Fuck indeed, good words Desdydyn.
While y'all figure out what's smart to vote for action wise, I'll try to do some in depth analysis for once.
Looks like our values and the Trelli's are pretty incompatible in a war scenario. These mercs are used to fucking up everything in their path and selling any prisoners they take. Doesn't look like it meshes too well with the near hippie style raiding our people do.
The Txolla had this same sort of problem when we fought side by side with them, but I suppose their history as a vassel meant that they were more willing to roll with our fighting style than these merc cutthroats are. Hopefully the Trell mercs will start working with us, their employer, aka the group that's choosing to pay them, more easily after spending more time with us, because if their attitude doesn't improve soon I say we should drop their asses. since the wealth will be more valuable than the big Martial score and we could actually fight properly without the dead weight. It's not about the size of our army, it's about how we use it.
Speaking of size, looks like the Khem are zerging with infantry. If I had to hedge a guess, a lot of these folks are either lower class or slaves. I don't know how much loyalty they have to their god-king, but if possible I'd love to sway them away from the Khem and take them in as refugees.
Elite scout unit, like ours! I love that they can just use their natural skin color as camoflauge, that's super cool. We don't know if they've developed their scouts into spies or police or anything like we like to think we've done with our Blackbirds, but at least we know on the battlefield that we match them tit for tat in this case.
It says a lot about the Khem's wealth that they've been able to outfit their army with as much bronze as they have. This is representative of a huge amount of wealth and resources that they've invested into straight up fighting. Wouldn't be surprised if they had some sort on honor trait to help them field this level of arsenal. Hopefully we're currently fighting the main body of their army and they don't have anything else hidden up their sleeve. Otherwise we might be fucked unless we fall back and turtle.
Elite unit alert! Looks like the Khem made some wicked big strides in armorsmithing, these dudes sound like bronze aged juggernauts. Likely slow because heavier armor, but hard to stop.
Annnnnd we developed a good counter to their juggernauts, just in time. To whoever made the case for a size upgrade last vote: I love you. That was a very good decision.
Highlanders = bears confirmed. At least we know their crest now, though I'm sure it'll change after their next civil war.
The Highlanders have had iron samples from us for fucking ages, from back during our lone red martial + negative stability incident I believe. This has been building for awhile, I'm honestly surprised it's taken this long for something like this to happen. Kind of upsetting that the secret potentially came from one of our bits (us, Gulvalley, or Txolla are the most likely because didn't), but c'est la vie. Iron wasn't going to stay secret forever. At least we were able to find this out. AN's probably been waiting a good while to lay this twist on us, I can just hear the cackling. Bravo on the long game AN, I feel like you're doing a phenomenal job keeping track of the consequences of our actions. ^u^
As for what we can do about HK having iron, other than sending a Trade Mission/Salt Gift the Highlander's way to either bribe or threaten them into silence, I'm not sure. Any other ideas?
