- Pronouns
- He/Him
I'm gonna be interested in learning more about how djinn work/seeing such in action.
Making Araby great again, a Sultan quest(Warhammer Fantasy)
- Thread starter guyfromtheplace1
- Start date
- Location
- Toronto, Ontario(occasionally)
Nomads and over-ambitious territorial claims, like how the middle mountains are drawn as part of Ostland on maps, but have no permenant settlements. I mean there's a guy who's supposed to be in charge of that area, and he has just enough material power to have some political power, but that particular territory overlap will come to a head soon.
- Pronouns
- He/Him
- Location
- Toronto, Ontario(occasionally)
Some, but not all of the periods before the fall of Bel-Alliad to Arkhan the Black, as they had been coming off of a major period of territorial expansion, were actually fully unified, had the beastmen (mostly)under control, could march an army overland to the south of the country by hopping between oases in the east, and had essentially finished most of the modern infrastructure work intended to feed people.(before it was devestated by the undead and rendered unnessary by a sudden drop in population, before being rebuilt a bit over a thousand years later)
The times after the opening (or reopening) of trade with the far east were considered especially prosperous, and the reigns of Sultan Jaffar and his immediate successors are viewed more fondly in Araby than anywhere else(with supporters claiming he was only speaking with Jinn and detractors claiming he was corrupted by daemons).
I have some more specific notes I could use to make up specific reigns that were considered golden ages, but that's the gist of it.
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- Pronouns
- He/Him
Is Arkhan's specific part in that mess known to the higher ups to this day?
- Location
- Toronto, Ontario(occasionally)
Yes, that whole thing made it into the holy books. While no one alive actually knows what happened at Bel-Alliad, because no one survived to tell the story and recovered journals of the battle didn't get circulated widely enough for there to be surviving copies, they did record that Arkhan was the one genociding them in between all of the 'hate the undead, despise the undead' stuff.
Nowadays commoners view Arkhan as some sort of undead equivalent (theologically speaking) to a historically significant daemon, who ended a semi mythical period of plenty, and his face is the face of the undead people are supposed to hate.
The higher ups are aware that he is a real figure, who beat them pretty badly in a fight at one point, and they know that the golden age he ended wasn't mythical as they still find artefacts from it.
On an unrelated note, but while I'm talking about holy books, in this reality it was trauma from encountering Chaos that set these people onto the whole 'one god' thing and anyone who claims otherwise is viewed with suspicion, which means that merchants are viewed with some suspicion as they interact with those people, which in turn ties in to the restrictions on who can be a merchant.
ThatGuyWithIdeas
Treize died for our sins
- Location
- Romania
[X] Plan Securing The Foundations
GhostKing 666
Bringing Nightmares to life evey minute
Eh, while Jaffar's rule was probably a good time for Araby as a whole(at least at first) do to him successfully conquering and unifying all the city-states, no one actually liked him since he well, conquered the city-states. Jaffar was a tyrant, plain and simple and after the Crusaders reached Araby and were still around even a year later despite constant skirmishes with Jaffar's forces, lots of tribesmen and other people of Araby took the opportunity to either flee Jaffar's rule into the desert or even help the Crusaders against Jaffar. Heck the rebellions were even instrumental during the Battle of El Haikk, forcing Jaffar to fight the Crusaders in the field(where he was crushed) rather then behind his cities(destroyed) defenses.
That plus the Imperials staying in Araby for around a century tracking down all of Jaffar's loyalists and killing them all means that for modern Arabyans while Jaffar's rule would be noted as making Araby a power that nearly conquered Estalia, he'd also be remembered as "that asshole" for being a tyrant and for causing the Crusaders to be a thing.
always_confused
Perpetually unwanted
- Location
- SEA
Araby doesn't have a 'capital' or 'crown-jewel' type City at the moment does it? The wiki tells me Bel-Aliad was destroyed by the Big Black Dick.
GhostKing 666
Bringing Nightmares to life evey minute
Not really. While Araby is more unified then Tilea in that there is a position of Sultan of All Araby that's the de jure ruler of Araby, in practice all the city-states and desert tribes are pretty much independent, with very little stopping them from doing whatever they want, even go to war with each other. Araby's "capitol" is whatever city-state is home to the Sultan of All Araby of the time, but its pretty important to remember that most such people aren't Jaffar and don't have major power over the lesser sultans and caliphs that run the other cities, much less have any control over the nomadic desert tribes.
- Location
- Toronto, Ontario(occasionally)
I'm going with this, they don't like the man, or think he was a good ruler, and they remember they got invaded then, but they also remember that he was a sultan that actually did things and won battles.
It should be noted that rulers who do things are often viewed more fondly in hindsight. And hated at the time by the people they trample over.
After all, things didn't get better with his death, but worse, and subsequent rulers also tried to persecute religious wars against the Old World in emulation of him, likely deriving additional legitimacy from emulation of a ruler that was viewed as successful.
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- Location
- Toronto, Ontario(occasionally)
I'm glad someone picked up on the date thing. I [Redacted]
Okay wait, some further clarification on the Zandri issue, there used to be actual permenant coastal settlements surprisingly near to Zandri, however the tomb kings rolled them up in a campaign during the reign of the sultan preceding you, and now the Emirate of Teshert and a bunch of lands that theoretically belong to the Sultan of all Araby no longer exist.
The next hotpoint of territorial conflict is Ka-Sabar being just barely within the claimed territory of the Caliphate of Ashur. You might actually win that one if you can bring enough forces to bear.
always_confused
Perpetually unwanted
- Location
- SEA
For a moment there, I was shitting my pants. I thought 'Great War against Chaos' was the End Times. Thankfully thats a few hundred years away canonically, I think. Hopefully enough time to unite the City States under one Shahenshah/Padishah.
- Location
- Toronto, Ontario(occasionally)
Writing continues, I went over the military costs section with an excel spreadsheet and found out that I was undercharging you for the military, editing beginning.
always_confused
Perpetually unwanted
- Location
- SEA
Undercharging...FUUUU-
Our troops don't particularly inspire confidence either, with the Guards being the best quality and only 'middling' in attack and defense.
Our troops don't particularly inspire confidence either, with the Guards being the best quality and only 'middling' in attack and defense.
- Location
- Toronto, Ontario(occasionally)
The system is meant to simulate things that are absolute bull---- without me having to make up a new rank. Like formations of 25+ hellcannons, or a Daemonic incursion under ideal conditions, or Slann.
Edit: Right now you have maybe 1-2% of your Guard troops equipped with enchanted or otherwise really special gear, if it was 100% they would be two, maybe three ranks higher.
Even a bunch of pistols for each would kick them up another rank.
Edit2: also I'm kind of pessimistic with descriptions, but there are very few units out in the world that actually get up to heroic.
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- Location
- Reno Nv
Meh, if GW was lazy enough to barley put up units of Araby, then you can make them up, or the players can make them up. Hell, you can get some inspiration form the Tomb Kings, or Ancient or Midevil Arabia.
[X] Plan Securing The Foundations
- Location
- Toronto, Ontario(occasionally)
One the subject of designing units, I might take suggestions, and have been referencing history books, but you need to develop better technology to have the prerequisites for a lot of things.
always_confused
Perpetually unwanted
- Location
- SEA
- Location
- Toronto, Ontario(occasionally)
Actually on my list already,
However your firearms tech isn't that advanced yet, look at this image Arquebus - Wikipedia
And imagine that, but without the rest properly attached to the barrel on a hinge, and a tendency to explode, and that's the best type of locally manufactured firearm.
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GhostKing 666
Bringing Nightmares to life evey minute
In Warmaster, only Arabyan Commanders were armed with Jezail's, well rather it was one of the options for Arabyan Commanders anyway.
Also please keep in mind:
While Araby is by no means Bretonnia*, it is not the most technologically advanced human nation in the old world, not when it comes to engineering anyway.
*
- Location
- Toronto, Ontario(occasionally)
Update is finished, do you want it up now?(probably early tomorrow, as I'm heading to bed) Or holding to a more regular schedule on Tuesday, after it's gotten more editing?
Though they are designed to be longer and larger bore, and thus more accurate, more powerful, more awkward, and slower loading than most European firearms all at once.
On the other hand that image doesn't look much like a real world Jezzail. With further examination I come to believe that the Arabyans copied the name and idea from contact with the Skaven, before taking it in their own direction, which leads to some interesting realizations.
Namely, Araby might already know what rifling is, as the scope on the Warplock Jezzail would only be useful with a rifled weapon, assuming they copied some of the minutia of the design alongside the name. Something I consider fairly likely because the Skaven are nowhere near as careful about keeping their designs out of other's hands as the Dwarves.
I have things setup so that the Chaos Dwarves, Skaven, and to a lesser extent Dwarves and Hochland, all definitely have access to rifling technology.
The Dwarves in the form of a bunch of prototypes that aren't accepted yet, but that inspired Skaven weapons developments centuries ago.
Hochland in the form of non-standardized hunting rifles occasionally used by army irregulars, that may have been inspired by either Dwarven radicals, or observation that spinning crossbow bolts are more accurate(a design improvement originally from the Dwarves).
Hochland is currently fighting on the Ulrican side of the civil war and as such isn't putting focus on developing firearms tech, once an oddball with an interest in guns, or a disrespect of Ulrican proclamations comes into power, or the war stops and Nuln reviews the firearms designs others are using, then the actual Hochland Long Rifle design will come into being.
Last point, I count architecture as engineering, in terms of roads, bridges, buildings, fortifications, irrigation, aqueducts, dams, quanat, docks, canals, locks, and water and wind mills Araby is actually up there with the Empire as one of the most advanced human nations, despite Araby's usual lack of Dwarven teachers, specialists, and creations to crib notes from. That is actually very impressive and represents a tremendous amount of money sunk into that kind of technology.
A couple points. Firstly, in the real world Jezzails are supposed to be possible for a person to manufacture in their own home, with tools and supplies they could easily gain access to in that era, It's the primary reason why they became popular as a design. There is no inherent reason for them to be less common than Imperial handguns.In Warmaster, only Arabyan Commanders were armed with Jezail's, well rather it was one of the options for Arabyan Commanders anyway.
Also please keep in mind:
While Araby is by no means Bretonnia*, it is not the most technologically advanced human nation in the old world, not when it comes to engineering anyway.
Though they are designed to be longer and larger bore, and thus more accurate, more powerful, more awkward, and slower loading than most European firearms all at once.
On the other hand that image doesn't look much like a real world Jezzail. With further examination I come to believe that the Arabyans copied the name and idea from contact with the Skaven, before taking it in their own direction, which leads to some interesting realizations.
Namely, Araby might already know what rifling is, as the scope on the Warplock Jezzail would only be useful with a rifled weapon, assuming they copied some of the minutia of the design alongside the name. Something I consider fairly likely because the Skaven are nowhere near as careful about keeping their designs out of other's hands as the Dwarves.
I have things setup so that the Chaos Dwarves, Skaven, and to a lesser extent Dwarves and Hochland, all definitely have access to rifling technology.
The Dwarves in the form of a bunch of prototypes that aren't accepted yet, but that inspired Skaven weapons developments centuries ago.
Hochland in the form of non-standardized hunting rifles occasionally used by army irregulars, that may have been inspired by either Dwarven radicals, or observation that spinning crossbow bolts are more accurate(a design improvement originally from the Dwarves).
Hochland is currently fighting on the Ulrican side of the civil war and as such isn't putting focus on developing firearms tech, once an oddball with an interest in guns, or a disrespect of Ulrican proclamations comes into power, or the war stops and Nuln reviews the firearms designs others are using, then the actual Hochland Long Rifle design will come into being.
Last point, I count architecture as engineering, in terms of roads, bridges, buildings, fortifications, irrigation, aqueducts, dams, quanat, docks, canals, locks, and water and wind mills Araby is actually up there with the Empire as one of the most advanced human nations, despite Araby's usual lack of Dwarven teachers, specialists, and creations to crib notes from. That is actually very impressive and represents a tremendous amount of money sunk into that kind of technology.
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- Pronouns
- He/Him
Now if possible.
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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