The council had called an emergency meeting to discuss the latest disastrous news from out of the north, and after some initial back and forth it was decided that it was grossly irresponsible to tangle other people up in their fights. They would send their warriors to attempt to keep the blow from falling on their distant trading partners while also trying to sort out this mess with the distant nomads. While there was some grumbling about Gwygoytha causing trouble again, it was pointed out that she was only defending herself after suffering sneak attack and abduction, so it wasn't like this mess was in any way her fault. If the nomads could be convinced to call it even then they would leave satisfied that both sides had taken their licks but the matter could drop, but if they insisted on fighting it out then the People would absolutely defend themselves and anyone caught in the middle.
However, once that was over, the High Chief asked the rather more important question, "Alright, straight up, does anyone think we can stop Gwygoytha from somehow being considered for a chief or High Chief position if she wants to take it?"
The uncomfortable silence that followed was all the answer he needed, and thus the High Chief just nodded and said, "Right then, let's just put her on the smooth trail to being High Chief. If she's actually competent at it when we put her feet to the fire then hopefully she'll learn some responsibility, and if she isn't then she'll decide on her own that she doesn't want the position and she'll get out of our hair."
There was some grumbling at that, and then a defeated sigh like an air filled bladder deflating when the chief of the traders realized that, given circumstances, it was probably going to be his job to tutor her as a chief for the foreseeable future. None of them were stupid enough to tell her to stay behind when there was a conflict to get stuck into.
"Also, the elders from the waterfall have sent a runner and reported back that she is most definitely a pupil of Crow and not Crow himself. The runner added on that they muttered, 'terrified what it would do to her head if we said anything else' at the end, when they thought he wasn't listening," the High Chief told the assembled council, who nodded along sagely.
"Right then, any further word from the caravan itself?" The High Chief asked the Trade Chief, whose runners had first brought the matter to the council.
Nodding, the man said, "They've fallen back outside threatened territory, and are building a rapport with the people they brought with them. They'll give a full report when they get back here, but they've managed to piece together what went wrong. By their reckoning Gwygoytha murdered the first three men since it was by surprise, but when the chief's son shouted something like 'Leave her to me!' he invoked their code of battle by accident. Apparently a lot of their battles are done by champions in elaborate duels involving the betting of various forms of property, and if you don't declare stakes first that means 'everything you own'. That no only included the animals and slaves the chief's son owned, but because he had a daughter of marriageable age, she was included to."
The man paused to gather himself for what would come next before he said as straight as he could, "She is reported 'still confused, but adjusting well'."
The sub-chiefs all tried to hide their expressions, but the High Chief just smirked and said, "If my son is any authority, that's unsurprising."
A crow could be heard distantly cawing in response to his subordinates faces.
And thus it was that warriors were sent out with a mission to attempt to negotiate a cessation of hostilities, give the raiders an at least appropriate target, and do what they could to protect any other peoples who might get caught up in something that wasn't really their fight. Initial attempts to stop the fight before it really got going ran into the fact that the northern nomads had a bone deep conviction about their honour that was stronger than stone. They didn't care who started it, one of their chiefs had been murdered and they wouldn't stop until Gwygoytha and anyone who supported her was dead or enslaved. While those sent out to talk to them were rather irritated by this obstinate attitude, they at least thanked the nomads for the fact that they were willing to talk it over when asked.
Also, while there was some initial worry that the tribes who were in the affected territory were going to be rather upset with the People over the fact that it was their lands that were going to be the ones fought over by foreigners, but all in all the locals were actually pretty okay with it all. They had honestly expected the traders to cut and run and leave them standing there for the nomads to vent their fury on, and their attitude was that anyone intent on killing the animal-thieving and woman-stealing bastards was okay with them. Of course, given the fact that if the nomads had any settlements they were well out of striking range so the only thing to target were their herds, bands of raiders, and the occasional proper warband, that made actually fighting them difficult, and the conflict fairly quickly settled into a series of skirmishes that took place in the off-seasons when people could move around easily enough. For the People, the biggest two issues were keeping the nomad warbands focused on their warbands rather than other people, and finding the enemy before the enemy ambushed them.
For the nomads, their biggest issue was Gwygoytha.
And the fact that she was creative.
Hair and feather headdress whipping in the wind as they clattered and roared across the plains, Gwygoytha cackled with corvid glee as men ran in confusion and horror before her, the oxen hitched to the wagon quite perturbed with her insistence that she go faster and the men in back shouting with mixed war cries and horror from trying to hang onto the bumpy ride. As was typical for the warm summer months, she went into battle topless so that all would see that she was a woman - the woman - who was fighting them, her dyed linen kilt decorated with bulls horns that dangled and clattered at her waist in a symbol as blunt as she and her demon-club. Deciding that she had disrupted the enemy enough, she hauled on the reins to bring the wagon to a rattling stop, the warriors in the back immediately rising up on their now stable platform to begin launching missile weapons at the confused and panicked nomads who had decided to pick a fight. Once it looked like the enemy might be able to get their bearings about them and start launching their own missiles, Gwygoytha snapped the reins to get the oxen moving once more.
Alas, as with pretty much every other time she'd done this, the abuse put on the wagon broke something - this time a wheel - and the rampage was halted by the wagon grinding to a stop. Snatching up her man-sized demon-club, Gwygoytha hopped out and proclaimed, "If anyone wants to stop this stupid conflict, now's the chance!"
Gwygoytha had never actually clubbed a man's head off and sent it sailing through the air, but that was because they usually had their arms in the way in a terrified attempt to block upon realizing what was about to happen. With the rest of the warband providing covering fire with their missiles or skirmishing with the nomads, it didn't take long for them to realize that they couldn't take her at range and their best bet was to simply run. She only ever chased down the ones that were retreating rather than running, so as to encourage people turning their backs to her. The only problem with that of course was that they couldn't see the various rude gestures she sent their way very well.
Once the enemy warband was properly routed, she smirked, looked at her own warriors, and said, "As always, that was fun."
One of the men who had ridden in the wagon with her was panting heavily from the exertion of just hanging on, and commented, "You need to stop breaking them you know."
"They need to start making them stronger then!" Gwygoytha proclaimed. Still, she shook her head and went over to help the rest of the men get the wagon unstuck from where its disabling had ploughed it into the ground. Soon enough they had the wagon more or less fixed with the help of the rest of the warband, loaded up with their wounded even as the dead wagon was loaded up with their mercifully few permanent casualties. As for the enemy dead...
"Yes, eat their eyes so that you can tell me what they saw," Gwygoytha proclaimed as the birds - particularly the crows - settled in to feast, much to the queasy looks of her subordinates. As far as they were concerned, they were quite glad that she had rather violently crushed any rumours that she partook of the feast of dead flesh, that was a path too far for all concerned.
Returning to the home camp where the overall warband kept their stuff in a trenched enclosure during campaign, Gwygoytha cheerily welcomed Buutah with an as always awkward kiss considering their relative sizes, and then took "their" son Yhirlyn off her wife's hands so she could take a turn feeding him.
To pretty much anyone who saw the children and the parents all at once, it was pretty obvious that Gwygoytha had found at least one man, probably two, to impregnate the two of them, but Gwygoytha insisted that both children were hers, a point that no one contested after about the third mass dressing down. At the very least everyone agreed that regardless of their anonymous paternity, Gwygoytha treated both her son and daughter as being hers equally.
"So how was your day? Were Yhirlyn and Forthyra fussy at all?" Gwygoytha asked while gently cradling her son to her bosom.
"Yhirlyn fussy, Forthyra good," Buutah stated in her still broken version of the People's tongue.
"I'll take Forthyra more tomorrow, let your milk balance him out a bit more then," Gwygoytha stated, getting a nod from her wife. Gwygoytha had knowledge of the spirits and had thus proclaimed that she had an excess of male essence despite her femininity, and thus while extra fortifying and strengthening, it was important that their children be fed from both parents so as to ensure that their growing bodies did not become unbalanced. No one was quite sure where she got that idea, but they had no grounds to contradict her, and by her own admission she was obviously a unique case and most people would have little cause for concern for their own children.
Around nightfall, a runner came to the camp, bearing a message for the battle chief - AKA Gwygoytha. Inviting him to her tent, she bade him speak.
"Chieftess, word from home for you. The High Chief has passed... and you have been elected the new heir by his successor and the other chiefs," the man reported, obviously still not quite sure of what he was saying even after having run out here over a course of weeks.
Gwygoytha herself blinked at that and said, "I didn't expect that... I suppose that means the fighting is over early for the season and it is time to pack it up?"
"The new High Chief did request you return as soon as possible," the messenger replied.
"Right then, responsibilities and all that. We'll pack up and head out tomorrow," she said with a nod.
The trip back was mostly uneventful, the nomads having learned not to go after an alert warband that was leaving border territory. Gwygoytha spent the majority of the time quiet and contemplative of this new role that had been thrust upon her, much to the nervous agitation of the warriors around her. When she was loud and brash and bold the woman was exasperating, but when she actually started putting all of her Crow-taught mind to a task, something dangerous was usually brewing. Not for them directly mind, but someone had to carry out her crazy schemes, and despite her size there was only so much of her to go around.
As it turned out, her crazy schemes were much more long term than they expected. Upon being made the heir, she launched into the study of all the things she would need to know - this time with less trading sex for instruction - and began pushing for a variety of projects to be pursued. These weren't primarily continuing the fight that she had seen the birth and raising of, at least not directly. Rather, she pushed for changes to how warriors were selected and trained, placing more emphasis on general training of the entire population, giving more time to figure out who would actually grow up to be a better warrior, and in teaching more girls how to fight. No more women warriors were found who had both the desire and the skill for it by the time she became the chief proper, but her argument was that if the warriors proper were called out to distant lands to fight for one reason or another, the men and women who remained would be better equipped to drive off an attackers.
Second, she ordered the construction of more of the war wagons she had dreamed up, mostly because she enjoyed them but they had a tendency to break, and because the northern nomads had begun to adopt the idea they had seen used against them. At some point however it was realized by both groups that neither one could actually do lasting damage to the other and they were basically just using the conflict to train their young men, and since the nomads were mostly ignoring the villages for retaliation attacks - they were still going after them for the raids they usually did - it was decided that the whole thing had gone beyond the point of reason and it was best to simply walk away and let the hotheads among the nomads cool off.
Finally, in recognition of all the aid the spirits had given her, she poured resources into improving the place of spirits, bringing in farflung curios that showed the power of the spiritual world, and improving the decorations at the graves of the honoured dead.
By the time her hair was turning grey and her children were grown, the conflicts of her youth were mostly forgotten, but not by her second surviving son. "Dywhwl, you have a request?"
"Yes my mother, my chief," he said. "I am your son by mother Buutah, correct?"
"As always when my children ask, yes," Gwygoytha said, seeing that this was more than just confirmation of parentage but a rhetorical path. Dywhwl was one of her children who took more from mother Buutah than her though.
"And mother Buutah was the daughter of a son of a chief, correct?" Her son asked leadingly.
"Yes, and I am starting to understand where this is going. I do not believe that the northern people's laws work the way you are hoping," Gwygoytha said imperiously.
"No, no, I checked with mother Buutah. You were not eligible for inheritance of her grandfather's tribe because you killed him, but her sons by the one who triumphed over her father do have eligibility. I already asked my brothers and the only one with the right above me, Yhirlyn, said that he would not stand in my way," Dywhwl explained.
The High Chieftess regarded her son carefully and imperiously, before she asked, "Do you wish for my assistance or blessing in this matter?"
"Both?" Dywhwl asked hopefully.
Gwygoytha would...
[] Render military aid to her son's ambition
[] Give him her blessing to pursue his birthright
[] Neither bless nor forbid this action
[] Forbid him from this course of action
