[X][Secondary] Support Faction – Patricians (-4 Culture, +1 Faction Power, +1 Time to current quest)
[X][Secondary] Found Free City – Valleyguard (Transfer 2 Econ and 2 EE)
[X][Secondary] Proclaim Glory (-3 Culture, -1 Econ, +1 Legitimacy, +1 Stability, potential +1 Prestige)
[X][Secondary] Integrate Colony – Gulvalley
[X][Guild] Build Goldmine (-4 Econ, -1 EE, -3 Tech, +11 Wealth, trade good, gold mine)
[X][Guild] Build Ironworks – Redshore (2*-3 Econ and Tech)
Provinces – [Main] Expand Econ, [Sec] New Settlement (boundry hills), [Sec] Build Mills, [Sec] Study Stars, [Sec] Study Health
Policies – Valleyhome Market (3/3), Redshore Market (2/3), Significant Walls (29/58)
FC – Redshore Market (3/3), City Support x2
Heaven's Hawk – [Sec] Aqueduct (9/9), [Sec] Support Artisans
Western Wall – [Main] Expand Econ, [Sec] Expand Forests
Greenshore – [Main] Expand Econ, [Main] Governor's Palace (6/9)
Tinriver – [Main] Expand Econ, [Sec] Build Road
Txolla – [Main] New Settlement x2
Thunder Speakers – [Main] New Settlement x2
Thunder Horse – [Main] New Settlement x2
Amber Road – [Main] Build Walls
Religious Settlement – New Settlement (boundary hills)
The continued expansion of the Iron District in Redshore brought about many changes, not least of which was the fact that the guild suddenly had a tremendously increased need for masters who were skilled at their craft and not just skilled at bureaucracy and politics. The newfound ready availability of quality tools also meant that other artisans were in a similar situation, and the combination of newfound wealth and responsibility lead to a most curious issue. These new master artisans wanted better learning for them and their children, to better move among the lower patrician classes. They wanted into the gymnasia, and more than a few of them got in. And something most curious happened: the artisans learned at the gymnasia, went back to their apprentices and journeymen, tried out some of what they saw, and then came back to yell at their instructors for teaching wrong.
There was a considerable amount of yelling among war trainers, priests, patricians, and artisans before one group splintered off and went to found 'a place of pure learning and instruction!'.
The first iteration failed within the year, but a few of of the instructors went back to the gymnasia and had some new ideas. Fresh shouting matches were born, but this time when the splinter groups walked away they had a better idea of what they actually wanted to do. Comprehensive classes in physical education, mathematics, poetry, music, history, rhetoric, and philosophy would be able to better educate the leaders of the future. The immediate effect was a bit more mixed as the actual top tier patricians still got top level tutors for the actual next generation of kings, but those tutors quite rapidly were either working for the new center of learning in between jobs, or were being drawn from the students of said center of learning. Soon enough new courses like medicine, astrology, and religious practices were added in. Medicine in particular took off as a number of the more medically inclined priests realized that they had a lot of things to teach each other.
The screaming matches over the nature of the souls and their relationship to the body, the stars, and the elements were entertaining for many students at least.
And as the reputation of the new academy grew, more and more of the middle patricians wanted to send their children there, followed by the lower and upper patricians wanting their sons to go there not just for the education but for the contact with the peers they would eventually be working with. And as class sizes grew, this called for more teachers, which called for more teachers to teach them and...
Guild Reward: Academy!
Academy
All kings not suffering from hereditary disorders have their skills improved one level (cannot make non-heroic skills to heroic level) and increases the possibility of hero unit generation. Also provides the Build Academy action. Costs 1 Wealth/turn to maintain as an effective institution.
Choose a bonus for completing the Academy
[] [MP] New Social Value slot
[] [MP] Randomly upgrade a value
[] [MP] Unlock Philosopher Kings for further upgrades
[] [MP] Two free technologies (exploding)
[] [MP] Next king is heroic admin or heroic mystic
And then, one day, an older urban healer showed up at the academy demanded to speak to with the doctors immediately, because they had a problem. While several of the men tried to brush her off, one of the older artisans there to get some degree of education so he could work as a lesser master and not get run over had a flicker of recognition. Going to speak with her, he got the story from her and immediately put decades of swinging hammers to good use by physically picking up one of the doctors to haul the man to speak with her.
Everyone seemed rather bemused enough by the display to not object as strenuously as they could, leading to the silver haired woman getting her story out before any guards might be summoned.
"Look, I tried to explain this at the Shrine of Bonwyn but it rapidly became obvious that all of the best of that lot had come here, and they're not listening to me so I figured that if there's anyone with any sense enough to be able to see what I'm seeing, it would be with you lot," the woman stated.
Deciding that the situation had grown absurd enough that he might as well hear here out, the doctor carefully listened to the graduated prostitute's story, his brows progressively furrowing as she went on, before he finally grabbed up his healer's staff and followed her back to the bathhouse where she worked. A number of beefy bouncers waited worriedly at the doors to a particular room that had been barred from the outside, only letting it open with a nod from healer, to reveal a hastily constructed quarantine ward.
A half dozen men in various degrees of degeneration were confined within, the less worse off members somewhat isolated from the other cases but also clearly forcibly tied down. The worse off members didn't need such extreme measures to keep them from leaving though.
"If the taxmen didn't lean on us to follow the laws exactly we never would have caught this, but we needed to keep records of possible infections to avoid contaminating the baths, not just the sexual ones that most places do to avoid their girls getting sick. Without those, I never would have caught on: a lingering cough? Nothing special there, but it sounds more serious than what they claim, so I made notes and kept them from the public baths. But since I had notes, when Chyrlyn here came in and he was clearly worse off..." the woman explained, gesturing to the worst case in the room.
"We took him aside yesterday and grabbed everyone else with a note like they'd had before while we went to the priests, who again, are ignoring us as unimportant..." she finished while the doctor went to check all of the patients.
Glancing at the barely alive puddle of froth and blood that had been Chrlyn, the doctor said, "We may need to burn this entire building down."
The hard eyed healer looked him dead in the eye and said, "If that wasn't a possibility, I wouldn't have come to you."
The message to the king and every other settlement that went out on the swiftest horse and boat couriers that night was as simple as it was direct.
SHUT.
DOWN.
EVERYTHING.
It was far too late to stop the Blood Cough from spreading throughout the People and beyond, but somehow word managed to get out and the People from top to bottom managed to obey enough that instead of the cities becoming plague ridden abattoirs, they instead were able become cramped, crowded, fearful, but somehow safe islands. Generations of paying attention to public health and concern over stockpiling resources meant that as trade shut down, as the food stopped flowing so readily as the merchant froze in place, they were able to ride things out while the king figured out what to do. Because even as the cities burned down districts to keep the plague contained and refused entrance of any visitors without a two week quarantine period, only permitting the exchange of goods at a distance, the plague found a home in the countryside and began to reap the people there.
Trade disintegrated and the Banner Companies were expelled from the Highlands Kingdom as a hazard, although as the Red and Dragon Banners left they had already heard rumours of the cough appearing throughout the hills. No one was entirely certain where it had all started - the cough could linger for ages as a minor annoyance before abruptly a person began to cough up blood and shortly after that was struck low with up to half a dozen random other symptoms and then almost invariably dying a gruesome and horrifying death - but it had certainly been detected among the People first, and had spread to everyone they traded with before anything could be done to halt the problem. Many priests within the People blamed the king for not taking aggressive action against the One God Heresy from the Highlanders, and there were surely many outside who blamed the People, but no indication of what others peoples thought was forthcoming.
As the People sat in their cities, supplies slowly dwindling as camps of desperate rural dwellers clawing at their walls for refuge as they hacked themselves to death, many whispered of the dreamed of horrors in other places. No one had the extensive network of sanitation, experts in medicine and magic, careful monitoring of all levels of society, distributed stockpiles of food, and enormous pre-existing abundance. Some dreamed of foreign cities entirely wiped clean of life, the ghosts of the angry dead prowling the streets, banding together to find those responsible. It kept many up at night.
What little contact between settlements was done via royal authority, a few carefully isolated messengers and warrior bands that were just able to keep everything from falling apart all at once. Bandits were suppressed and panicking villages kept in line just enough that a trickle of food and vital goods could keep hunger from consuming what the plague was having difficulty cracking. Still, the harvest the first year of the plague essentially failed.
And then the refugees started to press in from all quarters.
Not even the king had the ability to compile everything to know how bad it was, but the consensus from those still able to achieve internal communication was that every settlement more significant than a single clan was suffering from the Blood Cough. Hundreds of thousands, perhaps millions had died of plague, famine, and violence. The Western People and the Storm Tribes were retreating into the mountains, hoping that the ability to close off the passes would save them. The Khemetri were abandoning their northern colonies as they shut down their borders. Freehills and the Harmurri had fallen into chaos. Trelli was, by all accounts, gone, the city abandoned to the dead as plague and the complete halting of trade shut down any ability to pay for the tenuous peace they had along the Yllthon part of their territory. By some accounts the same fate had befallen the Mountain Horse, but even less was known there.
Horseman's Plague
A civilization killing plague, this monstrous new disease is disrupting all capacity to organize a major society, causing the following effects:
Halted Trade - No one is trading anything. All Wealth and Diplomacy income is shut down. Expenses still must be paid.
Rural Plague - Bizarrely the rural areas are worse off than the urban areas, so the demographic flow is not working as normal, with fields being abandoned. EE refunds for cities halved
Isolated Economy - Taking temp Econ damage equal to the number of True and Free Cities each phase
Plague Rotted Economy - Taking random amount of Econ damage each phase
How many refugees
[] [R1] Be as selective as possible (Chance of stability loss, 2 triggers, 4 temp econ damage)
[] [R1] Only those you are mostly sure are safe (-1 Stability, chance of further loss, 3 triggers, 6 temp econ damage)
[] [R1] Everyone who makes it can have a place found for them (-2 Stability, chance of further loss, 4 triggers, 8 temp econ damage)
[] [R1] Declare that you are still stable (-3 stability, chance of further loss, 5 triggers, 10 temp econ damage)
What to do with the refugees?
[] [R2] Welcome in as best you can (EE exchanged for Econ as usual, every trigger causes a Disease roll)
[] [R2] Force them to settle in the shadow of your current population centers (Every trigger provides a Sec strength New Settlement - Internal Reorg action, 1 Disease roll, ???)
[] [R2] Force them to settle far from your current population centers (Every trigger provides a Sec strength New Settlement - Northern Blackriver or boundary hills [even split], 0 Disease rolls, ???)
Note: Each disease roll has the potential to make the situation worse, potentially triggering additional Stability loss or adding new status effects
Many priests blame the Heretics from the Highlands. What should be done about them?
[] [Mono] Purge them (+1 Stability, 2 temp Econ damage negated, ???)
[] [Mono] Isolate them (+1 Stability, ???)
[] [Mono] Ignore them (???)
[] [Mono] This isn't their fault, protect them (-1 Stability, ???)
With what resources you have, what do you do?
[] [React] Attempt to figure the disease out (Sec Study Health)
[] [React] Search for a cure (Sec Expand Forest)
[] [React] Comb internally for problems (Sec Hunt Troublemakers)
[] [React] Attempt to restore order (Sec Restore Order)
[] [React] Honour the gods and hope for a miracle (Sec Build Temple Rainbow Trail (0/3))
[] [React] Try to repair agriculture (Sec Expand Econ)
Astrology: Drive out the unbelievers and heretics! (6)
