Edit: disclaimer, I have only a bare idea of what I'm doing, If I offend someone(because Araby...
Making Araby great again, a Sultan quest(Warhammer Fantasy)
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Character creation
- Location
- Toronto, Ontario(occasionally)
Edit: disclaimer, I have only a bare idea of what I'm doing, If I offend someone(because Araby is inspired? by middle eastern and Islamic? nations), I apologize in advance.
Feel free to decide I'm doing/portraying/existing wrong, and if you have actually constructive advice about how to do it better then PM me, when you do, skip the criticism and move on to 'I advise you do _ this way because _', or I will ignore you, not because you haven't said something useful or smart, but because I don't want to deal with a bunch of messages from people who want to be critical of me every time I sign in(assuming this draws that much interest, HA).
Making Araby great again, a Sultan quest
You are Ossman Ibn Sa'di and you are betrayed.
You had been enjoying a quiet moment, looking out over the life-giving river running through the heart of your father's city. Across and some ways down the river was the shining gold minaret of the temple 'Prophet Abdul Rashid's Vigil' looking out over the bay the river opened into.
The structure was nearly 100 meters tall, and shone with the reflected rays of the sun bouncing off of the precious metals and gems adorning its body, making it the second most expensive building in the city. The exterior decorations told eight traditional tales of morality and legend, and nine tales of the prophet Abdul Rashid's life and achievement, visible to any of the numerous pilgrims visiting the holy site should they choose to walk the perimeter of the building. These displays of riches and piety were preserved through the tireless efforts of the temple guard, drawn from the most experienced of the dervishers, and tasked with guiding the faithful though the building and to and from the sermons and relics within.
It was lauded as an expression of the ascendency of your nation, symbolic of the greatness, wealth, and depth of valuable tradition your people had accrued under the guiding hand of the priesthood -and of course, the Sultanate.
At the foot of the opulent walls the temple guard glared suspiciously at a pack of ragged street urchins, concerned that they might try to steal a part of the wealth on display for themselves.
The sight was ... thought provoking, and as it always did, it led you to ruminate further on the path you would set yourself in life, for it was indivisible from the people your family would rule.
As the fifth son of the Sultan, by a low-born wife no less, you were very unlikely to inherit the throne naturally, and unnatural causes did not seem to be forthcoming, or even particularly desirable.
A man of lower character and greater ambition might have begun scheming to take the throne by guile or force, but that was not for you, the laws of inheritance were as God's book and your father's decree wrote, you would not challenge them for selfish reasons.
A man of lesser responsibility or restraint might have fallen into indolence, taking advantage of the thousand luxuries offered to you each day as a child of royalty to lose yourself, burying the lack of purpose in your life below the anticipation of the next distraction, but that path seemed increasingly hollow to you as you grew out of boyhood.
A man of greater wanderlust or lesser love for your people might have sought fortune and significance elsewhere, in far off lands out of the shadows of your more prominent siblings, but compared to service to your people the siren call of adventure held no allure.
You had resolved yourself to seek a role supporting your nation, perhaps roles open to a child of royalty that could not inherit were less glorious than sitting on the throne, but the nation needed skilled subordinates to carry out the Sultan's will and address the corruption that would not always be visible from on high.
It was by the constant and unceasing efforts of dozens of generals, priests, spies, scholars, administrators and emissaries that Araby existed at all against the challenges your civilization faced day by day.
As such you had been grooming yourself for a role as
[] a leader of fighting men, acting in defence of your people's lands. A traditional role for unneeded sons, the closeness of your relation to the current Sultan would allow you to bypass many local obstacles and issues of petty grudges or pride in defence of your homeland.(+martial dice when rolling character, connections in the army)
[] a shepherd of the people's souls, acting in defence of your people's spirits. Like many before you, you would study the depths of theology to succor your people against both spiritual and physical ailments.(+piety dice when rolling character, connections in the priesthood)
[] an emissary, bringing the Sultan's words to both good Arabyans, and heathens alike, and supporting the unity and interests of the greater Arabyan people wherever you're sent. Your blood would open many doors and many ears, if you followed this path(+diplomacy dice, minimal connections all over the place, including the far reaches of Araby)
[] a scholar, studying the achievements of the past and unraveling the present nature of God's world to bring your people new prosperity. An nontraditional course, you still sought this in the hopes of using your connections and status to have new innovations adopted by your people.(+ learning dice, advantages in bypassing social and religious conservatism when trying to convince people to adopt new innovations)
[] a spymaster, seeking the truth in the shadows and concealing it in the light, to fight the darkness that lurks beneath the veneer the world presents to the uninquiring so that it won't touch upon the lives of your people. A nontraditional course, following through on your plans would require that you keep them secret from your siblings, so as to avoid a knife in the back, and produce children quickly to leave with whichever one of your siblings would have become Sultan as hostages to secure the tolerance of the government.(+intrigue dice, a (somewhat)trustworthy mentor and local information network, complications)
Of course all of those futures would require that you live to see them in order to be possible.
Something you recognized as acutely uncertain as you began to go into shock, the paling of blood at the surface of your body contracting inward towards your core, the intense nausea and shortness of breath caused by your internal humors becoming unbalenced, and behind it all the unnatural stuttering of your heart. you looked around in a panic, spluttering your wine out, and looking into the eyes of the serving-slave as they withdrew a dagger first from their robes, then from its scabbard, exposing the dull green whorls on the blade, unnaturally mesmerizing the eye.
Your wine had been poisoned, and though you did not drink all of it, it was enough to prevent you from taking any action to fight death by the blade, even if this slave would have been no match for you normally there was little you could do. Other than, of course, throwing yourself off of the balcony, into the river.
You hit the water with a thunderous splash, seeming all the louder for the deadening of sound like cotton in your ears.
You struggled desperately for breath, trying to get some, any air, down your throat, but breathing had already been getting difficult before you plunged into deep water. Bobbing briefly above the waves you see the palace in flames, already too far gone to be saved.
Lamenting your inability to reach that future you had hoped for, you slip into darkness under the waves.
In your mind's eye you stood nude on a plain, the desert sun beating down overhead, more intense than you've ever felt in reality. Nearly making you long for that time only a minute ago when you were drowning.
You look around for a moment in confusion, but on some level your know where you need to go.
Turning in the direction of the rising sun, you begin your walk.
The eternity of the journey seems only a minute to your half-addled mind, as you stumble unheedingly past lush and quenching oases that were never there. Ignoring the voices of loved ones, your pleading mother Sayida and stern father Sultan Sa'di Ibn Adil, your cajoling elder brother Hikmat, respected as only a little boy could despite his foolish escapades, and your tearful long deceased nanny from when you were merely a boy, a woman whose name you cannot make yourself remember but whose scent, of soap and linen with a hint of flowering blood lily during the spring, you will never forget, all of them from people you begin to realize you will never see again and increasingly obstacles that you cannot divert your path, hedges of cacti and yawning chasms to bar the way, spikes and coals to pain your bare feet and armies of horrors to turn you from your path.
Yet each distraction melts away to nothing as you pass through, burning away like a mist under the beating sun.
You could fill a small epic with the journey alone, yet beside the Need to reach the destination it is meaningless, unworthy of note, and already fading from memory.
So you come upon a titan, standing upon the plain, you cannot determine it's height, and you cannot count the number of wings that spring from its body.
You can marvel at how long it takes to get any bigger in your vision, despite the timeless quality of the trek.
Eventually you come to a stop, craning your neck to stare upwards towards where its eyes would be, if you could see any. Nonetheless you get the sense that you've met it's gaze.
And then you KNOW.
For too long your people have lacked a secular authority that can balance the strength of religious authority, for too long your people have looked to past glory for strength without thought of what the future might offer, since the fall of Bel-Alliad it has been so. You've been set a holy task, to unify Araby in more than just name, and in a manner that will survive your death, and to lead your nation both to victory over the forces that are coming tear down all mankind, and into the future, to meet and take advantage of the changes that are coming on your own terms.
This is your mission, And you have no choice but to accept it and make it your own, or abandon all you have ever had faith in.
And your world is dissolved in retching up the contents of your stomach and half the contents of your lungs onto the sand between your fingers, listening to the shouts of panic and the clamor of both the city guard and the bucket brigades drawing from the river.
You need to get up, you have a job to do.
What do you tell your men to focus on?(write in the order of priority. voting must be in plan format)
[]the trade district in general
[]the docks in particular
[]the palace
[]the temple district
[]the barracks
[]the inner walls
[]the district walls
[]the outer walls
[]the other noble estates
[]the tradesman district
[]the hovelheap(eastern slums)
[]the mud lands(western slums)
Do you contribute personally?
[]yes(raises morale)
[]no(eliminates chance of making injury due to poisoning worse or drawing a second assassination attempt)
All of the below physical traits have a 50% chance of being heritable, with bonuses to probability and rerolls possible depending on blessings and magic and the like. Voting for this stage must be in plan format.
(choose 2, don't choose tall and short at once)Physical:
[ ] Tall: You stand a head above most, giving you an edge in combat and a little bit of extra respect from everyone that has to lean backwards to look you in the eye. +2 martial, bonus to relations with anyone that respects size, bonus to intimidation attempts
[ ] Extremely Short: Not just a little shorter than most, but significantly so, comparable to a child, a halfling or a dwarf. Being overlooked is infuriating, but often useful. -2 martial, +4 intrigue, bonus to halfling and dwarf relations but malus to leading humans and other tall creatures
[ ] Strong: A very straightforward advantage. +4 martial
[ ] Quick: you're much faster on your feet than normal +3 martial, +1 intrigue
(choose 3)Mental:
[ ] Animal Kinship: You have a gift for getting along with and training animals. Regular animals, that is; it'd take a lot of work and luck to apply the knack to, say, a Roc. +1 Diplomacy
[ ] Brave: You can withstand terrors that make others flee. +1 Martial
[ ] Eidetic Memory: Unless severely distracted, you are able to memorize anything at a glance and recall it in perfect detail later. +1 Learning
[ ] Gossipmonger: You have a knack for keeping one ear on the buzz of gossip all around you, giving you early warnings when something isn't quite right in your immediate vicinity and a source of low-level local information. +1 Intrigue
[ ] Principled: You are almost pained by the idea of betraying your principles and aren't likely the bend or break on the matter +1 Piety
[ ] Organized: Through habit or obsession, you keep everything neat, tidy, and in it's place. +1 Stewardship
[ ] Polyglot: You easily pick up new languages. +1 Diplomacy
[ ] Genius: Your mind works with a furious intensity that is sometimes frightening to those who know you well enough to understand it. +2 to all stats, drawbacks and complications
[ ] Stickler: You measure however many times you need to. You do the job once and do it well. +1 Stewardship
[ ] Superstitious: You know a hundred different superstitions for averting bad luck and keeping the evil eye off you. Maybe some of them work. +1 Piety
[ ] Touched by Death: In your youth you were present to view a Tomb King raid cut through your trusted guards and friends, striking fear into your heart. As an adult, that fear has been reforged into hatred. Hatred of Undead trait +2 Martial VS undead.
[ ] Savaged by beasts: In your youth you were clawed by a beastman while out on a hunting trip. Deciding that the aversion this trauma had created was unseemly you and your father planned further 'hunting trips', this time seeking a more dangerous game, to desensitize you and fan your enmity into a burning source of strength. Hatred of Beastmen trait +2 martial VS beastmen
Feel free to decide I'm doing/portraying/existing wrong, and if you have actually constructive advice about how to do it better then PM me, when you do, skip the criticism and move on to 'I advise you do _ this way because _', or I will ignore you, not because you haven't said something useful or smart, but because I don't want to deal with a bunch of messages from people who want to be critical of me every time I sign in(assuming this draws that much interest, HA).
Making Araby great again, a Sultan quest
You are Ossman Ibn Sa'di and you are betrayed.
You had been enjoying a quiet moment, looking out over the life-giving river running through the heart of your father's city. Across and some ways down the river was the shining gold minaret of the temple 'Prophet Abdul Rashid's Vigil' looking out over the bay the river opened into.
The structure was nearly 100 meters tall, and shone with the reflected rays of the sun bouncing off of the precious metals and gems adorning its body, making it the second most expensive building in the city. The exterior decorations told eight traditional tales of morality and legend, and nine tales of the prophet Abdul Rashid's life and achievement, visible to any of the numerous pilgrims visiting the holy site should they choose to walk the perimeter of the building. These displays of riches and piety were preserved through the tireless efforts of the temple guard, drawn from the most experienced of the dervishers, and tasked with guiding the faithful though the building and to and from the sermons and relics within.
It was lauded as an expression of the ascendency of your nation, symbolic of the greatness, wealth, and depth of valuable tradition your people had accrued under the guiding hand of the priesthood -and of course, the Sultanate.
At the foot of the opulent walls the temple guard glared suspiciously at a pack of ragged street urchins, concerned that they might try to steal a part of the wealth on display for themselves.
The sight was ... thought provoking, and as it always did, it led you to ruminate further on the path you would set yourself in life, for it was indivisible from the people your family would rule.
As the fifth son of the Sultan, by a low-born wife no less, you were very unlikely to inherit the throne naturally, and unnatural causes did not seem to be forthcoming, or even particularly desirable.
A man of lower character and greater ambition might have begun scheming to take the throne by guile or force, but that was not for you, the laws of inheritance were as God's book and your father's decree wrote, you would not challenge them for selfish reasons.
A man of lesser responsibility or restraint might have fallen into indolence, taking advantage of the thousand luxuries offered to you each day as a child of royalty to lose yourself, burying the lack of purpose in your life below the anticipation of the next distraction, but that path seemed increasingly hollow to you as you grew out of boyhood.
A man of greater wanderlust or lesser love for your people might have sought fortune and significance elsewhere, in far off lands out of the shadows of your more prominent siblings, but compared to service to your people the siren call of adventure held no allure.
You had resolved yourself to seek a role supporting your nation, perhaps roles open to a child of royalty that could not inherit were less glorious than sitting on the throne, but the nation needed skilled subordinates to carry out the Sultan's will and address the corruption that would not always be visible from on high.
It was by the constant and unceasing efforts of dozens of generals, priests, spies, scholars, administrators and emissaries that Araby existed at all against the challenges your civilization faced day by day.
As such you had been grooming yourself for a role as
[] a leader of fighting men, acting in defence of your people's lands. A traditional role for unneeded sons, the closeness of your relation to the current Sultan would allow you to bypass many local obstacles and issues of petty grudges or pride in defence of your homeland.(+martial dice when rolling character, connections in the army)
[] a shepherd of the people's souls, acting in defence of your people's spirits. Like many before you, you would study the depths of theology to succor your people against both spiritual and physical ailments.(+piety dice when rolling character, connections in the priesthood)
[] an emissary, bringing the Sultan's words to both good Arabyans, and heathens alike, and supporting the unity and interests of the greater Arabyan people wherever you're sent. Your blood would open many doors and many ears, if you followed this path(+diplomacy dice, minimal connections all over the place, including the far reaches of Araby)
[] a scholar, studying the achievements of the past and unraveling the present nature of God's world to bring your people new prosperity. An nontraditional course, you still sought this in the hopes of using your connections and status to have new innovations adopted by your people.(+ learning dice, advantages in bypassing social and religious conservatism when trying to convince people to adopt new innovations)
[] a spymaster, seeking the truth in the shadows and concealing it in the light, to fight the darkness that lurks beneath the veneer the world presents to the uninquiring so that it won't touch upon the lives of your people. A nontraditional course, following through on your plans would require that you keep them secret from your siblings, so as to avoid a knife in the back, and produce children quickly to leave with whichever one of your siblings would have become Sultan as hostages to secure the tolerance of the government.(+intrigue dice, a (somewhat)trustworthy mentor and local information network, complications)
Of course all of those futures would require that you live to see them in order to be possible.
Something you recognized as acutely uncertain as you began to go into shock, the paling of blood at the surface of your body contracting inward towards your core, the intense nausea and shortness of breath caused by your internal humors becoming unbalenced, and behind it all the unnatural stuttering of your heart. you looked around in a panic, spluttering your wine out, and looking into the eyes of the serving-slave as they withdrew a dagger first from their robes, then from its scabbard, exposing the dull green whorls on the blade, unnaturally mesmerizing the eye.
Your wine had been poisoned, and though you did not drink all of it, it was enough to prevent you from taking any action to fight death by the blade, even if this slave would have been no match for you normally there was little you could do. Other than, of course, throwing yourself off of the balcony, into the river.
You hit the water with a thunderous splash, seeming all the louder for the deadening of sound like cotton in your ears.
You struggled desperately for breath, trying to get some, any air, down your throat, but breathing had already been getting difficult before you plunged into deep water. Bobbing briefly above the waves you see the palace in flames, already too far gone to be saved.
Lamenting your inability to reach that future you had hoped for, you slip into darkness under the waves.
In your mind's eye you stood nude on a plain, the desert sun beating down overhead, more intense than you've ever felt in reality. Nearly making you long for that time only a minute ago when you were drowning.
You look around for a moment in confusion, but on some level your know where you need to go.
Turning in the direction of the rising sun, you begin your walk.
The eternity of the journey seems only a minute to your half-addled mind, as you stumble unheedingly past lush and quenching oases that were never there. Ignoring the voices of loved ones, your pleading mother Sayida and stern father Sultan Sa'di Ibn Adil, your cajoling elder brother Hikmat, respected as only a little boy could despite his foolish escapades, and your tearful long deceased nanny from when you were merely a boy, a woman whose name you cannot make yourself remember but whose scent, of soap and linen with a hint of flowering blood lily during the spring, you will never forget, all of them from people you begin to realize you will never see again and increasingly obstacles that you cannot divert your path, hedges of cacti and yawning chasms to bar the way, spikes and coals to pain your bare feet and armies of horrors to turn you from your path.
Yet each distraction melts away to nothing as you pass through, burning away like a mist under the beating sun.
You could fill a small epic with the journey alone, yet beside the Need to reach the destination it is meaningless, unworthy of note, and already fading from memory.
So you come upon a titan, standing upon the plain, you cannot determine it's height, and you cannot count the number of wings that spring from its body.
You can marvel at how long it takes to get any bigger in your vision, despite the timeless quality of the trek.
Eventually you come to a stop, craning your neck to stare upwards towards where its eyes would be, if you could see any. Nonetheless you get the sense that you've met it's gaze.
And then you KNOW.
For too long your people have lacked a secular authority that can balance the strength of religious authority, for too long your people have looked to past glory for strength without thought of what the future might offer, since the fall of Bel-Alliad it has been so. You've been set a holy task, to unify Araby in more than just name, and in a manner that will survive your death, and to lead your nation both to victory over the forces that are coming tear down all mankind, and into the future, to meet and take advantage of the changes that are coming on your own terms.
This is your mission, And you have no choice but to accept it and make it your own, or abandon all you have ever had faith in.
And your world is dissolved in retching up the contents of your stomach and half the contents of your lungs onto the sand between your fingers, listening to the shouts of panic and the clamor of both the city guard and the bucket brigades drawing from the river.
You need to get up, you have a job to do.
What do you tell your men to focus on?(write in the order of priority. voting must be in plan format)
[]the trade district in general
[]the docks in particular
[]the palace
[]the temple district
[]the barracks
[]the inner walls
[]the district walls
[]the outer walls
[]the other noble estates
[]the tradesman district
[]the hovelheap(eastern slums)
[]the mud lands(western slums)
Do you contribute personally?
[]yes(raises morale)
[]no(eliminates chance of making injury due to poisoning worse or drawing a second assassination attempt)
All of the below physical traits have a 50% chance of being heritable, with bonuses to probability and rerolls possible depending on blessings and magic and the like. Voting for this stage must be in plan format.
(choose 2, don't choose tall and short at once)Physical:
[ ] Tall: You stand a head above most, giving you an edge in combat and a little bit of extra respect from everyone that has to lean backwards to look you in the eye. +2 martial, bonus to relations with anyone that respects size, bonus to intimidation attempts
[ ] Extremely Short: Not just a little shorter than most, but significantly so, comparable to a child, a halfling or a dwarf. Being overlooked is infuriating, but often useful. -2 martial, +4 intrigue, bonus to halfling and dwarf relations but malus to leading humans and other tall creatures
[ ] Strong: A very straightforward advantage. +4 martial
[ ] Quick: you're much faster on your feet than normal +3 martial, +1 intrigue
(choose 3)Mental:
[ ] Animal Kinship: You have a gift for getting along with and training animals. Regular animals, that is; it'd take a lot of work and luck to apply the knack to, say, a Roc. +1 Diplomacy
[ ] Brave: You can withstand terrors that make others flee. +1 Martial
[ ] Eidetic Memory: Unless severely distracted, you are able to memorize anything at a glance and recall it in perfect detail later. +1 Learning
[ ] Gossipmonger: You have a knack for keeping one ear on the buzz of gossip all around you, giving you early warnings when something isn't quite right in your immediate vicinity and a source of low-level local information. +1 Intrigue
[ ] Principled: You are almost pained by the idea of betraying your principles and aren't likely the bend or break on the matter +1 Piety
[ ] Organized: Through habit or obsession, you keep everything neat, tidy, and in it's place. +1 Stewardship
[ ] Polyglot: You easily pick up new languages. +1 Diplomacy
[ ] Genius: Your mind works with a furious intensity that is sometimes frightening to those who know you well enough to understand it. +2 to all stats, drawbacks and complications
[ ] Stickler: You measure however many times you need to. You do the job once and do it well. +1 Stewardship
[ ] Superstitious: You know a hundred different superstitions for averting bad luck and keeping the evil eye off you. Maybe some of them work. +1 Piety
[ ] Touched by Death: In your youth you were present to view a Tomb King raid cut through your trusted guards and friends, striking fear into your heart. As an adult, that fear has been reforged into hatred. Hatred of Undead trait +2 Martial VS undead.
[ ] Savaged by beasts: In your youth you were clawed by a beastman while out on a hunting trip. Deciding that the aversion this trauma had created was unseemly you and your father planned further 'hunting trips', this time seeking a more dangerous game, to desensitize you and fan your enmity into a burning source of strength. Hatred of Beastmen trait +2 martial VS beastmen
Last edited:
Character Sheet
- Location
- Toronto, Ontario(occasionally)
Character Sheet
Name: Ossman Ibn Sa'di (Ossman, son of Sa'di. In the full formal title there are are a bunch of other 'son of' iterations tracking his male ancestry, but I'll be skipping them whenever the issue comes up)
Date of Birth : 2267 IC
Titles: Caliph of Khufra, Heir Apparent to the Throne of Araby
Prestige: 125 (fights and leads decently well, fought that one Chaos champion, Got the bird poop smell out)
Wargear: You have good steel weapons and plate armor.(and lots of replacements for when they break)
Fate points: 0
Kills: 3 brown coated infiltrators of unknown origin, 3 Zabraq (Zabraq)
Background: =+4 to base diplomacy
Traits: -
Strong: A very straightforward advantage. You are one of the strongest men of your generation, capable of overpowering foes on to lower end of inhuman strength with nothing but honed natural ability. +4 martial
Quick: You're much faster on your feet than normal. Your reflexes are absurd, and average men have trouble tracking you visually when you loosen up and really start moving. +3 martial +1 intrigue
Animal Kinship: You have a gift for getting along with and training animals. Regular animals, that is; it'd take a lot of work and luck to apply the knack to, say, a Roc. +1 Diplomacy
Eidetic Memory: Unless severely distracted, you are able to memorize anything at a glance and recall it in perfect detail later. +1 Learning
Polyglot: You easily pick up new languages. +1 Diplomacy
Popular Great Sultan: When you called your people to confirm your ascension they came from all across the peninsula and overwhelmingly responded with support, despite no previous knowledge of you.
+2 Diplomacy with Arabyans, may degrade or upgrade
The Potential: You've always felt like there's a deeper connection with god, right on the edge of your mind, at the tip of your tongue. Once you have the time you could develop this into something more.
Martial: 14 +4 +3 =21, You lean pretty heavily on your natural physical talent, but actually put in a little more training than average to make sure you can make most effective use of that talent in combat. Through innate ability and hard work you've started to edge past the threat level that a normal person can deal with.
Diplomacy: 16 +1+1 =18(20 with Arabyans), between long practice and a natural affinity for both languages and the more instinctive interactions of beasts, spoken through body language and tone, you've achieved skill at matters diplomatic significantly above the average.
Stewardship: 18 =18, you were always really good at managing both people and numbers, with your excellent memory backing you up in your studies and efforts in this direction you've taken this to a praiseworthy level.
Learning: 11 +1 =12, You're well studied enough, but not especially knowledgeable in any field you didn't expect to need, or in anything particularly esoteric.
Piety: 20 =20, (nat 20, do you express natural priest powers or just have the potential? Roll: 23/100, Just the potential) Your faith burns within you, a quiet source of strength that none would dare doubt or cast aspersions upon, though since your vision you've been feeling like there's something more, just beyond your reach.
Intrigue:7+1 =8, You aren't very good at the shadow games of the court, not especially terrible, but not good either.
Name: Ossman Ibn Sa'di (Ossman, son of Sa'di. In the full formal title there are are a bunch of other 'son of' iterations tracking his male ancestry, but I'll be skipping them whenever the issue comes up)
Date of Birth : 2267 IC
Titles: Caliph of Khufra, Heir Apparent to the Throne of Araby
Prestige: 125 (fights and leads decently well, fought that one Chaos champion, Got the bird poop smell out)
Wargear: You have good steel weapons and plate armor.(and lots of replacements for when they break)
Fate points: 0
Kills: 3 brown coated infiltrators of unknown origin, 3 Zabraq (Zabraq)
Background: =+4 to base diplomacy
Traits: -
Strong: A very straightforward advantage. You are one of the strongest men of your generation, capable of overpowering foes on to lower end of inhuman strength with nothing but honed natural ability. +4 martial
Quick: You're much faster on your feet than normal. Your reflexes are absurd, and average men have trouble tracking you visually when you loosen up and really start moving. +3 martial +1 intrigue
Animal Kinship: You have a gift for getting along with and training animals. Regular animals, that is; it'd take a lot of work and luck to apply the knack to, say, a Roc. +1 Diplomacy
Eidetic Memory: Unless severely distracted, you are able to memorize anything at a glance and recall it in perfect detail later. +1 Learning
Polyglot: You easily pick up new languages. +1 Diplomacy
Popular Great Sultan: When you called your people to confirm your ascension they came from all across the peninsula and overwhelmingly responded with support, despite no previous knowledge of you.
+2 Diplomacy with Arabyans, may degrade or upgrade
The Potential: You've always felt like there's a deeper connection with god, right on the edge of your mind, at the tip of your tongue. Once you have the time you could develop this into something more.
Martial: 14 +4 +3 =21, You lean pretty heavily on your natural physical talent, but actually put in a little more training than average to make sure you can make most effective use of that talent in combat. Through innate ability and hard work you've started to edge past the threat level that a normal person can deal with.
Diplomacy: 16 +1+1 =18(20 with Arabyans), between long practice and a natural affinity for both languages and the more instinctive interactions of beasts, spoken through body language and tone, you've achieved skill at matters diplomatic significantly above the average.
Stewardship: 18 =18, you were always really good at managing both people and numbers, with your excellent memory backing you up in your studies and efforts in this direction you've taken this to a praiseworthy level.
Learning: 11 +1 =12, You're well studied enough, but not especially knowledgeable in any field you didn't expect to need, or in anything particularly esoteric.
Piety: 20 =20, (nat 20, do you express natural priest powers or just have the potential? Roll: 23/100, Just the potential) Your faith burns within you, a quiet source of strength that none would dare doubt or cast aspersions upon, though since your vision you've been feeling like there's something more, just beyond your reach.
Intrigue:7+1 =8, You aren't very good at the shadow games of the court, not especially terrible, but not good either.
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State of the realm
- Location
- Toronto, Ontario(occasionally)
Everything on the northern coast east of the Emirate of Kamt was destroyed in a war during the reign of the sultan preceding you and the Emirate of Kamt is down to some nomads, two forts, a partially-finished fishing village, and some people looking for mines that were open before the war.
Trade and 'Trade' in the sea of Infidels, both with the estalians and with other Arabyans: 1,000
Government owned plantation farms: 900
Government owned mines: 500
Taxes
Peasantry: 80 (medium)
Tradesmen: 120 (medium)
Nobility: 250(low)
Total: 2850
Itemized expenses of the Caliphate of Khufra:
Army: (foot)390 +(mounted)380 +(knights of Araby upkeep)27 =797
The part of the Araby Guard upkeep you pay =100
Navy: 410
Infrastructure including Trade fleet(dhows, cogs and a couple galleons) and wood imports: 500
Tribute to that Roc your father pissed off: 50
Total: 1,857
Net profit: +993/turn
Military forces of the Caliphate of Khufra:
Military Organization, In theory each noble is supposed to raise and equip troops to a standard set by the local Caliph or Emir then send them off and pay for their upkeep as part of their taxes, somehow this mutated into doing so in exchange for a tax break, in reality the situation is even less consistent and more complicated than that.
A bunch of nobles don't actually raise troops, but instead just send the extra money, and leave the territory to organize things.
As the wealthiest noble in Khufra, you actually send much of the funds used to maintain the military to yourself.
The territory raised troops tend to be more consistently equipped, trained to a higher standard and more loyal than those raised by local authorities.
Costs Basically assume 500 men will cost 100 gold to raise, and 10,000 men have an upkeep of 100 gold. With Guard and knights costing 3 times that
-Standing army:
Morale: 3/10
Total:
58,000 + 12,000 +2,600
39,000 foot, 7,000 mounted, 12,000 mounted mercs, 2,600 knights
12,000(mostly deployed) Arabyan Guard
15,000 Spearmen: Equipped with an iron or steel tipped spear, a hide shield, and possibly some kind of light armor, these troops make up much of the line of battle. These troops are theoretically raised and armed by the leaders of major settlements and nobility to a minimum standard set by the Caliph, but as often as not just bring their own equipment instead, believing that what they've been supplied is inferior to the weapons they're familiar with.
(12 units)6,000 Swordsmen: Equipped with a steel sword a wood or hide shield, and often some kind of armor, these troops are much less numerous than the spearmen, but are generally of a higher quality, at least because the weapon requires that a user take their training seriously over an extended period to become effective with it.
(36 units)18,000 Bowmen: Equipped with a bow, a quiver of arrows and maybe a dagger, the bow is a traditional weapon of Araby, and most people outside of the cities practice with one frequently. These troops are theoretically raised and armed by the leaders of major settlements and nobility to a minimum standard set by the Caliph, but as often as not just bring their own equipment instead, believing that what they've been supplied is inferior to the weapons they're familiar with.
(8 units)4,000 Guard: Equipped with the finest in human made weapons and armor, and even a handful of earned or inherited bits of more exotic gear, their colorful silks and gilded armor making their importance clear to all who see, these troops are raised from the ranks of the most accomplished and skilled form the retinue of nobles in battle, or personally serve the Sultan of all Araby.(closest thing Araby has to state troops, you only pay a small part of their upkeep, they can fight on foot or one horseback as appropriate, and tend to be broken down into 500 man units with a range of capabilities)
160 + 500 Knights(in two knightly orders, one secular, one religious): originally a northerner tradition, the idea of knighthood was eventually adopted by the Arabyan people when they saw the practical value of a massed charge of armored horse on the battlefield. Knights ride Arabyan warhorses, descended from elven stock and perhaps the best breed of horseflesh outside of Bretonnia, and are armored in scale mail and half-plate(https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/b7/Demi-armure_MG_0793.JPG), while being armed with long lances and Scimitars, some formations also use a heavy bow.
(8 units)4,000 Desert Riders, the best light cavalry in the world, they specialize in the use of bows, but have a scimitar if they need to charge the enemy, equipped with a variety of types of light armor, all the way up to scale mail
(6 units)3,000 Camel Riders, Similar to Desert Riders, these troops are less tactically but more strategically mobile than their counterparts mounted on horses.
-Auxiliaries
5,000ish Desert Riders
7,000ish Camel Riders
(however many show up)Dervishers, unbreakable religious fanatics equipped with whatever they could bring along
(however many show up) militia, generally worse spearmen and bowmen, occasionally people armed with farming tools
not available right now
(16 units)8000 guard, scattered around Araby, representing the Sultanate's interests
740 Knights of Araby, 1,200 Knights Templar
Naval Forces of the Caliphate of Khufra:
36 Galleys(primarily oar driven ram ship, better in shallow water, some balistae and archers)
5 Galleas(larger, slower, slightly stupid attempt to combine oars and a broadside)
Whatever merchants and pirates can be convinced to show up
41/100 Military berths filled
Emirate of Ka-sabar: (Territory is a frequent battleground VS the undead and threats from the desert, concerned about the undead, violent rivalry with Symarra, the Tomb King city of Ka Sabar is a bit north and east of their territory)
Caliphate of Zoan: (very standoffish to everyone outside of his lands, holds a strategically important river mouth)
Calphate of Agade: (A hard people, used to frequent war and expanding into previously lost areas, no current trade agreements with the Lizardmen, would like to sell you elephants, but the pirates are in the way and you don't have the food security you'd want, reports minor Orc and Southlander problems, sending assistance to fight the undead)
Emirate of Al-Anaim: (defunct, occupied by imperials, sworn to the elected emperors)
Emirate of Lugash: (prosperous, sending assistance east, influenced by Bretonnian culture, especially with regards to duels and cavalry composition, with a minority that do not follow the common religion, contains the ruins of Antoch, Emir is unambitious and doesn't want to become embroiled in anything, but will still get involved when his priests call for it)
Caliphate of Medes: (wealthy off of trade and manufacturing, has significant soft power and favors banked in the south, is currently focusing on rebuilding their force of fighting men)
Emirate of Debeqea: (Damaged in civil war and never fully recovered, thinks you might be favoring his rival, doesn't like centralized power, despite all of this the representative walked away with a good impression of you)
Emirate of Songhai: (wealthy off of trade with the Far East, Has no problem with you, but doesn't particularly like you)
Emirate of Sud: (major food shortage, water shortage, desert beastmen attacks, is offering his first daughter's hand to any who can help, might be assassinated soon)
Caliphate of Ghafsa: (food shortage, minor raids by beastmen and nomads)
Emirate of Tambukta: (recent losses to beastmen, want revenge, currently fighting nomads, concentrated on the other side of the mountains, some food shortages)
Caliphate of Khufra(you): (recently suffered a major attack on the palace, problems with necromancers, beastmen, and ghouls, some food shortage)
Caliphate of Nejaz: (Full scale war against both beastmen and Nomads, some food shortages)
Emirate of Copher: (Spice trade, scholars and wizards, they still have a highly visible guild of sorcerers despite the current national antipathy towards magic, their pirates compete with yours but historically you've otherwise worked well together)
Emirate of Martek: (Concerned with stoppage of trade in manufactured goods and luxuries, is unable to export metal, Concerned with beastmen raiding their trade and outer settlements)
Emirate of Al-Haikk: (In rebellion, you suspect some relation to your father's death, Largest trading port in Araby, there is a massive divide between the haves and the have-nots with the former often trying to squeeze the latter out of what little they have, leading to rampant theft and crime as the lower classes try to support themselves and rebel, a couple of other settlements supporting the big city)
Emirate of Mabbah: (province prioritizes strength through faith, stubborn and successful foes of the Tomb Kings, Jealous of Al-Haikk, wants more support against the undead)
Emirate of Kamt: (nearly defunct, excepting a nomad chief with a blood relation to the one-time rulers who has spent time in the lands his blood gives him claim on, interested in getting you to suppress Zandri)
Sorcerer's islands: ???
Internal Nomads: currently extorting or raiding nearly everyone but you(the Caliphate of Khufra), the Emirate of Copher, the Emirate of Al-Haikk, and some of the far south-eastern territories that you're barely aware exist.
List of upgrades:
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Relationship and opinion numbers
- Location
- Toronto, Ontario(occasionally)
Relationship levels
Your peasants 4/10(Who is this guy? Some people say he's a good fighter.)
Your nobles 2/10(Who is this guy? The guy who let all of our palaces get burnt down, son of the guy who lost a lot)
-the nobles that are also merchants 3/10(same as above, but they have more assets in a mobile format and can just leave if you lose)
The Priests ?/10
Caliph of Ashur, Mustafa Abd al-Wali 7/10 (Really want assistance in coming battles against the undead, eager for a fight against the Tomb Kings of the city of Ka Sabar)
Emir of Symarra, Zaki Rashid: 8/10 (Ruled by a former adventurer who is friends with the dwarves, importing dwarf equipment and expertise, is trusted enough to be allowed to buy runic equipment En mass, smug and secure in their currently advantageous position both in general and over their rivals The Emirate of Ka-Sabar, want the Sultanate to support clearing the south of threats and expanding population and infrastructure there)
Emir of Ka-sabar, Shakil Wassim: 7/10 (Territory is a frequent battleground VS the undead and threats from the desert, concerned about the undead, violent rivalry with Symarra, the Tomb King city of Ka Sabar is a bit north and east of their territory)
Caliph of Zoan, Eniola Abd al-Karim: 5/10 (very standoffish to everyone outside of his lands, holds a strategically important river mouth)
Calph of Agade, Karam Abdul-Hamid: 7/10 (A hard people, used to frequent war and expanding into previously lost areas, no current trade agreements with the Lizardmen, would like to sell you elephants, but the pirates are in the way and you don't have the food security you'd want, reports minor Orc and Southlander problems, sending assistance to fight the undead)
Emirate of Al-Anaim(defunct, occupied by imperials)
Emir of Lugash, Khalid Zahir 7/10 (prosperous, sending assistance east, influenced by Bretonnian culture, especially with regards to duels and cavalry composition, with a minority that do not follow the common religion, contains the ruins of Antoch, Emir is unambitious and doesn't want to become embroiled in anything, but will still get involved when his priests call for it)
Caliph of Medes, Anwer Kato: 7/10 (wealthy off of trade and manufacturing, has significant soft power and favors banked in the south, is currently focusing on rebuilding their force of fighting men)
Emir of Debeqea, Yamikani Eskender: 5/10 (Damaged in civil war and never fully recovered, thinks you might be favoring his rival, doesn't like centralized power, despite all of this the representative walked away with a good impression of you, wants to double down on their historical rivalry with the Emirate of Songhai)
Emir of Songhai, Rashid Bahij: 5/10 (wealthy off of trade with the Far East, Has no problem with you, but doesn't particularly like you, wants to stop their historical rivalry with the Emirate of Debeqea)
Emir of Sud, Folami Anwar: 7/10 (major food shortage, water shortage, desert beastmen attacks, is offering his first daughter's hand to any who can help, might be assassinated soon)
Caliph of Ghafsa, Samad Aqil: 8/10 (food shortage, minor raids by beastmen and nomads)
Emir of Tambukta, Suhayl Salma: 7/10 (recent losses to beastmen, want revenge, currently fighting nomads, concentrated on the other side of the mountains, some food shortages)
Caliph of Khufra(you)
Caliph of Nejaz, Baqir Azhar: 6/10 (Full scale war against both beastmen and Nomads, some food shortages)
Emir of Copher, Abbas Ali: 4?/10 (Spice trade, scholars and wizards, they still have a highly visible guild of sorcerers despite the current national antipathy towards magic, their pirates compete with yours but historically you've otherwise worked well together)
Emir of Martek, Saif al-Din Youcef: 6/10 (Concerned with stoppage of trade in manufactured goods and luxuries, is unable to export metal, Concerned with beastmen raiding their trade and outer settlements)
Emir of Al-Haikk, Taj Faraj: 1/10 (In rebellion, you suspect some relation to your father's death, Largest trading port in Araby, there is a massive divide between the haves and the have-nots with the former often trying to squeeze the latter out of what little they have, leading to rampant theft and crime as the lower classes try to support themselves and rebel, a couple of other settlements supporting the big city)
Emir of Mabbah, : 7/10 (province prioritizes strength through faith, stubborn and successful foes of the Tomb Kings, Jealous of Al-Haikk, wants more support against the undead)
Emir of Kamt, Mas'ud Noureddine: 7/10 (nearly defunct, excepting a nomad chief with a blood relation to the one-time rulers who has spent time in the lands his blood gives him claim on, interested in getting you to suppress Zandri)
People to the northeast of the Aguidi mountains 7/10
People to the south of the Aguidi mountains and along the coast 7/10
People living along the coast and gulf of Medes: 5/10
People living along the rivers feeding into the Gulf of Durbaita: 5/10
Sorcerer's island: At least okay?/10
Internal Nomads: ?/10
Your peasants 4/10(Who is this guy? Some people say he's a good fighter.)
Your nobles 2/10(Who is this guy? The guy who let all of our palaces get burnt down, son of the guy who lost a lot)
-the nobles that are also merchants 3/10(same as above, but they have more assets in a mobile format and can just leave if you lose)
The Priests ?/10
Caliph of Ashur, Mustafa Abd al-Wali 7/10 (Really want assistance in coming battles against the undead, eager for a fight against the Tomb Kings of the city of Ka Sabar)
Emir of Symarra, Zaki Rashid: 8/10 (Ruled by a former adventurer who is friends with the dwarves, importing dwarf equipment and expertise, is trusted enough to be allowed to buy runic equipment En mass, smug and secure in their currently advantageous position both in general and over their rivals The Emirate of Ka-Sabar, want the Sultanate to support clearing the south of threats and expanding population and infrastructure there)
Emir of Ka-sabar, Shakil Wassim: 7/10 (Territory is a frequent battleground VS the undead and threats from the desert, concerned about the undead, violent rivalry with Symarra, the Tomb King city of Ka Sabar is a bit north and east of their territory)
Caliph of Zoan, Eniola Abd al-Karim: 5/10 (very standoffish to everyone outside of his lands, holds a strategically important river mouth)
Calph of Agade, Karam Abdul-Hamid: 7/10 (A hard people, used to frequent war and expanding into previously lost areas, no current trade agreements with the Lizardmen, would like to sell you elephants, but the pirates are in the way and you don't have the food security you'd want, reports minor Orc and Southlander problems, sending assistance to fight the undead)
Emirate of Al-Anaim(defunct, occupied by imperials)
Emir of Lugash, Khalid Zahir 7/10 (prosperous, sending assistance east, influenced by Bretonnian culture, especially with regards to duels and cavalry composition, with a minority that do not follow the common religion, contains the ruins of Antoch, Emir is unambitious and doesn't want to become embroiled in anything, but will still get involved when his priests call for it)
Caliph of Medes, Anwer Kato: 7/10 (wealthy off of trade and manufacturing, has significant soft power and favors banked in the south, is currently focusing on rebuilding their force of fighting men)
Emir of Debeqea, Yamikani Eskender: 5/10 (Damaged in civil war and never fully recovered, thinks you might be favoring his rival, doesn't like centralized power, despite all of this the representative walked away with a good impression of you, wants to double down on their historical rivalry with the Emirate of Songhai)
Emir of Songhai, Rashid Bahij: 5/10 (wealthy off of trade with the Far East, Has no problem with you, but doesn't particularly like you, wants to stop their historical rivalry with the Emirate of Debeqea)
Emir of Sud, Folami Anwar: 7/10 (major food shortage, water shortage, desert beastmen attacks, is offering his first daughter's hand to any who can help, might be assassinated soon)
Caliph of Ghafsa, Samad Aqil: 8/10 (food shortage, minor raids by beastmen and nomads)
Emir of Tambukta, Suhayl Salma: 7/10 (recent losses to beastmen, want revenge, currently fighting nomads, concentrated on the other side of the mountains, some food shortages)
Caliph of Khufra(you)
Caliph of Nejaz, Baqir Azhar: 6/10 (Full scale war against both beastmen and Nomads, some food shortages)
Emir of Copher, Abbas Ali: 4?/10 (Spice trade, scholars and wizards, they still have a highly visible guild of sorcerers despite the current national antipathy towards magic, their pirates compete with yours but historically you've otherwise worked well together)
Emir of Martek, Saif al-Din Youcef: 6/10 (Concerned with stoppage of trade in manufactured goods and luxuries, is unable to export metal, Concerned with beastmen raiding their trade and outer settlements)
Emir of Al-Haikk, Taj Faraj: 1/10 (In rebellion, you suspect some relation to your father's death, Largest trading port in Araby, there is a massive divide between the haves and the have-nots with the former often trying to squeeze the latter out of what little they have, leading to rampant theft and crime as the lower classes try to support themselves and rebel, a couple of other settlements supporting the big city)
Emir of Mabbah, : 7/10 (province prioritizes strength through faith, stubborn and successful foes of the Tomb Kings, Jealous of Al-Haikk, wants more support against the undead)
Emir of Kamt, Mas'ud Noureddine: 7/10 (nearly defunct, excepting a nomad chief with a blood relation to the one-time rulers who has spent time in the lands his blood gives him claim on, interested in getting you to suppress Zandri)
People to the northeast of the Aguidi mountains 7/10
People to the south of the Aguidi mountains and along the coast 7/10
People living along the coast and gulf of Medes: 5/10
People living along the rivers feeding into the Gulf of Durbaita: 5/10
Sorcerer's island: At least okay?/10
Internal Nomads: ?/10
this section is being worked on
3 living sibling that weren't in the castle at the time of the kerfuffle
girl1
girl2
3 living sibling that weren't in the castle at the time of the kerfuffle
girl1
girl2
Monte Castello, :
Luccini, :
Verezzo, :
Remas, :
Pavona, :
Trantio, :
Miraglino, :
Tobaro, :
Luccini, :
Verezzo, :
Remas, :
Pavona, :
Trantio, :
Miraglino, :
Tobaro, :
There's at least 40 of them right now, I'll give information on a case by case basis, or when they start consolidating.
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General Background, Benefits and Detriments
- Location
- Toronto, Ontario(occasionally)
The Sultanate of Araby
Religion: Not!Islam, If you can cite a historical practice of Islam(or any middle eastern religion descended from the sorta-Jewish views on the singular nature of God), that you would like to be included, then send me a message or respond to one of my posts here and I might include it.
Race: Human
Magic: Priest prayer powers, in the form of granting people or (with difficulty)objects a person is using additional ability to do something they could already do. This can stretch pretty far, instead of Morrite blessings blocking magic from interfering with corpses, the local priests enhance that person's ability to pass on, and that corpse's ability to remain unaffected by magic, or instead of blessing weapons with an additional effect to make them do more damage or damage intangible enemies, they bless weapons to cut better, and steer that towards better cutting what they expect them to need to cut. Similar outcome, different methodology.
It is difficult but technically possible to game the system, and some of the best powers currently in use come from doing so.
Prophets have the much rarer power of prophesy(duh), they're considered holy because they can essentially ask god for information on current events, past events, and with some inaccuracy, future events, some people claim that all religious dogma is passed down from god through his prophets, a minority claim that past prophets have used their status and the trust of others to codify their own wisdom as religious dogma.
Sorcerers, of a vaguely elementalist bent and a really lengthy tradition of study, with unique experience in binding spirits that may or may not be some manner of Daemon, but the current religious climate is against them in many places, there are known to be an indeterminate, but large, number of them on the Sorcerers' Isles, but they do not brook visitors.
Further clarification, Araby is essentially on the equator, and is thus far from the sources of the Winds of Magic, and isolated from their flow for -other reasons- the Sorcerers often struggle to gather up enough magic to produce any sort of effect beyond the interpersonal scale, and have been comparing themselves to the Elves as a benchmark for progress for a long time. As such, they essentially stopped trying to develop spells they would cast themselves, and began relying on premade items, charged over time, and spells and rituals cast or powered by Jinni, who are essentially a type of elemental Spirit, and can be any alignment on the good-evil lawful-chaotic alignment chart except for good. From what you've heard the most common method of doing this is to capture a Jinn, then cause them to supply and shape the power needed to produce an effect on release, preferably with the assistance, or at least consent, of the Jinn, you also hear it is considered a mark of skill to be able to make the resulting effect long-lasting, or convince the Jinn to stick around to much the same end.
Starting Year: 2267 IC
Benefits
One of the Oldest civilized realms of man. You've achieved a lot in the past, and have a lot to fall back on or draw inspiration from.
-As part of that you have a large population, maintained by lots of infrastructure, if admittedly concentrated mostly in the north-west and south-east.
-And also extensive maps and knowledge of trade.
Military specialization, your people as a whole are relatively well prepared to face your two most likely adversaries, Beastmen and Tomb kings, as well as being the best light cavalry and mounted skirmishers in the world.
Religious unity, between a shared code of religious law, required pilgrimages to certain key sites, and a robust religious organization, your people are a unified culture and can be made to all move in one direction when a powerful enough priest says so.
Detriments
Mostly desert, your land has a lot of relatively useless desert, filled with dangerous nomads and beastmen.
Dangerous fauna, seriously, some of these things are terrifying.
hidebound and traditional, your people have serious trouble with change, and a tendency to reverse advances made twenty years ago in the the name of tradition or short-term gain, at least some of this is because you are unable to alter large chunks of your legal code without seriously pissing off your priests over it.
Tomb Kings, Just, Tomb Kings. Your most powerful neighbors and biggest military threat, if they all wanted to roll over you they could do it, winning even a small war against them is colossally difficult.
No real allies, most nations accrue allies over time, or at least semi-friendly rivals, yours didn't, you have plenty of enemies, but no real allies.
Weak Central Government, it's a tossup to see whether people will do what the Sultanate tells them to do, and people are used to this being acceptable.
A realm divided in half: You essentially need to go by sea to get significant trade or military forces from the North-western to the Southern centers of power, you can get people or small units through the desert, but the far eastern land routes skipping between the larger oases are closed due to Tomb Kings. Aside from that, your father rose to power leading one side of a civil war, and some people in the Southeast still hold grudges over that.
Religion: Not!Islam, If you can cite a historical practice of Islam(or any middle eastern religion descended from the sorta-Jewish views on the singular nature of God), that you would like to be included, then send me a message or respond to one of my posts here and I might include it.
Race: Human
Magic: Priest prayer powers, in the form of granting people or (with difficulty)objects a person is using additional ability to do something they could already do. This can stretch pretty far, instead of Morrite blessings blocking magic from interfering with corpses, the local priests enhance that person's ability to pass on, and that corpse's ability to remain unaffected by magic, or instead of blessing weapons with an additional effect to make them do more damage or damage intangible enemies, they bless weapons to cut better, and steer that towards better cutting what they expect them to need to cut. Similar outcome, different methodology.
It is difficult but technically possible to game the system, and some of the best powers currently in use come from doing so.
Prophets have the much rarer power of prophesy(duh), they're considered holy because they can essentially ask god for information on current events, past events, and with some inaccuracy, future events, some people claim that all religious dogma is passed down from god through his prophets, a minority claim that past prophets have used their status and the trust of others to codify their own wisdom as religious dogma.
Sorcerers, of a vaguely elementalist bent and a really lengthy tradition of study, with unique experience in binding spirits that may or may not be some manner of Daemon, but the current religious climate is against them in many places, there are known to be an indeterminate, but large, number of them on the Sorcerers' Isles, but they do not brook visitors.
Further clarification, Araby is essentially on the equator, and is thus far from the sources of the Winds of Magic, and isolated from their flow for -other reasons- the Sorcerers often struggle to gather up enough magic to produce any sort of effect beyond the interpersonal scale, and have been comparing themselves to the Elves as a benchmark for progress for a long time. As such, they essentially stopped trying to develop spells they would cast themselves, and began relying on premade items, charged over time, and spells and rituals cast or powered by Jinni, who are essentially a type of elemental Spirit, and can be any alignment on the good-evil lawful-chaotic alignment chart except for good. From what you've heard the most common method of doing this is to capture a Jinn, then cause them to supply and shape the power needed to produce an effect on release, preferably with the assistance, or at least consent, of the Jinn, you also hear it is considered a mark of skill to be able to make the resulting effect long-lasting, or convince the Jinn to stick around to much the same end.
Starting Year: 2267 IC
Benefits
One of the Oldest civilized realms of man. You've achieved a lot in the past, and have a lot to fall back on or draw inspiration from.
-As part of that you have a large population, maintained by lots of infrastructure, if admittedly concentrated mostly in the north-west and south-east.
-And also extensive maps and knowledge of trade.
Military specialization, your people as a whole are relatively well prepared to face your two most likely adversaries, Beastmen and Tomb kings, as well as being the best light cavalry and mounted skirmishers in the world.
Religious unity, between a shared code of religious law, required pilgrimages to certain key sites, and a robust religious organization, your people are a unified culture and can be made to all move in one direction when a powerful enough priest says so.
Detriments
Mostly desert, your land has a lot of relatively useless desert, filled with dangerous nomads and beastmen.
Dangerous fauna, seriously, some of these things are terrifying.
hidebound and traditional, your people have serious trouble with change, and a tendency to reverse advances made twenty years ago in the the name of tradition or short-term gain, at least some of this is because you are unable to alter large chunks of your legal code without seriously pissing off your priests over it.
Tomb Kings, Just, Tomb Kings. Your most powerful neighbors and biggest military threat, if they all wanted to roll over you they could do it, winning even a small war against them is colossally difficult.
No real allies, most nations accrue allies over time, or at least semi-friendly rivals, yours didn't, you have plenty of enemies, but no real allies.
Weak Central Government, it's a tossup to see whether people will do what the Sultanate tells them to do, and people are used to this being acceptable.
A realm divided in half: You essentially need to go by sea to get significant trade or military forces from the North-western to the Southern centers of power, you can get people or small units through the desert, but the far eastern land routes skipping between the larger oases are closed due to Tomb Kings. Aside from that, your father rose to power leading one side of a civil war, and some people in the Southeast still hold grudges over that.
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State of Religion in Araby
- Location
- Toronto, Ontario(occasionally)
Religious Information.
On Caliphs
Yes, I know that Caliph means 'sucessor' and is supposed to imply legitimate succession from the prophet Muhammad and a claim to spiritual guidance of the entire Muslim people, and that in the real world it's the Sultans and Emirs that're below the Caliphs.
My decision to set things up otherwise was mostly because of finding that map you see in the state of the ream section, but also because in Warhammer Fantasy the intervention of gods is constant and ongoing, unlike real world theology where Muhammad is acknowledged as the last real prophet there's likely to be another prophet every generation.
Worse there might be 2 or 3 in a given generation and they are able to disagree with or dislike each other.
While gods do give their priests marching orders sometimes they generally don't stop internal conflicts.
Morover, the unifying force in Araby is religion, if being a caliph(the highest religious authority) was a claim that anyone else would have to either stand in support of, or in active opposition to, then the peninsula would be unified or approaching unification far more often.
So a Caliph is an individual claiming legitimate succession from one of these prophets, with the authority over religious affairs in their own territory.
This creates a state of affairs where while religion creates a unified cultural identity, and can motivate everyone to independently do more or less the same thing at once to unify action for wars and such, but unlike real world Islam, it no longer provides an effective basis for a politically unified nation, while still filling much of the vacuum that needs to exist to motivate the creation of a nation state.
Ironically this makes the long standing religious unity a detriment to achieving political unity.
Burial
I also know that in real Islam cremation or mutilation of the body(excepting for the purposes of organ donation), is forbidden, and grand or expensive monuments to the dead are discouraged, any funerary construction is supposed to be kept low-key.
On the other hand, undead are a thing in this universe, so it is actually illegal to not destroy the body, at one time typically by cremation, at least until someone figured out how to turn ashes into undead, but also sometimes by dismemberment and burying in multiple locations, this is possible because of the lack of Morrite prohibitions on messing with dead bodies. Similarly it is traditional to both wrap and box corpses, both for religious reasons and to prevent them from easily escaping the ground.
The discouragement of expensive monuments to the dead is also a thing here, even more so given the influence of what knowledge they have of Nehekharan culture, but the rich always accept, and assume, a certain amount of bypassing that kind of thing.
On the other hand, something that this culture has also adapted as a defense is support for leaving unmarked graves, with the location one goes to to pay their respects being completely different than the location of the body.
It's not much use in the cities where everyone knows where the cemeteries are, even if they don't know the precise location of any body within unless they were there for the burial or can access the priest's records of where previous graves were put, but it's much more use in the countryside, after battles, or in transit between locations, where a body might be buried anywhere within a day's walk, with only a memorable rock, or a name or symbol carved into a tree within fifty paces as a grave marker.
Unfortunately while this is effective against small-scale necromancy, it actually makes organizing a response against grand rituals harder, because no one knows where the worst threat areas are.
Burial practices were at one point exclusively cremation, but then a necromancer spread around their research into how to turn corpse-ash into undead, and there was an extreme shift towards burying in guarded locations with only one entrance, like fortified graveyards, or catacombs. After a number of incidents with those and people getting used to ash rising as undead the system shifted to mostly stop using and mostly fill in catacombs, and accept improvements to making whole corpses less accessible, like dismemberment of the dead before burial, or scattering of ashes over wide areas or in rivers.
Holy Relics
Sometimes you end up with an artifact that is especially significant to a religion.
Sometimes their power is entirely in how they are perceived, a banner that improves morale or enhances a units ability to follow orders, or prevents them from outright routing when demoralized or disordered might only hold power in the way people think about it.
Sometimes their power is real and magical, but actually has nothing to do with why they are holy, even if many would claim otherwise. Magical artifacts from the elves or Lizardmen could easily be given religious importance long after they gain power.
Sometimes it is genuinely the influence of a god, bleeding through into an artifact that has been long revered, or long subject to that god's power. An example seen(briefly) in the story are the sharpened knuckle bones of St. Haldinnian, who spent much of his life pursuing his hobby, by walking out into the Land of the Dead and punching the undead.
Beating them to re-death with his bare hands and his faith in god, each day all day, then coming back the next day and doing the same.
After he died doing what he loved(punching a Tomb King in the face), his body was recovered and his knuckle bones sharpened into a weapon.
They're a fairly terrifying artifact for the undead to get injured by.
On Caliphs
Yes, I know that Caliph means 'sucessor' and is supposed to imply legitimate succession from the prophet Muhammad and a claim to spiritual guidance of the entire Muslim people, and that in the real world it's the Sultans and Emirs that're below the Caliphs.
My decision to set things up otherwise was mostly because of finding that map you see in the state of the ream section, but also because in Warhammer Fantasy the intervention of gods is constant and ongoing, unlike real world theology where Muhammad is acknowledged as the last real prophet there's likely to be another prophet every generation.
Worse there might be 2 or 3 in a given generation and they are able to disagree with or dislike each other.
While gods do give their priests marching orders sometimes they generally don't stop internal conflicts.
Morover, the unifying force in Araby is religion, if being a caliph(the highest religious authority) was a claim that anyone else would have to either stand in support of, or in active opposition to, then the peninsula would be unified or approaching unification far more often.
So a Caliph is an individual claiming legitimate succession from one of these prophets, with the authority over religious affairs in their own territory.
This creates a state of affairs where while religion creates a unified cultural identity, and can motivate everyone to independently do more or less the same thing at once to unify action for wars and such, but unlike real world Islam, it no longer provides an effective basis for a politically unified nation, while still filling much of the vacuum that needs to exist to motivate the creation of a nation state.
Ironically this makes the long standing religious unity a detriment to achieving political unity.
Burial
I also know that in real Islam cremation or mutilation of the body(excepting for the purposes of organ donation), is forbidden, and grand or expensive monuments to the dead are discouraged, any funerary construction is supposed to be kept low-key.
On the other hand, undead are a thing in this universe, so it is actually illegal to not destroy the body, at one time typically by cremation, at least until someone figured out how to turn ashes into undead, but also sometimes by dismemberment and burying in multiple locations, this is possible because of the lack of Morrite prohibitions on messing with dead bodies. Similarly it is traditional to both wrap and box corpses, both for religious reasons and to prevent them from easily escaping the ground.
The discouragement of expensive monuments to the dead is also a thing here, even more so given the influence of what knowledge they have of Nehekharan culture, but the rich always accept, and assume, a certain amount of bypassing that kind of thing.
On the other hand, something that this culture has also adapted as a defense is support for leaving unmarked graves, with the location one goes to to pay their respects being completely different than the location of the body.
It's not much use in the cities where everyone knows where the cemeteries are, even if they don't know the precise location of any body within unless they were there for the burial or can access the priest's records of where previous graves were put, but it's much more use in the countryside, after battles, or in transit between locations, where a body might be buried anywhere within a day's walk, with only a memorable rock, or a name or symbol carved into a tree within fifty paces as a grave marker.
Unfortunately while this is effective against small-scale necromancy, it actually makes organizing a response against grand rituals harder, because no one knows where the worst threat areas are.
Burial practices were at one point exclusively cremation, but then a necromancer spread around their research into how to turn corpse-ash into undead, and there was an extreme shift towards burying in guarded locations with only one entrance, like fortified graveyards, or catacombs. After a number of incidents with those and people getting used to ash rising as undead the system shifted to mostly stop using and mostly fill in catacombs, and accept improvements to making whole corpses less accessible, like dismemberment of the dead before burial, or scattering of ashes over wide areas or in rivers.
Holy Relics
Sometimes you end up with an artifact that is especially significant to a religion.
Sometimes their power is entirely in how they are perceived, a banner that improves morale or enhances a units ability to follow orders, or prevents them from outright routing when demoralized or disordered might only hold power in the way people think about it.
Sometimes their power is real and magical, but actually has nothing to do with why they are holy, even if many would claim otherwise. Magical artifacts from the elves or Lizardmen could easily be given religious importance long after they gain power.
Sometimes it is genuinely the influence of a god, bleeding through into an artifact that has been long revered, or long subject to that god's power. An example seen(briefly) in the story are the sharpened knuckle bones of St. Haldinnian, who spent much of his life pursuing his hobby, by walking out into the Land of the Dead and punching the undead.
Beating them to re-death with his bare hands and his faith in god, each day all day, then coming back the next day and doing the same.
After he died doing what he loved(punching a Tomb King in the face), his body was recovered and his knuckle bones sharpened into a weapon.
They're a fairly terrifying artifact for the undead to get injured by.
Last edited:
Turn 1
- Location
- Toronto, Ontario(occasionally)
Note: you rolled a 4 on a d100 on the 'What sort of strategic problems should I give you' roll. You have many, many problems. I may have gotten a little carried away.
Editing later.
[X][Priorities] Plan Critical and Vulnerable
-[X] 1 the palace
You stagger to your feet, moving quickly to reach those very same Temple Guard you had been looking across the river at from your balcony.
Though they try to lead you to the healers you insist that they work on the move.
There is too much to be done, too much at stake, for you to be injured right now!
+200 Temple Guard, +4 healers
Once they've been gathered you move to the nearest bridge to seize the palace. You want to know what happened while you were semi-conscious, having your vision. You know you should move to protect any members of your family still alive within the palace. You realize you should retrieve the records. If any of them are still intact, you think with trepidation, looking up at the growing plume of smoke.
And … you need to know if what you knew in that dream is actually true, to know if your father is truly dead.
You rush past the dead guards at the gate, travelling further into the outer courtyard.
[where you go first: 1d3 =1]
You need to see your family.
[Random encounters: 76]
You rush for the royal quarters immediately. As you charge through the increasingly smoky halls, past the rich tapestries, detailed frescos, and glimmering mosaics of the palace you meet up with three squads of the Arabyan Guard, heading to secure the royal family, and you alert them of the compromising of the servants. Their leader, a man of few words, simply affirms that he has heard and understood.
+30 Arabyan Guard.
Then you are through, into the apartments.
[what you find at the entrance: 35]
There is a group of brown-coated men at the entrance, quite successfully fighting their way through the guards that have arrived before you towards the living quarters. But you come upon only a couple dozen men from the rear with a force over two hundred strong.
[entering combat: 40+21]
Despite their best attempts to run, via one of the servant's passages, you are on them too fast for more than one or two of them to escape. Lunging ahead of your force, you get in front of their escape route, cutting down the one that had been about to leave,
[you versus a group of browncoats, with some men attached to them: 39+21]
And locking blades with the next in line, despite one of the men pinking you at the wrist with a rapier, they are unable to break through your quick and flexible defence before your small army of support can arrive.
[survival rates: 7]
Unfortunately, as it seems certain that they will be captured, they all stumble, then simultaneously explode, knocking you on your back and releasing a small horde of chittering many-toothed creatures.
-17 men
You blink dumbly in surprise for just a moment, somehow all 23 of the men you were just fighting have burst open thunderously, scattering leavings on every possible surface and releasing twice their number of toothed fuzzballs, the creatures are nauseatingly, fundamentally wrong in a way that gives you the heebie jeebies. But even that doesn't stop you as you rapidly get your bearings and roll to your feet, yelling to your men to follow you, as you try to get to the royal apartments ahead of the creatures.
[managing it: 47 +21 = 68]
[What else is going on Here? 13 + 21, fail, are distracted by the fighting]
You actually manage to get nearly four squads of the men though the doors before the blue fuzzballs, they may zigzag back and forth quickly, but they aren't very fast in a straight line, your men will block them, at least for a few minutes.
[What do you find: 37 they're mostly dead]
But inside the situation is much worse, the air is difficult to breath, causing coughing if you dare to take a deep breath, and bodies lay scattered on the ground.
The shortness of breath in your lungs combines with the stuttering ache in your chest to nearly drive you to your knees.
[Don't give out on me now: =70, still going, actually given the source of all of this and the high level of general vitality implied by your traits I'll make it 70+20 =90, you shake it off for an hour or two and act unaffected]
The men at the doors have set to stamping on the creatures, slashing low at the ground, and in one case body slamming five of them against the ground, crushing the creatures with a shield bash.
-3 men
You turn to join them in a helpless rage, you can't head deeper in with this sorcery fouling the air.
[combat continues: 92 +21 =113 Critical success]
But the enemy is already fading and popping away into nothingness, leaving you nothing to vent your frustrations.
You order the men to force their way through, warning them of the foul air and telling them to take any precautions they can.
-4 men
The commander, two of his sergeant's, the healers and you group up, trying to figure out how to stop the men from dropping and having to be dragged back out to the healers like the first few that tried to get through.
[Poison gas bypass: 42 +11 +15(healers) =68, success]
You settle on wrapping damp cloths around their mouths, holding their breaths and having the healers bless their ability to not breath in whatever is in there.
You're not sure it's very effective, given that by the time they've searched the entire wing for survivors you're down nearly another 30 men to whatever this is. And one squad has disappeared without a trace, gone from their planned patrol route.
-39 men
But at least some people have survived, servants near the upper floor windows, and
[1d10 =2 1d2 =2 1d2=2]
two of your younger sisters, trapped in a wardrobe with a clearly hysterical maid raving about rats.
By this time the castle hallways are becoming choked with smoke, you might not be able to retrieve anything.
[Do you still have time? Required 70: 73 you (barely) still have time]
But there's just one more thing you have to get before you can go.
You order fifty of your remaining men to escort the servants, wounded, and your siblings out of the palace, keeping them safe.
-50 men
Leaving you with only 117 men to help you, with luck you wouldn't need any more.
The treasury could keep on it's own, while many precious items would be lost to fire the melted gold and silver could be sifted from the wreckage. You would instead be headed to the Records room, assuming it wasn't yet aflame. So you started heading across from the east wing, towards the centre of the castle.
You end up fishing your way past the rising smoke in one hallway, one man realized part way through that staying closer to the ground reduced the strain on your lungs, and passed it on to the others.
At least if the building came down on you now you would have achieved something here.
[random encounters 35, the difficulty level is increasing)
(What 81 +12)
Nearly reaching your destination you round a corner and run smack dab into a rapidly finishing engagement between some rat mutants and six squads of what look like Arabyan guard, you are at first relieved, but something twigs you that things aren't quite right. You look again, most damningly your eyes catch one of them armed with a weapon that pains the head to look upon, just now returning to its holster as the owner notices your group, but also almost every man among them has at least one pistol, an esoteric weapon you know is so rare amongst the troops assigned to the palace that it would be suspicious enough on its own to run into a full group armed suchly.
(You really don't have time for this, Charging 20 +10 (some are distracted) +21)
Unfortunately these men are made of sterner stuff than the last group, and just as you notice the one with a corrupted weapon you know he notices you, your eyes lock and he moves to meet you.
Though you'd never heard of someone with a Daemonic pistol before it proves just as, if not more deadly as it's barely-conventional forebears.
Your group only avoids being savaged by virtue of the enemy being distracted and mostly unloaded, and is holding the advantage in physical combat more by virtue of superior numbers than superior skill, being relatively evenly matched in ability, and far closer in numbers than any other fight you've had today.
Those advantages unfortunately to not apply to your fight with their leader, you only survive the approach by having reflexes good enough to grab one of his men and interpose them between you when he draws his weapon.
He fires anyway, as you duck behind the improvised obstacle, lifting the dying body with one hand, ignoring the way his backplate deforms and heats under the weight of nine technicolor shots unloaded so fast you have trouble believing you aren't listening to a string of firecrackers, and hurling the corpse the enemy leader. This surprises him long enough to bat his weapon away from it's bead on you on the upswing, transitioning into a downswing seeking to cleave him shoulder to waist.
That bounces off of a shimmer in the air that you can barely see surrounding his body, feeling like you had tried to cut solid steel.
[Round 1 FIGHT 37 +21 =58]
Again you have trouble with the fight, the enemy uses his ranged weapon to limit your options, proving that, yes it can continue firing, even now, and forcing you to keep track of a weapon with an unfamiliar angle of attack, alongside some form of magic, while he tries -unsuccessfully to gut you with his shortsword.
[The rest of the fight 9 + 21 +5(some are still distracted with stragglers)]
At the same time your men are doing even worse, the smaller force causing nearly fourty casualties in thirty seconds, as they fight with a clearly choreographed style of bladesmanship, remaining consistent only long enough to allow their opponents to get used to the rhythm of battle, before luring their opponents into over extending, then all simultaneously changing to an entirely different style at once and either striking decisively or putting their foes on the back foot.
[ROUND2 FIGHT 22 +21]
Your enemy, a large man in an ornate full face, concealing helm, responds to you nearly stabbing him in the visor by first nearly managing to shoot you in the foot with a wild spray, then actually laying open your off hand while it was out of position in a dodge.
[Your men are still fighting 90 + 21]
Now however, you can see that the fight around you is going much better, that trick with the changing combat styles was the only one the enemy had, and superior numbers, endurance, and focused skill is beginning to show, and in the space of a minute the several of the enemy seem to slip up, leaving them with fewer than twenty combatants, trying to pull away from a force now over three times their numbers.
[ROUND 3 FIGHT 54 + 21 + 10(interferance) -5 (trying to escape) =80]
This time you break through his defence, after a series of back and forth moments and aborted preparatory moves you see an opportunity while he's distracted firing a spray from his pistol and a blast if flame from his hand to keep your men back and use it to make a much harder slash towards his neck. You've landed a couple of blows on his, presumably magical, defence over then course of the fight, just as he's landed a few you've chosen to take to one of your plates, and you think it has some flex to it.
Luckily you are correct, in a strike you just know is ruining the edge on your sword you slam the blade into his neck as hard as you can, feeling the magical protection give a little, and hearing a sharp crack to accompany the impact.
His bloodshot eyes barely visible through the visor glare at you hatefully, but only for less than a split second, as with a swirl in your vision he, and all of his men, are gone, leaving you to stumble forward, unbalenced by all the weight you put into that strike suddenly having nothing to rest against.
You don't stop to worry about the disappearing act, the hallways are getting worse by the minute, and based on the heat you would swear that the left wall has a massive conflagration burning on the other side.
You Need to get to the records.
[What you find, 2]
You had hoped to bag up everything you could find on taxes, recent employment histories, and both taxes and deals across the greater peninsula, to give you a leg up in figuring out what caused this, and on your mission, but you are obviously too late, that entire section of the palace is ablaze, and you stagger out, eyes burning and coughing up ash-stained phelgm uncontrollably.
You manage to help organize the bucket brigades, but you can do little else and normal water seems to have no effect on this blaze, requiring sand to put it out. If the palace grounds didn't provide such an excellent firebreak you would be worried about losing chunks of the city.
-[X] 2 the inner walls
You end up leading men to the gatehouse, from there you can send runners across the walls to alert the other guardposts, in the hope of stopping an infiltrator on the way out. You're not sure how effective it will be, while there are men posted along the length of the walls, and blockages and barricades in the breaches the enemy have obviously gotten into the city so how and can probably get out.
(Random encounters 26, nothing you want to encounter)
You get word that a tree monster and some elves have broken through one of the other barricades, killing over two squads of troops, but nothing comes for you at the gate.
-[X] 3 the docks in particular
At the same time as heading to the walls you'd commanded men to go ahead and secure the docks, to prevent any ships from leaving with the attackers.
[Preventing escape 17]
Unfortunately they are too late, they arrive to find three ships pulling out of the rivermouth and the dock master nowhere to be seen.
The ships of the Navy that can be made ready to give chase scramble to call as much of their crews as possible before setting out.
[Detection and deactivation 79 +12, success]
Just as you're arriving the pursuit is delayed when a hue and cry is sent up from one of the ships, they've found some sort of clearly corrupted warpstone and gunpowder artifact aboard, almost entirely by chance, luckily they're able to strip it out relatively easily. You soon deactivate them by helping to figure out how to pull them apart without actually letting the Phial of acids inside mix with anything.
This prompt the other captains to do the same, after a brief delay they find that whoever has planted these things aboard has done the stupid thing and planted them all in roughly the same area on each ship, all are found in short order.
[Pursuit 82]
You wish the captains luck as you see them rapidly closing on their quarry, you have your own problems to deal with.
[6][17][82]
You later learned that while two ships escaped, even sinking one of your galleys in the process, another was captured, filled to the gunwales with the same rat mutants you saw in the palace. And the important looking ones were kept alive for interrogation.
[X] 4 the district walls
[Riot? 38 riot]
[Talking them down 79 + 18]
You actually had to help contain a Riot in the trade district, but they were surprisingly easy to talk down and get organized to help keep the fires under control once they found someone in charge to speak to.
-[X] 5 the barracks
The barracks were secure before you could get there, but connecting up with the command post there could be really useful in your efforts to get the rest of the city under control.
At this point however your injuries were starting to wear heavily on you, leaving you stuck in a carriage being fussed over by the healers as you were carted around to oversee everything.
[Too injured? 71 barely no]
Nontheless you were confident that you could contribute if anything went wrong.
-[X] 6 the temple district
[Attempted theft 83 HA]
Your stop by the temple district informed you that they were thankful for your visit, but the attempted thieves had been either captured by the guards, Knights Templar or in one memorable case torn apart by an enraged congregation.
-[X] 7 the outer walls
Unfortunately these defences where to porus and low on the priority list, when you swing by they report nothing out of the ordinary.
-[X] 8 the tradesman district
Having quelled the riots and seeing no plumes of smoke, you would expect it to be quiet here.
[Tempted fate 3 + 20(visited the barracks)]
But no, apparently not, the wheels on your carriage are burnt off in an encounter with a small group of Zabraq released from some cage somewhere, you end up hiding behind your carriage and a stone building, as you feel in no state to rush them with your injuries and small guard force, and they feel no need to leap after you after you gutted the first two that tried it. These things were originally imported from Ind, some point in the last few centuries, primarily because the alchemists were interested in thier acidic leavings, but have since gotten loose and made a home for themselves in the mountains.
[The cavalry 75]
Luckily a charge from the Knights of Araby to the rescue gives you the opportunity to turn things around.
[Combat 26]
Unfortunately the Zabraq show why they are so feared, spade tails flinging their horrifically acidic feces fells more than thirty knights, burning through plate and unhorsing men moments after splashing on their targets.
You, of course, charge the biggest one.
[Reaction 40 + 21]
It tries to fling some at you, but you're closing faster than the beast predicted and it misses by a narrow margin as you turn aside.
[Combat 22 + 21 -5 (injuries)]
The beast manages to get its fangs into your left greave, but in doing so you put one of it's eyes out and it scuttles back.
[Everything else 76 +21]
The Knights, however are cleaning things up nicely, if the beasts could realize that they are very difficult to hit from horseback so long as they stay close to the ground this fight might have gone a different way, but these are just simple beasts and they scatter from a superior force.
[combat 89 + 21 -10 (injuries)]
Ignoring the growing no burning in your leg, you lunge forward in a perfect leap, taking the beast in the side right below the heart as it coils up to leap away, luckily this time you didn't cut into the digestive system so you blame wasn't ruined by acid, unluckily this appears to be your limit.
You need to lie down and see the, now deeply aggrieved with you, healers.
Final injury total: shallow cuts and bruises, the (mitigated) aftereffects of a poison meant to cause a heart attack, a nasty cut on your hand, acid burns to much of your right shin, the aftereffects of smoke inhalation.
-[X] 9 the other noble estates
-[X] 10 the trade district in general
It took eighteen hours to beat back the unnatural blazes that had ravaged your city and get the riots and roaming assassins targeting the nobility under control.
You collapsed into a relatively secure bed, only to wake up again six hours later as a flaming vampire burst through your window and you needed to decapitate it and put the room out.
Hours of further coordination, calling anyone you know that would help on short notice, a nap, and trying to set up a temporary centre of government in the winter palace of a second cousin of yours that wouldn't mind the intrusion occupy the whole of the second day, and by the time you're finally meeting with some people to a get a handle on the situation you are beginning to suspect that there isn't a 'bottom' of this business, the rabbit hole just keeps on going down.
You eventually learn that the Knights hunting down the surviving seven of those creatures lost nearly another twenty men, mostly to their ability to leap far out of range and fling more acid at them, only winning with so few casualties because some of their number had brought bows, and spending the next four hours on a challenging chase to make sure they'd gotten them all, before taking extensive trophies from the creatures corpses. You also learn that the nobles are pissed at you for being a low priority while an unnatural fire that got out of control burnt down half of their palaces, and that there was a riot, starting a fire in one of the slums, but both problems rapidly got under control when the rioters organized themselves to put it out.
The immediate problems dealt with, you how have to figure out who caused this mess. No easy task as it would be easier to count the forces the city garrison didn't report fighting than it is to figure out who is responsible for this.
Military: Your marshal is Hossam Mahmud, a noted swordsmaster and inspired general, he appears quietly angry at the state of your people and publically angry at the madness that lead to your father's death, while only having held his position fir a matter of months he has adapted quickly, doing his best to meet the challenge of filling his predecessors shoes. he has a great many ideas for courses of action you could take, but only time to pursue some of them. -choose 2
Picking up the crown and getting some religion: The Knights of Araby and the local mission of the Knights Templar are spread out throughout the Caliphate of Khufra fighting a surprisingly wide array of gribbles. In the wake of the spate of defeats your father suffered immediately before his assassination they were deployed to assuage the nobles and break up small concentrations of enemies, mostly undead and beastmen, but also Ghouls, desert raiders, cultists, an explosion in the population of dangerous animals, and that rarest of local threats, the greenskin. By rallying them together you will gain a considerable force you can wheel to smash each of these problems in isolation.
Cost 100. Time 1 year. Chance of success: 100% and 80% on the Knights of Araby and the Knights Templar respectively. Reward: Knights of Araby and Knights Templar able to be commanded as a massed body.
Where are the Guards!?: The most loyal and elite force in Araby, the Guard is supposed to project the royal family and serve as their mailed fist in striking down threats all across the country. Your father had them helping both the local nobles and the other Caliphs and Emirs with threats to ensure their support, but many of those problems are now dealt with and you have enemies to fight Here.
Cost: 200. Time: 2 years. Chance of success 50%(90% if taken with or after The King is dead, long live the King). Reward: Sultanate Guard able to be commanded as a single force(note, they trickle in over time, the ones along the coast in the north will arrive relatively quickly).
Call the army: Your regular military force had been temporarily stood down to replace losses and in acknowledgement that your father could not lead them while recuperating from injuries and had not yet replaced the last Marshal so no one else could lead them. Call them back to full readiness and send them out to fight. Cost 100. Time 1 year. Chance of success 98%. Reward: Nobles not pissed off at you for massing together the Knights or Guards and leaving them with less defences. Dead gribbles. Access to a much larger number of regular troops for any fight you get into.
Start beating back this mess: No one knows who you are, as far as the nobles are concerned you're just another unimportant nth son, who likely would never have amounted to anything. The peasants don't even know that much. Your legitimacy as a ruler will be in question until you prove that you can protect your people, so go out and get started.
Cost: 0. Time: 1 Year. Reward: Battle Interlude. Good chance of Boost to Peasant Opinion. Good chance of small Boost to Noble Opinion. Choose one option to focus on, there's a chance of getting to do a second on the same action if the battle goes really well in your favor:
-[] Beastmen. There have been beastmen in the mountains and deserts for longer than any record you can find goes back. Now they're coming out of the mountains and attacking the farms and plantations along the river Tarouz, lets see if you can discourage that.
No further reduction in food supply.
-[] Necromancers. Araby has been plagued by the undead since the effectively prehistoric time when your current capital, the city of Lashiek, was a small town founded by nomads, and something struck down the decrepit people of dread Nehekhara. Sources vary on what exactly that was, most say it was god, others say it was Nagash, a small number of debased heretics say there's no difference. However the problem got significantly worse when Abdul Ben Rashchid got ahold of something from the land of the dead that drove him insane and wrote his damned 'Book of the Dead'. There's a coven of necromancers wreaking havoc up north, raising the dead and cutting off overland trade with the actually important chunks of Araby. Let's go see if you can make their creations re-dead, and them just dead.
+trade income
-[] Ghouls. They've haunted graveyards, catacombs, and battlefields, preying on good Arabayans, since their creation by the daemon Gallu. What's that, you say the northern infidels claim that's not where they come from, shaddup about it, they have no idea what they're talking about. Somehow their population has gotten out of control, now there are groups of them massing wherever corpses can be found, and actually coordinating with each other. Possibly the least of the threats you would need to muster a small army to face, they're still a serious problem. Worse, if they manage to take a major religious site in their quest to get into the graveyards and feed on the dead the church will be gravely disappointed with you. Let's go out and perform some pest control.
We're going to need some boats. Piracy is endemic to Araby, in fact it is a valuable part of your culture in certain areas, but this goes too far. There is a group of pirates down the coast somewhere around the Emirate of Sud or Songhai interrupting trade with the entire southern half of the country and everything further south. When your father went to face them he was evaded for an extended period then caught by surprise ashore with a strong wind and bad tide preventing him from getting back out to sea, many of his ships were burned or taken and now swell the ranks of the pirates into a credible threat. You will need to dislodge them eventually, preferably lethally. Call up the navy and any merchants or pirates willing to fight on short notice and take the fight to them.
Cost 2,000. Time: 1 Year. Reward: Sea battle Interlude. Good chance of boost to Noble Opinion.
-The cheap version Cost 1,000. Time: 1 Year. Reward: Sea battle Interlude, Reduced chance of pirates and merchants showing up to help, Small chance of boost to Noble Opinion.
I would like that laminated: Your father was forced to interrupt his effort to equip the troops with standardized lamellar armour, and shields of iron plates backed with wood, to deal with the current spate of crises, but much of the groundwork is still there and the many of the plates themselves are still sitting in government warehouses. Getting the soldiers into some kind of standardized protection would greatly improve their survivability.
Cost 400. Time 1 Year. Reward: The common soldiery(Spearmen, Swordsmen, Bowmen), and the mounted troops(Desert riders, Camel riders) take fewer casualties in battle.
Hammer time, the cheap and fast edition: You can kind of deal with the normal undead, but fighting them with blades is inefficient. While skeletons are fragile, blades tend to skate off of all the hard surfaces and lack of fleshy bits. And don't even get started on war statuary! I mean seriously, they're solid stone armored in bronze, with enough flexibility and responsiveness to their environment to give way a little bit under a blow. In ancient times your ancestors considered it a mildly heroic feat to defeat one Ushabti. The traditional way of dealing with them was, and still is, sledgehammers, pickaxes and specialized maces, with slingers intermixed with the bowmen flinging rocks and lead weights at the skeletons. Admittedly your Guard and Knights are already equipped for this, similarly some of your swordsmen carry a mace as a secondary weapon, and your militia includes nearly as many slingers as bowmen, but you don't really have much of this equipment among the average troops of your standing army. If you have ambitions beyond your own province, and it's common threats of beastmen and other Arabyans, you should load for homicidal skeletons and statues. It might also be useful against those undead in your own province?
Cost: 100. Time: 1 year. Reward: 2,000 Swordsmen become Macemen(better against skeletons and war statuary, marginally less effective against unarmored enemies that suffer from blood loss), 4,000 archers become slingers(better against skeletons, worse against anyone who takes shields and armor seriously)
Bombardment: Your father lost all of the bombards in your land army to the Tomb Kings and a Roc. However, despite some priests proclaiming the loss of the new(less than a century old!) weapons as a sign of their inferiority and god's displeasure, the general consensus is that you need to get some more. Despite their lack of reliability, recent losses against the Tomb Kings, and their use against fellow Arabyans in the civil war they have proved effective weapons, allowing you to strike down enemies you would have remained otherwise unable to handle, enabling you to damage the larger war statuary or winnow down regiments of Ushabti before closing, and actually deliberately sink ships in naval combat without setting them on fire and leaving them to burn for an extended period, or boarding them and drilling holes under the waterline. They can't be that difficult to replace right? They're just a latticework of banded iron wrapped into a tube.
Cost: 600. Time: 1 year. Reward: 1d12 Bombards, with attached minimally skilled siege engineers, pass quality control inspections and join the army of Araby(large cannon using stone cannonballs, they use a relatively small powder charge and still tend to burst more than you'd like, you don't know why, it might have something to do with the fact that you don't cast them as a solid mass of metal, they also lack wheels so the engineering crew has to disassemble, move, and reassemble them whenever you want them moved)
I chucked a rock at it, then I realized that it wasn't small, just far away: Your father entered an ill-fated feud with Al Ruhk, known to the northerners as a Roc, when it started stealing goats from herders(and an elephant from the army). This is why there are no elephants, bombards or flying carpets in the army of Khufra, why Lashiek's walls have several holes in them, why Lashiek has several immovably huge boulders scattered throughout its neighborhoods, and some neighborhoods look recently repaired from being flattened or clawed, why you are down several ships that you didn't lose to pirates, and why every important looking building in the city still smells like bird poo. Take revenge, and stop paying this ridiculous tribute that's straining your herders and skimming off the top of your coffers to pay those herders with noble patrons sufficient that you can't just claim extra animals as a temporary tax, and to prevent herders from just up and leaving.
Cost: Varies depending on the plan you end up going with. Reward: Roc assassination interlude, If you win: Definite boost to both noble and peasant opinion, no longer paying tribute, food situation improved by one step(it eats a lot of animals), a measure of satisfaction.
Diplomacy: On the diplomatic front you are served by Amani Anis, a normally gregarious young man you've seen in the chambers on occasion. He's been hit hard by your father's death, perhaps harder than you, as he had a much closer relationship with the man than you did. He now walks as if he has a metaphorical cloud over him at all times.
Choose 2:
The king is dead, long live the king: You should hold a coronation, inviting all of the other Emirs and Caliphs or their representatives to confirm and witness your ascension as Sultan and witness your ascension as Caliph. You need these people if you want to do anything outside of your own territory, either aiding you, or out of the picture. Hold a meet and greet after the coronation and hear out their concerns.
Cost: 200, Time: 2 years, Reward: information on the other sections of 'your' realm and it's politics, you are confirmed as Sultan with greater theoretical authority, ???
Ask your neighbors for help: Sometimes the resources of one Caliphate just aren't enough, you could ask a your neighboring Caliphates and Emirates to deal with your military problems for you. You do, after all, have a great many enemies right now. But they haven't accepted you as Sultan just yet and this would be undermining your credibility in a period when many of them have their own problems.
Cost: the respect of your neighbors(of course you'd lose it if you lose the fight on your own as well), possibly some reputation with your nobles, likely a 'reward' to the people helping you, If they show up you don't really have any guarantees that their men will behave themselves, or only be here to help. Time 2 years. Reward, possibility of some of your local threats getting removed without you having to do it.
Who is responsible for this?: some of your efforts to hunt down the mastermind of the ten-plot pileup at the palace will require going overseas to track down information in places where you currently lack an information network. Doing so through diplomatic channels is essentially your only option at this point. Cost 200, Time ???(at least 2 years), Chance of success:you're almost certain to get something, whether it is enough is another matter entirely, Reward: information?
Scratch My Back: It is an accepted trick in Estalia and TIlea to gain a title of nobility by sending a letter to a receptive noble with an amount of gold to persuade them to respond to you with the wished for title, e.g. Signor or Sir. This is perhaps even more useful in Araby, with your current restriction on merchants needing to also be nobles, you could easily legitimize some of the less aggressive 'raiders' or 'pirates'. While you Aren't the Sultan yet you still are the highest authority in your lands and as such your word when responding would mean something. Amani knows of a few people who would make use of this service and would pay handsomely.
Cost: 0, Time: 1 year Reward: 1d250 Gold
Stewardship Your father's steward, Mansur Nurul, still serves you loyaly, though he seems distracted, and is prone to frowning off into space when not occupied with a specific task. choose 2
The centre needs to hold: There are still several noble mansions standing in the city, and you need a centre of government to run your administration out of. You could buy or confiscate one of the unoccupied ones, hopefully from someone who won't be around to be angry at you for doing so. Then move all of your organization's into the new 'palace'. Your advisors strongly recommend doing this as soon as possible.
Cost 500, Time, 1 year, Reward: no longer rolling for each category to see if your number of actions will degrade to 1 per turn, currently 90% chance of preserving the system Hossam Mahmud's predecessor set up to give you 3 military actions, 1 more piety action once you have an advisor for that, options to get 1 more Learning action.
Fishing fleet: You're concerned over the food situation, but a solution presents itself, much of Araby's food has traditionally come from the sea. You could sponsor a major expansion to the fishing fleet as a crown owned business, pocketing the profit and using the influx of seafood to feed your population.
Cost, 1000, Time 1 year, Reward: chance of increasing food availability by one step, certainty of delaying any reduction in food availability, +fishing income.
Overseas trade: You trade with the infidels to the north, but right now only when it would most benefit you, generally selling silks and spices for ruinous prices, and now that your southern sources are cutoff, buying good timber from them. You could expand that trade to a wider array of things, and while you're at it you could bypass the necromancers blocking overland trade to the north-east, and just ship everything back and forth.
Cost: 150, Time: 1 year. Reward: increased trade income.
Outsourcing Overseas: You are really really concerned about the food situation, you could try to remedy the problem by importing massed shipments of grain across the sea of Infidels, though it would get expensive.
Cost: 800 per turn, Time: until you stop, Reward: food supply increased by one step until you stop, note that given the number of pirates in this area any seaborne venture carries a measure of risk, and that risk will increase the longer you maintain predictable shipments.
Southern Hospitality: While trade to the north might be cut off, and the mountains are full of beastmen, you do have southern neighbors. Notably you share a land border with the Caliphate of Ghafsa, and the pass of Cobras on your Southern border through the mountains leading to the Emirate of Tambukta, while historically much of your trade has been with the richer northern territories, excepting some sales of manufactured goods in Tambukta, there isn't any reason you couldn't open closer trade ties with the neighbors you aren't cut off from. Maybe they could fill your needs for material, in the absence of northern alternatives.
Cost: 150, Time: 1 year. Reward: increased trade income
Diggin a hole: The mines in the mountains run deep, copper, lead and silver, some iron, gold once upon a time, a couple of odder metals you mostly have little use for. You doubt the peaks and valleys of your lands have run dry you could conduct a survey to exploit additional resources.
Cost: 100, Time 1 year. Chance Of Success: 70% Reward: Veins found and exploited
Quarrels and Quarries: Most of the mountain stone you find is too coarse in grain, or passe in nature to be worth much in trade. But often functionality is more important than aesthetics, and stone is a popular building material, for those who can afford it. Beastmen took out some of your best Quarries last year, but there are less profitable quarries in the south that could be reopened, with a few guards.
Cost: 75 Gold,Time: 3 Years Reward: Quarries, Quarry income
Smithing expansion: In the past, long before the Estalians were able to claim anything similar, the Damsik clan of your people's blacksmith's claimed to produce the best steel in the world. They weren't around to continue claiming that after that feud with the Dwarves. But it is true that you have a long and storied tradition of metalworking. So why, precisely, is your steel production so low that the Army is armed with nearly as much iron as they are good steel? It's unacceptable. You could hold a conference of blacksmiths, encouraging, or ordering them to share their techniques and subsidize training new apprentices, to increase your level of steel production and make better equipment practical.
Cost: 400, Time: 4 years, Chance of success: 75% Reward: more steel, army gradually switches over to steel in places they previously used iron, actions to speed that switch made available.
Wall me in, the fast and cheap version: Currently the walls of Lashiek have had several holes blown in them by a Roc chucking Rocks. Luckily this problem provides its own solution, you could claim all of the bricks, rubble, loose stones, and the substance of the giant boulders hurled into your city as property of the crown and set to rebuilding the walls from them.
Cost: 400, Time: 1 year, Chance of success: 90%, Reward: The breaches in your walls sealed, if with sub-par materiels, giant rocks removed from your city, on crit the city stops smelling like bird poop.
Taxes: Oh boy, corruption! Or typos. Either way, people often do not put the whole of their owed taxes together. Send Mansur Nurul to double check, and make sure that all is as it should be, instead of all screwed up.
Cost: Free, Time: 1 year, Reward: 1d250 Gold
Research
Your advisor in this area is Tabassum Qismat, a gently smiling extremely elderly man who worked with your father, offers his condolences and tells you that you don't really have the facilities to conduct proper research right now, running your government out of someone else's dining room as you are, but he can help you read up on a subject.
Choose 1
Read up on the Aguidi mountains and beastmen
Time 1 year: cost 0 Reward: bonus to fighting the current group due to a better understanding of them in particular, possible advantage against that Roc, possible other discoveries.
Read up on Nehekhara and the undead
Time 1 year: cost 0 Reward: bonus to fighting the current group of undead due to a better understanding of them in particular, information on current and recent events in Nehekhara.
Read up on ghouls
Time 1 year: cost 0 Reward: clarification of contradictory myths on ghous in Araby, bonus to fighting the current group due to a better understanding of them in particular, ???.
Read up on specific territories of Araby
Time 1 year: cost 0 Reward: choose two Emirates or Caliphates, get a better understanding of them
Read up on the abandoned isle
Time 1 year, Cost 0, Chance of success: ???, Reward: there's in island in the river Tarouz, downriver from Lashiek, it's forbidden to all for some reason, you know an army disappeared there once but you don't know why, try to find out.
Piety: you could use someone to organize this mess of priests, holy warriors, and pilgrims, half the things they say seem to contradict each other, and it's incredibly difficult to figure out who you should be talking to to get something specific done -choose 1
Recruitment: you need to fill your council if you want anything to get done, recruit a Piety advisor Cost 0. Time: 1 year. Reward: You gain a Piety advisor, probabilities of success and effects of success improve, additional piety options, once you have a space in a proper centre of government set aside for them to work this will give you one more piety action.
Whirling Dervishers: Thesemadmen overly faithful individuals are really good at human wave attacks against enemies that cause immense casualties and facing the things that drive men mad to look upon, generally without even blinking, possibly because many of them are mad already. Okay, perhaps that is being a bit harsh, you know faith can drive men to make great sacrifices and face terrible foes, but perhaps these people take it a bit too far? You could conduct a survey to find out how many will show up and call some.
Time 1 year, Cost: 100, Chance of success 70%, Dervishers show up to the battles ahead more reliably
War priests: Araby has plenty of priests whose faith can have more, let us say temporal, effects. Call some to join the army for the duration of the current crisis. Cost: 100, Reward: 1d3 war priests join army for your operations
Seek Support: While as a caliph you hypothetically hold final religious authority in your caliphate, and as Sultan you theoretically hold final say over everything except doctrine in all of Araby, in reality you have a bunch of people to need to convince and keep happy if you want to do anything. You could talk to them, seeking support for your rule, though it might be better to get an advisor first.
Time 1 year, Cost 50, Chance of success ???, Reward: Support among the politically significant of the religiously significant, may come with terms and conditions, possible increased priest opinion.
Intrigue, Your spies and assassins are run by Faraj Wafi, a Eunoch who served your father effectively,. At least up until the palace fiasco, he is eager to get to the bottom of things, having just returned to the country from a four year trip to determine the current state of the Empire's long-running civil war, and their developments(for some reason) far to the north. He reports that your information network has been systematically targeted in his absence and effectively no longer exists. Choose 2
What just happened?!: The ten plot pileup at the former palace was one of the most ridiculous mid-air scheme collisions he's ever heard of, as best he can tell there were several factions in the city, each planning something different, but all forced to act at once, to both confusing and dramatic effect. There were at least two groups of human assassins, Ratmen, Elves, Undead, and some plant thing present.The situation was so confused that he's not sure that all of them were even there as assassins, he really wants to clarify this mess, try to form a narrative that can explain any of this, interrogate the rat mutants and thieves, and get some leads on the various groups that succeeded in escaping and who sent everyone involved. There's also the issue of what exactly happened to his information network while he was away, he doesn't really know how anyone without access to your father's records could have done this much damage, and would like to determine how related this is to the mess in the palace.
Cost: 200, Time: 2 years, Reward: More(but not complete, level of completeness depends on rolls) knowledge of what happened in the castle, leads for further investigation.
Do something about those necromancers: In the north they may rely on the Witch hunters of the Order of the Silver Hammer, or the varoous orders of the inquisition to deal with cultists and witches, You don't do that here. Araby uses more subtle, and to your mind, perhaps more effective methods, namely assassin's and kill-teams. The Black Hand are an order of assassins that have served the Sultanate for hundreds of years, since replacing the last order when they went rogue. They are efficient, dutiful, nearly undetectable before they strike, and don't care much for honorable battle, pride, or even their own lives, just killing their targets as quickly as practical. And if they're a bunch of weirdos who never miss an opportunity to head off into the mountains between missions to practise their skills against the local beastmen, that just shows their dedication to honing their craft, and to the common good of the civilisation you both protect. You could send some of them after the coven of necromancers, if they can get close enough they might be able to whittle down the number you will have to face. This is made practical because unlike most of your other enemies the necromancers interact socially with the people they raid and lord over. Given the way that they act as the linchpin of the much larger force of undead, any casualties they take will noticeably reduce the difficulty of the fight you're about to get into.
Cost 100, Time 1 year, Chance of success 50%, Reward: dead necromancers
Set up a local information network, currently you are operating at a reduced level of information gathering capacity, and have lots of things you're likely to need to investigate soon. Your advisor set one up the first time around and thinks he can do it faster and cheaper a second time.
Cost 200, Time 1 year, Chance of success 80%, Reward: removal of your -10 mallus to information gathering attempts within the Caliphate of Khufra(your own province).
Investigate: (write in: who, where, or what event): if there's something you think is suspicious, or worthy of deeper investigation, you can order your spies to look into it.
Personal, you have a great deal of work to do, choose two
Rest well in the arms of the Father of our people, father: You need to hold a state funeral for your father, he was good to you as a child and deserves to be honored in his passing. Build him a small monument, and hold a gathering to give a speech, touching upon the good points of his life and what you plan to do to improve on what he left you. You could put this off for a while, given the plethora of problems you face, and the lack of a body but that wouldn't be ideal.
Cost: 200. Time: 1 year. Reward: funeral segment, unlikely chance to boost to noble opinion, peace of mind
Call the healers: You're being tended to by the best healers in the city plying their herbs, tinctures and blessings to speed your recovery, but they aren't the best healers in Araby. Normal healers simply speed natural recovery, if you want to be recovered quickly enough to be present for the current campaigns you will need some assistance with a bit more ompf, call a healer of the Esoteric Order of the Potent Hand, or … a sorcerer. At this point you don't really care who responds, you need to be back on your feet and fighting to deal with the threats coming out of the woodwork.
Cost: 150. Time: less than 1 year. Chance of success 75%. Reward: fully healed and back at it in time for any fights you pick this year.
The king is dead, long live the king: You should hold a coronation, inviting all of the other Emirs and Caliphs to confirm your ascension as Sultan and witness your ascension as Caliph. You need these people if you want to do anything outside of your own territory, either aiding you, or out of the picture. Hold a meet and greet and hear out their concerns. You might be able to do this on your own, maybe?
Cost: 200, Time: 2 years,Chance of success ???. auto success due to emissary background, Reward: information on the other sections of 'your' realm and it's politics, you are confirmed as Sultan with greater theoretical authority
I chucked a rock at it, then I realized that it wasn't small, just far away: Your father entered an ill-fated feud with Al Ruhk, known to the northerners as a Roc, when it started stealing goats from herders(and an elephant from the army). This is why there are no elephants, bombards or flying carpets in the army of Khufra, why Lashiek's walls have several holes in them, why Lashiek has several immovably huge boulders scattered throughout its neighborhoods, and some neighborhoods look recently repaired from being flattened or clawed, why you are down several ships that you didn't lose to pirates, and why every important looking building in the city still smells like bird poo. Take revenge, and stop paying this ridiculous tribute that's straining your herders and skimming off the top of your coffers, both to pay those herders with noble patrons sufficient that you can't just claim extra animals as a temporary tax, and to prevent herders from just up and leaving. You don't think you necessarily need to do this through your military infrastructure, you've been fantasizing about an attempt for quite some time, most of the people in the city have been, and you are thus somewhat prepared.
Cost: Varies depending on the plan you come up with. Reward: Roc assassination interlude, with some added difficulties, If you win: Definite boost to both noble and peasant opinion, no longer paying tribute, food situation improved by one step(it eats a lot of animals), a measure of satisfaction.
Find love: Or at least a politically convenient marriage, you could wait several years, but it is expected that you eventually go about building a group of wives to provide heirs. The first one is a difficult choice to make, as they will have authority to manage all of the others, and their children will have primacy over the others regardless of their own family's prominence.
Cost: Free, Time: 1 year, Reward: Marriage options
Editing later.
[X][Priorities] Plan Critical and Vulnerable
-[X] 1 the palace
You stagger to your feet, moving quickly to reach those very same Temple Guard you had been looking across the river at from your balcony.
Though they try to lead you to the healers you insist that they work on the move.
There is too much to be done, too much at stake, for you to be injured right now!
+200 Temple Guard, +4 healers
Once they've been gathered you move to the nearest bridge to seize the palace. You want to know what happened while you were semi-conscious, having your vision. You know you should move to protect any members of your family still alive within the palace. You realize you should retrieve the records. If any of them are still intact, you think with trepidation, looking up at the growing plume of smoke.
And … you need to know if what you knew in that dream is actually true, to know if your father is truly dead.
You rush past the dead guards at the gate, travelling further into the outer courtyard.
[where you go first: 1d3 =1]
You need to see your family.
[Random encounters: 76]
You rush for the royal quarters immediately. As you charge through the increasingly smoky halls, past the rich tapestries, detailed frescos, and glimmering mosaics of the palace you meet up with three squads of the Arabyan Guard, heading to secure the royal family, and you alert them of the compromising of the servants. Their leader, a man of few words, simply affirms that he has heard and understood.
+30 Arabyan Guard.
Then you are through, into the apartments.
[what you find at the entrance: 35]
There is a group of brown-coated men at the entrance, quite successfully fighting their way through the guards that have arrived before you towards the living quarters. But you come upon only a couple dozen men from the rear with a force over two hundred strong.
[entering combat: 40+21]
Despite their best attempts to run, via one of the servant's passages, you are on them too fast for more than one or two of them to escape. Lunging ahead of your force, you get in front of their escape route, cutting down the one that had been about to leave,
[you versus a group of browncoats, with some men attached to them: 39+21]
And locking blades with the next in line, despite one of the men pinking you at the wrist with a rapier, they are unable to break through your quick and flexible defence before your small army of support can arrive.
[survival rates: 7]
Unfortunately, as it seems certain that they will be captured, they all stumble, then simultaneously explode, knocking you on your back and releasing a small horde of chittering many-toothed creatures.
-17 men
You blink dumbly in surprise for just a moment, somehow all 23 of the men you were just fighting have burst open thunderously, scattering leavings on every possible surface and releasing twice their number of toothed fuzzballs, the creatures are nauseatingly, fundamentally wrong in a way that gives you the heebie jeebies. But even that doesn't stop you as you rapidly get your bearings and roll to your feet, yelling to your men to follow you, as you try to get to the royal apartments ahead of the creatures.
[managing it: 47 +21 = 68]
[What else is going on Here? 13 + 21, fail, are distracted by the fighting]
You actually manage to get nearly four squads of the men though the doors before the blue fuzzballs, they may zigzag back and forth quickly, but they aren't very fast in a straight line, your men will block them, at least for a few minutes.
[What do you find: 37 they're mostly dead]
But inside the situation is much worse, the air is difficult to breath, causing coughing if you dare to take a deep breath, and bodies lay scattered on the ground.
The shortness of breath in your lungs combines with the stuttering ache in your chest to nearly drive you to your knees.
[Don't give out on me now: =70, still going, actually given the source of all of this and the high level of general vitality implied by your traits I'll make it 70+20 =90, you shake it off for an hour or two and act unaffected]
The men at the doors have set to stamping on the creatures, slashing low at the ground, and in one case body slamming five of them against the ground, crushing the creatures with a shield bash.
-3 men
You turn to join them in a helpless rage, you can't head deeper in with this sorcery fouling the air.
[combat continues: 92 +21 =113 Critical success]
But the enemy is already fading and popping away into nothingness, leaving you nothing to vent your frustrations.
You order the men to force their way through, warning them of the foul air and telling them to take any precautions they can.
-4 men
The commander, two of his sergeant's, the healers and you group up, trying to figure out how to stop the men from dropping and having to be dragged back out to the healers like the first few that tried to get through.
[Poison gas bypass: 42 +11 +15(healers) =68, success]
You settle on wrapping damp cloths around their mouths, holding their breaths and having the healers bless their ability to not breath in whatever is in there.
You're not sure it's very effective, given that by the time they've searched the entire wing for survivors you're down nearly another 30 men to whatever this is. And one squad has disappeared without a trace, gone from their planned patrol route.
-39 men
But at least some people have survived, servants near the upper floor windows, and
[1d10 =2 1d2 =2 1d2=2]
two of your younger sisters, trapped in a wardrobe with a clearly hysterical maid raving about rats.
By this time the castle hallways are becoming choked with smoke, you might not be able to retrieve anything.
[Do you still have time? Required 70: 73 you (barely) still have time]
But there's just one more thing you have to get before you can go.
You order fifty of your remaining men to escort the servants, wounded, and your siblings out of the palace, keeping them safe.
-50 men
Leaving you with only 117 men to help you, with luck you wouldn't need any more.
The treasury could keep on it's own, while many precious items would be lost to fire the melted gold and silver could be sifted from the wreckage. You would instead be headed to the Records room, assuming it wasn't yet aflame. So you started heading across from the east wing, towards the centre of the castle.
You end up fishing your way past the rising smoke in one hallway, one man realized part way through that staying closer to the ground reduced the strain on your lungs, and passed it on to the others.
At least if the building came down on you now you would have achieved something here.
[random encounters 35, the difficulty level is increasing)
(What 81 +12)
Nearly reaching your destination you round a corner and run smack dab into a rapidly finishing engagement between some rat mutants and six squads of what look like Arabyan guard, you are at first relieved, but something twigs you that things aren't quite right. You look again, most damningly your eyes catch one of them armed with a weapon that pains the head to look upon, just now returning to its holster as the owner notices your group, but also almost every man among them has at least one pistol, an esoteric weapon you know is so rare amongst the troops assigned to the palace that it would be suspicious enough on its own to run into a full group armed suchly.
(You really don't have time for this, Charging 20 +10 (some are distracted) +21)
Unfortunately these men are made of sterner stuff than the last group, and just as you notice the one with a corrupted weapon you know he notices you, your eyes lock and he moves to meet you.
Though you'd never heard of someone with a Daemonic pistol before it proves just as, if not more deadly as it's barely-conventional forebears.
Your group only avoids being savaged by virtue of the enemy being distracted and mostly unloaded, and is holding the advantage in physical combat more by virtue of superior numbers than superior skill, being relatively evenly matched in ability, and far closer in numbers than any other fight you've had today.
Those advantages unfortunately to not apply to your fight with their leader, you only survive the approach by having reflexes good enough to grab one of his men and interpose them between you when he draws his weapon.
He fires anyway, as you duck behind the improvised obstacle, lifting the dying body with one hand, ignoring the way his backplate deforms and heats under the weight of nine technicolor shots unloaded so fast you have trouble believing you aren't listening to a string of firecrackers, and hurling the corpse the enemy leader. This surprises him long enough to bat his weapon away from it's bead on you on the upswing, transitioning into a downswing seeking to cleave him shoulder to waist.
That bounces off of a shimmer in the air that you can barely see surrounding his body, feeling like you had tried to cut solid steel.
[Round 1 FIGHT 37 +21 =58]
Again you have trouble with the fight, the enemy uses his ranged weapon to limit your options, proving that, yes it can continue firing, even now, and forcing you to keep track of a weapon with an unfamiliar angle of attack, alongside some form of magic, while he tries -unsuccessfully to gut you with his shortsword.
[The rest of the fight 9 + 21 +5(some are still distracted with stragglers)]
At the same time your men are doing even worse, the smaller force causing nearly fourty casualties in thirty seconds, as they fight with a clearly choreographed style of bladesmanship, remaining consistent only long enough to allow their opponents to get used to the rhythm of battle, before luring their opponents into over extending, then all simultaneously changing to an entirely different style at once and either striking decisively or putting their foes on the back foot.
[ROUND2 FIGHT 22 +21]
Your enemy, a large man in an ornate full face, concealing helm, responds to you nearly stabbing him in the visor by first nearly managing to shoot you in the foot with a wild spray, then actually laying open your off hand while it was out of position in a dodge.
[Your men are still fighting 90 + 21]
Now however, you can see that the fight around you is going much better, that trick with the changing combat styles was the only one the enemy had, and superior numbers, endurance, and focused skill is beginning to show, and in the space of a minute the several of the enemy seem to slip up, leaving them with fewer than twenty combatants, trying to pull away from a force now over three times their numbers.
[ROUND 3 FIGHT 54 + 21 + 10(interferance) -5 (trying to escape) =80]
This time you break through his defence, after a series of back and forth moments and aborted preparatory moves you see an opportunity while he's distracted firing a spray from his pistol and a blast if flame from his hand to keep your men back and use it to make a much harder slash towards his neck. You've landed a couple of blows on his, presumably magical, defence over then course of the fight, just as he's landed a few you've chosen to take to one of your plates, and you think it has some flex to it.
Luckily you are correct, in a strike you just know is ruining the edge on your sword you slam the blade into his neck as hard as you can, feeling the magical protection give a little, and hearing a sharp crack to accompany the impact.
His bloodshot eyes barely visible through the visor glare at you hatefully, but only for less than a split second, as with a swirl in your vision he, and all of his men, are gone, leaving you to stumble forward, unbalenced by all the weight you put into that strike suddenly having nothing to rest against.
You don't stop to worry about the disappearing act, the hallways are getting worse by the minute, and based on the heat you would swear that the left wall has a massive conflagration burning on the other side.
You Need to get to the records.
[What you find, 2]
You had hoped to bag up everything you could find on taxes, recent employment histories, and both taxes and deals across the greater peninsula, to give you a leg up in figuring out what caused this, and on your mission, but you are obviously too late, that entire section of the palace is ablaze, and you stagger out, eyes burning and coughing up ash-stained phelgm uncontrollably.
You manage to help organize the bucket brigades, but you can do little else and normal water seems to have no effect on this blaze, requiring sand to put it out. If the palace grounds didn't provide such an excellent firebreak you would be worried about losing chunks of the city.
-[X] 2 the inner walls
You end up leading men to the gatehouse, from there you can send runners across the walls to alert the other guardposts, in the hope of stopping an infiltrator on the way out. You're not sure how effective it will be, while there are men posted along the length of the walls, and blockages and barricades in the breaches the enemy have obviously gotten into the city so how and can probably get out.
(Random encounters 26, nothing you want to encounter)
You get word that a tree monster and some elves have broken through one of the other barricades, killing over two squads of troops, but nothing comes for you at the gate.
-[X] 3 the docks in particular
At the same time as heading to the walls you'd commanded men to go ahead and secure the docks, to prevent any ships from leaving with the attackers.
[Preventing escape 17]
Unfortunately they are too late, they arrive to find three ships pulling out of the rivermouth and the dock master nowhere to be seen.
The ships of the Navy that can be made ready to give chase scramble to call as much of their crews as possible before setting out.
[Detection and deactivation 79 +12, success]
Just as you're arriving the pursuit is delayed when a hue and cry is sent up from one of the ships, they've found some sort of clearly corrupted warpstone and gunpowder artifact aboard, almost entirely by chance, luckily they're able to strip it out relatively easily. You soon deactivate them by helping to figure out how to pull them apart without actually letting the Phial of acids inside mix with anything.
This prompt the other captains to do the same, after a brief delay they find that whoever has planted these things aboard has done the stupid thing and planted them all in roughly the same area on each ship, all are found in short order.
[Pursuit 82]
You wish the captains luck as you see them rapidly closing on their quarry, you have your own problems to deal with.
[6][17][82]
You later learned that while two ships escaped, even sinking one of your galleys in the process, another was captured, filled to the gunwales with the same rat mutants you saw in the palace. And the important looking ones were kept alive for interrogation.
[X] 4 the district walls
[Riot? 38 riot]
[Talking them down 79 + 18]
You actually had to help contain a Riot in the trade district, but they were surprisingly easy to talk down and get organized to help keep the fires under control once they found someone in charge to speak to.
-[X] 5 the barracks
The barracks were secure before you could get there, but connecting up with the command post there could be really useful in your efforts to get the rest of the city under control.
At this point however your injuries were starting to wear heavily on you, leaving you stuck in a carriage being fussed over by the healers as you were carted around to oversee everything.
[Too injured? 71 barely no]
Nontheless you were confident that you could contribute if anything went wrong.
-[X] 6 the temple district
[Attempted theft 83 HA]
Your stop by the temple district informed you that they were thankful for your visit, but the attempted thieves had been either captured by the guards, Knights Templar or in one memorable case torn apart by an enraged congregation.
-[X] 7 the outer walls
Unfortunately these defences where to porus and low on the priority list, when you swing by they report nothing out of the ordinary.
-[X] 8 the tradesman district
Having quelled the riots and seeing no plumes of smoke, you would expect it to be quiet here.
[Tempted fate 3 + 20(visited the barracks)]
But no, apparently not, the wheels on your carriage are burnt off in an encounter with a small group of Zabraq released from some cage somewhere, you end up hiding behind your carriage and a stone building, as you feel in no state to rush them with your injuries and small guard force, and they feel no need to leap after you after you gutted the first two that tried it. These things were originally imported from Ind, some point in the last few centuries, primarily because the alchemists were interested in thier acidic leavings, but have since gotten loose and made a home for themselves in the mountains.
[The cavalry 75]
Luckily a charge from the Knights of Araby to the rescue gives you the opportunity to turn things around.
[Combat 26]
Unfortunately the Zabraq show why they are so feared, spade tails flinging their horrifically acidic feces fells more than thirty knights, burning through plate and unhorsing men moments after splashing on their targets.
You, of course, charge the biggest one.
[Reaction 40 + 21]
It tries to fling some at you, but you're closing faster than the beast predicted and it misses by a narrow margin as you turn aside.
[Combat 22 + 21 -5 (injuries)]
The beast manages to get its fangs into your left greave, but in doing so you put one of it's eyes out and it scuttles back.
[Everything else 76 +21]
The Knights, however are cleaning things up nicely, if the beasts could realize that they are very difficult to hit from horseback so long as they stay close to the ground this fight might have gone a different way, but these are just simple beasts and they scatter from a superior force.
[combat 89 + 21 -10 (injuries)]
Ignoring the growing no burning in your leg, you lunge forward in a perfect leap, taking the beast in the side right below the heart as it coils up to leap away, luckily this time you didn't cut into the digestive system so you blame wasn't ruined by acid, unluckily this appears to be your limit.
You need to lie down and see the, now deeply aggrieved with you, healers.
Final injury total: shallow cuts and bruises, the (mitigated) aftereffects of a poison meant to cause a heart attack, a nasty cut on your hand, acid burns to much of your right shin, the aftereffects of smoke inhalation.
-[X] 9 the other noble estates
-[X] 10 the trade district in general
It took eighteen hours to beat back the unnatural blazes that had ravaged your city and get the riots and roaming assassins targeting the nobility under control.
You collapsed into a relatively secure bed, only to wake up again six hours later as a flaming vampire burst through your window and you needed to decapitate it and put the room out.
Hours of further coordination, calling anyone you know that would help on short notice, a nap, and trying to set up a temporary centre of government in the winter palace of a second cousin of yours that wouldn't mind the intrusion occupy the whole of the second day, and by the time you're finally meeting with some people to a get a handle on the situation you are beginning to suspect that there isn't a 'bottom' of this business, the rabbit hole just keeps on going down.
You eventually learn that the Knights hunting down the surviving seven of those creatures lost nearly another twenty men, mostly to their ability to leap far out of range and fling more acid at them, only winning with so few casualties because some of their number had brought bows, and spending the next four hours on a challenging chase to make sure they'd gotten them all, before taking extensive trophies from the creatures corpses. You also learn that the nobles are pissed at you for being a low priority while an unnatural fire that got out of control burnt down half of their palaces, and that there was a riot, starting a fire in one of the slums, but both problems rapidly got under control when the rioters organized themselves to put it out.
The immediate problems dealt with, you how have to figure out who caused this mess. No easy task as it would be easier to count the forces the city garrison didn't report fighting than it is to figure out who is responsible for this.
Military: Your marshal is Hossam Mahmud, a noted swordsmaster and inspired general, he appears quietly angry at the state of your people and publically angry at the madness that lead to your father's death, while only having held his position fir a matter of months he has adapted quickly, doing his best to meet the challenge of filling his predecessors shoes. he has a great many ideas for courses of action you could take, but only time to pursue some of them. -choose 2
Picking up the crown and getting some religion: The Knights of Araby and the local mission of the Knights Templar are spread out throughout the Caliphate of Khufra fighting a surprisingly wide array of gribbles. In the wake of the spate of defeats your father suffered immediately before his assassination they were deployed to assuage the nobles and break up small concentrations of enemies, mostly undead and beastmen, but also Ghouls, desert raiders, cultists, an explosion in the population of dangerous animals, and that rarest of local threats, the greenskin. By rallying them together you will gain a considerable force you can wheel to smash each of these problems in isolation.
Cost 100. Time 1 year. Chance of success: 100% and 80% on the Knights of Araby and the Knights Templar respectively. Reward: Knights of Araby and Knights Templar able to be commanded as a massed body.
Where are the Guards!?: The most loyal and elite force in Araby, the Guard is supposed to project the royal family and serve as their mailed fist in striking down threats all across the country. Your father had them helping both the local nobles and the other Caliphs and Emirs with threats to ensure their support, but many of those problems are now dealt with and you have enemies to fight Here.
Cost: 200. Time: 2 years. Chance of success 50%(90% if taken with or after The King is dead, long live the King). Reward: Sultanate Guard able to be commanded as a single force(note, they trickle in over time, the ones along the coast in the north will arrive relatively quickly).
Call the army: Your regular military force had been temporarily stood down to replace losses and in acknowledgement that your father could not lead them while recuperating from injuries and had not yet replaced the last Marshal so no one else could lead them. Call them back to full readiness and send them out to fight. Cost 100. Time 1 year. Chance of success 98%. Reward: Nobles not pissed off at you for massing together the Knights or Guards and leaving them with less defences. Dead gribbles. Access to a much larger number of regular troops for any fight you get into.
Start beating back this mess: No one knows who you are, as far as the nobles are concerned you're just another unimportant nth son, who likely would never have amounted to anything. The peasants don't even know that much. Your legitimacy as a ruler will be in question until you prove that you can protect your people, so go out and get started.
Cost: 0. Time: 1 Year. Reward: Battle Interlude. Good chance of Boost to Peasant Opinion. Good chance of small Boost to Noble Opinion. Choose one option to focus on, there's a chance of getting to do a second on the same action if the battle goes really well in your favor:
-[] Beastmen. There have been beastmen in the mountains and deserts for longer than any record you can find goes back. Now they're coming out of the mountains and attacking the farms and plantations along the river Tarouz, lets see if you can discourage that.
No further reduction in food supply.
-[] Necromancers. Araby has been plagued by the undead since the effectively prehistoric time when your current capital, the city of Lashiek, was a small town founded by nomads, and something struck down the decrepit people of dread Nehekhara. Sources vary on what exactly that was, most say it was god, others say it was Nagash, a small number of debased heretics say there's no difference. However the problem got significantly worse when Abdul Ben Rashchid got ahold of something from the land of the dead that drove him insane and wrote his damned 'Book of the Dead'. There's a coven of necromancers wreaking havoc up north, raising the dead and cutting off overland trade with the actually important chunks of Araby. Let's go see if you can make their creations re-dead, and them just dead.
+trade income
-[] Ghouls. They've haunted graveyards, catacombs, and battlefields, preying on good Arabayans, since their creation by the daemon Gallu. What's that, you say the northern infidels claim that's not where they come from, shaddup about it, they have no idea what they're talking about. Somehow their population has gotten out of control, now there are groups of them massing wherever corpses can be found, and actually coordinating with each other. Possibly the least of the threats you would need to muster a small army to face, they're still a serious problem. Worse, if they manage to take a major religious site in their quest to get into the graveyards and feed on the dead the church will be gravely disappointed with you. Let's go out and perform some pest control.
We're going to need some boats. Piracy is endemic to Araby, in fact it is a valuable part of your culture in certain areas, but this goes too far. There is a group of pirates down the coast somewhere around the Emirate of Sud or Songhai interrupting trade with the entire southern half of the country and everything further south. When your father went to face them he was evaded for an extended period then caught by surprise ashore with a strong wind and bad tide preventing him from getting back out to sea, many of his ships were burned or taken and now swell the ranks of the pirates into a credible threat. You will need to dislodge them eventually, preferably lethally. Call up the navy and any merchants or pirates willing to fight on short notice and take the fight to them.
Cost 2,000. Time: 1 Year. Reward: Sea battle Interlude. Good chance of boost to Noble Opinion.
-The cheap version Cost 1,000. Time: 1 Year. Reward: Sea battle Interlude, Reduced chance of pirates and merchants showing up to help, Small chance of boost to Noble Opinion.
I would like that laminated: Your father was forced to interrupt his effort to equip the troops with standardized lamellar armour, and shields of iron plates backed with wood, to deal with the current spate of crises, but much of the groundwork is still there and the many of the plates themselves are still sitting in government warehouses. Getting the soldiers into some kind of standardized protection would greatly improve their survivability.
Cost 400. Time 1 Year. Reward: The common soldiery(Spearmen, Swordsmen, Bowmen), and the mounted troops(Desert riders, Camel riders) take fewer casualties in battle.
Hammer time, the cheap and fast edition: You can kind of deal with the normal undead, but fighting them with blades is inefficient. While skeletons are fragile, blades tend to skate off of all the hard surfaces and lack of fleshy bits. And don't even get started on war statuary! I mean seriously, they're solid stone armored in bronze, with enough flexibility and responsiveness to their environment to give way a little bit under a blow. In ancient times your ancestors considered it a mildly heroic feat to defeat one Ushabti. The traditional way of dealing with them was, and still is, sledgehammers, pickaxes and specialized maces, with slingers intermixed with the bowmen flinging rocks and lead weights at the skeletons. Admittedly your Guard and Knights are already equipped for this, similarly some of your swordsmen carry a mace as a secondary weapon, and your militia includes nearly as many slingers as bowmen, but you don't really have much of this equipment among the average troops of your standing army. If you have ambitions beyond your own province, and it's common threats of beastmen and other Arabyans, you should load for homicidal skeletons and statues. It might also be useful against those undead in your own province?
Cost: 100. Time: 1 year. Reward: 2,000 Swordsmen become Macemen(better against skeletons and war statuary, marginally less effective against unarmored enemies that suffer from blood loss), 4,000 archers become slingers(better against skeletons, worse against anyone who takes shields and armor seriously)
Bombardment: Your father lost all of the bombards in your land army to the Tomb Kings and a Roc. However, despite some priests proclaiming the loss of the new(less than a century old!) weapons as a sign of their inferiority and god's displeasure, the general consensus is that you need to get some more. Despite their lack of reliability, recent losses against the Tomb Kings, and their use against fellow Arabyans in the civil war they have proved effective weapons, allowing you to strike down enemies you would have remained otherwise unable to handle, enabling you to damage the larger war statuary or winnow down regiments of Ushabti before closing, and actually deliberately sink ships in naval combat without setting them on fire and leaving them to burn for an extended period, or boarding them and drilling holes under the waterline. They can't be that difficult to replace right? They're just a latticework of banded iron wrapped into a tube.
Cost: 600. Time: 1 year. Reward: 1d12 Bombards, with attached minimally skilled siege engineers, pass quality control inspections and join the army of Araby(large cannon using stone cannonballs, they use a relatively small powder charge and still tend to burst more than you'd like, you don't know why, it might have something to do with the fact that you don't cast them as a solid mass of metal, they also lack wheels so the engineering crew has to disassemble, move, and reassemble them whenever you want them moved)
I chucked a rock at it, then I realized that it wasn't small, just far away: Your father entered an ill-fated feud with Al Ruhk, known to the northerners as a Roc, when it started stealing goats from herders(and an elephant from the army). This is why there are no elephants, bombards or flying carpets in the army of Khufra, why Lashiek's walls have several holes in them, why Lashiek has several immovably huge boulders scattered throughout its neighborhoods, and some neighborhoods look recently repaired from being flattened or clawed, why you are down several ships that you didn't lose to pirates, and why every important looking building in the city still smells like bird poo. Take revenge, and stop paying this ridiculous tribute that's straining your herders and skimming off the top of your coffers to pay those herders with noble patrons sufficient that you can't just claim extra animals as a temporary tax, and to prevent herders from just up and leaving.
Cost: Varies depending on the plan you end up going with. Reward: Roc assassination interlude, If you win: Definite boost to both noble and peasant opinion, no longer paying tribute, food situation improved by one step(it eats a lot of animals), a measure of satisfaction.
Diplomacy: On the diplomatic front you are served by Amani Anis, a normally gregarious young man you've seen in the chambers on occasion. He's been hit hard by your father's death, perhaps harder than you, as he had a much closer relationship with the man than you did. He now walks as if he has a metaphorical cloud over him at all times.
Choose 2:
The king is dead, long live the king: You should hold a coronation, inviting all of the other Emirs and Caliphs or their representatives to confirm and witness your ascension as Sultan and witness your ascension as Caliph. You need these people if you want to do anything outside of your own territory, either aiding you, or out of the picture. Hold a meet and greet after the coronation and hear out their concerns.
Cost: 200, Time: 2 years, Reward: information on the other sections of 'your' realm and it's politics, you are confirmed as Sultan with greater theoretical authority, ???
Ask your neighbors for help: Sometimes the resources of one Caliphate just aren't enough, you could ask a your neighboring Caliphates and Emirates to deal with your military problems for you. You do, after all, have a great many enemies right now. But they haven't accepted you as Sultan just yet and this would be undermining your credibility in a period when many of them have their own problems.
Cost: the respect of your neighbors(of course you'd lose it if you lose the fight on your own as well), possibly some reputation with your nobles, likely a 'reward' to the people helping you, If they show up you don't really have any guarantees that their men will behave themselves, or only be here to help. Time 2 years. Reward, possibility of some of your local threats getting removed without you having to do it.
Who is responsible for this?: some of your efforts to hunt down the mastermind of the ten-plot pileup at the palace will require going overseas to track down information in places where you currently lack an information network. Doing so through diplomatic channels is essentially your only option at this point. Cost 200, Time ???(at least 2 years), Chance of success:you're almost certain to get something, whether it is enough is another matter entirely, Reward: information?
Scratch My Back: It is an accepted trick in Estalia and TIlea to gain a title of nobility by sending a letter to a receptive noble with an amount of gold to persuade them to respond to you with the wished for title, e.g. Signor or Sir. This is perhaps even more useful in Araby, with your current restriction on merchants needing to also be nobles, you could easily legitimize some of the less aggressive 'raiders' or 'pirates'. While you Aren't the Sultan yet you still are the highest authority in your lands and as such your word when responding would mean something. Amani knows of a few people who would make use of this service and would pay handsomely.
Cost: 0, Time: 1 year Reward: 1d250 Gold
Stewardship Your father's steward, Mansur Nurul, still serves you loyaly, though he seems distracted, and is prone to frowning off into space when not occupied with a specific task. choose 2
The centre needs to hold: There are still several noble mansions standing in the city, and you need a centre of government to run your administration out of. You could buy or confiscate one of the unoccupied ones, hopefully from someone who won't be around to be angry at you for doing so. Then move all of your organization's into the new 'palace'. Your advisors strongly recommend doing this as soon as possible.
Cost 500, Time, 1 year, Reward: no longer rolling for each category to see if your number of actions will degrade to 1 per turn, currently 90% chance of preserving the system Hossam Mahmud's predecessor set up to give you 3 military actions, 1 more piety action once you have an advisor for that, options to get 1 more Learning action.
Fishing fleet: You're concerned over the food situation, but a solution presents itself, much of Araby's food has traditionally come from the sea. You could sponsor a major expansion to the fishing fleet as a crown owned business, pocketing the profit and using the influx of seafood to feed your population.
Cost, 1000, Time 1 year, Reward: chance of increasing food availability by one step, certainty of delaying any reduction in food availability, +fishing income.
Overseas trade: You trade with the infidels to the north, but right now only when it would most benefit you, generally selling silks and spices for ruinous prices, and now that your southern sources are cutoff, buying good timber from them. You could expand that trade to a wider array of things, and while you're at it you could bypass the necromancers blocking overland trade to the north-east, and just ship everything back and forth.
Cost: 150, Time: 1 year. Reward: increased trade income.
Outsourcing Overseas: You are really really concerned about the food situation, you could try to remedy the problem by importing massed shipments of grain across the sea of Infidels, though it would get expensive.
Cost: 800 per turn, Time: until you stop, Reward: food supply increased by one step until you stop, note that given the number of pirates in this area any seaborne venture carries a measure of risk, and that risk will increase the longer you maintain predictable shipments.
Southern Hospitality: While trade to the north might be cut off, and the mountains are full of beastmen, you do have southern neighbors. Notably you share a land border with the Caliphate of Ghafsa, and the pass of Cobras on your Southern border through the mountains leading to the Emirate of Tambukta, while historically much of your trade has been with the richer northern territories, excepting some sales of manufactured goods in Tambukta, there isn't any reason you couldn't open closer trade ties with the neighbors you aren't cut off from. Maybe they could fill your needs for material, in the absence of northern alternatives.
Cost: 150, Time: 1 year. Reward: increased trade income
Diggin a hole: The mines in the mountains run deep, copper, lead and silver, some iron, gold once upon a time, a couple of odder metals you mostly have little use for. You doubt the peaks and valleys of your lands have run dry you could conduct a survey to exploit additional resources.
Cost: 100, Time 1 year. Chance Of Success: 70% Reward: Veins found and exploited
Quarrels and Quarries: Most of the mountain stone you find is too coarse in grain, or passe in nature to be worth much in trade. But often functionality is more important than aesthetics, and stone is a popular building material, for those who can afford it. Beastmen took out some of your best Quarries last year, but there are less profitable quarries in the south that could be reopened, with a few guards.
Cost: 75 Gold,Time: 3 Years Reward: Quarries, Quarry income
Smithing expansion: In the past, long before the Estalians were able to claim anything similar, the Damsik clan of your people's blacksmith's claimed to produce the best steel in the world. They weren't around to continue claiming that after that feud with the Dwarves. But it is true that you have a long and storied tradition of metalworking. So why, precisely, is your steel production so low that the Army is armed with nearly as much iron as they are good steel? It's unacceptable. You could hold a conference of blacksmiths, encouraging, or ordering them to share their techniques and subsidize training new apprentices, to increase your level of steel production and make better equipment practical.
Cost: 400, Time: 4 years, Chance of success: 75% Reward: more steel, army gradually switches over to steel in places they previously used iron, actions to speed that switch made available.
Wall me in, the fast and cheap version: Currently the walls of Lashiek have had several holes blown in them by a Roc chucking Rocks. Luckily this problem provides its own solution, you could claim all of the bricks, rubble, loose stones, and the substance of the giant boulders hurled into your city as property of the crown and set to rebuilding the walls from them.
Cost: 400, Time: 1 year, Chance of success: 90%, Reward: The breaches in your walls sealed, if with sub-par materiels, giant rocks removed from your city, on crit the city stops smelling like bird poop.
Taxes: Oh boy, corruption! Or typos. Either way, people often do not put the whole of their owed taxes together. Send Mansur Nurul to double check, and make sure that all is as it should be, instead of all screwed up.
Cost: Free, Time: 1 year, Reward: 1d250 Gold
Research
Your advisor in this area is Tabassum Qismat, a gently smiling extremely elderly man who worked with your father, offers his condolences and tells you that you don't really have the facilities to conduct proper research right now, running your government out of someone else's dining room as you are, but he can help you read up on a subject.
Choose 1
Read up on the Aguidi mountains and beastmen
Time 1 year: cost 0 Reward: bonus to fighting the current group due to a better understanding of them in particular, possible advantage against that Roc, possible other discoveries.
Read up on Nehekhara and the undead
Time 1 year: cost 0 Reward: bonus to fighting the current group of undead due to a better understanding of them in particular, information on current and recent events in Nehekhara.
Read up on ghouls
Time 1 year: cost 0 Reward: clarification of contradictory myths on ghous in Araby, bonus to fighting the current group due to a better understanding of them in particular, ???.
Read up on specific territories of Araby
Time 1 year: cost 0 Reward: choose two Emirates or Caliphates, get a better understanding of them
Read up on the abandoned isle
Time 1 year, Cost 0, Chance of success: ???, Reward: there's in island in the river Tarouz, downriver from Lashiek, it's forbidden to all for some reason, you know an army disappeared there once but you don't know why, try to find out.
Piety: you could use someone to organize this mess of priests, holy warriors, and pilgrims, half the things they say seem to contradict each other, and it's incredibly difficult to figure out who you should be talking to to get something specific done -choose 1
Recruitment: you need to fill your council if you want anything to get done, recruit a Piety advisor Cost 0. Time: 1 year. Reward: You gain a Piety advisor, probabilities of success and effects of success improve, additional piety options, once you have a space in a proper centre of government set aside for them to work this will give you one more piety action.
Whirling Dervishers: These
Time 1 year, Cost: 100, Chance of success 70%, Dervishers show up to the battles ahead more reliably
War priests: Araby has plenty of priests whose faith can have more, let us say temporal, effects. Call some to join the army for the duration of the current crisis. Cost: 100, Reward: 1d3 war priests join army for your operations
Seek Support: While as a caliph you hypothetically hold final religious authority in your caliphate, and as Sultan you theoretically hold final say over everything except doctrine in all of Araby, in reality you have a bunch of people to need to convince and keep happy if you want to do anything. You could talk to them, seeking support for your rule, though it might be better to get an advisor first.
Time 1 year, Cost 50, Chance of success ???, Reward: Support among the politically significant of the religiously significant, may come with terms and conditions, possible increased priest opinion.
Intrigue, Your spies and assassins are run by Faraj Wafi, a Eunoch who served your father effectively,. At least up until the palace fiasco, he is eager to get to the bottom of things, having just returned to the country from a four year trip to determine the current state of the Empire's long-running civil war, and their developments(for some reason) far to the north. He reports that your information network has been systematically targeted in his absence and effectively no longer exists. Choose 2
What just happened?!: The ten plot pileup at the former palace was one of the most ridiculous mid-air scheme collisions he's ever heard of, as best he can tell there were several factions in the city, each planning something different, but all forced to act at once, to both confusing and dramatic effect. There were at least two groups of human assassins, Ratmen, Elves, Undead, and some plant thing present.The situation was so confused that he's not sure that all of them were even there as assassins, he really wants to clarify this mess, try to form a narrative that can explain any of this, interrogate the rat mutants and thieves, and get some leads on the various groups that succeeded in escaping and who sent everyone involved. There's also the issue of what exactly happened to his information network while he was away, he doesn't really know how anyone without access to your father's records could have done this much damage, and would like to determine how related this is to the mess in the palace.
Cost: 200, Time: 2 years, Reward: More(but not complete, level of completeness depends on rolls) knowledge of what happened in the castle, leads for further investigation.
Do something about those necromancers: In the north they may rely on the Witch hunters of the Order of the Silver Hammer, or the varoous orders of the inquisition to deal with cultists and witches, You don't do that here. Araby uses more subtle, and to your mind, perhaps more effective methods, namely assassin's and kill-teams. The Black Hand are an order of assassins that have served the Sultanate for hundreds of years, since replacing the last order when they went rogue. They are efficient, dutiful, nearly undetectable before they strike, and don't care much for honorable battle, pride, or even their own lives, just killing their targets as quickly as practical. And if they're a bunch of weirdos who never miss an opportunity to head off into the mountains between missions to practise their skills against the local beastmen, that just shows their dedication to honing their craft, and to the common good of the civilisation you both protect. You could send some of them after the coven of necromancers, if they can get close enough they might be able to whittle down the number you will have to face. This is made practical because unlike most of your other enemies the necromancers interact socially with the people they raid and lord over. Given the way that they act as the linchpin of the much larger force of undead, any casualties they take will noticeably reduce the difficulty of the fight you're about to get into.
Cost 100, Time 1 year, Chance of success 50%, Reward: dead necromancers
Set up a local information network, currently you are operating at a reduced level of information gathering capacity, and have lots of things you're likely to need to investigate soon. Your advisor set one up the first time around and thinks he can do it faster and cheaper a second time.
Cost 200, Time 1 year, Chance of success 80%, Reward: removal of your -10 mallus to information gathering attempts within the Caliphate of Khufra(your own province).
Investigate: (write in: who, where, or what event): if there's something you think is suspicious, or worthy of deeper investigation, you can order your spies to look into it.
Personal, you have a great deal of work to do, choose two
Rest well in the arms of the Father of our people, father: You need to hold a state funeral for your father, he was good to you as a child and deserves to be honored in his passing. Build him a small monument, and hold a gathering to give a speech, touching upon the good points of his life and what you plan to do to improve on what he left you. You could put this off for a while, given the plethora of problems you face, and the lack of a body but that wouldn't be ideal.
Cost: 200. Time: 1 year. Reward: funeral segment, unlikely chance to boost to noble opinion, peace of mind
Call the healers: You're being tended to by the best healers in the city plying their herbs, tinctures and blessings to speed your recovery, but they aren't the best healers in Araby. Normal healers simply speed natural recovery, if you want to be recovered quickly enough to be present for the current campaigns you will need some assistance with a bit more ompf, call a healer of the Esoteric Order of the Potent Hand, or … a sorcerer. At this point you don't really care who responds, you need to be back on your feet and fighting to deal with the threats coming out of the woodwork.
Cost: 150. Time: less than 1 year. Chance of success 75%. Reward: fully healed and back at it in time for any fights you pick this year.
The king is dead, long live the king: You should hold a coronation, inviting all of the other Emirs and Caliphs to confirm your ascension as Sultan and witness your ascension as Caliph. You need these people if you want to do anything outside of your own territory, either aiding you, or out of the picture. Hold a meet and greet and hear out their concerns. You might be able to do this on your own, maybe?
Cost: 200, Time: 2 years,
I chucked a rock at it, then I realized that it wasn't small, just far away: Your father entered an ill-fated feud with Al Ruhk, known to the northerners as a Roc, when it started stealing goats from herders(and an elephant from the army). This is why there are no elephants, bombards or flying carpets in the army of Khufra, why Lashiek's walls have several holes in them, why Lashiek has several immovably huge boulders scattered throughout its neighborhoods, and some neighborhoods look recently repaired from being flattened or clawed, why you are down several ships that you didn't lose to pirates, and why every important looking building in the city still smells like bird poo. Take revenge, and stop paying this ridiculous tribute that's straining your herders and skimming off the top of your coffers, both to pay those herders with noble patrons sufficient that you can't just claim extra animals as a temporary tax, and to prevent herders from just up and leaving. You don't think you necessarily need to do this through your military infrastructure, you've been fantasizing about an attempt for quite some time, most of the people in the city have been, and you are thus somewhat prepared.
Cost: Varies depending on the plan you come up with. Reward: Roc assassination interlude, with some added difficulties, If you win: Definite boost to both noble and peasant opinion, no longer paying tribute, food situation improved by one step(it eats a lot of animals), a measure of satisfaction.
Find love: Or at least a politically convenient marriage, you could wait several years, but it is expected that you eventually go about building a group of wives to provide heirs. The first one is a difficult choice to make, as they will have authority to manage all of the others, and their children will have primacy over the others regardless of their own family's prominence.
Cost: Free, Time: 1 year, Reward: Marriage options
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Turn 1 results
- Location
- Toronto, Ontario(occasionally)
By popular demand, I'll work on the rest of the spacing issues after putting it up.
[X] Plan Securing The Foundations
State of the treasury: 2800+993 -2150 = 1643
-[X][Military] Call the army
Call the army: Your regular military force had been temporarily stood down to replace losses and in acknowledgement that your father could not lead them while recuperating from injuries and had not yet replaced the last Marshal so no one else could lead them. Call them back to full readiness and send them out to fight. Cost 100. Time 1 year. Chance of success 98%. Reward: Nobles not pissed off at you for massing together the Knights or Guards and leaving them with less defences. Dead gribbles. Access to a much larger number of regular troops for any fight you get into.
-Required: 2, Rolled: 13. Despite significant confusion, temporary delays, a general reluctance among junior officers expecting to be thrown into another meat grinder, and a certain amount of prevaricating among some nobles who were 'training' the troops by sending them out to break up highwaymen, ghouls and monsters, they eventually stop interfering when it gets out that you plan for most of them to do essentially what some of them were already doing, but more consistently and with greater organization, as such this gets done within the budgeted time, and the men are ready to go fight beastmen. Apparently they are less demoralized than they could be, as they are expecting to face a foe they haven't lost a major engagement to recently, though you couldn't tell from looking at them. Let's see if you can avoid breaking this particular streak.
[X][Military] Start beating back this mess
Start beating back this mess: No one knows who you are, as far as the nobles are concerned you're just another unimportant nth son, who likely would never have amounted to anything. The peasants don't even know that much. Your legitimacy as a ruler will be in question until you prove that you can protect your people, so go out and get started.Cost: 0. Time: 1 Year. Reward: Battle Interlude. Good chance of Boost to Peasant Opinion. Good chance of small Boost to Noble Opinion. Choose one option to focus on, there's a chance of getting to do a second on the same action if the battle goes really well in your favor:
-[X] Beastmen.
-[] Beastmen. There have been beastmen in the mountains and deserts for longer than any record you can find goes back. Now they're coming out of the mountains and attacking the farms and plantations along the river Tarouz, lets see if you can discourage that. No further reduction in food supply.
-A number of riverboats are called up, guards on the river plantations, whose fortified central buildings will serve as temporary billets, storehouses and command centres, are increased and food and supplies are prepositioned along the expected path of march. You learn a great deal about the army you are expected to lead, somewhat anxiety inducingly it is by far the largest force you have ever personally commanded, and you try to go the extra mile, using your extraordinary memory to make sure you remember the names and faces of all of the officers under you and guard troops directly under your command, and a couple of tidbits of personal history or personality for each.
You've read up on the battlefield and your expected enemy, now you begin plotting out how you will kill him.
---interlude to follow
-[X][Diplomacy] The king is dead, long live the king
The king is dead, long live the king: You should hold a coronation, inviting all of the other Emirs and Caliphs or their representatives to confirm and witness your ascension as Sultan and witness your ascension as Caliph. You need these people if you want to do anything outside of your own territory, either aiding you, or out of the picture. Hold a meet and greet after the coronation and hear out their concerns.Cost: 200, Time: 2 years, Reward: information on the other sections of 'your' realm and it's politics, you are confirmed as Sultan with greater theoretical authority, ???
Rolled: 94 Crit on something story related that you're not already at or above twenty at, do you gain a trait? 1d2 =2 yes, I'll decide what later, probably something about greater diplo w. Arabyans
-It is both a great and terrible day, a day you never expected to see, but you are now standing before an assembly of the most powerful of your people, trying to convince them that you can measure up to the highest of the expectations that they placed on your father, and avoid the most terrible lows that reached. Stage fright doesn't even begin to describe it.
But as you stand in front of them, trying not to quake in your boots, you know god would not have set you this task if it was unnecessary, or beyond you, so you stiffen your spine and greet them. You have enough time before the coronation to talk to everybody, but between the ones who arrive early and the ones who you can speak to before they leave you get to hear out everyone's concerns.
The Emir of nearly defunct Kamt, Mas'ud Noureddine, who holds no trade routes or mines or taxable settlements to his name, whose entire people are dead, undead, evacuated, too stubborn to leave and living in a pair of forts funded by interested parties from out of the Emirate, or part of his band of nomads, backing their chiefs claim to the title in the hopes of future returns, after your father lost territory in a war against the Tomb Kings of Zandri. And whose greatest projects in recent years have been trying to convince fishermen and money lenders to help him setup a taxable fishing settlement, convincing the funders of those two forts to keep up the funding, and issuing ennoblements to wealthy individuals without asking where they got that wealth so long as he can partake of a fraction of it.
After the mutual bows he shakes your hand vigorously and expresses his intent to offer the greatest possible support, though you personally doubt how much that is worth, before trying to draw you into a discussion on your naval intentions, you of course demure, you have threats in your territory to deal with first and were taught that a responsible man sets his own house in order before looking further afield.
With him comes the Emir of Mahabbah, Hafiz Mikha'il, one of Noureddine's closest allies, he married his sister to the man, so he should be. Emir Mikha'il has been at the forefront of the efforts against the undead since practically before he came of age, and has had great success being the gate guard to the rest of the more prosperous Arabyan civilisation, you get the sense that he'd like to talk about getting more money and support from the Sultanate, and given his history, would find it ideal for that money to be taken from wealthy Al-Haikk, but feels it would be inappropriate to ask, given your other problems, instead you speak on religion, his province is one of the most intensely faithful amongst your people, and he is impressed with your personal piety, and fascinated by your insights into the holy books.
The Emir of Al-Haikk, speaking for Taj Faraj, is perhaps running late, understandable given that the delegates and representatives from the north were told to ride south along the mountains until reaching the Cobra pass then ride north to Lashiek to avoid the necromancers, you move on without him.
The Emir of Martek, the city built around the bottomless lake of Fazoth-Ar, supplying the richest mines in all of Araby, goes by the name Saif al-Din Youcef and presents himself in the greatest finery, though once you shake his sticky palms he rapidly begins expressing concerns that the beastmen are cutting off trade with the other cities, whom Martek relies on for luxuries in exchange for their metals that will eventually be fashioned into finished goods.
You do your best to reassure him, after all, you are acting against the beastmen yourself, and hope to begin breaking them this campaign season.
The Emir of Copher, Abbas Ali, has chosen not to come himself, and instead has sent a representative on the circuitous route to avoid the necromancers on your northern border that plague the both of you, the representative is a reserved man, who looks almost as overwhelmed to be here as you feel, the two of you end you very carefully not discussing the presence of a guild of magic users that have come to arrangements with local cults doing highly visible research within his city. It is a thorny issue, under other circumstances you would be just as certain in your view of magic as your father, knowing that it is a gateway to limitless corruption, but you have been charged with a difficult task, and one that is intended to simply be the first step in facing even greater challenges, and it cannot be denied that magic has been used to accomplish legendary things in the past, one simply needs to look to the raising of the Sorcerers Isles from the volcanic seabed to see that.
Your discussion with the Caliph of Ghafsa is ironically more comfortable, despite his seat of power and capital city being literally called 'The Palace of the Wizard Caliph, he was one of your father's supporters during the war and ironically acted against magic users, as despite the rumors, there haven't been any publically acknowledged wizards in his line since the time of the ancestor that created the palace, yet they have still suffer from their ancestor's feud with the inhabitants of the Sorcerer's isles after the creator of the palace stole several of the Islanders secrets. They are somewhat concerned with beastmen, but the problem is not getting worse as most of them have headed north, and more recently have suffered some minor attacks by nomads, though luckily they are not escalating, they are also suffering a food shortage.
You speak to the Emir of Tambukta, Suhayl Salma, whose family has been an on and off ally of your line, though he is too young to have fought with your father during his early victories, he recently lost a pair of engagements against the beastman warherds led by Riphorn, and is eager for revenge. Unfortunately it is too late for him to organize the movement of a major force and he is occupied enough with a major raiding force of desert nomads that he wouldn't want to, but he offers several bands of mountain wanderers, fresh from serving as mercenaries in his armies, who might be useful.
Shortly before the coronation you are also able to speak to the Calph of Nejaz, Baquir Azhar, who is currently in a lull in a full scale war with both beastmen and desert nomads, and appears to be bordering on deciding that he can't handle things on his own and is taking this opportunity to sound out the other rulers present about getting some help, he appears thus far mostly unimpressed by his neighbors, but you did see him talking to the Emir of Tambukta.
Together these men rule something like sixty percent of the population of Araby, and hold as much or more of its wealth, you had hoped that all of the Caliphs and Emirs are too caught off guard and busy with their own problems to make a bid for the throne, and you suspected that your hopes had proven true. At least up until midway through the coronation.
You have already accepted the crown, and are about to ceremonially accept the scepter when a commotion in the anteroom makes itself heard. A messenger from Al-Haikk bursts in, frothing at the mouth and yelling something about stopping 'this unjust, invalid ceremony, robbing my master of his birthright', before being restrained by the guards and dragged back out the door, screaming that 'The tainted get of the usurper Sa'di have no right to even see the throne, much less sit upon it'. With that somewhat deranged interruption punctuating the ceremony the room lapses into mutters about how the overweening ambitions of Taj Faraj will harm them all, dividing them in a time when the Arabyan peoples need to stand together. Some rulers and representatives less enthusiastic in their affirmations than others.
[Noticing 56+7, success, but not an amazing one, notice some things]
The representative from Copher is sweating, and looking kind of dazed and confused as he is dragged through the same endorsements of your rule more by social pressure than anything else, and the Emir of Martek keeps glancing at the caliph of Nejaz, Baquir Azhar.
But they all denounce the ruler of Al-Haikk as being way out of line, and formally endorse your rule.
As you are moving on to complete the ceremony, however, you notice that there is one more figure in the grand mosque than you saw enter, a cloaked figure with gnarled hands steps forward after the last of the southern representatives, causing several men present to draw steel, and proclaims himself Ahmad Fikri, the chosen representative of the Council of Sorcerers, here to confirm your ascension to Sultan.
The Sorcerer's Isles joined Araby many reigns after the formation of the Sultanate, and were never formally conquered or made part if the administration common to the rest of the peninsula, but rather integrated by converting to the common religion. Many of their internal affairs are opaque to outsiders, they are viewed with suspicion, and they have not sent a representative to confirm the ascension of a sultan for nearly six hundred years, and only sporadically before that, and just as rarely pay any attention to what mainlanders want them to do.
Mr. Fikri formally confirms your ascension, bows, then explodes into a swarm of winged beetles that proceed to make a mess of everyone's hair and clothes.
And now you are Sultan, not just any Sultan, but the Great Sultan.
Now you are nominal ruler of a nation of, at the admittedly distant last census, well over twenty million people.
It is a heady feeling, one that you aren't quite sure what to do with. Strangely you are comforted by the thought that it is likely to be one emergency after another for the immediate future, you are good at fighting and have your faith to fall back on when facing terrible threats to life and limb, you probably won't screw that part of the job up.
After the ceremony you speak more to the southern rulers, while shepherding a lesser proportion of the total population than the northern rulers, they do hold a much larger area of land.
First the Emir of Sud, Folami Anwar, who came himself by horse, and is very concerned about both his food and beastman situation, and is suffering a water shortage, but is essentially unable to do anything decisive about any of those problems, he would normally be effectively a nonentity, excepting the need to secure his goodwill or pay off his merchants to avoid suffering shipbreaking attempts while rounding the peninsula, but is offering his first daughter's hand in marriage to anyone who can offer support sufficient to solve his problems, and given his lack of male heirs thus far there is a significant chance of him suffering an 'accident' within a few years of any marriage, allowing whoever 'helps' to claim his territory.
You speak to the representative sent by the Emir of Songhai, trusted by Rashid Bahij, who holds one of the two best sources to take on food and water for shipping that's heading along the Old World-Far East sea trade route, with the next sources being in the raiding grounds of the elven dragonships, or all the way on the other side of the four year journey to Ind, and has a territorial rivalry with the Emirate of Debeqea hanging over his head that he flat out says he would like to set aside rather than pursuing, he actually didn't have any noteworthy problems right now, and was eyeing the Emir of Sud's offer speculatively, he is not one of your strongest supporters, but you get the sense that if he had a problem with your rule he would have tried to extract concessions from you before the ceremony.
And then to the representative of the Emirate of Debeqea, who speaks for Yamikani Eskender, and looks suspicious of your intentions in speaking to their rival first, they were damaged in the civil war and never really recovered properly, so are now frequently outshone and outbought by their once evenly matched neighbor. They don't really have any intention of giving up their end of the rivalry, and instead look to double down and compete harder.
You nearly finish working your way down the coast and get to speak to the representative of the Caliph of Medes, who speaks for Anwer Kato, luckily he isn't miffed by your not speaking to him earlier, as instead of deciding order by prominence you had clearly done so by geography. Medes is the only far southern territory to match the population and wealth of the northern territories, on account of it's spring fed river and extensive farms, its commanding position in the gulf it is named for as a port, several past expeditions actually sent to the far east from there, and a network of favours and friendships dominating much of the south. While their soft power dominance over the south might have deteriorated somewhat over their loss in the civil war, they have made great strides in rebuilding it since, with offers of assistance against the Tomb Kings of Ka Sabar, shipments of luxuries, and entreaties to past debts and alliances, but they have made lesser strides in rebuilding their force of fighting men, having taken additional casualties in rebuilding their network of supporters.
The representative for the Emir of Lughash, who speaks for Khalid Zahir, reports his land is well off and prosperous, and is preparing to lend support to their southeastern neighbors in the back and forth raiding against the Tomb Kings that has started up, his land was conquered by the savage Bretonnians during the crusades, but was recovered when the Al Saurim led an army against the crusader city of Antoch, leaving it in ruins and freeing the land from the rule of the violent and barbaric foreigners. It still contains a minority population of those legally or illegally following northerner cults, those who speak Bretonni as a second language, and sections of the population with lighter skin, unusual in the south. These features mean that the land has suffered internal religious conflicts in the past as the pagans hold uprisings, and must be careful to avoid drawing the attention of the northerners, lest they pursue reconquest. Reading between the lines, the Emir almost seems to want to avoid drawing the attention of anyone at all, and has no political ambitions beyond helping where his faith demands he do so.
Unfortunately, where in the centuries before the crusades the Emir of Al-Anaim would send someone, that territory hasn't existed for quite some time now, though the dominant imperial noble still claims that title among their others, and is sworn to the elected emperors out of that three way civil war in the barbaric north.
The half-savage Caliphate of Agade's current Caliph, Karam Abdul-Hamid, also sends a representative you are interested in speaking with. Their people are often embattled, against the Orcs, against the Beastmen, against the raiding parties of the Southlanders, against the Undead, even against the Al Saurim about as intermittently as they trade with them, but they also make great riches off of their trade with the Al Saurim, who do not seem to value gold the same as sensible people do, and off of their trade with others in ivory and useful animals. It is from here that most elephants, razorbeaks, and exotic one off rideable lizards are exported. Specifically you are interested in elephants, creatures that they are more than willing to sell you, just as soon as the trade routes open. They also report no other current concerns than the Undead, and some Orcish and Southlander raiding parties.
The representative for the Caliph of Zoan, who speaks for Eniola Abd al-Karim, seems reluctant to give any solid agreements or useful information to you, but he did confirm your ascension, so there's probably something about their local politics motivating standoffishness from you and the other territories. They hold, and tax, a critical set of river mouths that are amazingly useful in accessing the far southeastern territories.
The Emir of Ka Sabar, Shakil Wassim, whose land had retained its name since before it was divided into the present day Caliphates of Ka Sabar, Ashur, and Symarra, has also sent a representative, but the man is kind of a useless yes-man, you are unable to get anything out of him other than an endless array of compliments, surprisingly creative genuflections, and uncommitted but effusive agreement with whatever you are saying. While the man doesn't tell you anything useful, you still remember your lessons clearly, knowing that his Emirate has been the battleground of many efforts against the undead, and has a long standing and often violent rivalry with Symarra that they would likely be pursuing were it not for the increasing activity of the undead.
You have a conversation with the representative from the Emir of Symarra, who speaks for Zaki Rashid, an odd man who you are told would be here himself, despite the distance, were it not for the pirates. He is a former adventurer and mercenary, and in his youth he went abroad, seeking his fortune in the wars that wrack the largely divided nations to the far north. He returned when called to take up his inheritance nearly penniless, but with enough favor with the dwarves to equip thousands of men with dwarf forged equipment, import both runic arms and armor in small numbers, and call Dwarven specialists this far south to oversee his new efforts at mining, irrigation, metalworking and fortification. In your father's less preoccupied periods this would have led to political pressure being placed on him to contribute to the Arabyan Guard Armories, but right now you have other priorities. The representative seems smug in his Emirate's superiority over their historical rivals, inquires about the Sultanate's planned level of commitment to supporting the southeastern territories, and indicates that their forces are building up to face the eventuality of war with the undead.
The representative for the Caliph of Ashur, who has earned the trust of Mustafa Abd al-Wali, speaks primarily of the need for unity and solidarity against the undead horrors of Nehekhara, and urges you to organize assistance. It is only with difficulty that you are able to convince him that delaying and holding back any war is what your people need right now, as he seems eager to avenge past indignities on the Tomb Kings. You are uncertain how much will carry over when he goes back to speak to his superior, and send an impassioned persuasive letter with him, urging caution and delaying actions, at least while the rest of the kingdom puts itself in order.
(autosuccess diplo roll due to crit)
And with this you feel like you actually know enough about your people to be called their ruler. While you are certain there are reams of minutia you still need to learn to be an effective Sultan, and dozens of problems you would never hear about without someone specifically bringing them to your attention, it is a start.
800 mountain wanderer mercenaries show up from Tambukta, asking where their pay is
[]Pay them(-400 gold per turn for as long as you continue to pay them)
[] Pay them less than what they're asking (diplomacy roll, ???)
[]Don't pay them, (???, they probably leave)
-[X][Diplomacy] Who is responsible for this?
Who is responsible for this?: some of your efforts to hunt down the mastermind of the ten-plot pileup at the palace will require going overseas to track down information in places where you currently lack an information network. Doing so through diplomatic channels is essentially your only option at this point. Cost 200, Time ???(at least 2 years), Chance of success: you're almost certain to get something, whether it is enough is another matter entirely, Reward: information?
-There were definitely elves in your palace at the time of the attack, and by the time the calls for assistance are sent out Faraj Wafi has a solid suspicion that one of the groups of infiltrators hailed from Estalia. So you send out the letters and the bribes, and see if any of your trade contacts can be persuaded to investigate or part with information.
Locked for 1d3 additional years =1, huh
-[X][Stewardship] The centre needs to hold
The centre needs to hold: There are still several noble mansions standing in the city, and you need a centre of government to run your administration out of. You could buy or confiscate one of the unoccupied ones, hopefully from someone who won't be around to be angry at you for doing so. Then move all of your organization's into the new 'palace'. Your advisors strongly recommend doing this as soon as possible. Cost 500, Time, 1 year, Reward: no longer rolling for each category to see if your number of actions will degrade to 1 per turn, currently 90% chance of preserving the system Hossam Mahmud's predecessor set up to give you 3 military actions, 1 more piety action once you have an advisor for that, options to get 1 more Learning action.
Required 10, Rolled: 56
You end up claiming some guy's dry season palace as a centre of government. he won't be missing it as he died in the fire at someone else's party, and doesn't have any nearby family to protest the decision. Renovations begin immediately, as you knock out and put in walls, and add a great many desks and shelves. The end result won't impress many petitioners or foreign delegates, but it will do, at least for now. And the government is already running more efficiently. 1 more military action next turn, options allowing more actions opened up.
-[X][Stewardship] Wall me in, the fast and cheap version
Wall me in, the fast and cheap version: Currently the walls of Lashiek have had several holes blown in them by a Roc chucking Rocks. Luckily this problem provides its own solution, you could claim all of the bricks, rubble, loose stones, and the substance of the giant boulders hurled into your city as property of the crown and set to rebuilding the walls from them.Cost: 400, Time: 1 year, Chance of success: 90%, Reward: The breaches in your walls sealed, if with sub-par materiels, giant rocks removed from your city, on crit the city stops smelling like bird poop.
Rolled: 96
-Your architects and engineering professionals take this as a personal challenge, they are loosely aware of the strategic situation and have decided to improve on your defences, while remaining under budget, and only slightly over their deadlines, by implementing a number of clever tricks involving, angling, internal structure, earthen berms and oddly positioned columns or rocks they make it nearly impossible to hit the sections of wall made of less durable materials hard enough to break them any faster than the rest of your walls. The workers breaking up boulders also descend into an obsessive fugue state and manage to remove most of the smell of bird poop from the city. By the end they are being investigated for possible corruption. their unusual behavior and accomplishing a feat beyond the the means of normal men seems to have set off the more paranoid of the the clergy. Reward: walls fully repaired despite having no quarry for good stone, +25 prestige for removing the bird poop smell
-[X][Research] Read up on the Aguidi mountains and beastmen
Read up on the Aguidi mountains and beastmen Time 1 year: cost 0 Reward: bonus to fighting the current group due to a better understanding of them in particular, possible advantage against that Roc, possible other discoveries.
-you spend a fair sized chunk of the year reading up on the Aguidi mountains and their inhabitants.
Your people's relationship with these mountains is apparently fundamentally different from the relationship other humans further north have with similar terrain, while other cultures of men may want to take mountain ranges because of a cultural imperative, or past experience with the threats that can fester there, or greed for the mineral wealth within, your ancestors were motivated to take the Aguidi mountains by not wanting to die of dehydration or famine. After all the mountains have by far the heaviest and most consistent rainfall in your lands, their springs, snow capped peaks, lakes, and seasonal rivers are responsible for providing your people with much of what they need to make this region of the world habitable.
As with all things however, there was a rub, notably the beastmen who got there first, and from the very beginning your fate was sealed. You would probably be fighting them until the end of time, as they could hide in the caves and mountain peaks where you could not properly follow, and could simply reappear in the mountains every time some warherd wandered in from the desert, or the green moon hung low in the sky, or some group of idiots touched something they shouldn't have. Nonetheless your ancestors persevered and have created a series of dams, reservoirs, and step farms, after the dwarven model, all up and down the mountain chain, that you must constantly defend. The most profitable of these are the relatively secure sites along the river Tarouz, where a series of locks allow riverboats to reach deep into the heart of the mountains.
Much of the mountain chain is a perpetual frontier, as the back and forth motion of warherds and human forces clears 'new' land each season. This region is home to so called 'chivalrous' bandits, claim jumpers, highwaymen leading heists on silver shipments, mercenaries who clear land or put down slave revolts for the highest bidder, and bands who extract protection money in exchange for a dubious quality of protection, all these and more are seen here.
As for the stranger things that call the mountains home, there are more species of strange or mutant animal, oddity, and monster than one can shake a stick at, though several authors certainly claim to have a comprehensive list. Recently their numbers have grown unpredictably and rapidly for unknown reasons, making species once thought rare, common, and those thought mythical or extinct, seen within the lands of man once more.
The current discovery setting the mouths of the natural philosophers atwitter is a species of small colorful bird. A creature thought to have migrated, or been brought, to the mountains from the Southlands proper or the New World, that can speak as if with a man's voice imitating anything they hear. The jury is still out on whether this is solely to lead unwary travelers to their doom or whether it also serves some other purpose, with the radicals claiming that this is some form of proto-bird-beastman, and that we should all look to the skies and build new defenses, having been shouted down already.
There are other things worth seeking in these mountains, artifacts and sites of great power or significance, lost villages still surviving in defensible positions and gone a little strange from the isolation, whole lost cities abandoned or overrun if rumor is to be believed, and mineral wealth beyond a man's wildest dreams, with silver being common, and gold still found occasionally, or deposits of the materials an alchemist would pay dearly for a steady supply of, like mercury from cinnabar ore, and rarer minerals sometimes useful for weapons or magic, even a vein of Silverine was once found in the Emirate of Martek, the only one in the known world far enough from Bretonnia that the infidels found it impractical to launch a conquest to claim it. While that seam is long since played out, hopeful treasure seekers still search.
More immediately relevant to you is what this particular group of beastmen and this particular Roc are up to, both are acting unusually.
The group you march to fight are devoted to that jumped up Daemon, Khorne, and have apparently earned the favor of at least one of that OverDaemon's legions. They act under the leadership of an unusually clever, and unusually large and mutated, Gor. Notable for being only slightly smaller than a minotaur with uncommon horns, going by the name of Riphorn, and apparently unusually clever is not intended to mean 'for a Gor' in this case, the beast having outsmarted many commanders with it's skilled use of raiding or charge tactics in battle.
You actually know what this beast is up to, on account of both careful observation and the half-nonsensical words of it's herald, some gibbering now-nameless adventurer corrupted to the cause of chaos. The beast having proclaimed it's intentions before issuing challenge for several duels.
As far as you can tell, the monster is leading the conservative beastmen of the mountains to push back against the unnatural changes another of its kind, Sparkeye Silverclaw, apparently a follower of Tzeentch, is bringing to their clans, and Riphorn's victories against the farms, quarries, and mines are simply fodder to increase his fame and reputation among the beastmen and draw recruits from across the mountains and away from his rival's warherds.
According to the adventurers and mountain men, if these are the same Tzeentchian beastmen they've been running into then you are not immediately threatened by the Silverclaw warherds, but have good reason to be very concerned about them in the long term, they appear to have vast numbers and fight differently from normal beastmen, with some raiding in the same old way, if less skillfully and frequently than Riphorn, and others actually standing and fighting with more discipline and better weaponry than you are entirely comfortable with, generally refusing to rout unless ordered to retreat, as if they are more afraid of what will happen to them if they disobey than if they die fighting, and still others fighting more like remotely commanded undead than thinking beings. But not striking human settlements except to take women, disdaining the other usual causes for an attack, for now at least.
But all this discussion of distant threats doesn't mean your current problem is not a problem, you need to stop them or people are going to start starving. Yes you heavily outnumber the enemy, but you will be facing them on their home turf, and if things go wrong and they are allowed to define the terms of battle things could go very bad. Luckily, while Riphorn is clever and has proportionately more minotaurs than a usual warherd under his command, he is also prideful, and insecure about his unusual but apparently very sharp horns, he will meet and attempt to overcome any perceived challenge to his strength, making him predictable.
In other news you find that the Roc is nesting in the south of your realm, nearer to the Cobra Pass than the River Tarouz, and are once again reminded of its sheer size. The Aguidi mountains have long been effectively the only nesting ground of the Roc, a species with fewer than one thousand members, and most likely only hundreds at all times, and a wide variety of sizes, with the largest ones competing with elder dragons for the title of most dangerous apex predator. Over its life cycle the Roc typically first leaves the nest at the size where it can pick up and eat mountain goats, men, or beastmen, then rapidly grows in size until it is large enough to pick up a fully armored man and horse at once, afterwards it continues to grow until it can lift and eat an elephant, then two, then they typically switch over to a diet of whales and sea monsters and become a legitimate threat to shipping as they occasionally mistake the profile of ships for that of food. They simply just keep on growing and becoming stronger flyers as they age, according to legend eventually dying at around the point when they become too big to find enough food, when this is combined with far more intelligence than you should see in any simple animal they become terrifying threats. Which is what makes the behavior of this one so bizarre, it was eating GOATS for pete's sake, that's like watching a full-grown hawk or vulture peck at and eat flies, something was clearly up. Careful comparison of its sightings reveals that it is unwilling to move beyond a certain approximate diameter from something in its estimated nesting area, possibly it's nest.
Reward: possible? nest area, some understanding of Riphorn's character, +5 bonus to all rolls during this campaign due to a better understanding of the terrain, previous campaigns, and this warherd.
-[X][Piety] Recruitment
Recruitment: you need to fill your council if you want anything to get done, recruit a Piety advisor Cost 0. Time: 1 year. Reward: You gain a Piety advisor, probabilities of success and effects of success improve, additional piety options, once you have a space in a proper center of government set aside for them to work this will give you one more piety action.
Rolls: ?/?/?(not telling),
-You eventually manage to get ahold of a priest who has the respect of and ability to organize the holy men, a superstitious man going by the name Zakariyya Baki, he appears to be a moderate or neutral on a variety of religious issues, yet somehow has the political power to command the respect of other priests. He is the advisor you've been able to find for spiritual matters.
Reward: piety advisor, 1 more piety action.
-[X][Intrigue] What just happened?!
What just happened?!: The ten plot pileup at the former palace was one of the most ridiculous mid-air scheme collisions he's ever heard of, as best he can tell there were several factions in the city, each planning something different, but all forced to act at once, to both confusing and dramatic effect. There were at least two groups of human assassins, Ratmen, Elves, Undead, and some plant thing present.
The situation was so confused that he's not sure that all of them were even there as assassins, he really wants to clarify this mess, try to form a narrative that can explain any of this, interrogate the rat mutants and thieves, and get some leads on the various groups that succeeded in escaping and who sent everyone involved. There's also the issue of what exactly happened to his information network while he was away, he doesn't really know how anyone without access to your father's records could have done this much damage, and would like to determine how related this is to the mess in the palace.
Cost: 200, Time: 2 years, Reward: More(but not complete, level of completeness depends on rolls) knowledge of what happened in the castle, leads for further investigation.
(How complete? 67)
(Thief interrogation 24)
(Rat interrogation 65)
Faraj Wafi begins by carefully questioning every person that came out of the palace alive and untainted, he is able to piece together descriptions of most of the attackers, determining that there were -probably four groups of humans involved, counting the guard infiltrators you found, but acknowledging that he wouldn't have known they were there otherwise, and actually still hasn't been able to place the servant that tried to poison you, after he has some idea of what to be looking for he started asking around amongst the people who might have noticed something out of the ordinary. Eventually a picture begins to emerge.
The group of brown-coated men you fought appear to have entered the city four months ago probably from Estalia, by their accents and the make of the weapons recovered, arriving in the city from the north with a trade caravan, and targeting the royal apartments to either kill or take hostages in the confusion, there were initially far more of them but a number died or turned back due to injuries incurred in breaching the palace defences. Unfortunately the ones that turned back seem to have also exploded, so there's no way to question them.
The guard infiltrators are simply men who killed the former owners of the armor, stole it and entered in the confusion, their actions imply that they knew about this in advance in order for them to thieve their equipment in time, and that they are followers of the OverDaemon Tzeentch. You have no way of knowing when or where they entered the city limits, when you encountered them they were (probably)returning from failing to retrieve something from the records, though they may have just set them on fire instead, it is ultimately unknown why they were trying to reach the records.
There were two other groups of human infiltrators that ended up fighting each other in the throne room, and sent groups after the royal apartments that failed to reach them for unknown motivations, both of those were Arabyans, rather than foreigners disguised to seem unobtrusive like the previous groups, and both were infiltrated into the city in ways you cannot track, for lengths of time you cannot determine, and left via means you cannot determine, assuming they left the city at all.
Finally there were the rat mutants, who admitted under torture to sending groups after the royal family and Sultan as distractions, and are responsible for the majority of the casualties at the royal apartments, but were actually after the Sultan's helmet in the treasury, a magical item originally enchanted by the elves of Ulthuan that allowed it's wearer's intentions to heavily influence the paths of all unprotected projectiles within their immediate environment, protecting the wearer and their nearest allies and redirecting attacks to strike their enemies. The rat mutants suffered a betrayal from their own after the battle and one of their ships took the helmet to a city of their people somewhere within Araby, while the other returned to their port of origin, somewhere in the islands of eastern Estalia. They entered and exited by disguising their ships as human ships and suborning critical harbour personnel, an entrance your advisor claims is now closed. Unfortunately you didn't capture their navigator, and so don't know the correct location of any of these cities of mutants, something whose existence is deeply concerning to you. While on further examination of the records these rat mutants, also known as 'Skaven' have been encountered by your people before, you couldn't find any references indicating that those before you knew just how extensive their civilisation actually was.
The rat mutants fought with a group of elves and plant monsters, creatures they claim were working with the elves, that were tearing your treasury apart looking for something, but the fight ended when the elves finished and left, heading downriver overland towards the coast, probably without whatever they were looking for, you have no idea how the elves got in.
There were also vampires in the city, somehow stirred into panicking, revealing themselves, and failing an attack on you by the events at the palace, but possibly otherwise unrelated.
The thieves have no obvious relation to other events, beyond suspicious timing and two of them claiming that another, now dead, thief had mentioned having a buyer lined up before the failed heist, they were apparently after the sharpened knucklebones of St. Haldinnian, renowned for their powers in neutralizing the undead.
You also still have no idea what set all of this off, all the rat mutants knew was that they'd seen, or were allowed to see, the Tzeentchians moving for the palace and had hurried to follow suit.
-[X][Intrigue] Set up a local information network
Set up a local information network, currently you are operating at a reduced level of information gathering capacity, and have lots of things you're likely to need to investigate soon. Your advisor set one up the first time around and thinks he can do it faster and cheaper a second time.Cost 200, Time 1 year, Chance of success 80%, Reward: removal of your -10 mallus to information gathering attempts within the Caliphate of Khufra(your own province).
Rolled: 53
-work goes smoothly, and some of the low level contacts were still in place, by the end of the year the information network will be rebuilt and you will actually be able to tell what is going on in your realm.
-[X][Personal] Rest well in the arms of the Father of our people, father
Rest well in the arms of the Father of our people, father: You need to hold a state funeral for your father, he was good to you as a child and deserves to be honored in his passing. Build him a small monument, and hold a gathering to give a speech, touching upon the good points of his life and what you plan to do to improve on what he left you. You could put this off for a while, given the plethora of problems you face and the lack of a body, but that wouldn't be ideal. Cost: 200. Time: 1 year. Reward: funeral segment, unlikely chance to boost to noble opinion, peace of mind
-The law indicates that a funeral should be held as soon as possible, preferably before the next sunset, so no dark forces can gain access to the bodies of the deceased, and to prevent decomposition from spreading disease, but in this case that is not binding, given the lack of a body to bury.
It would also unsettle many of your father's friends, to be attending his funeral so soon after his disappearance in the disaster at the palace, so you order men to search for him, even though you feel in your heart that he is gone, but as the months wear on, and you take command over the recalcitrant nobles, a general realization that he must have burned in that fire spreads, and when it reaches its peak you invite others for the funeral.
The law also forbids actually burying a whole body, but that is again a moot point given the lack of a body.
Really the only funerary laws that are relevant to this situation are the prohibitions against marking grave locations in a way that someone not present for the funeral would be able to pick out, meaning that the ceremonial, but empty, 'grave', sitting in the fortified graveyard that has served your family for the past few generations, and marked only by a remembered number of paces from a cemetary marker, has to be in a completely different location than the monument most of the ceremony will be held around.
The Janazah prayer is spoken solemnly, in the hope that god will have mercy on the dead, and the coffin is lowered by the seven men carrying it.
You put your three handfuls of dirt into the hole in the ground containing an empty coffin, and swear to those present that if there is a body somewhere out there, you will find it and bring it back to receive a proper burial.
You feel too numb to cry, like you've taken too many shocks to your worldview recently and can't quite bring yourself to feel anything too strongly.
It almost doesn't feel real, like there's been some mistake, or you just deluded yourself and your father Sa'di will return any minute now from some hidden fastness, but you remind yourself that it is all to real. There is no mistake, and the feeling in your gut that those who say he is dead are right is constantly tugging at you, reminding you that it is really true.
Others cry freely, including the one of the two younger sisters you saved, despite what some might say you feel they should be present, though your other surviving siblings cannot be present in time. These tears quickly set off the other one, even though it is clear she doesn't really get what is going on. Their minder is careful to keep them quiet, though the older one is doing an admirable job of that on her own, all those who are suffering in their grief do so, as louder wails might disturb the dead as they pass over to the afterlife.
Once you supervise the gravediggers finishing the filling in of the grave you lead the funeral procession back to the palace grounds, where you stand in front of a marble statue of your father at his best, sword in hand and boot planted on the chest of a fallen minotaur, a small plaque at the base naming him and commemorating his achievements.
You need to say something, you need to say something Right Now.
"Many of you here will most strongly remember the bad times at the end, the times when it seemed like every enemy in existence was coming out of the woodwork to take a chunk out of us. I remember the man I looked up to, the man who reunited our people after a religious schism that might have escalated into full blown internecine warfare, or a feud lasting centuries, I remember the man who crushed the beasts of the mountains and the nomads of the deserts badly enough that they didn't resurge for fifteen years, who built the farms deep enough into the mountains that our people are only now starting to suffer under the years of drought that have plagued us and shepherded the recovery of our population to beyond pre-war levels, who recovered old masterpieces of sculpture and music, sponsoring a revival of older forms and the spread and development of newer ones, who strengthened the Guard by accruing artefacts of great power, who sought out more than a dozen holy relics thought lost and forced through the reconciliation with those southerners that would not recant their beliefs, preemptively eliminating the cause of another civil war he predicted coming." You began.
You are glad you planned the rough shape of this speech out in advance, otherwise you might have either frozen, or had to improvise. You're not sure which would have turned out worse.
You were starting to build up speed, the heat of anger beating in your breast and leaking out through your words. "There can be no doubt that he was a great Sultan, worthy of his title, but he will not be remembered as such because of undead monstrosities, more concerned with their own power and rotting 'greatness' than any man should be, and animalistic creatures worshipping pointless destruction as their idol, and heretics and raiders and vagabonds and common thieves. Who together stole from him the respect he had earned and the peace he had bled for, before assassins stole from him his life."
"He didn't deserve this. He didn't deserve to die, he didn't deserve to have his achievements crushed under the weight of the foolish and the destructive, and he didn't deserve to lose everything like this."
"I am here to put him to rest, and to make sure he is remembered, but more than that, I am here to avenge him, to finish his work, to succeed him, to lay low our, his, enemies. I will see them crushed for this, utterly destroyed and driven back beyond the furthest limits of possibility. I will see them rue the day they thought to challenge us here, and fear us so terribly that they will not even consider returning, so terrified are they of the consequences."
You're trembling, shaking with a fury that you cannot seem to contain. It feels like you're going to burst, and at the same time like you're watching yourself at a remove.
"I will march on the beastmen next month, and when I do I will tear them apart, burning them until not even ashes or memories remain. Extinguishing them everywhere I find them and going into the dark places they hold sacred to tear them down and spite their remains. And they will only be the first to fall." You snarl out.
"I will be coming for the rest."
You take a breath, then another.
"My father's death will not be in vain, and his achievements are only the beginning. Never doubt that our people are in ascendency this day forth. And if any stand in the way of that rise, they won't survive to tell of it." you say, more quietly.
The crowd is rendered silent at your words, staring intensely and interrupted from their conversing and mourning to listen to your speech.
But now you get down from the bench you had spoken upon and walk away. You won't be observing the three days of Hidaad to mourn his passing, the corpses of your enemies would be comfort enough, and every moment could be used to bring you closer to the day you would take them.
[Nobles?: 1d10=1, dismissed as the foolish anger of a grieving child]
-[X][Personal] Call the healers
Call the healers: You're being tended to by the best healers in the city, plying their herbs, tinctures and blessings to speed your recovery, but they aren't the best healers in Araby. Normal healers simply speed natural recovery, if you want to be recovered quickly enough to be present for the current campaigns you will need some assistance with a bit more ompf, call a healer of the Esoteric Order of the Potent Hand, or … a sorcerer. At this point you don't really care who responds, you need to be back on your feet and fighting to deal with the threats coming out of the woodwork. Cost: 150. Time: less than 1 year. Chance of success 75%. Reward: fully healed and back at it in time for any fights you pick this year.
Rolled: 45
-You send out the call, and end up with an outer circle healer of the Esoteric Order of the Potent Hand. They are a secretive and exclusive group, clearly priests of the One, capable of using the same abilities as the others, but also fairly bizarre in their displays of powers beyond the reach of the rest of the faithful, and possessing many rituals they will only teach on a selective basis. Their detractors accuse them of magic and trucking with fell spirits for their eclectic and varied array of powers, not united by any common theme visible to the uninitiated, and of being pawns of foreign influence, for the hints of the language of the elves in their chants, and the practises of the monastic orders of the far east in their structure and rituals. You cannot say if any of the rumors are true, but you do know that they are effective, as with little more than a chant, a set of ritual steps and motions, some incense, and a series of sharp pokes to 'vital points' on your body you find your heart and lungs well again, and within a few hours you are removing your bandages to reveal some of your scabs turning to scarred skin, that is enough to buy the benefit of the doubt from you. Honestly you, as many, doubt anyone so obviously able to call on god's favor could be a servant of the ruinous powers.
[X] Plan Securing The Foundations
State of the treasury: 2800+993 -2150 = 1643
-[X][Military] Call the army
Call the army: Your regular military force had been temporarily stood down to replace losses and in acknowledgement that your father could not lead them while recuperating from injuries and had not yet replaced the last Marshal so no one else could lead them. Call them back to full readiness and send them out to fight. Cost 100. Time 1 year. Chance of success 98%. Reward: Nobles not pissed off at you for massing together the Knights or Guards and leaving them with less defences. Dead gribbles. Access to a much larger number of regular troops for any fight you get into.
-Required: 2, Rolled: 13. Despite significant confusion, temporary delays, a general reluctance among junior officers expecting to be thrown into another meat grinder, and a certain amount of prevaricating among some nobles who were 'training' the troops by sending them out to break up highwaymen, ghouls and monsters, they eventually stop interfering when it gets out that you plan for most of them to do essentially what some of them were already doing, but more consistently and with greater organization, as such this gets done within the budgeted time, and the men are ready to go fight beastmen. Apparently they are less demoralized than they could be, as they are expecting to face a foe they haven't lost a major engagement to recently, though you couldn't tell from looking at them. Let's see if you can avoid breaking this particular streak.
[X][Military] Start beating back this mess
Start beating back this mess: No one knows who you are, as far as the nobles are concerned you're just another unimportant nth son, who likely would never have amounted to anything. The peasants don't even know that much. Your legitimacy as a ruler will be in question until you prove that you can protect your people, so go out and get started.Cost: 0. Time: 1 Year. Reward: Battle Interlude. Good chance of Boost to Peasant Opinion. Good chance of small Boost to Noble Opinion. Choose one option to focus on, there's a chance of getting to do a second on the same action if the battle goes really well in your favor:
-[X] Beastmen.
-[] Beastmen. There have been beastmen in the mountains and deserts for longer than any record you can find goes back. Now they're coming out of the mountains and attacking the farms and plantations along the river Tarouz, lets see if you can discourage that. No further reduction in food supply.
-A number of riverboats are called up, guards on the river plantations, whose fortified central buildings will serve as temporary billets, storehouses and command centres, are increased and food and supplies are prepositioned along the expected path of march. You learn a great deal about the army you are expected to lead, somewhat anxiety inducingly it is by far the largest force you have ever personally commanded, and you try to go the extra mile, using your extraordinary memory to make sure you remember the names and faces of all of the officers under you and guard troops directly under your command, and a couple of tidbits of personal history or personality for each.
You've read up on the battlefield and your expected enemy, now you begin plotting out how you will kill him.
---interlude to follow
-[X][Diplomacy] The king is dead, long live the king
The king is dead, long live the king: You should hold a coronation, inviting all of the other Emirs and Caliphs or their representatives to confirm and witness your ascension as Sultan and witness your ascension as Caliph. You need these people if you want to do anything outside of your own territory, either aiding you, or out of the picture. Hold a meet and greet after the coronation and hear out their concerns.Cost: 200, Time: 2 years, Reward: information on the other sections of 'your' realm and it's politics, you are confirmed as Sultan with greater theoretical authority, ???
Rolled: 94 Crit on something story related that you're not already at or above twenty at, do you gain a trait? 1d2 =2 yes, I'll decide what later, probably something about greater diplo w. Arabyans
-It is both a great and terrible day, a day you never expected to see, but you are now standing before an assembly of the most powerful of your people, trying to convince them that you can measure up to the highest of the expectations that they placed on your father, and avoid the most terrible lows that reached. Stage fright doesn't even begin to describe it.
But as you stand in front of them, trying not to quake in your boots, you know god would not have set you this task if it was unnecessary, or beyond you, so you stiffen your spine and greet them. You have enough time before the coronation to talk to everybody, but between the ones who arrive early and the ones who you can speak to before they leave you get to hear out everyone's concerns.
The Emir of nearly defunct Kamt, Mas'ud Noureddine, who holds no trade routes or mines or taxable settlements to his name, whose entire people are dead, undead, evacuated, too stubborn to leave and living in a pair of forts funded by interested parties from out of the Emirate, or part of his band of nomads, backing their chiefs claim to the title in the hopes of future returns, after your father lost territory in a war against the Tomb Kings of Zandri. And whose greatest projects in recent years have been trying to convince fishermen and money lenders to help him setup a taxable fishing settlement, convincing the funders of those two forts to keep up the funding, and issuing ennoblements to wealthy individuals without asking where they got that wealth so long as he can partake of a fraction of it.
After the mutual bows he shakes your hand vigorously and expresses his intent to offer the greatest possible support, though you personally doubt how much that is worth, before trying to draw you into a discussion on your naval intentions, you of course demure, you have threats in your territory to deal with first and were taught that a responsible man sets his own house in order before looking further afield.
With him comes the Emir of Mahabbah, Hafiz Mikha'il, one of Noureddine's closest allies, he married his sister to the man, so he should be. Emir Mikha'il has been at the forefront of the efforts against the undead since practically before he came of age, and has had great success being the gate guard to the rest of the more prosperous Arabyan civilisation, you get the sense that he'd like to talk about getting more money and support from the Sultanate, and given his history, would find it ideal for that money to be taken from wealthy Al-Haikk, but feels it would be inappropriate to ask, given your other problems, instead you speak on religion, his province is one of the most intensely faithful amongst your people, and he is impressed with your personal piety, and fascinated by your insights into the holy books.
The Emir of Al-Haikk, speaking for Taj Faraj, is perhaps running late, understandable given that the delegates and representatives from the north were told to ride south along the mountains until reaching the Cobra pass then ride north to Lashiek to avoid the necromancers, you move on without him.
The Emir of Martek, the city built around the bottomless lake of Fazoth-Ar, supplying the richest mines in all of Araby, goes by the name Saif al-Din Youcef and presents himself in the greatest finery, though once you shake his sticky palms he rapidly begins expressing concerns that the beastmen are cutting off trade with the other cities, whom Martek relies on for luxuries in exchange for their metals that will eventually be fashioned into finished goods.
You do your best to reassure him, after all, you are acting against the beastmen yourself, and hope to begin breaking them this campaign season.
The Emir of Copher, Abbas Ali, has chosen not to come himself, and instead has sent a representative on the circuitous route to avoid the necromancers on your northern border that plague the both of you, the representative is a reserved man, who looks almost as overwhelmed to be here as you feel, the two of you end you very carefully not discussing the presence of a guild of magic users that have come to arrangements with local cults doing highly visible research within his city. It is a thorny issue, under other circumstances you would be just as certain in your view of magic as your father, knowing that it is a gateway to limitless corruption, but you have been charged with a difficult task, and one that is intended to simply be the first step in facing even greater challenges, and it cannot be denied that magic has been used to accomplish legendary things in the past, one simply needs to look to the raising of the Sorcerers Isles from the volcanic seabed to see that.
Your discussion with the Caliph of Ghafsa is ironically more comfortable, despite his seat of power and capital city being literally called 'The Palace of the Wizard Caliph, he was one of your father's supporters during the war and ironically acted against magic users, as despite the rumors, there haven't been any publically acknowledged wizards in his line since the time of the ancestor that created the palace, yet they have still suffer from their ancestor's feud with the inhabitants of the Sorcerer's isles after the creator of the palace stole several of the Islanders secrets. They are somewhat concerned with beastmen, but the problem is not getting worse as most of them have headed north, and more recently have suffered some minor attacks by nomads, though luckily they are not escalating, they are also suffering a food shortage.
You speak to the Emir of Tambukta, Suhayl Salma, whose family has been an on and off ally of your line, though he is too young to have fought with your father during his early victories, he recently lost a pair of engagements against the beastman warherds led by Riphorn, and is eager for revenge. Unfortunately it is too late for him to organize the movement of a major force and he is occupied enough with a major raiding force of desert nomads that he wouldn't want to, but he offers several bands of mountain wanderers, fresh from serving as mercenaries in his armies, who might be useful.
Shortly before the coronation you are also able to speak to the Calph of Nejaz, Baquir Azhar, who is currently in a lull in a full scale war with both beastmen and desert nomads, and appears to be bordering on deciding that he can't handle things on his own and is taking this opportunity to sound out the other rulers present about getting some help, he appears thus far mostly unimpressed by his neighbors, but you did see him talking to the Emir of Tambukta.
Together these men rule something like sixty percent of the population of Araby, and hold as much or more of its wealth, you had hoped that all of the Caliphs and Emirs are too caught off guard and busy with their own problems to make a bid for the throne, and you suspected that your hopes had proven true. At least up until midway through the coronation.
You have already accepted the crown, and are about to ceremonially accept the scepter when a commotion in the anteroom makes itself heard. A messenger from Al-Haikk bursts in, frothing at the mouth and yelling something about stopping 'this unjust, invalid ceremony, robbing my master of his birthright', before being restrained by the guards and dragged back out the door, screaming that 'The tainted get of the usurper Sa'di have no right to even see the throne, much less sit upon it'. With that somewhat deranged interruption punctuating the ceremony the room lapses into mutters about how the overweening ambitions of Taj Faraj will harm them all, dividing them in a time when the Arabyan peoples need to stand together. Some rulers and representatives less enthusiastic in their affirmations than others.
[Noticing 56+7, success, but not an amazing one, notice some things]
The representative from Copher is sweating, and looking kind of dazed and confused as he is dragged through the same endorsements of your rule more by social pressure than anything else, and the Emir of Martek keeps glancing at the caliph of Nejaz, Baquir Azhar.
But they all denounce the ruler of Al-Haikk as being way out of line, and formally endorse your rule.
As you are moving on to complete the ceremony, however, you notice that there is one more figure in the grand mosque than you saw enter, a cloaked figure with gnarled hands steps forward after the last of the southern representatives, causing several men present to draw steel, and proclaims himself Ahmad Fikri, the chosen representative of the Council of Sorcerers, here to confirm your ascension to Sultan.
The Sorcerer's Isles joined Araby many reigns after the formation of the Sultanate, and were never formally conquered or made part if the administration common to the rest of the peninsula, but rather integrated by converting to the common religion. Many of their internal affairs are opaque to outsiders, they are viewed with suspicion, and they have not sent a representative to confirm the ascension of a sultan for nearly six hundred years, and only sporadically before that, and just as rarely pay any attention to what mainlanders want them to do.
Mr. Fikri formally confirms your ascension, bows, then explodes into a swarm of winged beetles that proceed to make a mess of everyone's hair and clothes.
And now you are Sultan, not just any Sultan, but the Great Sultan.
Now you are nominal ruler of a nation of, at the admittedly distant last census, well over twenty million people.
It is a heady feeling, one that you aren't quite sure what to do with. Strangely you are comforted by the thought that it is likely to be one emergency after another for the immediate future, you are good at fighting and have your faith to fall back on when facing terrible threats to life and limb, you probably won't screw that part of the job up.
After the ceremony you speak more to the southern rulers, while shepherding a lesser proportion of the total population than the northern rulers, they do hold a much larger area of land.
First the Emir of Sud, Folami Anwar, who came himself by horse, and is very concerned about both his food and beastman situation, and is suffering a water shortage, but is essentially unable to do anything decisive about any of those problems, he would normally be effectively a nonentity, excepting the need to secure his goodwill or pay off his merchants to avoid suffering shipbreaking attempts while rounding the peninsula, but is offering his first daughter's hand in marriage to anyone who can offer support sufficient to solve his problems, and given his lack of male heirs thus far there is a significant chance of him suffering an 'accident' within a few years of any marriage, allowing whoever 'helps' to claim his territory.
You speak to the representative sent by the Emir of Songhai, trusted by Rashid Bahij, who holds one of the two best sources to take on food and water for shipping that's heading along the Old World-Far East sea trade route, with the next sources being in the raiding grounds of the elven dragonships, or all the way on the other side of the four year journey to Ind, and has a territorial rivalry with the Emirate of Debeqea hanging over his head that he flat out says he would like to set aside rather than pursuing, he actually didn't have any noteworthy problems right now, and was eyeing the Emir of Sud's offer speculatively, he is not one of your strongest supporters, but you get the sense that if he had a problem with your rule he would have tried to extract concessions from you before the ceremony.
And then to the representative of the Emirate of Debeqea, who speaks for Yamikani Eskender, and looks suspicious of your intentions in speaking to their rival first, they were damaged in the civil war and never really recovered properly, so are now frequently outshone and outbought by their once evenly matched neighbor. They don't really have any intention of giving up their end of the rivalry, and instead look to double down and compete harder.
You nearly finish working your way down the coast and get to speak to the representative of the Caliph of Medes, who speaks for Anwer Kato, luckily he isn't miffed by your not speaking to him earlier, as instead of deciding order by prominence you had clearly done so by geography. Medes is the only far southern territory to match the population and wealth of the northern territories, on account of it's spring fed river and extensive farms, its commanding position in the gulf it is named for as a port, several past expeditions actually sent to the far east from there, and a network of favours and friendships dominating much of the south. While their soft power dominance over the south might have deteriorated somewhat over their loss in the civil war, they have made great strides in rebuilding it since, with offers of assistance against the Tomb Kings of Ka Sabar, shipments of luxuries, and entreaties to past debts and alliances, but they have made lesser strides in rebuilding their force of fighting men, having taken additional casualties in rebuilding their network of supporters.
The representative for the Emir of Lughash, who speaks for Khalid Zahir, reports his land is well off and prosperous, and is preparing to lend support to their southeastern neighbors in the back and forth raiding against the Tomb Kings that has started up, his land was conquered by the savage Bretonnians during the crusades, but was recovered when the Al Saurim led an army against the crusader city of Antoch, leaving it in ruins and freeing the land from the rule of the violent and barbaric foreigners. It still contains a minority population of those legally or illegally following northerner cults, those who speak Bretonni as a second language, and sections of the population with lighter skin, unusual in the south. These features mean that the land has suffered internal religious conflicts in the past as the pagans hold uprisings, and must be careful to avoid drawing the attention of the northerners, lest they pursue reconquest. Reading between the lines, the Emir almost seems to want to avoid drawing the attention of anyone at all, and has no political ambitions beyond helping where his faith demands he do so.
Unfortunately, where in the centuries before the crusades the Emir of Al-Anaim would send someone, that territory hasn't existed for quite some time now, though the dominant imperial noble still claims that title among their others, and is sworn to the elected emperors out of that three way civil war in the barbaric north.
The half-savage Caliphate of Agade's current Caliph, Karam Abdul-Hamid, also sends a representative you are interested in speaking with. Their people are often embattled, against the Orcs, against the Beastmen, against the raiding parties of the Southlanders, against the Undead, even against the Al Saurim about as intermittently as they trade with them, but they also make great riches off of their trade with the Al Saurim, who do not seem to value gold the same as sensible people do, and off of their trade with others in ivory and useful animals. It is from here that most elephants, razorbeaks, and exotic one off rideable lizards are exported. Specifically you are interested in elephants, creatures that they are more than willing to sell you, just as soon as the trade routes open. They also report no other current concerns than the Undead, and some Orcish and Southlander raiding parties.
The representative for the Caliph of Zoan, who speaks for Eniola Abd al-Karim, seems reluctant to give any solid agreements or useful information to you, but he did confirm your ascension, so there's probably something about their local politics motivating standoffishness from you and the other territories. They hold, and tax, a critical set of river mouths that are amazingly useful in accessing the far southeastern territories.
The Emir of Ka Sabar, Shakil Wassim, whose land had retained its name since before it was divided into the present day Caliphates of Ka Sabar, Ashur, and Symarra, has also sent a representative, but the man is kind of a useless yes-man, you are unable to get anything out of him other than an endless array of compliments, surprisingly creative genuflections, and uncommitted but effusive agreement with whatever you are saying. While the man doesn't tell you anything useful, you still remember your lessons clearly, knowing that his Emirate has been the battleground of many efforts against the undead, and has a long standing and often violent rivalry with Symarra that they would likely be pursuing were it not for the increasing activity of the undead.
You have a conversation with the representative from the Emir of Symarra, who speaks for Zaki Rashid, an odd man who you are told would be here himself, despite the distance, were it not for the pirates. He is a former adventurer and mercenary, and in his youth he went abroad, seeking his fortune in the wars that wrack the largely divided nations to the far north. He returned when called to take up his inheritance nearly penniless, but with enough favor with the dwarves to equip thousands of men with dwarf forged equipment, import both runic arms and armor in small numbers, and call Dwarven specialists this far south to oversee his new efforts at mining, irrigation, metalworking and fortification. In your father's less preoccupied periods this would have led to political pressure being placed on him to contribute to the Arabyan Guard Armories, but right now you have other priorities. The representative seems smug in his Emirate's superiority over their historical rivals, inquires about the Sultanate's planned level of commitment to supporting the southeastern territories, and indicates that their forces are building up to face the eventuality of war with the undead.
The representative for the Caliph of Ashur, who has earned the trust of Mustafa Abd al-Wali, speaks primarily of the need for unity and solidarity against the undead horrors of Nehekhara, and urges you to organize assistance. It is only with difficulty that you are able to convince him that delaying and holding back any war is what your people need right now, as he seems eager to avenge past indignities on the Tomb Kings. You are uncertain how much will carry over when he goes back to speak to his superior, and send an impassioned persuasive letter with him, urging caution and delaying actions, at least while the rest of the kingdom puts itself in order.
(autosuccess diplo roll due to crit)
And with this you feel like you actually know enough about your people to be called their ruler. While you are certain there are reams of minutia you still need to learn to be an effective Sultan, and dozens of problems you would never hear about without someone specifically bringing them to your attention, it is a start.
800 mountain wanderer mercenaries show up from Tambukta, asking where their pay is
[]Pay them(-400 gold per turn for as long as you continue to pay them)
[] Pay them less than what they're asking (diplomacy roll, ???)
[]Don't pay them, (???, they probably leave)
-[X][Diplomacy] Who is responsible for this?
Who is responsible for this?: some of your efforts to hunt down the mastermind of the ten-plot pileup at the palace will require going overseas to track down information in places where you currently lack an information network. Doing so through diplomatic channels is essentially your only option at this point. Cost 200, Time ???(at least 2 years), Chance of success: you're almost certain to get something, whether it is enough is another matter entirely, Reward: information?
-There were definitely elves in your palace at the time of the attack, and by the time the calls for assistance are sent out Faraj Wafi has a solid suspicion that one of the groups of infiltrators hailed from Estalia. So you send out the letters and the bribes, and see if any of your trade contacts can be persuaded to investigate or part with information.
Locked for 1d3 additional years =1, huh
-[X][Stewardship] The centre needs to hold
The centre needs to hold: There are still several noble mansions standing in the city, and you need a centre of government to run your administration out of. You could buy or confiscate one of the unoccupied ones, hopefully from someone who won't be around to be angry at you for doing so. Then move all of your organization's into the new 'palace'. Your advisors strongly recommend doing this as soon as possible. Cost 500, Time, 1 year, Reward: no longer rolling for each category to see if your number of actions will degrade to 1 per turn, currently 90% chance of preserving the system Hossam Mahmud's predecessor set up to give you 3 military actions, 1 more piety action once you have an advisor for that, options to get 1 more Learning action.
Required 10, Rolled: 56
You end up claiming some guy's dry season palace as a centre of government. he won't be missing it as he died in the fire at someone else's party, and doesn't have any nearby family to protest the decision. Renovations begin immediately, as you knock out and put in walls, and add a great many desks and shelves. The end result won't impress many petitioners or foreign delegates, but it will do, at least for now. And the government is already running more efficiently. 1 more military action next turn, options allowing more actions opened up.
-[X][Stewardship] Wall me in, the fast and cheap version
Wall me in, the fast and cheap version: Currently the walls of Lashiek have had several holes blown in them by a Roc chucking Rocks. Luckily this problem provides its own solution, you could claim all of the bricks, rubble, loose stones, and the substance of the giant boulders hurled into your city as property of the crown and set to rebuilding the walls from them.Cost: 400, Time: 1 year, Chance of success: 90%, Reward: The breaches in your walls sealed, if with sub-par materiels, giant rocks removed from your city, on crit the city stops smelling like bird poop.
Rolled: 96
-Your architects and engineering professionals take this as a personal challenge, they are loosely aware of the strategic situation and have decided to improve on your defences, while remaining under budget, and only slightly over their deadlines, by implementing a number of clever tricks involving, angling, internal structure, earthen berms and oddly positioned columns or rocks they make it nearly impossible to hit the sections of wall made of less durable materials hard enough to break them any faster than the rest of your walls. The workers breaking up boulders also descend into an obsessive fugue state and manage to remove most of the smell of bird poop from the city. By the end they are being investigated for possible corruption. their unusual behavior and accomplishing a feat beyond the the means of normal men seems to have set off the more paranoid of the the clergy. Reward: walls fully repaired despite having no quarry for good stone, +25 prestige for removing the bird poop smell
-[X][Research] Read up on the Aguidi mountains and beastmen
Read up on the Aguidi mountains and beastmen Time 1 year: cost 0 Reward: bonus to fighting the current group due to a better understanding of them in particular, possible advantage against that Roc, possible other discoveries.
-you spend a fair sized chunk of the year reading up on the Aguidi mountains and their inhabitants.
Your people's relationship with these mountains is apparently fundamentally different from the relationship other humans further north have with similar terrain, while other cultures of men may want to take mountain ranges because of a cultural imperative, or past experience with the threats that can fester there, or greed for the mineral wealth within, your ancestors were motivated to take the Aguidi mountains by not wanting to die of dehydration or famine. After all the mountains have by far the heaviest and most consistent rainfall in your lands, their springs, snow capped peaks, lakes, and seasonal rivers are responsible for providing your people with much of what they need to make this region of the world habitable.
As with all things however, there was a rub, notably the beastmen who got there first, and from the very beginning your fate was sealed. You would probably be fighting them until the end of time, as they could hide in the caves and mountain peaks where you could not properly follow, and could simply reappear in the mountains every time some warherd wandered in from the desert, or the green moon hung low in the sky, or some group of idiots touched something they shouldn't have. Nonetheless your ancestors persevered and have created a series of dams, reservoirs, and step farms, after the dwarven model, all up and down the mountain chain, that you must constantly defend. The most profitable of these are the relatively secure sites along the river Tarouz, where a series of locks allow riverboats to reach deep into the heart of the mountains.
Much of the mountain chain is a perpetual frontier, as the back and forth motion of warherds and human forces clears 'new' land each season. This region is home to so called 'chivalrous' bandits, claim jumpers, highwaymen leading heists on silver shipments, mercenaries who clear land or put down slave revolts for the highest bidder, and bands who extract protection money in exchange for a dubious quality of protection, all these and more are seen here.
As for the stranger things that call the mountains home, there are more species of strange or mutant animal, oddity, and monster than one can shake a stick at, though several authors certainly claim to have a comprehensive list. Recently their numbers have grown unpredictably and rapidly for unknown reasons, making species once thought rare, common, and those thought mythical or extinct, seen within the lands of man once more.
The current discovery setting the mouths of the natural philosophers atwitter is a species of small colorful bird. A creature thought to have migrated, or been brought, to the mountains from the Southlands proper or the New World, that can speak as if with a man's voice imitating anything they hear. The jury is still out on whether this is solely to lead unwary travelers to their doom or whether it also serves some other purpose, with the radicals claiming that this is some form of proto-bird-beastman, and that we should all look to the skies and build new defenses, having been shouted down already.
There are other things worth seeking in these mountains, artifacts and sites of great power or significance, lost villages still surviving in defensible positions and gone a little strange from the isolation, whole lost cities abandoned or overrun if rumor is to be believed, and mineral wealth beyond a man's wildest dreams, with silver being common, and gold still found occasionally, or deposits of the materials an alchemist would pay dearly for a steady supply of, like mercury from cinnabar ore, and rarer minerals sometimes useful for weapons or magic, even a vein of Silverine was once found in the Emirate of Martek, the only one in the known world far enough from Bretonnia that the infidels found it impractical to launch a conquest to claim it. While that seam is long since played out, hopeful treasure seekers still search.
More immediately relevant to you is what this particular group of beastmen and this particular Roc are up to, both are acting unusually.
The group you march to fight are devoted to that jumped up Daemon, Khorne, and have apparently earned the favor of at least one of that OverDaemon's legions. They act under the leadership of an unusually clever, and unusually large and mutated, Gor. Notable for being only slightly smaller than a minotaur with uncommon horns, going by the name of Riphorn, and apparently unusually clever is not intended to mean 'for a Gor' in this case, the beast having outsmarted many commanders with it's skilled use of raiding or charge tactics in battle.
You actually know what this beast is up to, on account of both careful observation and the half-nonsensical words of it's herald, some gibbering now-nameless adventurer corrupted to the cause of chaos. The beast having proclaimed it's intentions before issuing challenge for several duels.
As far as you can tell, the monster is leading the conservative beastmen of the mountains to push back against the unnatural changes another of its kind, Sparkeye Silverclaw, apparently a follower of Tzeentch, is bringing to their clans, and Riphorn's victories against the farms, quarries, and mines are simply fodder to increase his fame and reputation among the beastmen and draw recruits from across the mountains and away from his rival's warherds.
According to the adventurers and mountain men, if these are the same Tzeentchian beastmen they've been running into then you are not immediately threatened by the Silverclaw warherds, but have good reason to be very concerned about them in the long term, they appear to have vast numbers and fight differently from normal beastmen, with some raiding in the same old way, if less skillfully and frequently than Riphorn, and others actually standing and fighting with more discipline and better weaponry than you are entirely comfortable with, generally refusing to rout unless ordered to retreat, as if they are more afraid of what will happen to them if they disobey than if they die fighting, and still others fighting more like remotely commanded undead than thinking beings. But not striking human settlements except to take women, disdaining the other usual causes for an attack, for now at least.
But all this discussion of distant threats doesn't mean your current problem is not a problem, you need to stop them or people are going to start starving. Yes you heavily outnumber the enemy, but you will be facing them on their home turf, and if things go wrong and they are allowed to define the terms of battle things could go very bad. Luckily, while Riphorn is clever and has proportionately more minotaurs than a usual warherd under his command, he is also prideful, and insecure about his unusual but apparently very sharp horns, he will meet and attempt to overcome any perceived challenge to his strength, making him predictable.
In other news you find that the Roc is nesting in the south of your realm, nearer to the Cobra Pass than the River Tarouz, and are once again reminded of its sheer size. The Aguidi mountains have long been effectively the only nesting ground of the Roc, a species with fewer than one thousand members, and most likely only hundreds at all times, and a wide variety of sizes, with the largest ones competing with elder dragons for the title of most dangerous apex predator. Over its life cycle the Roc typically first leaves the nest at the size where it can pick up and eat mountain goats, men, or beastmen, then rapidly grows in size until it is large enough to pick up a fully armored man and horse at once, afterwards it continues to grow until it can lift and eat an elephant, then two, then they typically switch over to a diet of whales and sea monsters and become a legitimate threat to shipping as they occasionally mistake the profile of ships for that of food. They simply just keep on growing and becoming stronger flyers as they age, according to legend eventually dying at around the point when they become too big to find enough food, when this is combined with far more intelligence than you should see in any simple animal they become terrifying threats. Which is what makes the behavior of this one so bizarre, it was eating GOATS for pete's sake, that's like watching a full-grown hawk or vulture peck at and eat flies, something was clearly up. Careful comparison of its sightings reveals that it is unwilling to move beyond a certain approximate diameter from something in its estimated nesting area, possibly it's nest.
Reward: possible? nest area, some understanding of Riphorn's character, +5 bonus to all rolls during this campaign due to a better understanding of the terrain, previous campaigns, and this warherd.
-[X][Piety] Recruitment
Recruitment: you need to fill your council if you want anything to get done, recruit a Piety advisor Cost 0. Time: 1 year. Reward: You gain a Piety advisor, probabilities of success and effects of success improve, additional piety options, once you have a space in a proper center of government set aside for them to work this will give you one more piety action.
Rolls: ?/?/?(not telling),
-You eventually manage to get ahold of a priest who has the respect of and ability to organize the holy men, a superstitious man going by the name Zakariyya Baki, he appears to be a moderate or neutral on a variety of religious issues, yet somehow has the political power to command the respect of other priests. He is the advisor you've been able to find for spiritual matters.
Reward: piety advisor, 1 more piety action.
-[X][Intrigue] What just happened?!
What just happened?!: The ten plot pileup at the former palace was one of the most ridiculous mid-air scheme collisions he's ever heard of, as best he can tell there were several factions in the city, each planning something different, but all forced to act at once, to both confusing and dramatic effect. There were at least two groups of human assassins, Ratmen, Elves, Undead, and some plant thing present.
The situation was so confused that he's not sure that all of them were even there as assassins, he really wants to clarify this mess, try to form a narrative that can explain any of this, interrogate the rat mutants and thieves, and get some leads on the various groups that succeeded in escaping and who sent everyone involved. There's also the issue of what exactly happened to his information network while he was away, he doesn't really know how anyone without access to your father's records could have done this much damage, and would like to determine how related this is to the mess in the palace.
Cost: 200, Time: 2 years, Reward: More(but not complete, level of completeness depends on rolls) knowledge of what happened in the castle, leads for further investigation.
(How complete? 67)
(Thief interrogation 24)
(Rat interrogation 65)
Faraj Wafi begins by carefully questioning every person that came out of the palace alive and untainted, he is able to piece together descriptions of most of the attackers, determining that there were -probably four groups of humans involved, counting the guard infiltrators you found, but acknowledging that he wouldn't have known they were there otherwise, and actually still hasn't been able to place the servant that tried to poison you, after he has some idea of what to be looking for he started asking around amongst the people who might have noticed something out of the ordinary. Eventually a picture begins to emerge.
The group of brown-coated men you fought appear to have entered the city four months ago probably from Estalia, by their accents and the make of the weapons recovered, arriving in the city from the north with a trade caravan, and targeting the royal apartments to either kill or take hostages in the confusion, there were initially far more of them but a number died or turned back due to injuries incurred in breaching the palace defences. Unfortunately the ones that turned back seem to have also exploded, so there's no way to question them.
The guard infiltrators are simply men who killed the former owners of the armor, stole it and entered in the confusion, their actions imply that they knew about this in advance in order for them to thieve their equipment in time, and that they are followers of the OverDaemon Tzeentch. You have no way of knowing when or where they entered the city limits, when you encountered them they were (probably)returning from failing to retrieve something from the records, though they may have just set them on fire instead, it is ultimately unknown why they were trying to reach the records.
There were two other groups of human infiltrators that ended up fighting each other in the throne room, and sent groups after the royal apartments that failed to reach them for unknown motivations, both of those were Arabyans, rather than foreigners disguised to seem unobtrusive like the previous groups, and both were infiltrated into the city in ways you cannot track, for lengths of time you cannot determine, and left via means you cannot determine, assuming they left the city at all.
Finally there were the rat mutants, who admitted under torture to sending groups after the royal family and Sultan as distractions, and are responsible for the majority of the casualties at the royal apartments, but were actually after the Sultan's helmet in the treasury, a magical item originally enchanted by the elves of Ulthuan that allowed it's wearer's intentions to heavily influence the paths of all unprotected projectiles within their immediate environment, protecting the wearer and their nearest allies and redirecting attacks to strike their enemies. The rat mutants suffered a betrayal from their own after the battle and one of their ships took the helmet to a city of their people somewhere within Araby, while the other returned to their port of origin, somewhere in the islands of eastern Estalia. They entered and exited by disguising their ships as human ships and suborning critical harbour personnel, an entrance your advisor claims is now closed. Unfortunately you didn't capture their navigator, and so don't know the correct location of any of these cities of mutants, something whose existence is deeply concerning to you. While on further examination of the records these rat mutants, also known as 'Skaven' have been encountered by your people before, you couldn't find any references indicating that those before you knew just how extensive their civilisation actually was.
The rat mutants fought with a group of elves and plant monsters, creatures they claim were working with the elves, that were tearing your treasury apart looking for something, but the fight ended when the elves finished and left, heading downriver overland towards the coast, probably without whatever they were looking for, you have no idea how the elves got in.
There were also vampires in the city, somehow stirred into panicking, revealing themselves, and failing an attack on you by the events at the palace, but possibly otherwise unrelated.
The thieves have no obvious relation to other events, beyond suspicious timing and two of them claiming that another, now dead, thief had mentioned having a buyer lined up before the failed heist, they were apparently after the sharpened knucklebones of St. Haldinnian, renowned for their powers in neutralizing the undead.
You also still have no idea what set all of this off, all the rat mutants knew was that they'd seen, or were allowed to see, the Tzeentchians moving for the palace and had hurried to follow suit.
-[X][Intrigue] Set up a local information network
Set up a local information network, currently you are operating at a reduced level of information gathering capacity, and have lots of things you're likely to need to investigate soon. Your advisor set one up the first time around and thinks he can do it faster and cheaper a second time.Cost 200, Time 1 year, Chance of success 80%, Reward: removal of your -10 mallus to information gathering attempts within the Caliphate of Khufra(your own province).
Rolled: 53
-work goes smoothly, and some of the low level contacts were still in place, by the end of the year the information network will be rebuilt and you will actually be able to tell what is going on in your realm.
-[X][Personal] Rest well in the arms of the Father of our people, father
Rest well in the arms of the Father of our people, father: You need to hold a state funeral for your father, he was good to you as a child and deserves to be honored in his passing. Build him a small monument, and hold a gathering to give a speech, touching upon the good points of his life and what you plan to do to improve on what he left you. You could put this off for a while, given the plethora of problems you face and the lack of a body, but that wouldn't be ideal. Cost: 200. Time: 1 year. Reward: funeral segment, unlikely chance to boost to noble opinion, peace of mind
-The law indicates that a funeral should be held as soon as possible, preferably before the next sunset, so no dark forces can gain access to the bodies of the deceased, and to prevent decomposition from spreading disease, but in this case that is not binding, given the lack of a body to bury.
It would also unsettle many of your father's friends, to be attending his funeral so soon after his disappearance in the disaster at the palace, so you order men to search for him, even though you feel in your heart that he is gone, but as the months wear on, and you take command over the recalcitrant nobles, a general realization that he must have burned in that fire spreads, and when it reaches its peak you invite others for the funeral.
The law also forbids actually burying a whole body, but that is again a moot point given the lack of a body.
Really the only funerary laws that are relevant to this situation are the prohibitions against marking grave locations in a way that someone not present for the funeral would be able to pick out, meaning that the ceremonial, but empty, 'grave', sitting in the fortified graveyard that has served your family for the past few generations, and marked only by a remembered number of paces from a cemetary marker, has to be in a completely different location than the monument most of the ceremony will be held around.
The Janazah prayer is spoken solemnly, in the hope that god will have mercy on the dead, and the coffin is lowered by the seven men carrying it.
You put your three handfuls of dirt into the hole in the ground containing an empty coffin, and swear to those present that if there is a body somewhere out there, you will find it and bring it back to receive a proper burial.
You feel too numb to cry, like you've taken too many shocks to your worldview recently and can't quite bring yourself to feel anything too strongly.
It almost doesn't feel real, like there's been some mistake, or you just deluded yourself and your father Sa'di will return any minute now from some hidden fastness, but you remind yourself that it is all to real. There is no mistake, and the feeling in your gut that those who say he is dead are right is constantly tugging at you, reminding you that it is really true.
Others cry freely, including the one of the two younger sisters you saved, despite what some might say you feel they should be present, though your other surviving siblings cannot be present in time. These tears quickly set off the other one, even though it is clear she doesn't really get what is going on. Their minder is careful to keep them quiet, though the older one is doing an admirable job of that on her own, all those who are suffering in their grief do so, as louder wails might disturb the dead as they pass over to the afterlife.
Once you supervise the gravediggers finishing the filling in of the grave you lead the funeral procession back to the palace grounds, where you stand in front of a marble statue of your father at his best, sword in hand and boot planted on the chest of a fallen minotaur, a small plaque at the base naming him and commemorating his achievements.
You need to say something, you need to say something Right Now.
"Many of you here will most strongly remember the bad times at the end, the times when it seemed like every enemy in existence was coming out of the woodwork to take a chunk out of us. I remember the man I looked up to, the man who reunited our people after a religious schism that might have escalated into full blown internecine warfare, or a feud lasting centuries, I remember the man who crushed the beasts of the mountains and the nomads of the deserts badly enough that they didn't resurge for fifteen years, who built the farms deep enough into the mountains that our people are only now starting to suffer under the years of drought that have plagued us and shepherded the recovery of our population to beyond pre-war levels, who recovered old masterpieces of sculpture and music, sponsoring a revival of older forms and the spread and development of newer ones, who strengthened the Guard by accruing artefacts of great power, who sought out more than a dozen holy relics thought lost and forced through the reconciliation with those southerners that would not recant their beliefs, preemptively eliminating the cause of another civil war he predicted coming." You began.
You are glad you planned the rough shape of this speech out in advance, otherwise you might have either frozen, or had to improvise. You're not sure which would have turned out worse.
You were starting to build up speed, the heat of anger beating in your breast and leaking out through your words. "There can be no doubt that he was a great Sultan, worthy of his title, but he will not be remembered as such because of undead monstrosities, more concerned with their own power and rotting 'greatness' than any man should be, and animalistic creatures worshipping pointless destruction as their idol, and heretics and raiders and vagabonds and common thieves. Who together stole from him the respect he had earned and the peace he had bled for, before assassins stole from him his life."
"He didn't deserve this. He didn't deserve to die, he didn't deserve to have his achievements crushed under the weight of the foolish and the destructive, and he didn't deserve to lose everything like this."
"I am here to put him to rest, and to make sure he is remembered, but more than that, I am here to avenge him, to finish his work, to succeed him, to lay low our, his, enemies. I will see them crushed for this, utterly destroyed and driven back beyond the furthest limits of possibility. I will see them rue the day they thought to challenge us here, and fear us so terribly that they will not even consider returning, so terrified are they of the consequences."
You're trembling, shaking with a fury that you cannot seem to contain. It feels like you're going to burst, and at the same time like you're watching yourself at a remove.
"I will march on the beastmen next month, and when I do I will tear them apart, burning them until not even ashes or memories remain. Extinguishing them everywhere I find them and going into the dark places they hold sacred to tear them down and spite their remains. And they will only be the first to fall." You snarl out.
"I will be coming for the rest."
You take a breath, then another.
"My father's death will not be in vain, and his achievements are only the beginning. Never doubt that our people are in ascendency this day forth. And if any stand in the way of that rise, they won't survive to tell of it." you say, more quietly.
The crowd is rendered silent at your words, staring intensely and interrupted from their conversing and mourning to listen to your speech.
But now you get down from the bench you had spoken upon and walk away. You won't be observing the three days of Hidaad to mourn his passing, the corpses of your enemies would be comfort enough, and every moment could be used to bring you closer to the day you would take them.
[Nobles?: 1d10=1, dismissed as the foolish anger of a grieving child]
-[X][Personal] Call the healers
Call the healers: You're being tended to by the best healers in the city, plying their herbs, tinctures and blessings to speed your recovery, but they aren't the best healers in Araby. Normal healers simply speed natural recovery, if you want to be recovered quickly enough to be present for the current campaigns you will need some assistance with a bit more ompf, call a healer of the Esoteric Order of the Potent Hand, or … a sorcerer. At this point you don't really care who responds, you need to be back on your feet and fighting to deal with the threats coming out of the woodwork. Cost: 150. Time: less than 1 year. Chance of success 75%. Reward: fully healed and back at it in time for any fights you pick this year.
Rolled: 45
-You send out the call, and end up with an outer circle healer of the Esoteric Order of the Potent Hand. They are a secretive and exclusive group, clearly priests of the One, capable of using the same abilities as the others, but also fairly bizarre in their displays of powers beyond the reach of the rest of the faithful, and possessing many rituals they will only teach on a selective basis. Their detractors accuse them of magic and trucking with fell spirits for their eclectic and varied array of powers, not united by any common theme visible to the uninitiated, and of being pawns of foreign influence, for the hints of the language of the elves in their chants, and the practises of the monastic orders of the far east in their structure and rituals. You cannot say if any of the rumors are true, but you do know that they are effective, as with little more than a chant, a set of ritual steps and motions, some incense, and a series of sharp pokes to 'vital points' on your body you find your heart and lungs well again, and within a few hours you are removing your bandages to reveal some of your scabs turning to scarred skin, that is enough to buy the benefit of the doubt from you. Honestly you, as many, doubt anyone so obviously able to call on god's favor could be a servant of the ruinous powers.
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Battle against Riphorn
- Location
- Toronto, Ontario(occasionally)
Author note: I promised myself I'd post this before 12 today. This has been edited several times, but didn't seem to get any better, I suspect I'll be changing the combat system as soon as the next battle interlude, possibly to one that uses actions more than choices, involves writing more character interactions, and requires more involvement to make sure the background stuff runs smoothly, future readers consider this interlude an example of early installment weirdness.
ARABY QUEST, BATTLE AGAINST RIPHORN THE BEASTMAN INTERLUDE, PREPARATORY PHASE
You spend several months organizing the movement of thousands of fighting men along transport infrastructure that is mostly meant to move materials out of the mountains, not men into them.
It poses a number of practical problems, mostly to do with a scarcity of boats intended to accommodate people, a tendency of the locks further up the river to be aggravatingly slow to fill, and a couple points along the river where your ancestors accepted that they would be flat out unable to put a practical lock or dam in the allow transit, and resorted to cutting a path alongside the river, with cranes and rollers to more easily portage boats past.
(Stewardship roll for how well supplied your army is auto success due to infrastructure)
Nonetheless, your people have done this hundreds of times before, and are well prepared to do it again.
You yourself head in on the third wave of vanguard ships, and while the river trips are easy enough along the calm river the slog pushing the damn boats uphill isn't, especially as you near the upper reaches of the river and have to get out to help do it more and more frequently. You don't envy the teams of men and donkeys that end up pulling the ropes along the shore against the current where the flow is too strong for the oars. The endless peaks of the mountain range around you throughout, looming over your men like the bones of some long dead beast that would wish you gone or curse you for trespassing on places you are not intended to see. The wind moans through the peaks unnervingly, making an dozen sounds that each seem strange or foreboding, seeming unnervingly similar sounding to the groans of the undead or diseased. One man even says he saw a large bird fly over the river turn left. And of course there are the frequent attacks by panthers and the lesser large birds of the mountains that must be driven off with arrows, spears, flashing mirrors, and foul smells, most of the birds are of the generic type, but one attack by Al Anqa'a is taken as an ill omen, presaging some form of fire. The men are unsettled. You are unsettled. The mercenaries and many militia are nonchalant and comfortable, embarrassing many of the people who are unsettled as their assumed inferiors show them up at fieldcraft and generally keeping cool heads.
WHAT TO DO WITH THE MERCS?
[]keep them concentrated to form a specialist force(ambush and raiding force with large bonus to hiding from beastmen in this terrain or following them back into inaccessible areas)
[]Distribute them to advise unit commanders and serve as trackers(+15 to Advantages of Heaven and Earth roll, meaning an additional +6 to many rolls)
While you do in fact need to leave a large chunk of your forces outside of the mountains to keep the rest of your realm safe, and out of acknowledgment that the terrain isn't ideal for cavalry, you are still able to bring the majority of your army with you. You suspect that they will be especially useful for setting up patrols and picket lines on a large scale, but are still concerned about the way the beastmen likely know these mountains far better than you. If you are particularly unlucky they might bypass your pickets, leaving you to clear areas multiple times, or getting behind you to launch embarrassing strikes into your rear area.
The weather might not be ideal, but it is pretty good, with water supplies available en rout, and the older soldiers believing it doesn't seem like it's about to turn into an unseasonal multi-week rainshower. Moreover, the lands you are fighting over are better than they could be, but could stand to have some dedicated fortifications rather than all of these little castles and plantation fortresses, while the watchtowers, roads, what of them there are, and the many, many, stairs are rough, but serviceable. You are at least confident that you can get a force downriver faster than the enemy can possibly march by taking advantage of the current, and between that and reports on where Riphorn was last seen you decide to bias your deployment towards the upper reaches of the river. Though you might still try to avoid battle until more favorable conditions can be found, you haven't decided yet.
ADVANTAGES OF HEAVEN AND EARTH, Represents terrain, weather, and winds of magic, roll:67 -25(mountains) +10(maps and local knowledge) +25(prepared ground) +5(prior experience)= 82/2.5 rounded down =+12 for many rolls this campaign phase
-GAMBLE ON FINDING BETTER GROUND?(under these conditions requires either waiting for methodical or marching out and losing the +25)
-[]yes
-[]no
Now that you're deciding on the final deployments you need to finalize your strategy, this is a complex issue, while you cannot fully rule out any course of action you need to have a clear idea of what you are striking out for if you're going to be proactive in the early phases of this campaign. With the numerous factors to take into account on the battlefield you have many options.
These two choices are too intertwined for me to leave them separate.
HOW LONG DO YOU WAIT TO MAKE YOUR MOVE? Choose a speed. Shorter speeds leave you with less forces, longer speeds leave the enemy more time to decide to leave or prepare a trap. Longer speeds might work better with defence or ambush options, and the earlier option categories on the list after this.
[]Decisive(you march quickly, using your vanguard)
[]Measured (medium, you wait until the main body shows up)
[]Methodical (once every possible force has arrived, rearguard shows up, one more Additional Forces roll with the Militia part at +30, if supplies were an issue this would give you better supplies)
WHAT SORT OF WIN ARE YOU MOSTLY AIMING FOR? AND WHAT WILL YOU PERSONALLY, AND YOUR FORCES FOCUS ON DOING TO GAIN IT?(this isn't a one option wins vote, the top option will be focused on, but vote for a couple, and runners up will be the next preferred option)
[]Drive them out of the area.(doable by making it obvious that there's no more plunder and too large a threat for staying in the local area to be worthwhile, would be worth taking a longer time before making your move)
-[] Aggressive(you actively range out, destroying camps and herdstones, striking groups of beastmen and making them flee, trying to intimidate the army and it's leader into seeking their fortunes elsewhere)
-[] Defensive(You focus on making the farms a hard enough target that it isn't worth attacking them anymore)
[]Kill enough of them to eliminate them as a threatening force(trick or taunt them into an ambush, or strike at herdstones to cut their numbers)
-[]Attack(you track them back to their largest concentrations, then launch a series of raids aimed at preventing most of them from escaping when killed by superior force concentration)
-[]Ambush(you hold them off and frustrate them, but leave some vulnerabilities to lure them in to attack, preferably making them angry enough to avoid smelling a trap, or multiple traps)
[]Kill their leader, Riphorn, and any lieutenants that might rally his force(challenging mostly because the leaders will cut through your normal troops and you don't have a reliable way of bringing them into contact with your better troops or yourself, you could taunt the enemy into a duel, trick them into striking a target that Riphorn should be personally present for and turn it into an ambush, or try to track the most important concentration of your enemy and strike with overwhelming force while blocking escape)
-[]Track down his personal force(leans kind of heavily on the Mercs and local militia to do the tracking, you try to wipe him and his nearest lieutenants out in one fell swoop)
-[]Try to dangle an incredibly useful shipment in front of the beastmen, the kind of thing that they can't resist striking, but that would catapult any chieftain into a position of status able to threaten Riphorn, then set a trap. Even though he would realize it is a trap, Riphorn would either have to spring the trap or lose status with his followers and leave the area to restrain his men. Would require risking things you would really rather not risk, food, weapons, women, gold, giant red cloths.
-[]Try to taunt Riphorn into fighting a duel(take captives and release them carrying imprecations of their Beastlord's weakness, insufficient size of manhood, and freakish mutations preventing him from being a proper Gor, Tear down herdstones, replace them with fired clay statues of men slaughtering beastmen, made as cheaply as practical with a mold, generally try to locate him, shout insults in his general direction and wave your sword at him.
[] or write in battle goals and methods.
Total force, 33150 infantry +4000 Guard +800 mercs +840 camel riders mounted on ponies(how many ponies can you find?: 53, 800ish)= Total army size: 38790 men
Normally your main body would be larger than either the vanguard or the rearguard, but due to the restrictions of riverboat traffic the three divisions of the army are more or less the same size, and take more or less the same amount of time to get out into the mountains.
Forces currently available in the Vanguard, numbering 12930 men:
4000 Guard(they go where you go)
800 Mountain wanderer mercenaries(currently overworked on screening duties)
3000 Bowmen
2500 swordsmen
2630 Spearmen
Main body, Numbering 12930 men
420 Camel riders(mounted on ponies)(currently overworked on screening duties)
2600 Swordsmen
5000 Bowmen
4930 Spearmen
Rearguard, numbering 12930 men
420 Camel riders(mounted on ponies)(currently overworked on screening duties)
7300 Bowmen
5230 Spearmen
(The math for the above section was a pain and I'm still not sure it's right. I'm just going to use 500 man units when dividing the army in the future)
Additional forces already in the mountains who meet up with you:
Knights: 60, 500, mostly Knights Templar
Dervishers: 74, 3100, mostly following the knights Templar
Militia: 89, 19,000 men, better quality than the militia outside of the mountains, so actually worth using for more than missile fire
When you send out the call for additional forces outside of the regular army troops you are slightly surprised by how many answer, the militia alone outnumber those of your regular forces that have arrived already by a considerable margin, but are disorganized and lacking in leadership beyond the knights and locally respected figures, all of whom you make a point of meeting with as you try to make sure they'll follow the lead of more regular forces in battle.
They might be better than most of their peers in a fight, but they're not terribly disciplined, and could cause problems if chance puts them in the wrong position and they're tested. On the plus side they bring news of Riphorn's recent actions, his warherds have apparently paused to the northwest of your position, gorging themselves on human flesh and produce after their newest round of raids against the mountain farms, and are using a hard-won victory over the mountain clansmen to gather more forces, using the promise of the flesh of the strong and victory against the unworthy to bring the last few unaligned warherds in the area to alliance or challenge.
ARABY QUEST, BATTLE AGAINST RIPHORN THE BEASTMAN INTERLUDE, PREPARATORY PHASE
You spend several months organizing the movement of thousands of fighting men along transport infrastructure that is mostly meant to move materials out of the mountains, not men into them.
It poses a number of practical problems, mostly to do with a scarcity of boats intended to accommodate people, a tendency of the locks further up the river to be aggravatingly slow to fill, and a couple points along the river where your ancestors accepted that they would be flat out unable to put a practical lock or dam in the allow transit, and resorted to cutting a path alongside the river, with cranes and rollers to more easily portage boats past.
(Stewardship roll for how well supplied your army is auto success due to infrastructure)
Nonetheless, your people have done this hundreds of times before, and are well prepared to do it again.
You yourself head in on the third wave of vanguard ships, and while the river trips are easy enough along the calm river the slog pushing the damn boats uphill isn't, especially as you near the upper reaches of the river and have to get out to help do it more and more frequently. You don't envy the teams of men and donkeys that end up pulling the ropes along the shore against the current where the flow is too strong for the oars. The endless peaks of the mountain range around you throughout, looming over your men like the bones of some long dead beast that would wish you gone or curse you for trespassing on places you are not intended to see. The wind moans through the peaks unnervingly, making an dozen sounds that each seem strange or foreboding, seeming unnervingly similar sounding to the groans of the undead or diseased. One man even says he saw a large bird fly over the river turn left. And of course there are the frequent attacks by panthers and the lesser large birds of the mountains that must be driven off with arrows, spears, flashing mirrors, and foul smells, most of the birds are of the generic type, but one attack by Al Anqa'a is taken as an ill omen, presaging some form of fire. The men are unsettled. You are unsettled. The mercenaries and many militia are nonchalant and comfortable, embarrassing many of the people who are unsettled as their assumed inferiors show them up at fieldcraft and generally keeping cool heads.
WHAT TO DO WITH THE MERCS?
[]keep them concentrated to form a specialist force(ambush and raiding force with large bonus to hiding from beastmen in this terrain or following them back into inaccessible areas)
[]Distribute them to advise unit commanders and serve as trackers(+15 to Advantages of Heaven and Earth roll, meaning an additional +6 to many rolls)
While you do in fact need to leave a large chunk of your forces outside of the mountains to keep the rest of your realm safe, and out of acknowledgment that the terrain isn't ideal for cavalry, you are still able to bring the majority of your army with you. You suspect that they will be especially useful for setting up patrols and picket lines on a large scale, but are still concerned about the way the beastmen likely know these mountains far better than you. If you are particularly unlucky they might bypass your pickets, leaving you to clear areas multiple times, or getting behind you to launch embarrassing strikes into your rear area.
The weather might not be ideal, but it is pretty good, with water supplies available en rout, and the older soldiers believing it doesn't seem like it's about to turn into an unseasonal multi-week rainshower. Moreover, the lands you are fighting over are better than they could be, but could stand to have some dedicated fortifications rather than all of these little castles and plantation fortresses, while the watchtowers, roads, what of them there are, and the many, many, stairs are rough, but serviceable. You are at least confident that you can get a force downriver faster than the enemy can possibly march by taking advantage of the current, and between that and reports on where Riphorn was last seen you decide to bias your deployment towards the upper reaches of the river. Though you might still try to avoid battle until more favorable conditions can be found, you haven't decided yet.
ADVANTAGES OF HEAVEN AND EARTH, Represents terrain, weather, and winds of magic, roll:67 -25(mountains) +10(maps and local knowledge) +25(prepared ground) +5(prior experience)= 82/2.5 rounded down =+12 for many rolls this campaign phase
-GAMBLE ON FINDING BETTER GROUND?(under these conditions requires either waiting for methodical or marching out and losing the +25)
-[]yes
-[]no
Now that you're deciding on the final deployments you need to finalize your strategy, this is a complex issue, while you cannot fully rule out any course of action you need to have a clear idea of what you are striking out for if you're going to be proactive in the early phases of this campaign. With the numerous factors to take into account on the battlefield you have many options.
These two choices are too intertwined for me to leave them separate.
HOW LONG DO YOU WAIT TO MAKE YOUR MOVE? Choose a speed. Shorter speeds leave you with less forces, longer speeds leave the enemy more time to decide to leave or prepare a trap. Longer speeds might work better with defence or ambush options, and the earlier option categories on the list after this.
[]Decisive(you march quickly, using your vanguard)
[]Measured (medium, you wait until the main body shows up)
[]Methodical (once every possible force has arrived, rearguard shows up, one more Additional Forces roll with the Militia part at +30, if supplies were an issue this would give you better supplies)
WHAT SORT OF WIN ARE YOU MOSTLY AIMING FOR? AND WHAT WILL YOU PERSONALLY, AND YOUR FORCES FOCUS ON DOING TO GAIN IT?(this isn't a one option wins vote, the top option will be focused on, but vote for a couple, and runners up will be the next preferred option)
[]Drive them out of the area.(doable by making it obvious that there's no more plunder and too large a threat for staying in the local area to be worthwhile, would be worth taking a longer time before making your move)
-[] Aggressive(you actively range out, destroying camps and herdstones, striking groups of beastmen and making them flee, trying to intimidate the army and it's leader into seeking their fortunes elsewhere)
-[] Defensive(You focus on making the farms a hard enough target that it isn't worth attacking them anymore)
[]Kill enough of them to eliminate them as a threatening force(trick or taunt them into an ambush, or strike at herdstones to cut their numbers)
-[]Attack(you track them back to their largest concentrations, then launch a series of raids aimed at preventing most of them from escaping when killed by superior force concentration)
-[]Ambush(you hold them off and frustrate them, but leave some vulnerabilities to lure them in to attack, preferably making them angry enough to avoid smelling a trap, or multiple traps)
[]Kill their leader, Riphorn, and any lieutenants that might rally his force(challenging mostly because the leaders will cut through your normal troops and you don't have a reliable way of bringing them into contact with your better troops or yourself, you could taunt the enemy into a duel, trick them into striking a target that Riphorn should be personally present for and turn it into an ambush, or try to track the most important concentration of your enemy and strike with overwhelming force while blocking escape)
-[]Track down his personal force(leans kind of heavily on the Mercs and local militia to do the tracking, you try to wipe him and his nearest lieutenants out in one fell swoop)
-[]Try to dangle an incredibly useful shipment in front of the beastmen, the kind of thing that they can't resist striking, but that would catapult any chieftain into a position of status able to threaten Riphorn, then set a trap. Even though he would realize it is a trap, Riphorn would either have to spring the trap or lose status with his followers and leave the area to restrain his men. Would require risking things you would really rather not risk, food, weapons, women, gold, giant red cloths.
-[]Try to taunt Riphorn into fighting a duel(take captives and release them carrying imprecations of their Beastlord's weakness, insufficient size of manhood, and freakish mutations preventing him from being a proper Gor, Tear down herdstones, replace them with fired clay statues of men slaughtering beastmen, made as cheaply as practical with a mold, generally try to locate him, shout insults in his general direction and wave your sword at him.
[] or write in battle goals and methods.
Total force, 33150 infantry +4000 Guard +800 mercs +840 camel riders mounted on ponies(how many ponies can you find?: 53, 800ish)= Total army size: 38790 men
Normally your main body would be larger than either the vanguard or the rearguard, but due to the restrictions of riverboat traffic the three divisions of the army are more or less the same size, and take more or less the same amount of time to get out into the mountains.
Forces currently available in the Vanguard, numbering 12930 men:
4000 Guard(they go where you go)
800 Mountain wanderer mercenaries(currently overworked on screening duties)
3000 Bowmen
2500 swordsmen
2630 Spearmen
Main body, Numbering 12930 men
420 Camel riders(mounted on ponies)(currently overworked on screening duties)
2600 Swordsmen
5000 Bowmen
4930 Spearmen
Rearguard, numbering 12930 men
420 Camel riders(mounted on ponies)(currently overworked on screening duties)
7300 Bowmen
5230 Spearmen
(The math for the above section was a pain and I'm still not sure it's right. I'm just going to use 500 man units when dividing the army in the future)
Additional forces already in the mountains who meet up with you:
Knights: 60, 500, mostly Knights Templar
Dervishers: 74, 3100, mostly following the knights Templar
Militia: 89, 19,000 men, better quality than the militia outside of the mountains, so actually worth using for more than missile fire
When you send out the call for additional forces outside of the regular army troops you are slightly surprised by how many answer, the militia alone outnumber those of your regular forces that have arrived already by a considerable margin, but are disorganized and lacking in leadership beyond the knights and locally respected figures, all of whom you make a point of meeting with as you try to make sure they'll follow the lead of more regular forces in battle.
They might be better than most of their peers in a fight, but they're not terribly disciplined, and could cause problems if chance puts them in the wrong position and they're tested. On the plus side they bring news of Riphorn's recent actions, his warherds have apparently paused to the northwest of your position, gorging themselves on human flesh and produce after their newest round of raids against the mountain farms, and are using a hard-won victory over the mountain clansmen to gather more forces, using the promise of the flesh of the strong and victory against the unworthy to bring the last few unaligned warherds in the area to alliance or challenge.
Battle against Riphorn the Beastman, interlude 2
- Location
- Toronto, Ontario(occasionally)
Author note: I am unspeakably slow, but like the mighty tortoise(with the attention span of a chipmunk), I eventually get there. I'm going to start padding deadlines.
You ultimately decide on keeping the mercenaries together, they have many strange customs that might not go over well with the common soldiery, are a tightly knit group that work well together, and you suspect that if you scattered them they would find a way to avoid taking any of the coming casualties, a state of affairs that would be mildly irritating to you given their relatively blatant profiteering off of you misfortune.
They remain under their commander Samad Mihammad, who is an old man to still be alive in his sort of business. Hopefully that means he is especially dangerous or clever rather than especially evasive or cowardly.
Your military advisor Hossam Mahmud advises you not to rely overmuch on the man, and helps you plan out the campaign, you need to try to get Riphorn's blood up, and convince him to strike somewhere predictable, and there are only a handful of levera you can use to push for that kind of resolution.
You need to challenge Riphorn, make it clear that he is facing a great force and should not just ignore you, and you need to control what he knows.
To achieve this end you try to track the enemy back to their camps, one of the few things you feel willing to do in advance of the next body of your force arriving. The mercenaries are sent out, to see if they are as good if their bragging claims they are.
So they go out into the villages and herds. They learn from the shepherds and adventurers and locals among the militia, using their stories to isolate the position and bearing of the Beastpaths through the mountains. And they speak to their local counterparts, recently crushed in battle against the enemy and eager for revenge.
SCOUTING [98+15 Skill +12 Heaven and Earth= 125: Super Critical success]
And as they do so a picture gradually forms, by the end of the month and a half it takes for the rest of your planned force to arrive they swear they have a completed accounting of the location, numbers and transit routes of their enemy. If they are correct, the Combined warherds in the area number some 14,000 Beastmen after their battles and a spate of bad luck in acquiring replacements. They are split into one camp of 4000, one camp of 3000, and seven camps of 1000, with several of the largest camps positioned nearby each other and the others scattered in good positions for raiding and replenishing their losses from the local Beastmen populations. They will likely begin coalescing into one force as soon as they learn that you have arrived so you intend to strike their outlying camps shortly before your forces are due to assemble.
STOPPING THEM FROM NOTICING YOU[2 + 20from the super critical +15skill = 37]
THEIR RESPONSE[65] most run, some raid
DETECTION OF RIADERS[72+12+15 =99]
YOUR TROOPS AMBUSH THE RAIDERS[58 +10crit +12 +15 =95]
Unfortunately it seems that something about your army moving in tipped them off. With what appears to be a fair amount of confusion the outlying warherds begin contracting back towards the largest groups of beastmen. But some are left behind, as with their blood up they cannot bring themselves to flee, one group of about a thousand charges towards where they believe your army is billeted. They fail to realize that you have just recently gained an extremely comprehensive map of their preferred mode of travel, and can thus track their every move within the lands men patrol. Where they intended to infiltrate into your territory through the hidden paths and lie in wait to raid you during the night, instead they find themselves caught stretched out along the mean hidden trails that are central to the lifestyle of these mutants, and surrounded.
------------------------------------------
It is just after noon that the leader of this warherd seems to detect something amiss as they march, strung out along the beast path.
RESPONSE[94+15+12 =111 a success, I am surprised, this scale of success skips a challenge roll]
But the largest of the beasts, a disgusting narrow triangular snouted, bat eared, catfish whiskered, two horned monster, or a beast, standing head and shoulders above any man on the battlefield commands them. He drives them on unheeding of and disturbance, perhaps believing that the odd scent on the air and unsettling feelings that this trail has been traversed are indicative of another denizen of the forest, long gone, or little threat to a warherd one thousand strong.
Right then is when your soldiers emerge from the screens of foliage and quick dugouts that have concealed them along both sides of the path causing a panic among the beastmen. They realize they are surrounded, and throw themselves at your lines with the fury of cornered animals.
BREAKOUT ATTEMPT[7 +12 +10numbers ??? = ??]
Unfortunately your men are disrupted and out of position, they can't quite seem to prevent this warherd from making a quick charge towards the thinly defended front and rear of the encirclements. While the men caught in the gap make a solid fight of it they are too disorganized to close ranks and prevent the enemy from encircling and bypassing the clumps of humans that those sections of the encirclement disintegrate into. You call for a rally, and move men to support those threatened by these breakout attempts, but hundreds of the warherd have escaped in the few moments of confusion.
Though those to escape so far are mostly the more fleet-footed of the abominations, the brays mostly, the others will soon follow if you do not reform the line.
REFORM AND REINFORCE[44 +12 +21 =77 ???, rear encirclement gradually regained, you deal with the more dangerous front]
So you surge for the front of the line yourself, calling to your men to do the same to the rear.
ENTERING COMBAT[70+21 = 91, front of encirclement regained, no more rolls needed]
The five hundred of your Guards that insisted on coming along on what was fundamentally to be a stealth mission, a role on the battlefield that the colorful men are rather unsuited to, surge along with you screaming their war cries.
For just a moment you see fear in the eyes of those you charge, and instant of hesitance in their motions tangling them up with those pushing from behind to escape the trap. Then you are upon them, striking a spear clean through the lung of one and into the eye of the one behind him, before discarding it as unsalvageable against the sucking flesh of the wounds it has opened. Your men arrive and reform, locking shields with you to form a front the savages cannot break without the weight of numbers on their side or momentum they cannot build, surrounded on all sides as they are. And you settle in for a long fight, gradually wearing away at creatures whose ferocity only seems to grow as their situation becomes grimmer.
CONTINUED COMBAT[53+12+21=86]
It takes you the better part of a half hour of fighting in the shield wall to fell them all, your men might outnumber them and take down as many as four for each casualty they take in the shifting of shields and spears, with the enemy situation becoming drastically worse as their long thin line is split in the middle, but the enemy is tireless in their tainted resolve and hardy in their unholy constitution and they nearly fight to the last. -And yet, their leader does not seem to share the same resolve to risk himself for escape, oh he fights, but he doesn't throw himself at you with abandon in hatred and the hopes of escape.
-200 spearmen
CAPTIVES[54 +21 ??? = ??]
Luckily nearly is not quite completely, and you capture both their leader and many of the lowest ranking members of their group that are likely to have been born human and changed later in life, using ropes, beatings and policing the wounded to collect these prisoners.
Before the alerting of the Warherd to your presence you had planned to raid their camps, not so much to cause damage, but to secure temporary captives. This was ostensibly to be for information.
But the real plan was, and still is, for torturing them, both for information and out of general principle, to be a cover to allow them to 'overhear' your men discussing plans to strip the mountains of everything of value and leave for the flatlands. This kind of narrative would be deeply tempting for a powerful Beastlord to believe, considering that they still consider the mountains their rightful home, and humans interlopers to be driven out even thousands of years after humans gained nominal control of the geological formations, and a target of such scale, wealth, and disorganization would be difficult to resist striking for any with beastlord with the ambition to see themselves rise still higher.
But, and it's a big but, there are some problems with this plan.
Your original plan to gather captives from multiple warherds would be too risky now, requiring that you practically challenge the main body of the enemy, or those forces encamped nearby and moving closer with every moment, to a fight. Unexpectedly, you could actually do that now, as you have an unusually precise reading of the numbers and disposition of the enemy, however you would essentially be risking starting the battle early and at a disadvantage, with the enemy main body flanking or outflanking you and attacking while you are dealing with subordinates.
While those you have already captured might be enough, assuming you can stage a convincing escape, you are suspicious of the catfish whiskered leader of this Warherd. He was captured too easily, and on reflection, didn't take as strong of an advantage of the breakthrough as you would have done in his place.
Moreover if you want the Beastlord Riphorn to actually take the risk of coming out and attacking a major movement of me and material you need to actually perform a major movement. Which could have many unpleasant side effects.
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PLAN(choose one)
[]Attack: Screw the plan, you know where the enemy is and how many of them there are, you outnumber them essentially two to one, march out along their own paths and beard this goat in his den. The scouting super critical means you know where the enemy troops are right now, and where they are concentrating, you could go out and make this a battle right this instant.(battle begins, lose the +25 for prepared ground on the heaven and earth roll, but it otherwise remains the same)
[]Raid: You are suspicious of this captured leader, so capture some more before you try to seed any false information.(risk of starting the battle at a disadvantage, gains more captives for the plan)
[] Restrain: You are suspicious of this captured beast, so proceed with the plan, but only allow his subordinates to escape, genuinely torture the leader for information instead of that being an incidental benefit. (Less chance of the enemy falling for the trap, Chance of ???)
[] Try something completely different(write in)
BAIT (choose as many as you want, note that on crit fail any of these can cause really ugly side effects)
[] Order the removal of nearly all physical wealth from the mountains, on the pretext that the beasts should not be allowed to steal it.(Crops, gold, silver, silk, jewlery, and trinkets are moved to the river to be shipped south on a royal guarantee of return or repayment, probably pisses off the peasants, ???)
[] Order the (Faux) removal of the vulnerable and dependents from the combat zone, ostensibly to ensure their safely(women and children gather at the river as if to be shipped south, really pisses off the peasants, especially if they hear that they were to be used as bait)
[] Order the (Faux) evacuation of the entire area, bringing what weapons, fighting men, and their families west as you can.( the militia, their families, and any war material you can grab gathers at the river as if to be shipped south, definitely causes rebellion on crit fail)
[]None of these
[] Write in
You ultimately decide on keeping the mercenaries together, they have many strange customs that might not go over well with the common soldiery, are a tightly knit group that work well together, and you suspect that if you scattered them they would find a way to avoid taking any of the coming casualties, a state of affairs that would be mildly irritating to you given their relatively blatant profiteering off of you misfortune.
They remain under their commander Samad Mihammad, who is an old man to still be alive in his sort of business. Hopefully that means he is especially dangerous or clever rather than especially evasive or cowardly.
Your military advisor Hossam Mahmud advises you not to rely overmuch on the man, and helps you plan out the campaign, you need to try to get Riphorn's blood up, and convince him to strike somewhere predictable, and there are only a handful of levera you can use to push for that kind of resolution.
You need to challenge Riphorn, make it clear that he is facing a great force and should not just ignore you, and you need to control what he knows.
To achieve this end you try to track the enemy back to their camps, one of the few things you feel willing to do in advance of the next body of your force arriving. The mercenaries are sent out, to see if they are as good if their bragging claims they are.
So they go out into the villages and herds. They learn from the shepherds and adventurers and locals among the militia, using their stories to isolate the position and bearing of the Beastpaths through the mountains. And they speak to their local counterparts, recently crushed in battle against the enemy and eager for revenge.
SCOUTING [98+15 Skill +12 Heaven and Earth= 125: Super Critical success]
And as they do so a picture gradually forms, by the end of the month and a half it takes for the rest of your planned force to arrive they swear they have a completed accounting of the location, numbers and transit routes of their enemy. If they are correct, the Combined warherds in the area number some 14,000 Beastmen after their battles and a spate of bad luck in acquiring replacements. They are split into one camp of 4000, one camp of 3000, and seven camps of 1000, with several of the largest camps positioned nearby each other and the others scattered in good positions for raiding and replenishing their losses from the local Beastmen populations. They will likely begin coalescing into one force as soon as they learn that you have arrived so you intend to strike their outlying camps shortly before your forces are due to assemble.
STOPPING THEM FROM NOTICING YOU[2 + 20from the super critical +15skill = 37]
THEIR RESPONSE[65] most run, some raid
DETECTION OF RIADERS[72+12+15 =99]
YOUR TROOPS AMBUSH THE RAIDERS[58 +10crit +12 +15 =95]
Unfortunately it seems that something about your army moving in tipped them off. With what appears to be a fair amount of confusion the outlying warherds begin contracting back towards the largest groups of beastmen. But some are left behind, as with their blood up they cannot bring themselves to flee, one group of about a thousand charges towards where they believe your army is billeted. They fail to realize that you have just recently gained an extremely comprehensive map of their preferred mode of travel, and can thus track their every move within the lands men patrol. Where they intended to infiltrate into your territory through the hidden paths and lie in wait to raid you during the night, instead they find themselves caught stretched out along the mean hidden trails that are central to the lifestyle of these mutants, and surrounded.
------------------------------------------
It is just after noon that the leader of this warherd seems to detect something amiss as they march, strung out along the beast path.
RESPONSE[94+15+12 =111 a success, I am surprised, this scale of success skips a challenge roll]
But the largest of the beasts, a disgusting narrow triangular snouted, bat eared, catfish whiskered, two horned monster, or a beast, standing head and shoulders above any man on the battlefield commands them. He drives them on unheeding of and disturbance, perhaps believing that the odd scent on the air and unsettling feelings that this trail has been traversed are indicative of another denizen of the forest, long gone, or little threat to a warherd one thousand strong.
Right then is when your soldiers emerge from the screens of foliage and quick dugouts that have concealed them along both sides of the path causing a panic among the beastmen. They realize they are surrounded, and throw themselves at your lines with the fury of cornered animals.
BREAKOUT ATTEMPT[7 +12 +10numbers ??? = ??]
Unfortunately your men are disrupted and out of position, they can't quite seem to prevent this warherd from making a quick charge towards the thinly defended front and rear of the encirclements. While the men caught in the gap make a solid fight of it they are too disorganized to close ranks and prevent the enemy from encircling and bypassing the clumps of humans that those sections of the encirclement disintegrate into. You call for a rally, and move men to support those threatened by these breakout attempts, but hundreds of the warherd have escaped in the few moments of confusion.
Though those to escape so far are mostly the more fleet-footed of the abominations, the brays mostly, the others will soon follow if you do not reform the line.
REFORM AND REINFORCE[44 +12 +21 =77 ???, rear encirclement gradually regained, you deal with the more dangerous front]
So you surge for the front of the line yourself, calling to your men to do the same to the rear.
ENTERING COMBAT[70+21 = 91, front of encirclement regained, no more rolls needed]
The five hundred of your Guards that insisted on coming along on what was fundamentally to be a stealth mission, a role on the battlefield that the colorful men are rather unsuited to, surge along with you screaming their war cries.
For just a moment you see fear in the eyes of those you charge, and instant of hesitance in their motions tangling them up with those pushing from behind to escape the trap. Then you are upon them, striking a spear clean through the lung of one and into the eye of the one behind him, before discarding it as unsalvageable against the sucking flesh of the wounds it has opened. Your men arrive and reform, locking shields with you to form a front the savages cannot break without the weight of numbers on their side or momentum they cannot build, surrounded on all sides as they are. And you settle in for a long fight, gradually wearing away at creatures whose ferocity only seems to grow as their situation becomes grimmer.
CONTINUED COMBAT[53+12+21=86]
It takes you the better part of a half hour of fighting in the shield wall to fell them all, your men might outnumber them and take down as many as four for each casualty they take in the shifting of shields and spears, with the enemy situation becoming drastically worse as their long thin line is split in the middle, but the enemy is tireless in their tainted resolve and hardy in their unholy constitution and they nearly fight to the last. -And yet, their leader does not seem to share the same resolve to risk himself for escape, oh he fights, but he doesn't throw himself at you with abandon in hatred and the hopes of escape.
-200 spearmen
CAPTIVES[54 +21 ??? = ??]
Luckily nearly is not quite completely, and you capture both their leader and many of the lowest ranking members of their group that are likely to have been born human and changed later in life, using ropes, beatings and policing the wounded to collect these prisoners.
Before the alerting of the Warherd to your presence you had planned to raid their camps, not so much to cause damage, but to secure temporary captives. This was ostensibly to be for information.
But the real plan was, and still is, for torturing them, both for information and out of general principle, to be a cover to allow them to 'overhear' your men discussing plans to strip the mountains of everything of value and leave for the flatlands. This kind of narrative would be deeply tempting for a powerful Beastlord to believe, considering that they still consider the mountains their rightful home, and humans interlopers to be driven out even thousands of years after humans gained nominal control of the geological formations, and a target of such scale, wealth, and disorganization would be difficult to resist striking for any with beastlord with the ambition to see themselves rise still higher.
But, and it's a big but, there are some problems with this plan.
Your original plan to gather captives from multiple warherds would be too risky now, requiring that you practically challenge the main body of the enemy, or those forces encamped nearby and moving closer with every moment, to a fight. Unexpectedly, you could actually do that now, as you have an unusually precise reading of the numbers and disposition of the enemy, however you would essentially be risking starting the battle early and at a disadvantage, with the enemy main body flanking or outflanking you and attacking while you are dealing with subordinates.
While those you have already captured might be enough, assuming you can stage a convincing escape, you are suspicious of the catfish whiskered leader of this Warherd. He was captured too easily, and on reflection, didn't take as strong of an advantage of the breakthrough as you would have done in his place.
Moreover if you want the Beastlord Riphorn to actually take the risk of coming out and attacking a major movement of me and material you need to actually perform a major movement. Which could have many unpleasant side effects.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
PLAN(choose one)
[]Attack: Screw the plan, you know where the enemy is and how many of them there are, you outnumber them essentially two to one, march out along their own paths and beard this goat in his den. The scouting super critical means you know where the enemy troops are right now, and where they are concentrating, you could go out and make this a battle right this instant.(battle begins, lose the +25 for prepared ground on the heaven and earth roll, but it otherwise remains the same)
[]Raid: You are suspicious of this captured leader, so capture some more before you try to seed any false information.(risk of starting the battle at a disadvantage, gains more captives for the plan)
[] Restrain: You are suspicious of this captured beast, so proceed with the plan, but only allow his subordinates to escape, genuinely torture the leader for information instead of that being an incidental benefit. (Less chance of the enemy falling for the trap, Chance of ???)
[] Try something completely different(write in)
BAIT (choose as many as you want, note that on crit fail any of these can cause really ugly side effects)
[] Order the removal of nearly all physical wealth from the mountains, on the pretext that the beasts should not be allowed to steal it.(Crops, gold, silver, silk, jewlery, and trinkets are moved to the river to be shipped south on a royal guarantee of return or repayment, probably pisses off the peasants, ???)
[] Order the (Faux) removal of the vulnerable and dependents from the combat zone, ostensibly to ensure their safely(women and children gather at the river as if to be shipped south, really pisses off the peasants, especially if they hear that they were to be used as bait)
[] Order the (Faux) evacuation of the entire area, bringing what weapons, fighting men, and their families west as you can.( the militia, their families, and any war material you can grab gathers at the river as if to be shipped south, definitely causes rebellion on crit fail)
[]None of these
[] Write in
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