and padding, and have little combat experience aside from chasing off the odd fox that had been terrorizing their chickens.
[Equipment: Sub-par (-1) - Training: Minimal (-1) - Morale: Eager (+1)]
[Upkeep: 4 gold per unit of 5]
Militia archers - more volunteers, these ones with sharper eyes and steadier hands. Most of them have experience as hunters, shooting for fowl or game. You're not certain how well they'll take to fighting off bandits though.
[Equipment: Sub-par (-1) - Training: Minimal (-1) - Morale: Eager (+1)]
[Upkeep: 4 gold per unit of 5]
Rangers - Professional warriors, hunters, and trackers, these people have sworn themselves to haunt the border where civilization touches the wilds and guard one from the other, and while not all of them are of the same mind as druids are, your goals usually coincide well enough. Their equipment is eclectic and haphazard by the standard of any professional army, but all of them know their tools and wield them like extensions of their own bodies.
[Equipment: Standard (0) - Training: Professional (+1) - Morale: Stoic (0)]
[Upkeep: 4 gold per unit of 2]
Horse Archers - Ugh, horses. You personally can't stand them, with their horrible sideways eyes and huge flat teeth and just… bigness. A horse could kill a longshanks easily, let alone you, and you have no idea why anyone could trust one around them. But it can't be denied that they can run faster than any longshanks, and the deeply strange people who ride them seem to be good at controlling the horrible things and using their bows from up there. You suppose you can let them stay, if you must.
[Equipment: Sub-par (-1) - Training: Drilled (0) - Morale: Stoic: (0)]
[Upkeep: 4 gold each]
Journeyman druids - Younger druids who've proven their basic competence and have been cut loose to grow on their own merits. In battle, they call on the primal forces of nature to turn the very environment against their foes, empower and direct the beasts of the wild, or even turn into animals themselves. Untested, but eager to prove themselves.
[Equipment: Standard (0) - Training: Drilled (0) - Morale: Eager (+1)]
[Upkeep: 8 gold each]
You sit in the branches of a craggy, half-dead old oak, look out on your domain (such that it is), and breathe the clean air of freedom. It's chill and damp, with the light of dawn only just cresting over the looming tors to the east to begin spreading the sun's warmth.
You've camped under the outermost eaves of the Narlmarches - to the west and south, your sightline quickly fades out under the gloom of the canopy, while to the east the trees thin out rapidly to reveal open grassland and rolling hills. It's a good spot; the surrounding trees cut the wind, a small river wends its way through within easy walking distance, and many of the nearby trees are oak and hazel and should provide plenty of nuts come autumn. It's taken your troupe more than a week to get here, moving under the forest where possible and with your rangers on high alert, but you think this is it.
An expanse of tents and lean-tos stretches out before you like the spreading roots of some enormous canvas-and-leather plant, pitched wherever there is room between tighter stands of trees and brambles. The air is alive with the murmur of conversation and the sundry noises of the few hundred people (mostly various longshanks, though there are a fair contingent of other goblins, all of them sharing a couple of yurts) who've followed you here - and isn't that a heady thought - preparing to break their fasts, and otherwise readying themselves to face the day. To follow your lead, and begin making a home here.
Were you anyone else, the task might be daunting, but you only feel a thrill of excitement.
You absently watch the curling streamer of blue smoke from someone's cooking fire for a while, until a pointed little nip on your ear snaps you back - you reach back and pull Boggle off your shoulder, his beady black eyes expectant. With your other, rat-free hand, you reach into the handy pouch you always keep tied to your belt, retrieve a carefully portioned scrap of dried iceroot, and pop it into your mouth. It's tough like old boots as you gnaw gamely at it, and it's acrid and bitter as always, but you can feel it going to work swiftly.
You have supplies to get you through the next few months - dry rations, spare cloth and canvas, seeds, ritual supplies to aid in foraging, hunting, and the myriad other tasks needed to survive in the wilderness - but after that you'll need to have more permanent solutions. Many of the shelters your people have brought with them will need to be replaced before winter, you'll need to construct defences before the locals come to take advantage, food needs to be sorted out so you're not depleting the local forest, and a hundred other things need your attention. You probably don't have enough druids.
Time to get to work!
[You currently have 1200 'gold' in your treasury, no income, and per-turn upkeep of 164]
MARTIAL: You don't have much of a fighting force at the moment, just a collection of half-drilled militia and a small cadre of rangers who are happier scouting on the fringes than fighting in formation. You can harass bandits, perhaps even distract them, but you're not sure of your ability to defend against a concerted raid.
[Choose 1]
-[ ] Drilling the Troops
Right now, your forces are hardly worth the name. Poorly armed, poorly disciplined, their morale high but untested. You can't fix the equipment problem (yet), but training and discipline is something you can manage.
Cost: 30 gold, 2 turns
Reward: Improve Militia Training to Drilled
-[ ] Basic Fortifications
The only protection your fledgling settlement has at the moment is obscurity, and the more you scout around or establish contact with Brevoy or other surrounding states, the harder it will be to maintain that secrecy. Before that happens, you should probably start laying down some solid defences. Concealed pits and ditches with and without spikes, snares, deadfall traps - you'll put the rangers on it.
Cost: 50 gold, 1 turn
Reward: Basic defences constructed around your settlement, reduce the Upkeep cost from [Unestablished] by 10
-[ ] Bloody Their Noses
Of course, you could also take a more proactive approach to your own protection. Small teams of your sneakier people could go out into the Greenbelt and… manage the bandit population.
Cost: 20 gold, DC 50, 1 turn
Reward: Delay discovery of your settlement
-[ ] Ranging
While your rangers are currently occupying themselves with maintaining a basic perimeter around your nascent town, they could be doing more and patrolling further. Work with them to set up a proper patrol plan, then have the militia take up the slack of guarding the immediate area. Aside from immediate threats, they may also find traces of past expeditions into the area, and possibly even useful things they left behind.
Cost: Free, 1 turn
Reward: Establish a wider patrol radius, gain advance warning of incoming threats, reduce the DC of Bandit Bothering and Bloody Their Noses, may find useful tools or infrastructure from previous attempted settlements
-[ ] Hunting
As a druid, you have a responsibility to protect the green places of the world from reckless exploitation; as a leader, you have a responsibility to make sure the people that follow you are cared for. You'll have to be careful not to strip the area bare of wildlife to feed all the hungry mouths you need to, but carefully managed hunting parties led by rangers or druids should be able to maintain the balance between morals and necessity. Meat will fill your people's bellies, bone can be used for tools, and skins can be fashioned into clothing and armour or prepared for trade.
Cost: 30 gold, DC 0/25/50, 1 turn
Reward: Reduce the Upkeep cost from [Unestablished] by 10/20/30
DIPLOMACY - Your settlement might be small, but you have big plans! Plans that include being recognised as a nation of your own and respected by your peers! How hard can it be?
[Choose 1]
-[ ] Howdy, Neighbours! Brevoy Edition
You need to begin establishing trade connections sooner rather or later. While an established druidic circle and careful land management can sustain a small community practically indefinitely, to establish more than a small town you'll need to draw people, and trade. Brevoy, by virtue of being the shortest distance to travel, is the easiest of the surrounding countries to begin establishing connections in, and Brevoyan merchants always have a hunger for the spoils of the Stolen Lands.
Cost: 30 gold, DC 25, 1 turn
Reward: Make contact with Brevoyan merchants, small trade income, reduce the Upkeep cost from [Unestablished] by 20
-[ ] Howdy, Neighbours! River Kingdoms Edition
While trade and travel connections are vital, nothing says you have to go through Brevoy to do it. If your people take the river downstream and south, it will link up with the Little Sellen and then pass into the River Kingdom of Mivon on its way to the Inner Sea. It would be a longer journey, and with the Greenbelt not made safe a rather more dangerous one, but Mivon is remarkably stable and inwardly-focused, so they are otherwise a safe option.
Cost: 30 gold, DC 50, 1 turn
Reward: Make contact with Mivoni merchants, small trade income, reduce the Upkeep cost from [Unestablished] by 20
-[ ] Howdy, Neighbours! Local Edition
It can't just be bandits out here! The Stolen Lands, while never having been successfully tamed, have never been truly empty of settlement - rumour goes around that from time to time strange folk will arrive in the River Kingdoms, trade in timber or skins or gathered herbs for supplies and tools, then disappear back into the wilds. Of course, if any of these people are to be found it would be a difficult undertaking, if they've hidden themselves well enough to avoid predation by the local brigands.
Cost: 30 gold, DC ???, 1 turn
Reward: Find hidden settlements in the Greenbelt?
INTRIGUE - Sneakery, skulduggery, ne'er-do-well-ism. There are many ways to win a fight, as the rangers say. While if the bandits come calling in force you cannot hope to do more than contain the damage, you can perhaps… lead them astray.
[Choose 1]
-[ ] Cover Your Tracks
Several hundred people on the move is not an inconspicuous party, even moving as swiftly and as carefully as they could. With rangers and druids you can have the trail muddled to a degree - you probably can't fully erase the evidence of your passage, but you can at least make it unclear where you went.
Cost: Free, DC 25/50, 1 turn
Reward: Delay discovery of your settlement
-[ ] Bandit Bothering
There are bandits in the Greenbelt. The question is "where?" While they are scattered all over - your rangers certainly found traces of enough temporary camps to be certain of that on the trek out - the reports of raids out of the area over the last few years tell not of scattered bands of brigands, but larger, more organized groups, and perhaps even a single overarching leader. You need more information, and while finding whatever headquarters they have is currently out of the question, nothing says you can't set your people to work finding an outlying camp to raid for intel.
Cost: 30 gold, DC 50, 1 turn
Reward: More information on the Greenbelt bandits
-[ ] Information Services
Aside from trade connections, it would be good to just get feelers out into the world. A finger on the proverbial pulse, as it were. See if you can find people willing to trade news.
Cost: 30 gold, DC 25 or 50 (can only be taken with or after [Howdy Neighbours!] Brevoy or River Kingdoms editions), 1 turn
Reward: World News updates, beginning with the chosen region
STEWARDSHIP - Everyone's busy right now with the myriad processes of establishing a new settlement. Even just managing what gets placed where, you've got your work cut out for you.
[Choose 1]
-[ ] Forestry
The fact is, your people need more permanent homes, and the simplest way to do that is with timber. Druids do not care for the reckless clearcutting of healthy forest, nor carelessly tearing the skin of the earth for enormous quarries - but you must care for your people first, and of the two options timber is both easier to source, and easier to manage.
Cost: 50 gold, 2 turns
Reward: Begin organized logging, reduce the Upkeep cost from [Unestablished] by 15, gain small income
-[ ] Food in the Forest
You cannot survive off foraging and travel rations forever. Sooner rather than later, you'll need to have crops growing and start living fully off the land's bounty. Druidic magic will speed things along, at least.
Cost: 30 gold, 1 turn
Reward: Establish farms, reduce the Upkeep cost from [Unestablished] by 15, gain small income
-[ ] Prospecting
You can have your people look through the surrounding area for surface deposits of metals and other minerals. Careful mining can have those extracted with a minimum of harm and either kept for use or used for trade.
Cost: Free, DC 25, 1 turn
Reward: Find a site for potential mining (D100 roll for what you find)
-[ ] Building Boats
While you can certainly followthe rivers to get places, it won't actually make your travel any quicker or easier without boats. You came overland, so you certainly didn't bring any - making small watercraft isn't difficult, luckily.
Cost: 20 gold, 1 turn
Reward: Construct small boats; reduce the DC of Howdy Neighbours!
LEARNING - Oh, for a proper library. Or at least a nice quiet space free of immediate distractions. No matter, the pursuit of knowledge must continue!
[Choose 1]
-[ ] Establish a Test Garden
While some druids might look down on any kind of artificiality when it comes to growing things, you are not so dogmatic. A properly sectioned-off garden for experimentation is necessary for proper research and documentation when trying to breed plants!
Cost: 20 gold, 2 turns
Reward: Test garden established, small bonus to certain Learning actions
-[ ] Documenting Diversity
While the flora and fauna of the Stolen Lands are unlikely to greatly differ from those in the surrounding lands, it isn't impossible that there are species here that have never been documented before. You itch to catalog them.
Cost: 20 gold, 1 turn
Reward: Look for unique plants and animals in the Stolen Lands (D100 roll for what you find)
-[ ] Sorcerous Census
Magical talent to a greater or lesser extent is not uncommon on Golarion, though most will never reach great heights due to inclination, circumstance, or any other factor. Certainly, any given slice of the population will likely find at least a handful of magical 'tricks' among otherwise entirely mundane folk, and even some self-taught hedge mages and small-time witches. If you can determine who among your people know more than usual about the arcane, you can have them work together and start becoming more than the sum of their parts.
Cost: Free, 2 turns
Reward: Find and organize the minor arcane talents among your people, progress to establishing a unified arcane tradition
SPIRITUALITY - The earth hums at your touch, as does the air, the water. This is a place of power. The veil between the planes is thin, and things slip through. You do not think your presence has gone unnoticed.
[Choose 1]
-[ ] A New Grove
While your circle trusted you well enough to uproot themselves from their old lives and follow you on this quest, you could never have taken the grove with you. The old grove where so many druids lived and died, that was left to be reclaimed by the elements. You will need to find a new space for your druids, somewhere you may all attune to the energies of this new land and centre yourselves. A space for ritual and relaxation both, away from the pounding hubbub of the town you are building.
Cost: 50 gold, 1 turn
Reward: Establish a new grove for your druids, to act as a focus for their magics; reduce the DC of some actions and unlock new ones, reduce the Upkeep cost from [Unestablished] by 10
-[ ] Druidic Defences
Aside from your more mundane defences, more magical protections may be put in place. Spells of binding and of harm to protect your borders, wards of protection and detection to discourage infiltration. Just small things for the moment, but they can serve as foundations for later works.
Cost: 50 gold, 1 turn
Reward: Fortify your settlement with magical defences, reduce the Upkeep cost from [Unestablished] by 10
-[ ] Ironwood
It is anathema for druids to wear dead metal against living flesh. Such is your pact and the price of your power. But of course this does not mean that you must go unprotected into battle, so druids long ago created a ritual to imbue wood with the resilience of the iron and steel used by the uninitiated. Ironwood armour is rare, though valued highly by more martially-inclined druids, but you know the material has more uses than that. It will be difficult - you do not fully know the ritual and the circle's records are infuriatingly vague, and without a proper ritual site it will be even harder, but you have time and ingenuity on your side.
Cost: 30 gold, DC 75, 1 turn
Reward: Begin producing ironwood; allows equipment upgrades for druids, increases logging and trade income
-[ ] Is There a Priest in Here?
Most of the people who followed you into the Stolen Lands follow druidic custom, and while many of them predictably honour Gozreh, Erastil, or similar deities, they perform their worship through action rather than prayer. However, not everyone in your settlement is a druid, and not everyone is going to be content (or comfortable) without the trappings of 'civilized' religion. You can take a census, at least - you might even find an actual cleric in this rabble, and otherwise you'll certainly field volunteers if anyone's willing to attempt being a chaplain. Oh, and a shrine - you'll probably need one of those.
Cost: 20 gold, 1 turn
Reward: Construct a small shrine, maybe find priests?
PERSONAL - Sure, you have free time. It's called 'sleeping!'
[Locked]
[Note: turns are currently a season/quarter-year in length. As you finish initial establishment, this will extend to a year per turn like other CK2 quests, and the expense or time investment of certain actions may change, as will upkeep and income. Advisors will become available starting next turn.]
You sit in the branches of a craggy, half-dead old oak, look out on your domain (such that it is), and breathe the clean air of freedom. It's chill and damp, with the light of dawn only just cresting over the looming tors to the east to begin spreading the sun's warmth.
You've camped under the outermost eaves of the Narlmarches - to the west and south, your sightline quickly fades out under the gloom of the canopy, while to the east the trees thin out rapidly to reveal open grassland and rolling hills. It's a good spot; the surrounding trees cut the wind, a small river wends its way through within easy walking distance, and many of the nearby trees are oak and hazel and should provide plenty of nuts come autumn. It's taken your troupe more than a week to get here, moving under the forest where possible and with your rangers on high alert, but you think this is it.
An expanse of tents and lean-tos stretches out before you like the spreading roots of some enormous canvas-and-leather plant, pitched wherever there is room between tighter stands of trees and brambles. The air is alive with the murmur of conversation and the sundry noises of the few hundred people (mostly various longshanks, though there are a fair contingent of other goblins, all of them sharing a couple of yurts) who've followed you here - and isn't that a heady thought - preparing to break their fasts, and otherwise readying themselves to face the day. To follow your lead, and begin making a home here.
Were you anyone else, the task might be daunting, but you only feel a thrill of excitement.
You absently watch the curling streamer of blue smoke from someone's cooking fire for a while, until a pointed little nip on your ear snaps you back - you reach back and pull Boggle off your shoulder, his beady black eyes expectant. With your other, rat-free hand, you reach into the handy pouch you always keep tied to your belt, retrieve a carefully portioned scrap of dried iceroot, and pop it into your mouth. It's tough like old boots as you gnaw gamely at it, and it's acrid and bitter as always, but you can feel it going to work swiftly.
You have supplies to get you through the next few months - dry rations, spare cloth and canvas, seeds, ritual supplies to aid in foraging, hunting, and the myriad other tasks needed to survive in the wilderness - but after that you'll need to have more permanent solutions. Many of the shelters your people have brought with them will need to be replaced before winter, you'll need to construct defences before the locals come to take advantage, food needs to be sorted out so you're not depleting the local forest, and a hundred other things need your attention. You probably don't have enough druids.
Time to get to work!
—
[ ] Plan Setting Up
MARTIAL: You don't have much of a fighting force at the moment, just a collection of half-drilled militia and a small cadre of rangers who are happier scouting on the fringes than fighting in formation. You can harass bandits, perhaps even distract them, but you're not sure of your ability to defend against a concerted raid.
[Choose 1]
-[ ] Ranging
While your rangers are currently occupying themselves with maintaining a basic perimeter around your nascent town, they could be doing more and patrolling further. Work with them to set up a proper patrol plan, then have the militia take up the slack of guarding the immediate area. Aside from immediate threats, they may also find traces of past expeditions into the area, and possibly even useful things they left behind.
(roll: 67)
A portion of your rangers - including all of those with trained birds or other fleet animal companions, and few that are swift enough themselves due to natural talent or magical enhancement - go out after a schedule is established. Operating alone or in pairs no more than two days' hard march from the tentative borders of your home, your instructions are that should an advancing hostile group be sighted, they should send a message back with as many details as possible, and then continue to monitor and - if possible - delay and harry the invaders to the best of their ability.
Then one day a hawk flies overhead as you're eating breakfast and drops a small, furled scroll into your porridge. After you have a moment to read it - and a few more to calm down from the false alarm - you arrange for a team (led by a druid pulled temporarily away from setting up your farm plots) to go out and take the few draft animals you have with them. One of your scouts had found the ruins of an old logging camp and sawmill a handful of miles south of your settlement, in a previously cleared area that is well on its way to being reclaimed. The remains are strange - some structures (or parts thereof) are so decayed and indistinct they must have laid rotting for decades; while others seem curiously fresh, except that all the iron and steel fittings seem to have rusted to nothing. Undoubtedly strange, but as far as you are able to confirm there are no traces of lingering magic or anything else to explain what happened.
Inside a rickety storage building that seemed to be more moss and woodworm than structural supports, but that had miraculously remained mostly weathertight, your man found several tons of stripped logs, many of which you are soon able to confirm are still in good condition. A small but valuable bounty, in your situation.
[Reward: Patrol perimeter established. Will gain advance warning of incoming threats and bonus to defence. DCs of Bandit Bothering and Bloody Their Noses reduced. Small timber stockpile found, upkeep from [Unestablished] reduced by 10.]
DIPLOMACY - Your settlement might be small, but you have big plans! Plans that include being recognised as a nation of your own and respected by your peers! How hard can it be?
[Choose 1]
-[ ] Howdy, Neighbours! Brevoy Edition
You need to begin establishing trade connections sooner rather or later. While an established druidic circle and careful land management can sustain a small community practically indefinitely, to establish more than a small town you'll need to draw people, and trade. Brevoy, by virtue of being the shortest distance to travel, is the easiest of the surrounding countries to begin establishing connections in, and Brevoyan merchants always have a hunger for the spoils of the Stolen Lands.
(roll: 87 + 6 = 93; Success)
It takes several weeks of carefully and steadily trail-breaking (then double- and triple-checking the route for nearby threats) but your people are able to forge a route that goes north from your settlement almost entirely under the eaves of the Narlmarches - providing concealment and relative safety. The trail itself is too rugged for carts, but the pair of donkeys you liberate from timber-hauling duty for the purpose seem quite capable of trotting along. The last leg of the journey - from the northernmost edge of the Narlmarches to the proper border of Brevoy - is a bit of a mad dash across open ground, but luckily it seems to be just far enough west to be out of the regular territory of the Greenbelt bandits, who seem more focused on haunting the roads closer to Restov to the east.
With that in mind, you had ordered the initial expedition to continue northwest once they reached Brevic Rostland, loosely toward the capital of New Stetven. Your people make contact in a number of small towns and villages to inquire about trade goods and services there, rather than continue on to the larger population centres - no need to announce yourselves to the wider world quite yet, you think; and what supplies you have need of at the moment are few enough that the larger markets aren't necessary. While you don't have much to trade - in fact, the expedition ventured forth with a fair portion of your extra stocks of herbs for making various tisanes and herbal remedies, as well as just about anything that might be valuable or useful and that conceivably could be spared - your people come home, their ad-hoc goods exchanged for salt and flour, iron nails, and other sundries. They also bring drafted contracts for your perusal, suggesting that a handful of your more agriculturally-inclined druids could hire out to assist the Rostlander farmers with their own crops, rather than continuing to barter limited supplies you can ill-afford to gamble away. Seems like a good deal to you.
[Reward: Made contact with smaller Brevic merchants/towns. Reduced the Upkeep cost from [Unestablished] by 20. New trade income: 25 gold/turn.]
INTRIGUE - Sneakery, skulduggery, ne'er-do-well-ism. There are many ways to win a fight, as the rangers say. While if the bandits come calling in force you cannot hope to do more than contain the damage, you can perhaps… lead them astray.
[Choose 1]
-[ ] Cover Your Tracks
Several hundred people on the move is not an inconspicuous party, even moving as swiftly and as carefully as they could. With rangers and druids you can have the trail muddled to a degree - you probably can't fully erase the evidence of your passage, but you can at least make it unclear where you went.
(roll: 22 + 10 = 32; 1 success)
The track your people left through the Greenbelt is visible against the grasses like a bloody gash. Four hundred people - while not a tremendous horde by any stretch of the imagining - is not a small number, and the passage of so many feet has in many places churned the wet springtime turf into mires and puddles of mud, to say nothing of the deep ruts carved by the collection of carts brought along to carry what could not be carried in rucksacks or in hand. The trail slaloms through the shallow hills, taking wide arcs around where your scouts had reported evidence of camps, leading inexorably toward your location.
While little better than a game trail in anything but scale, such evidence might as well be a road paved with gold to lead unwelcome visitors right to your doorstep, and you send a small group out to conceal what they can. Rangers for their expertise in spotting even the faintest trace that would draw a hunter in and to guard against interruption, druids for the actual work of concealment, in a small group for stealth and swiftness of movement. However, it swiftly becomes clear to them that their numbers work against them - and with most of your rangers occupied with other tasks, and the most capable druids busy consecrating the new grove, no reinforcement can be expected and they can only do so much.
The stamping passage of hundreds of feet cannot not be excised everywhere, so they smooth it out in alternate sections - and tear up untrodden ground in other places to muddle the direction. New shoots of grasses and other ground cover are encouraged to grow as much as possible, softening the sharp-edged furrows of wheels. Efforts are concentrated most strongly toward the forest, concealing your destination. Toward the end of the season, one of your outriders spots rough-looking men and women on horseback examining the remnants of the trail before scattering across the Greenbelt plains - and the party comes home, their task completed as well as it could be. The jig is up, and now all you can do is wait and prepare.
[Reward: Trail partially concealed, discovery delayed by at least one season (will begin checking for discovery after Turn 2)]
STEWARDSHIP - Everyone's busy right now with the myriad processes of establishing a new settlement. Even just managing what gets placed where, you've got your work cut out for you.
[Choose 1]
-[ ] Food in the Forest
You cannot survive off foraging and travel rations forever. Sooner rather than later, you'll need to have crops growing and start living fully off the land's bounty. Druidic magic will speed things along, at least.
Farming in open land is simple. Till the earth, plant the seeds, irrigate as needed, wait. It is also an inelegant, brute-force method. Farming in the forest, sculpting the environment to fit one's need, is both harder and easier by turn. You measure out an extended plot along the river, and begin work. Some trees are left in place, for shade and shelter; others are removed wholesale, earthmoving magic allowing the entire thing to be torn whole from the ground, like plucking a carrot. Cleared trees are swiftly broken down - leaves and bark stripped and processed for mulch, the wood taken away for fuel or construction work or other uses. From there, the process is simpler, if time-consuming - within the small cleared sections, you subdivide room for various sizes of plants - fruiting trees and shrubs, as well as creepers and smaller ground-hugging plants. In the course of your work and your studies, you've personally collected and preserved a wide variety of seeds, seedlings, cuttings, and saplings sourced from across the continent - as well as some farther reaches of the world - and you contribute everything that will grow to the project.
Normally, a food forest such as you are designing would take well over a year to start producing in earnest, but with many things magic allows you to 'cheat.' The small handful of druids spared from setting up the grove and other duties focus on coaxing saplings to take more readily and swiftly, providing seeds with the energy to grow, and in general making the process significantly faster. Within weeks, what had been an ugly mess of churned earth and new planting is verdant with new growth, and you are already able to harvest a small bounty of produce - currants, gooseberries, cattails, mushrooms, and more - to supplement your stocks of rations. It will still take most of the year for many of the plants to reach maturity even with judicious intervention, and your fruit tree saplings won't start producing for at least a year. But as you look out on the result of your people's labour, it is good indeed.
[Reward: Forest farming established. Upkeep cost from [Unestablished] reduced by 15. New agricultural income: 25 gold/turn.]
LEARNING - Oh, for a proper library. Or at least a nice quiet space free of immediate distractions. No matter, the pursuit of knowledge must continue!
[Choose 1]
-[ ] Sorcerous Census
Magical talent to a greater or lesser extent is not uncommon on Golarion, though most will never reach great heights due to inclination, circumstance, or any other factor. Certainly, any given slice of the population will likely find at least a handful of magical 'tricks' among otherwise entirely mundane folk, and even some self-taught hedge mages and small-time witches. If you can determine who among your people know more than usual about the arcane, you can have them work together and start becoming more than the sum of their parts.
(luck rolls: kineticist 1d3 = 1, no; summoner 1d3 = 3, yes; psychic 1d3 = 1, no)
Your settlement includes more than just druidic magical talents, you know that. You've certainly seen people lighting fires, mending clothes, and warming themselves with different tricks than your own primal tradition uses. The possibilities intrigue you, and you personally take the lead on the census.
The process of actually finding out how many of your people have those talents - and to what degree - is surprisingly time-consuming. It seems some of them consider simple questions such as whether they can cast spells as some hideous affront or a trap in the laying - though perhaps that should have been expected. The sort of people who tend to congregate around druids - particularly those willing to go haring off into the wild unknown on a hope and a dream - tend to include a fairly high proportion of people who have nowhere better left to go. Many of your most recalcitrant interviewees have the hunted expressions and wary eyes of people who've been forced to the margins again and again, and as you listen to the stories from people talking about inexplicable (and sometimes uncontrollable) magics and dark looks and suspicious whispers, you are reminded of some of the things said about goblins in your time out in the world. Part of you feels guilty that you worried any of your people with what seemed at first to be some kind of inquisition, but such is the price of knowledge sometimes - you've stepped on toes before, and you'll almost certainly do it again.
Once you have the last testimonials collected toward the end of the season, you are able to spare time to look everything over from a wider perspective. Of the portion of your settlers that have no grounding in druidic magical traditions, approximately a quarter have some small amount of magical ability. Many of those genuinely only know one or a handful of cantrips or minor magical 'tricks' without either the talent or the inclination for more, and the more serious hedge mages are working off scrapped-together arcane research from a variety of sources: dubious scrolls purchased from disreputable vendors, half-remembered theory gleaned from drunken discussion with actual students of the arcane, and the like. There are also a surprising variety of people who wield innate power to a greater or lesser extent - natural sorcerers. Finally, there are two other standouts: one, a ragged-edged catfolk man with impressive scars and a missing arm who claims have retired from the life of a magical mercenary, and who has the demonstrated skill to back up his claim; and the other is a gnomish woman who practices spirit-channeling of an unfamiliar sort, accompanied at times by a spectral dragon. You've found your spellcasters, though you need time to convince them to work together.
SPIRITUALITY - The earth hums at your touch, as does the air, the water. This is a place of power. The veil between the planes is thin, and things slip through. You do not think your presence has gone unnoticed.
[Choose 1]
-[ ] A New Grove
While your circle trusted you well enough to uproot themselves from their old lives and follow you on this quest, you could never have taken the grove with you. The old grove where so many druids lived and died, that was left to be reclaimed by the elements. You will need to find a new space for your druids, somewhere you may all attune to the energies of this new land and centre yourselves. A space for ritual and relaxation both, away from the pounding hubbub of the town you are building.
It's half a day's walk from the settlement that a good space presents itself, in a tangle of tremendously gnarled, ancient oak trees. The spreading branches above and the roots below are so interwoven that the oaks seem inseparable even as their growth has heaved at and in places partially uprooted each other. The effect is not unlike a squat tower, with partial 'floors' amidst the branches, at ground level, and in hollows torn out by the feuding trees' enormous roots.
Your druids begin setting up a home away from home. Bundles are unpacked - heavy, delicate slates and clay tablets containing the oldest lore of the circle recorded in the manner of the Green Faith, ancient rune-etched stones marked with spells of communion and warding to be buried beneath the roots of the grove's trees, and more. Many of your most capable and and spiritually-attuned druids are occupied for weeks on end with the more mystical preparations of the nascent grove, or simply meditating and communicating the new presence of your people to the surrounding woodland. Others work on more physical tasks: clearing and weatherproofing the root-hollows into more functional rooms for storage and rest, preparing ritual spaces, and the like. When all is said and done, the space looks largely the same to an untrained eye but for the spider's web of swept-clear walking paths that travel around the grove and pass through the trees in every direction into the truly wild woods - but to those with a connection to your primal magic there is an impression not unlike that of a heartbeat, though immense and distant like the warmth of the sun on your back.
The grove is not, of course, finished. A true druidic sanctuary is never really complete - it will grow and wither like the forest around it with the changing of seasons and the turning of years.
[Reward: Established a new grove for your druids. Upkeep cost from [Unestablished] reduced by 10. New actions unlocked; some actions made easier.]
You look out on an absolute hive of activity. The small influx of good timber means you can actually have a handful of more robust and permanent structures built, and no one is eager to waste any time. Several longhouses are under construction, in various stages - most are earmarked for storage, but you've planned to provide at least temporary housing for the people in your encampment whose shelter is in the direst state. The air is filled with shouted orders and bellows of exertion, and the sound of hammers and axes at work. You see panniers of clay being brought over from the direction of the river, people weaving sections of wattle, and others carefully charring the foot-ends of posts to prevent the foundations from rotting in the ground. One of your younger druids listens intently to a mud-spattered worker, then turns to touch a section of log on a sawhorse and barks out an incantation - the wood thins and stretches like taffy into a long, perfectly straight beam.
It's the sight and sound of industry and community both, and you itch to join in and get your hands dirty. But you sigh and start walking back to the tent that serves as your main 'office' - the last group of rangers that went out on patrol is due back, and you'll need to take their reports. And then… well, you're sure something will come up.
Your little camp is starting to look like an actual town, and spirits seem to be high. But there's a prickle on the back of your neck - it's been there since you arrived, but it's gotten worse over the past weeks. There's something out there, other than the bandits.
MARTIAL: You don't have much of a fighting force at the moment, just a collection of half-drilled militia and a small cadre of rangers who are happier scouting on the fringes than fighting in formation. You can harass bandits, perhaps even distract them, but you're not sure of your ability to defend against a concerted raid.
[Choose 1]
-[ ] Drilling the Troops
Right now, your forces are hardly worth the name. Poorly armed, poorly disciplined, their morale high but untested. You can't fix the equipment problem (yet), but training and discipline is something you can manage.
Cost: 30 gold, 2 turns
[Reward: Improve Militia Training to Drilled]
-[ ] Basic Fortifications
The only protection your fledgling settlement has at the moment is obscurity, and the more you scout around or establish contact with Brevoy or other surrounding states, the harder it will be to maintain that secrecy. Before that happens, you should probably start laying down some solid defences. Concealed pits and ditches with and without spikes, snares, deadfall traps - you'll put the rangers on it.
Cost: 50 gold, 1 turn
[Reward: Basic defences constructed around your settlement, reduce the Upkeep cost from [Unestablished] by 10]
-[ ] Bloody Their Noses
Of course, you could also take a more proactive approach to your own protection. Small teams of your sneakier people could go out into the Greenbelt and… manage the bandit population.
Cost: 20 gold, DC 50, 1 turn
[Reward: Delay discovery of your settlement]
-[ ] Hunting
As a druid, you have a responsibility to protect the green places of the world from reckless exploitation; as a leader, you have a responsibility to make sure the people that follow you are cared for. You'll have to be careful not to strip the area bare of wildlife to feed all the hungry mouths you need to, but carefully managed hunting parties led by rangers or druids should be able to maintain the balance between morals and necessity. Meat will fill your people's bellies, bone can be used for tools, and skins can be fashioned into clothing and armour or prepared for trade.
Cost: 30 gold, DC 0/25/50, 1 turn
[Reward: Reduce the Upkeep cost from [Unestablished] by 10/20/30]
-[ ] A Marshal
Excited and dedicated as you are to lead your people to victory in war and prosperity in peace, you have to admit that fielding reports from your scouts and cajoling your militia into something approximating a proper guard rotation along with all of your other duties is already a strain, and one that will only grow worse as you expand. Delegation is key, and sooner is better than later.
Cost: Free, 1 turn
[Reward: Find and appoint a Martial advisor]
DIPLOMACY - Your settlement might be small, but you have big plans! Plans that include being recognised as a nation of your own and respected by your peers! How hard can it be? Of course, now that you have made initial contact it's clear just how tenuous your international position is; you don't yet have much in the way of products to sell, so for the most part all you can do is trade your expertise - and the time of your limited number of druids.
[Choose 1]
-[ ] Howdy, Neighbours! River Kingdoms Edition
While trade and travel connections are vital, nothing says you have to go through Brevoy to do it. If your people take the river downstream and south, it will link up with the Little Sellen and then pass into the River Kingdom of Mivon on its way to the Inner Sea. It would be a longer journey, and with the Greenbelt not made safe a rather more dangerous one, but Mivon is remarkably stable and inwardly-focused, so they are otherwise a safe option.
Cost: 30 gold, DC 50, 1 turn
[Reward: Make contact with Mivoni merchants, small trade income, reduce the Upkeep cost from [Unestablished] by 20]
-[ ] Howdy, Neighbours! Local Edition
It can't just be bandits out here! The Stolen Lands, while never having been successfully tamed, have never been truly empty of settlement - rumour goes around that from time to time strange folk will arrive in the River Kingdoms, trade in timber or skins or gathered herbs for supplies and tools, then disappear back into the wilds. Of course, if any of these people are to be found it would be a difficult undertaking, if they've hidden themselves well enough to avoid predation by the local brigands.
Cost: 30 gold, DC ???, 1 turn
[Reward: Find hidden settlements in the Greenbelt?]
-[ ] Howdy, Neighbours! Brevoy Part 2
With some minor connections made and your position slightly more stable, you can perhaps continue to push inward, as it were, and begin looking for opportunities in and around New Stetven. Of course, the more mercantile the locale, the less you have to offer. But fortune favours the bold, and your people are smart - they can probably work something out.
Cost: 50 gold, DC 50, 2 turns
[Reward: Further economic ties in Brevoy, increased trade income]
-[ ] We're Hiring!
With contact made among smaller farming communities and your druids regularly cycling through, you could, perhaps… make some offers. Every settlement will have at least a handful of youngsters hoping for better prospects, and the Stolen Lands might just be exciting enough to tempt people to come join you. You absolutely could use more hands for… everything, really.
Cost: 50 gold, DC 25, 1 turn
[Reward: small population influx; slightly increases Agricultural income, unlocks more training options]
-[ ] A Secretary
You're very bad with people, you're not afraid to admit that. Frankly it's nothing short of a miracle that anyone was willing to follow you out into the wild unknown like they did. Luckily they did, and you can find people who can deal with the business of… people. You need someone who can proof-read contracts and schmooze and draft correspondence that you really don't have the patience for.
Cost: Free, 1 turn
[Reward: find and appoint a Diplomacy advisor]
INTRIGUE - Sneakery, skulduggery, ne'er-do-well-ism. There are many ways to win a fight, as the rangers say. While if the bandits come calling in force you cannot hope to do more than contain the damage, you can perhaps… lead them astray.
[Choose 1]
-[ ] Bandit Bothering
There are bandits in the Greenbelt. The question is "where?" While they are scattered all over - your rangers certainly found traces of enough temporary camps to be certain of that on the trek out - the reports of raids out of the area over the last few years tell not of scattered bands of brigands, but larger, more organized groups, and perhaps even a single overarching leader. You need more information, and while finding whatever headquarters they have is currently out of the question, nothing says you can't set your people to work finding an outlying camp to raid for intel.
Cost: 30 gold, DC 50, 1 turn
[Reward: More information on the Greenbelt bandits]
-[ ] Information Services
Aside from trade connections, it would be good to just get feelers out into the world. A finger on the proverbial pulse, as it were. See if you can find people willing to trade news.
Cost: 30 gold, DC 25 or 50 (can only be taken with or after [Howdy Neighbours!] Brevoy or River Kingdoms editions), 1 turn
[Reward: World News updates, beginning with the chosen region]
-[ ] Snipe Hunting
The time for trying to conceal that there is a new presence in the Stolen Lands is past. The locals are starting to sniff around for the proverbial fresh meat. But the reports from the attempt to conceal your entry give you an idea - you could create false trails to further obfuscate your location - paths that lead nowhere, or into hazards or hungry predators. The wilderness is a dangerous place, after all.
Cost: 30 gold, DC 50, 1 turn
[Reward: Delay discovery of your settlement]
-[ ] A Spymaster
You do your best, but you're not really a creature of the shadows. You need someone with twisty thoughts and a nastier sort of creativity to help pick up the slack.
Cost: Free, 1 turn
[Reward: Find and appoint an Intrigue advisor]
STEWARDSHIP - Everyone's busy right now with the myriad processes of establishing a new settlement. Even just managing what gets placed where, you've got your work cut out for you.
[Choose 1]
-[ ] Forestry
The fact is, your people need more permanent homes, and the simplest way to do that is with timber. Druids do not care for the reckless clearcutting of healthy forest, nor carelessly tearing the skin of the earth for enormous quarries - but you must care for your people first, and of the two options timber is both easier to source, and easier to manage.
Cost: 50 gold, 2 turns
[Reward: Begin organized logging, reduce the Upkeep cost from [Unestablished] by 15, gain small income]
-[ ] Prospecting
You can have your people look through the surrounding area for surface deposits of metals and other minerals. Careful mining can have those extracted with a minimum of harm and either kept for use or used for trade.
Cost: Free, DC 25, 1 turn
[Reward: Find a site for potential mining (D100 roll for what you find)]
-[ ] Building Boats
While you can certainly followthe rivers to get places, it won't actually make your travel any quicker or easier without boats. You came overland, so you certainly didn't bring any - making small watercraft isn't difficult, luckily.
Cost: 20 gold, 1 turn
[Reward: Construct small boats; reduce the DC of [Howdy Neighbours! River Kingdoms edition]]
-[ ] The Good Herb
Many of your people have started small herb and flower gardens - be it for relaxation or meditation or other reasons - most of which (because they are, by and large, practical sorts) produce a steady amount of various useful plants and extracts. Along with the mixed herbs in your forest plots and with green magic to help them along, these gardens produce enough to more or less account for your settlement's needs for medicines, alchemicals, poisons (mostly the rangers), certain spices, and other recreational applications. While individual small gardens can only account for what your people need, it's not like you have a shortage of land to expand your farming efforts to. The resulting produce can then be stored for later use or used for trade.
Cost: 50 gold, 1 turn
[Reward: Expand your farming with an emphasis on useful botanicals; slight increase to trade income; reduce the cost of [A House of Healing]]
-[ ] A House of Healing
While your druids are capable enough as healers and can usually be called upon within at most a day or two, some facts remain. You only have so many druids, and the larger your settlement grows the harder it's going to become to just pull one aside on the proverbial street and ask to have an ailment seen to. A place where people can go for their care, with the knowledge that there will always be someone who can see them as quickly as possible? That's far more effective.
Cost: 100 gold, 2 turns
[Reward: Construct a clinic; bonus to overall public health, bonus to population growth, small reduction to Military unit upkeep]
-[ ] A Steward
Shepherding labourers (both druidic and non) to where they need to go, overseeing the laying of foundations for various more permanent structures, allocating your limited stock of timber, making sure no one is digging latrines or midden pits too close to the river - the work of overseeing the birth of a town is endless and exhausting. Just yesterday you had to break up a fistfight between two different construction crews arguing over a log. There simply aren't the hours in the day for one goblin to oversee everything. A second set of eyes would be nice, preferably attached to another set of feet.
Cost: Free, 1 turn
[Reward: Find and appoint a Stewardship advisor]
LEARNING - Oh, for a proper library. Or at least a nice quiet space free of immediate distractions. No matter, the pursuit of knowledge must continue!
[Locked]
SPIRITUALITY - The earth hums at your touch, as does the air, the water. This is a place of power. The veil between the planes is thin, and things slip through. You do not think your presence has gone unnoticed.
[Choose 1]
-[ ] Druidic Defences
Aside from your more mundane defences, more magical protections may be put in place. Spells of binding and of harm to protect your borders, wards of protection and detection to discourage infiltration. Just small things for the moment, but they can serve as foundations for later works.
Cost: 50 gold, 1 turn
[Reward: Fortify your settlement with magical defences, reduce the Upkeep cost from [Unestablished] by 10]
-[ ] Ironwood
It is anathema for druids to wear dead metal against living flesh. Such is your pact and the price of your power. But of course this does not mean that you must go unprotected into battle, so druids long ago created a ritual to imbue wood with the resilience of the iron and steel used by the uninitiated. Ironwood armour is rare, though valued highly by more martially-inclined druids, but you know the material has more uses than that. It will be difficult - you do not fully know the ritual and the circle's records are infuriatingly vague, and without a proper ritual site it will be even harder, but you have time and ingenuity on your side.
Cost: 30 gold, DC 65, 1 turn
[Reward: Begin producing ironwood; allows equipment upgrades for druids, increases logging and trade income]
-[ ] Is There a Priest in Here?
Most of the people who followed you into the Stolen Lands follow druidic custom, and while many of them predictably follow the Green Faith or honour Gozreh, Erastil, or similar deities, they perform their worship through action rather than prayer. However, not everyone in your settlement is a druid, and not everyone is going to be content (or comfortable) without the trappings of 'civilized' religion. You can take a census, at least - you might even find an actual cleric in this rabble, and otherwise you'll certainly field volunteers if anyone's willing to attempt being a chaplain. Oh, and a shrine - you'll probably need one of those.
Cost: 20 gold, 1 turn
[Reward: Construct a small shrine, maybe find priests?]
-[ ] Spirit-Calling
Leshies aren't 'born' in the same way that mortal folk are. To create a leshy, a druid prepares a suitable vessel from a living plant, using a ritual that is only slightly less secret than your language. Should the vessel prove sufficiently enticing, a spirit of nature - a tremendous, truly immortal, fragmented embodiment of the world itself - may come and inhabit the shell, which gives them an ability to affect the world and a clarity of thought that they lack. Leshies retain a spiritual connection and affinity for primal magic which makes many of them natural druidic allies, and the fact that they're 'born' fully capable makes it much easier to rapidly grow your population
Cost: 100 gold, DC 40, 1 turn
[Reward: small population influx, unlocks more training options]
-[ ] A Shepherd
With everything demanding your attention, you've been unable to devote your full attention to advising your circle on non-practical matters, as well as attending the needs of your flock - the larger contingent of people who are initiated into druidic rites and customs but who for one reason or another do not share in the boons of the Green Pact. For those matters you've been leaning on the assistance of your Second, who has thankfully risen to the occasion. It would probably be best to formalize that arrangement so people stop bothering you with things you literally cannot spare the time for.
Cost: Free, 1 turn
[Reward: Appoint a Spirituality Advisor]
PERSONAL - Sure, you have free time. It's called 'sleeping!'
[Locked]
You look out on an absolute hive of activity. The small influx of good timber means you can actually have a handful of more robust and permanent structures built, and no one is eager to waste any time. Several longhouses are under construction, in various stages - most are earmarked for storage, but you've planned to provide at least temporary housing for the people in your encampment whose shelter is in the direst state. The air is filled with shouted orders and bellows of exertion, and the sound of hammers and axes at work. You see panniers of clay being brought over from the direction of the river, people weaving sections of wattle, and others carefully charring the foot-ends of posts to prevent the foundations from rotting in the ground. One of your younger druids listens intently to a mud-spattered worker, then turns to touch a section of log on a sawhorse and barks out an incantation - the wood thins and stretches like taffy into a long, perfectly straight beam.
It's the sight and sound of industry and community both, and you itch to join in and get your hands dirty. But you sigh and start walking back to the tent that serves as your main 'office' - the last group of rangers that went out on patrol is due back, and you'll need to take their reports. And then… well, you're sure something will come up.
Your little camp is starting to look like an actual town, and spirits seem to be high. But there's a prickle on the back of your neck - it's been there since you arrived, but it's gotten worse over the past weeks. There's something out there, other than the bandits.
—
MARTIAL: You don't have much of a fighting force at the moment, just a collection of half-drilled militia and a small cadre of rangers who are happier scouting on the fringes than fighting in formation. You can harass bandits, perhaps even distract them, but you're not sure of your ability to defend against a concerted raid.
-[ ] Basic Fortifications
The only protection your fledgling settlement has at the moment is obscurity, and the more you scout around or establish contact with Brevoy or other surrounding states, the harder it will be to maintain that secrecy. Before that happens, you should probably start laying down some solid defences. Concealed pits and ditches with and without spikes, snares, deadfall traps - you'll put the rangers on it.
The first step of defence is avoiding being noticed, the second is avoiding being surprised. The first will only last so long. The second, you can work on. While you have an early warning system in place, there is more you can do to ensure better awareness closer to home - better sight-lines, literally. You have a nominal 'hard' perimeter marked out, and logging teams (mostly) clear a wide swathe around the settlement from there, ensuring that most approaches from the forest have to cross a large, cover-less killing ground. A few isolated trees in this open band provide tempting cover, which you've accounted for - in fact, these are sites for traps. Concealed pits (large enough for a person to fall into, lined with sharpened stakes) are dug out, clustered in and around the remaining trees, and smaller 'leg breaker' holes are scattered randomly through the rest of the clear zone. The guaranteed safe paths through the field are planned as wide loops through the most exposed sections, forcing attackers to choose between time spent as clear targets for archers or unknown hazards hidden in the grass. While you don't currently have the spare material for an actual palisade with most of the cleared wood being set aside for other construction, you have a small number of 'watch towers' constructed in the boughs of particularly large trees left standing inside the perimeter boundary. Finally, along the perimeter itself the loose earth excavated from the pit traps is repurposed into a series of hard-packed berms to serve as cover for your people on the defence.
Out in the woods proper and scattered around the outer patrol perimeter, your rangers follow suit. Spike-lined pits and leg-catch holes are joined by nets, snares, and tripwires - some just meant as tripping hazards, some attached to tension triggers or counterweights, and from there to more lethal traps. All in all at the end of the season, while you don't have a wall or any of the more noticeable features one might associate with a typical fortified town, you've ensured that any attacker must first wade through miles of traps before they even find you.
[Reward: Basic defences constructed, bonus to defensive combat rolls; Upkeep cost from [Unestablished] reduced by 10.]
DIPLOMACY - Your settlement might be small, but you have big plans! Plans that include being recognised as a nation of your own and respected by your peers! How hard can it be? Of course, now that you have made initial contact it's clear just how tenuous your international position is; you don't yet have much in the way of products to sell, so for the most part all you can do is trade your expertise - and the time of your limited number of druids.
-[ ] A Secretary
You're very bad with people, you're not afraid to admit that. Frankly it's nothing short of a miracle that anyone was willing to follow you out into the wild unknown like they did. Luckily they did, and you can find people who can deal with the business of… people. You need someone who can proof-read contracts and schmooze and draft correspondence that you really don't have the patience for.
Almandine (obviously an assumed name) is not a druid. Which is fine - many of your people aren't druids either - but Almandine is emphatically, almost aggressively so, and quite possibly the least druidic person - or spiritual in general, for that matter - in the camp. Frankly, you have no idea how she came to join your little group since she's so obviously uncomfortable 'roughing it,' but she's with you now and you don't exactly have people lining up out the flap of your tent to volunteer as your privy secretary. You're almost certain the elf woman is a runaway or an exile (probably from Kyonin, by the accent) and even more so that she's some kind of longshanks nobility 'slumming it' - though you doubt it's by her own choice.
She had dire words to say about the sheaf of contracts you'd signed off on to provide druidic labour in Rostland, and in return you challenged her to show you better - and after several hours of furious drafting, she presents you with a plan for how you might market services to the more cosmopolitan part of the country where "being able to grow their plants better," as she so crudely puts it, is less in demand. She also cites several merchants that do business through Brevoy, the River Kingdoms, and beyond, whom she's familiar with and can write to for contacts.
That's enough for you, and you decide to let her sink or swim on the back of that interview. For the moment, you have her set up in another tent next to yours in lieu of a proper office - downwind, ultimately, since you don't care for the wafting stink of the low-grade hashish that she smokes.
[Reward: Diplomacy advisor - character sheet added to the front page.]
INTRIGUE - Sneakery, skulduggery, ne'er-do-well-ism. There are many ways to win a fight, as the rangers say. While if the bandits come calling in force you cannot hope to do more than contain the damage, you can perhaps… lead them astray.
-[ ] Snipe Hunting
The time for trying to conceal that there is a new presence in the Stolen Lands is past. The locals are starting to sniff around for the proverbial fresh meat. But the reports from the attempt to conceal your entry give you an idea - you could create false trails to further obfuscate your location - paths that lead nowhere, or into hazards or hungry predators. The wilderness is a dangerous place, after all.
[Roll: 1d100: 96 + 10 = 106, success]
Laying false trails now that the local bandit contingent knows of a group in the Stolen Lands is comparatively easy. In many cases, your rangers and druids are simply making certain various game trails are made more visible to the untrained eye. With the handful of druids doing the comparatively heavy work of trail-marking, the rangers go looking for natural hazards. A pack of wolves prowls the area, as do a mated pair of tatzlwyrms and - found in a moment of excitement which nearly ends in one of your rangers being eaten - a large, grizzled alce; trails are carefully expanded along and into these predators' most active hunting sites, as well as other more mundane dangers, such as sudden gullies hidden beneath patches of scrubby bush. All in all, it's enough to sow confusion and trepidation, though such tactics will not work forever.
[Reward: Delayed discovery of your settlement. Rolls for discovery will begin after Turn 3/Autumn.]
STEWARDSHIP - Everyone's busy right now with the myriad processes of establishing a new settlement. Even just managing what gets placed where, you've got your work cut out for you.
-[ ] Forestry
The fact is, your people need more permanent homes, and the simplest way to do that is with timber. Druids do not care for the reckless clearcutting of healthy forest, nor carelessly tearing the skin of the earth for enormous quarries - but you must care for your people first, and of the two options timber is both easier to source, and easier to manage.
Logging itself is simple enough; you are of course surrounded by forest on almost all sides. Cutting trees without denuding whole sections of first is a somewhat more complex task, especially while attempting to work quickly and produce the needed timber before winter comes. Even with the small bounties from thinning out some of the local woodland for farms and the unspoiled stock from the ruins to the south, your people have thoroughly raided and harvested all of the materially-useful deadfall from the forest for miles in every direction.
You have the logging teams and the labourers working on your defences coordinate their efforts, for the moment. Your people cut the forest back from the settlement's perimeter, making a nearly-clear band a hundred metres across with only a few individual trees and small clusters left standing. The rest come down whole or in parts, by axe and by spell; earthmoving magic boils root clusters up out of the ground for removing the latter and the stumps of the former with ease. As before, the fallen timber is quickly cleaned and stripped of bark and leaves on the spot before all being taken away - the trees for further processing, the bark and leaves to be used as mulch. Alongside the felling, druids move through the marked area and carefully uproot various small saplings as well as harvesting immature seedpods from the fallen trees; these are taken away to a number of clearings closer to the Grove, where they work on rapidly cultivating the seeds and saplings for replenishment.
LEARNING - Oh, for a proper library. Or at least a nice quiet space free of immediate distractions. No matter, the pursuit of knowledge must continue!
-[ ] Sorcerous Census
Magical talent to a greater or lesser extent is not uncommon on Golarion, though most will never reach great heights due to inclination, circumstance, or any other factor. Certainly, any given slice of the population will likely find at least a handful of magical 'tricks' among otherwise entirely mundane folk, and even some self-taught hedge mages and small-time witches. If you can determine who among your people know more than usual about the arcane, you can have them work together and start becoming more than the sum of their parts.
Half a year on, and the sorting is finished - and more importantly you know how many prospective students you have who are interested in expanding their ability. You now have an organized body of… perhaps it's generous to call them wizards just yet, but you're in a generous mood. 'The College of Greenhold,' you call them - some people would call that pretentious; you consider it aspirational. And frankly, it seems to be working. The hedge mages are standing straighter, looking more confident, and they're actually talking to one another and comparing notes already; which says good things about hammering them into shape. The members of the more sorcerous contingent are also looking up; while you can't exactly train them the way you can have the wizards study together, the sense of community from knowing they're not alone seems to similarly be doing good things for their morale.
[Reward: College of Greenhold tentatively established; new options unlocked]
SPIRITUALITY - The earth hums at your touch, as does the air, the water. This is a place of power. The veil between the planes is thin, and things slip through. You do not think your presence has gone unnoticed.
-[ ] Druidic Defences
Aside from your more mundane defences, more magical protections may be put in place. Spells of binding and of harm to protect your borders, wards of protection and detection to discourage infiltration. Just small things for the moment, but they can serve as foundations for later works.
Your druids' defensive efforts are largely focused on warding the settlement from less direct attack. All of you with a connection to the Green Pact feel that same creeping unease, and you focus on that first. Basic charms and amulets are produced with spells and wards intended to ward off hostile Outsiders, tied to tree branches or buried at their roots. A small number of your druids at a time devote their energy to divinatory spells or establishing a sense of camaraderie and mutual assistance with the local populations of small animals and birds to be their eyes and ears. All of this toward attempting to detect and defend the settlement against the unseen things stirring in the figurative dark.
This is not to say that no magical effort is spent in defending against more quantifiable threats, and a collection of other hazards are assembled to defend your people. A collection of alchemicals are given to the rangers to supplement their traps, runic traps are laid that produce swarms of biting insects, clouds of noxious gas or other irritants, and more. Closer to home in the cleared 'kill zone,' they replant brambles, viny plants and various low-lying shrubbery that can be animated to further harass and trip up unwanted guests.
[Reward: Basic magical defences constructed, bonus to defensive combat rolls; chance of esoteric attack reduced; Upkeep cost from [Unestablished] reduced by 10.]
Leaf litter crunches underfoot as you walk into the woods, following in the exact trail - if not the steps - of the ranger in front of you. He's a human youth, red-haired and nervous, and a real gangly one even by longshanks standards, all joints without the meat to really fill them out.
As you walk, the normal sounds of the forest gradually thin out, and are replaced instead by shouting voices and enraged bellowing. There's an audible silence from the boy, obviously trying to decide whether to say anything.
Finally, he points at a thinning in the trees. "Right through there, ma'am," the lad half-shouts over the din. You nod, give him an encouraging (and sharp) grin, and pat his elbow on your way past. He's gone when you glance back, probably back to border patrol.
The space you enter barely counts as a clearing, and feels downright crowded. Four rangers stand around, weapons drawn as they warily eye a grizzly bear in the centre, pinned and struggling under a net and several ropes anchored into the surrounding earth or tied off to sturdier-looking trees. Two other druids - a pair of halfling twins, Nikolas and Nakita, two of your few battle-trained druids - stand silent but ready, eyes fixed on the animal
You approach one of the rangers, a grim-looking aiuvarin you recognize as one of the more senior members of the contingent. "What's the situation!?" you shout.
"Damned if I know," they reply. "Never seen anything quite like it!"
The bear collapses, wheezing heavily into the dirt. The animal's jaws are frothy with pink-tinged saliva. A grizzly this time of year should be fattening up, but this one is verging on gaunt, with fur coming away in patches. One of the back legs is limp and dragging, evidenced by the ground not having been torn apart by claws beneath it.
"We thought he might be rabid, at first," the ranger continues at a more reasonable volume. "He's acting wrong, but not the right kind of wrong. We noticed him about a quarter-mile in from the outer perimeter, and decided to stalk him.
"Damn thing skipped around a half-dozen traps before we found a good spot for an ambush! Once or twice is a lucky fluke, but…" they shake their head. "And he was heading for town, straight as an arrow otherwise. It's been like this since we caught him and sent a runner back; we've got maybe five minutes until he gets his wind back."
"Faster and stronger than he should have been?" The lad told you as much, but confirmation is important.
"Yeah, too much even if it was rabid. He broke that leg trying to tear loose the first time."
With a murmured incantation and a gesture, you send up grasping vines to cinch around the bear's head and jaws, pinning the beast in place, and crouch down. You scrape up some of the foam in a little jar - wearing gloves just in case - and then reach up to gently pull the lidded eye wider. And then you freeze.
The bear's eye is the expected brown, but bloodshot and further threaded with tendrils of lurid green, and the pupil glows from within with emerald luminescence. And there's something else…
You scoot back, and release the vines. He snaps at the empty air, rumbles in obvious frustration, and his green eye remains fixed on you. The glow flares and dims rhythmically, like a heartbeat. You cast another spell, touching your throat and then one ear.
"Can you understand me?" you ask.
"Kill… kill them… kill you…"
"Why do you want to kill?"
"Kill them… hurts… invader… territory."
"Are we on your territory?"
"Long… way… hurts… hungry… invader… hurts."
That doesn't sound like a 'yes' - but why is this grizzly so intent on hunting you at such a detriment? You make a decision.
"Hurts… kill… kill…"
"I know it hurts, and I'm sorry," you say, softly. You move around, staying out of reach of those mighty jaws, even as the bear trembles and begins trying to gather his strength again.
Your knife is not terribly large, but you keep it sharp as a razor, and it cuts quickly and cleanly - and you hope, painlessly. His blood is red and hot.
You remember (distantly) sending the others away. You stay there for a long time.
—
MARTIAL: You don't have much of a fighting force at the moment, just a collection of half-drilled militia and a small cadre of rangers who are happier scouting on the fringes than fighting in formation. You can harass bandits, perhaps even distract them, but you're not sure of your ability to defend against a concerted raid.
[Choose 1]
-[ ] Drilling the Troops
Right now, your forces are hardly worth the name. Poorly armed, poorly disciplined, their morale high but untested. You can't fix the equipment problem (yet), but training and discipline is something you can manage.
Cost: 30 gold, 2 turns
[Reward: Improve Militia Training to Drilled]
-[ ] Bloody Their Noses
Of course, you could also take a more proactive approach to your own protection. Small teams of your sneakier people could go out into the Greenbelt and… manage the bandit population.
Cost: 20 gold, DC 50, 1 turn
[Reward: Delay discovery of your settlement]
-[ ] Hunting
As a druid, you have a responsibility to protect the green places of the world from reckless exploitation; as a leader, you have a responsibility to make sure the people that follow you are cared for. You'll have to be careful not to strip the area bare of wildlife to feed all the hungry mouths you need to, but carefully managed hunting parties led by rangers or druids should be able to maintain the balance between morals and necessity. Meat will fill your people's bellies, bone can be used for tools, and skins can be fashioned into clothing and armour or prepared for trade.
Cost: 30 gold, DC 0/25/50, 1 turn
[Reward: Reduce the Upkeep cost from [Unestablished] by 10/20/30]
-[ ] A Marshal
Excited and dedicated as you are to lead your people to victory in war and prosperity in peace, you have to admit that fielding reports from your scouts and cajoling your militia into something approximating a proper guard rotation along with all of your other duties is already a strain, and one that will only grow worse as you expand. Delegation is key, and sooner is better than later.
Cost: Free, 1 turn
[Reward: Find and appoint a Martial advisor]
DIPLOMACY - Almandine seems to be settling in well - by which she's terrorizing your trade caravan and the latest group of druids returned from Brevoy for news and other information. She strongly suggests spreading your efforts out for the moment or finding another revenue stream.
[Choose 1]
-[ ] Howdy, Neighbours! River Kingdoms Edition
While trade and travel connections are vital, nothing says you have to go through Brevoy to do it. If your people take the river downstream and south, it will link up with the Little Sellen and then pass into the River Kingdom of Mivon on its way to the Inner Sea. It would be a longer journey, and with the Greenbelt not made safe a rather more dangerous one, but Mivon is remarkably stable and inwardly-focused, so they are otherwise a safe option.
Cost: 30 gold, DC 50, 1 turn
[Reward: Make contact with Mivoni merchants, small trade income, reduce the Upkeep cost from [Unestablished] by 20]
-[ ] Howdy, Neighbours! Local Edition
It can't just be bandits out here! The Stolen Lands, while never having been successfully tamed, have never been truly empty of settlement - rumour goes around that from time to time strange folk will arrive in the River Kingdoms, trade in timber or skins or gathered herbs for supplies and tools, then disappear back into the wilds. Of course, if any of these people are to be found it would be a difficult undertaking, if they've hidden themselves well enough to avoid predation by the local brigands.
Cost: 30 gold, DC ???, 1 turn
[Reward: Find hidden settlements in the Greenbelt?]
-[ ] Howdy, Neighbours! Brevoy Part 2
With some minor connections made and your position slightly more stable, you can perhaps continue to push inward, as it were, and begin looking for opportunities in and around New Stetven. Of course, the more mercantile the locale, the less you have to offer. But fortune favours the bold, and your people are smart - they can probably work something out.
Cost: 50 gold, DC 50, 2 turns
[Reward: Further economic ties in Brevoy, increased trade income]
-[ ] We're Hiring!
With contact made among smaller farming communities and your druids regularly cycling through, you could, perhaps… make some offers. Every settlement will have at least a handful of youngsters hoping for better prospects, and the Stolen Lands might just be exciting enough to tempt people to come join you. You absolutely could use more hands for… everything, really.
Cost: 50 gold, DC 25, 1 turn
[Reward: small population influx; slightly increases Agricultural income, unlocks more training options]
INTRIGUE - Sneakery, skulduggery, ne'er-do-well-ism. There are many ways to win a fight, as the rangers say. While if the bandits come calling in force you cannot hope to do more than contain the damage, you can perhaps… lead them astray.
[Choose 1]
-[ ] Bandit Bothering
There are bandits in the Greenbelt. The question is "where?" While they are scattered all over - your rangers certainly found traces of enough temporary camps to be certain of that on the trek out - the reports of raids out of the area over the last few years tell not of scattered bands of brigands, but larger, more organized groups, and perhaps even a single overarching leader. You need more information, and while finding whatever headquarters they have is currently out of the question, nothing says you can't set your people to work finding an outlying camp to raid for intel.
Cost: 30 gold, DC 50, 1 turn
[Reward: More information on the Greenbelt bandits]
-[ ] Information Services
Aside from trade connections, it would be good to just get feelers out into the world. A finger on the proverbial pulse, as it were. See if you can find people willing to trade news.
Cost: 30 gold, DC 25 or 50 (can only be taken with or after [Howdy Neighbours!] Brevoy or River Kingdoms editions), 1 turn
[Reward: World News updates, beginning with the chosen region]
-[ ] Snipe Hunting
The time for trying to conceal that there is a new presence in the Stolen Lands is past. The locals are starting to sniff around for the proverbial fresh meat. But the reports from the attempt to conceal your entry give you an idea - you could create false trails to further obfuscate your location - paths that lead nowhere, or into hazards or hungry predators. The wilderness is a dangerous place, after all.
Cost: 30 gold, DC 75, 1 turn
[Reward: Delay discovery of your settlement]
-[ ] A Spymaster
You do your best, but you're not really a creature of the shadows. You need someone with twisty thoughts and a nastier sort of creativity to help pick up the slack.
Cost: Free, 1 turn
[Reward: Find and appoint an Intrigue advisor]
STEWARDSHIP - Everyone's busy right now with the myriad processes of establishing a new settlement. Even just managing what gets placed where, you've got your work cut out for you.
[Locked]
LEARNING - Oh, for a proper library. Or at least a nice quiet space free of immediate distractions. No matter, the pursuit of knowledge must continue!
[Choose 1]
-[ ] Establish a Test Garden
While some druids might look down on any kind of artificiality when it comes to growing things, you are not so dogmatic. A properly sectioned-off garden for experimentation is necessary for proper research and documentation when trying to breed plants!
Cost: 20 gold, 2 turns
[Reward: Test garden established, small bonus to certain Learning actions]
-[ ] Documenting Diversity
While the flora and fauna of the Stolen Lands are unlikely to greatly differ from those in the surrounding lands, it isn't impossible that there are species here that have never been documented before. You itch to catalog them.
Cost: 20 gold, 1 turn
[Reward: Look for unique/useful plants and animals in the Stolen Lands (D100 roll for what you find)]
-[ ] Passing Notes
Your wizards are assembled, such that they are. You need to get them used to working together, and moreover you need to assemble an actual curriculum. You need them to share whatever bits of arcane lore they've squirreled away - some of them have been, but not cohesively or equally. Fix that. Between all the odds and ends, you can probably scrap together a basic educational program to bring them to something more like trained wizards.
Cost: 100 gold, DC 50, 2 years
[Reward: Gain Journeyman Wizards; gain the ability to train wizards once population expands]
-[ ] Laboratory Conditions
You have a small number of alchemists both amidst your druids and rangers and otherwise - what you don't have is a space they can work in safety and security, or the equipment to produce more than basic concoctions. You could fix that and then your alchemists could both step up production and work on new formulas.
Cost: 100 gold, DC 50, 2 turns
[Reward: Construct alchemical laboratory; can produce/research alchemical enhancements]
-[ ] A Chancellor
Smart as you are, you only have so many hours in the day, and you newly have a gaggle of untrained wizards to wrangle. Some assistance wouldn't go amiss.
Cost: Free, 1 turn
[Reward: Find and appoint a Learning advisor]
SPIRITUALITY - The earth hums at your touch, as does the air, the water. This is a place of power. The veil between the planes is thin, and things slip through. You do not think your presence has gone unnoticed.
[Choose 1]
-[ ] Ironwood
It is anathema for druids to wear dead metal against living flesh. Such is your pact and the price of your power. But of course this does not mean that you must go unprotected into battle, so druids long ago created a ritual to imbue wood with the resilience of the iron and steel used by the uninitiated. Ironwood armour is rare, though valued highly by more martially-inclined druids, but you know the material has more uses than that. It will be difficult - you do not fully know the ritual and the circle's records are infuriatingly vague, and without a proper ritual site it will be even harder, but you have time and ingenuity on your side.
Cost: 30 gold, DC 65, 1 turn
[Reward: Begin producing ironwood; allows equipment upgrades for druids, increases logging and trade income]
-[ ] Is There a Priest in Here?
Most of the people who followed you into the Stolen Lands follow druidic custom, and while many of them predictably follow the Green Faith or honour Gozreh, Erastil, or similar deities, they perform their worship through action rather than prayer. However, not everyone in your settlement is a druid, and not everyone is going to be content (or comfortable) without the trappings of 'civilized' religion. You can take a census, at least - you might even find an actual cleric in this rabble, and otherwise you'll certainly field volunteers if anyone's willing to attempt being a chaplain. Oh, and a shrine - you'll probably need one of those.
Cost: 20 gold, 1 turn
[Reward: Construct a small shrine, maybe find priests?]
-[ ] Spirit-Calling
Leshies aren't 'born' in the same way that mortal folk are. To create a leshy, a druid prepares a suitable vessel from a living plant, using a ritual that is only slightly less secret than your language. Should the vessel prove sufficiently enticing, a spirit of nature - a tremendous, truly immortal, fragmented embodiment of the world itself - may come and inhabit the shell, which gives them an ability to affect the world and a clarity of thought that they lack. Leshies retain a spiritual connection and affinity for primal magic which makes many of them natural druidic allies, and the fact that they're 'born' fully capable makes it much easier to rapidly grow your population
Cost: 100 gold, DC 40, 1 turn
[Reward: small population influx, unlocks more training options]
-[ ] A Shepherd
With everything demanding your attention, you've been unable to devote your full attention to advising your circle on non-practical matters, as well as attending the needs of your flock - the larger contingent of people who are initiated into druidic rites and customs but who for one reason or another do not share in the boons of the Green Pact. For those matters you've been leaning on the assistance of your Second, who has thankfully risen to the occasion. It would probably be best to formalize that arrangement so people stop bothering you with things you literally cannot spare the time for.
Cost: Free, 1 turn
[Reward: Appoint a Spirituality Advisor]
PERSONAL - While Almandine taking over most of the work for your nascent diplomatic and trade correspondence has freed up a little of your time, it was probably the smallest amount of active work you actually had to delegate. Your personal freedom is still essentially nil.
[Locked]
Leaf litter crunches underfoot as you walk into the woods, following in the exact trail - if not the steps - of the ranger in front of you. He's a human youth, red-haired and nervous, and a real gangly one even by longshanks standards, all joints without the meat to really fill them out.
As you walk, the normal sounds of the forest gradually thin out, and are replaced instead by shouting voices and enraged bellowing. There's an audible silence from the boy, obviously trying to decide whether to say anything.
Finally, he points at a thinning in the trees. "Right through there, ma'am," the lad half-shouts over the din. You nod, give him an encouraging (and sharp) grin, and pat his elbow on your way past. He's gone when you glance back, probably back to border patrol.
The space you enter barely counts as a clearing, and feels downright crowded. Four rangers stand around, weapons drawn as they warily eye a grizzly bear in the centre, pinned and struggling under a net and several ropes anchored into the surrounding earth or tied off to sturdier-looking trees. Two other druids - a pair of halfling twins, Nikolas and Nakita, two of your few battle-trained druids - stand silent but ready, eyes fixed on the animal
You approach one of the rangers, a grim-looking aiuvarin you recognize as one of the more senior members of the contingent. "What's the situation!?" you shout.
"Damned if I know," they reply. "Never seen anything quite like it!"
The bear collapses, wheezing heavily into the dirt. The animal's jaws are frothy with pink-tinged saliva. A grizzly this time of year should be fattening up, but this one is verging on gaunt, with fur coming away in patches. One of the back legs is limp and dragging, evidenced by the ground not having been torn apart by claws beneath it.
"We thought he might be rabid, at first," the ranger continues at a more reasonable volume. "He's acting wrong, but not the right kind of wrong. We noticed him about a quarter-mile in from the outer perimeter, and decided to stalk him.
"Damn thing skipped around a half-dozen traps before we found a good spot for an ambush! Once or twice is a lucky fluke, but…" they shake their head. "And he was heading for town, straight as an arrow otherwise. It's been like this since we caught him and sent a runner back; we've got maybe five minutes until he gets his wind back."
"Faster and stronger than he should have been?" The lad told you as much, but confirmation is important.
"Yeah, too much even if it was rabid. He broke that leg trying to tear loose the first time."
With a murmured incantation and a gesture, you send up grasping vines to cinch around the bear's head and jaws, pinning the beast in place, and crouch down. You scrape up some of the foam in a little jar - wearing gloves just in case - and then reach up to gently pull the lidded eye wider. And then you freeze.
The bear's eye is the expected brown, but bloodshot and further threaded with tendrils of lurid green, and the pupil glows from within with emerald luminescence. And there's something else…
You scoot back, and release the vines. He snaps at the empty air, rumbles in obvious frustration, and his green eye remains fixed on you. The glow flares and dims rhythmically, like a heartbeat. You cast another spell, touching your throat and then one ear.
"Can you understand me?" you ask.
"Kill… kill them… kill you…"
"Why do you want to kill?"
"Kill them… hurts… invader… territory."
"Are we on your territory?"
"Long… way… hurts… hungry… invader… hurts."
That doesn't sound like a 'yes' - but why is this grizzly so intent on hunting you at such a detriment? You make a decision.
"Hurts… kill… kill…"
"I know it hurts, and I'm sorry," you say, softly. You move around, staying out of reach of those mighty jaws, even as the bear trembles and begins trying to gather his strength again.
Your knife is not terribly large, but you keep it sharp as a razor, and it cuts quickly and cleanly - and you hope, painlessly. His blood is red and hot.
You remember (distantly) sending the others away. You stay there for a long time.
—
MARTIAL: You don't have much of a fighting force at the moment, just a collection of half-drilled militia and a small cadre of rangers who are happier scouting on the fringes than fighting in formation. You can harass bandits, perhaps even distract them, but you're not sure of your ability to defend against a concerted raid.
-[ ] Hunting
As a druid, you have a responsibility to protect the green places of the world from reckless exploitation; as a leader, you have a responsibility to make sure the people that follow you are cared for. You'll have to be careful not to strip the area bare of wildlife to feed all the hungry mouths you need to, but carefully managed hunting parties led by rangers or druids should be able to maintain the balance between morals and necessity. Meat will fill your people's bellies, bone can be used for tools, and skins can be fashioned into clothing and armour or prepared for trade.
It's fortunate that your hunters haven't gone out until now, since it means that the local deer are, essentially, free game. By this time, the fawns born this past spring are grown enough for independence, so adult does can be taken without worry that orphans cannot hope to survive. It's a grim sort of comfort, but better than nothing. The hunters go out, and the hunters come back, laden with deer, rabbits, fowl, fish, and more. From there, a fair portion of your people descend on the bounty of the forest - many of them being homesteaders and woodsfolk, of course - and begin efficiently rendering everything usable. The animals are butchered efficiently, meat and fat and sinew all sectioned apart for various uses. Skins are divided into those to maintain as furs and those to render into leather, and worked accordingly. The bones are whittled into all manner of useful objects - from spoons to needles to arrowheads - while the scraps and any other unusable bits left over when all is said and done are taken by the druids to use for nourishing their tree nurseries.
By the time the first snows fall, your larders are bolstered with salted and smoked meats and pemmican; your people are warmed with coats and cloaks, boots and mittens; and you're able to breathe a sigh of relief.
[Reward: Reduced the Upkeep cost from [Unestablished] by 10.]
DIPLOMACY - Almandine seems to be settling in well - by which she's terrorizing your trade caravan and the latest group of druids returned from Brevoy for news and other information. She strongly suggests spreading your efforts out for the moment or finding another 'revenue stream.'
-[ ] We're Hiring!
With contact made among smaller farming communities and your druids regularly cycling through, you could, perhaps… make some offers. Every settlement will have at least a handful of youngsters hoping for better prospects, and the Stolen Lands might just be exciting enough to tempt people to come join you. You absolutely could use more hands for… everything, really.
The same detachment of druids has cycled through the same section of Rostland for half a year by now, encouraging growth, warding away pestilence, and monitoring the crops that the Brevic peasantry rely so heavily on for survival as well as their limited livelihood, as well as lending assistance (both in magic and in expert knowledge). Which is to say, they've grown quite familiar with the people they've been helping, and any one of them can name young people who feel dissatisfied or adrift in those communities, and families who exchange worried looks when the topic of winter comes up. Almandine speaks with the druids and traders and furnishes them with writs of invitation - and some little amount of speech coaching, for the eventuality that some of the people they'll be making offers to are illiterate - and the impression that they ought to make offers to come to Greenhold to anyone they think will be interested.
The last planned expedition goes out, and then weeks later - just ahead of the snows - they come home, numbers swollen several-fold. Young farmers, a handful of apprentice tradespeople, and a number of full families who were willing to take the risk. Your traders and druids vouch for all of them, and you welcome them with open arms. It'll be a snug fit to get everyone situated for the winter, but you had that in mind ahead of time and made certain that Almandine's offers were clear about the conditions to expect.
[Reward: +50 adult population; Agricultural income +10; training options unlocked]
INTRIGUE - Sneakery, skulduggery, ne'er-do-well-ism. There are many ways to win a fight, as the rangers say. While if the bandits come calling in force you cannot hope to do more than contain the damage, you can perhaps… lead them astray.
-[ ] A Spymaster
You do your best, but you're not really a creature of the shadows. You need someone with twisty thoughts and a nastier sort of creativity to help pick up the slack.
In the end, the fairly obvious choice for a spymaster is First Ranger Karth, being that your only real 'agents' at the moment are the rangers themselves, and Karth - through their seniority and personal charisma - has been the reason why such an infamously solitary and prickly collection of people has remained together (much less with your people). Karth accepts solemnly when you ask, though only with the assurance that they may choose to resign at any time - an expected possibility and one you were prepared for.
Karth is someone you deeply respect as a colleague, both then and now, but you can also admit that their demeanor can be difficult to acclimatize to. Most people tend to recognize the predatory calculation in their eyes after all, even if only subconsciously.
[Intrigue advisor appointed: Karth. Character sheet has been added to the front page.]
STEWARDSHIP - Everyone's busy right now with the myriad processes of establishing a new settlement. Even just managing what gets placed where, you've got your work cut out for you.
-[ ] Forestry
The fact is, your people need more permanent homes, and the simplest way to do that is with timber. Druids do not care for the reckless clearcutting of healthy forest, nor carelessly tearing the skin of the earth for enormous quarries - but you must care for your people first, and of the two options timber is both easier to source, and easier to manage.
Logging continues, for the days are already getting colder and winter is not known for a subtle arrival. The fact that your druids can directly transmute logs into usable lumber without waste is the only saving grace that will perhaps let you have all of your people under solid roofs by the time the first snows come. Your lumberjacks go to work with a will, carving deeper into the forest, and this time, the cleared ground is not left barren. While your people continue to mostly take trees root and stem and waste nothing, some patches are left with clusters of younger stumps and druids encouraging them to regrow for coppicing.
Every scrap of timber you can safely fell goes toward construction or is stored for firewood. The trees are converted to a second forest of posts and beams; skeletal frames are erected as quickly as your workers can manage, and just as quickly fleshed with wattle and daub, thatch, and magically-sculpted boards. Just basic communal longhouses for the moment, and focusing on function over form - you might all want to kill one another by spring, but by the gods and the Green you'll at least not let anyone freeze.
Yet more druids cycle through in the wake of your more intensive logging efforts, bringing young trees from the nursery to replant and rejuvenate the area. The forest will continue, if a touch less truly 'wild' than before.
[Reward: Upkeep cost from [Unestablished] reduced by 15; +25 Agriculture income]
LEARNING - Oh, for a proper library. Or at least a nice quiet space free of immediate distractions. No matter, the pursuit of knowledge must continue!
-[ ] A Chancellor
Smart as you are, you only have so many hours in the day, and you newly have a gaggle of untrained wizards to wrangle. Some assistance wouldn't go amiss.
'Ashmaker' Tybalt is perhaps not what you might have expected of a wizard and your head of research, from his looks. Tall by catfolk standards (you think - judging longshanks' height has never really been a concern when they're always taller than you) but stooped, grey and scarred, he dresses in simple peasant's garb - the one empty sleeve of his tunic pinned up neatly - rather than a robe, and he leans on an unadorned cane rather than a fanciful staff. However, he's prodigiously skilled as a war-mage - from his claims, he's sold his magical skill in conflicts across half of Avistan, and Almandine is able to confirm more than one of those stories. His repertoire - demonstrated, carefully, at your request - is impressive, and he's the only actual trained wizard amongst the gaggle of hedge-mages you've uncovered. He nods when you ask him to take the younger wizards under his wing, though he cracks that it's lucky he still has one to work with.
[Reward: Learning advisor appointed: Tybalt. Character sheet has been added to the front page.]
SPIRITUALITY - The earth hums at your touch, as does the air, the water. This is a place of power. The veil between the planes is thin, and things slip through. You do not think your presence has gone unnoticed.
-[ ] A Shepherd
With everything demanding your attention, you've been unable to devote your full attention to advising your circle on non-practical matters, as well as attending the needs of your flock - the larger contingent of people who are initiated into druidic rites and customs but who for one reason or another do not share in the boons of the Green Pact. For those matters you've been leaning on the assistance of your Second, who has thankfully risen to the occasion. It would probably be best to formalize that arrangement so people stop bothering you with things you literally cannot spare the time for.
Rakka has been largely managing your druids' day-to-day concerns for the better part of the last year, so announcing that you intend her to be your official delegate merits little more than an amused snort and a joke: "Well, if you insist."
The older ysoki woman is frankly better suited to handling people - and in particular the druids of the Circle - than you ever have been, and it's a sobering reminder that your position is owed as much to her contentment and lack of ambition as your own ability. Rakka trusts your judgement enough to back you up almost always, and you're thankful that she does so even when you otherwise butt heads. The two of you make a good team.
[Spirituality advisor appointed: Rakka. Character sheet has been added to the front page.]
The State of the Realm has now been updated to reflect the new state of affairs, since from now on you'll be doing year-long turns. Broadly, all income and upkeep has been quadrupled in accordance (I also found and fixed a math error - your upkeep was actually slightly too high so I've fixed that and refunded the difference).
With year-long turns, you'll also be getting two actions each in categories that have an advisor assigned; also, since you have more than half of the categories filled by an advisor you have one Personal action available, with a second unlocking once the remaining advisors are recruited.
Next turn will take a little while since I'm reformatting the actions a little bit re: cost and rewards.
If anyone has anything to ask, feel free to do so.
