[X] [MP] Next king is heroic admin or heroic mystic
[X] [R1] Only those you are mostly sure are safe (-1 Stability, chance of further loss, 3 triggers, 6 temp econ damage)
[X] [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, ???)
[X] [Mono] Isolate them (+1 Stability, ???)
[X] [React] Attempt to figure the disease out (Sec Study Health)
[X] [Merc] Pay mercenaries from main budget
[X] [MP] Next king is heroic admin or heroic mystic
[X] [R1] Only those you are mostly sure are safe (-1 Stability, chance of further loss, 3 triggers, 6 temp econ damage)
[X] [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, ???)
[X] [Mono] Isolate them (+1 Stability, ???)
[X] [React] Attempt to figure the disease out (Sec Study Health)
[X] [Merc] Pay mercenaries from main budget
Also I disagree that the second one; 8 points of protection covers a good 90% of the times that we take Event Damage, and I'd rather invest in other stuff then trying to whittle down that last 10%.
[X][MP] Next king is heroic admin or heroic mystic
[X][R1] Only those you are mostly sure are safe (-1 Stability, chance of further loss, 3 triggers, 6 temp econ damage)
[X][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, ???)
[X][Mono] Ignore them (???)
[X][React] Attempt to figure the disease out (Sec Study Health)
[X][Merc] Pay TWO mercenary companies from main budget
Uvothyn had never particularly considered himself kingly material: he was from a low class family and was rather spirit touched, being more comfortable around scrolls and statues than people, although he was nowhere near as bad as many of the other spirit touched. If he had any true skill, it was in being able to understand and categorize things, which had made him the head priest-clerk in Sacred Forest. Still, when the Blood Cough came, he found himself organizing the efforts to control and understand the plague for the temple and surrounding area... and then as the head priest realized his value he was being shipped off to Valleyhome to assist the king in the coordination of the efforts...
And then, somewhere along the line everyone realized that they were coming to him with questions about what to do, and then the king stepped down so he could be put in charge.
It was madness! Sheer madness!
Yet Uvothyn had realized some time ago that the world had gone mad, so his situation was definitely not too terribly strange.
He just wished that it could be mad in less depressing ways, more like the tales of Yshuyn the Great than Phygrif. The People had kept quarantine even as they tried to help those in need of aid, and it had gone a bit off. Other priests had been agitating and riling up the People, who were scared and looking for someone to blame. The obvious culprits were the weird One God lot who had been influenced by the Highlanders, foreigners who did not know the ways of the People, half-exiles, greedy merchants who were both sinfully avaricious and brought back strange and foreign things, and all of the dirty new artisans. While Uvothyn was sure that cleaniness, both spiritually and physically, was a major component of who lived and who died, there were many who he felt went too far. He could only really catch them when they had gone out and lynched someone or rioted, and there were all sorts of other things that he sort of wanted stopped as being disruptive to the effort of keeping them all alive, but that as king he couldn't catch. For one, the half-exiles were filling up with One God practitioners, which couldn't be a coincidence.
Still, at least the rabble rousers were keeping things clean.
New Spiritual Value Gained! Purity
Only through physical purity can spiritual purity be attained. There can however be no mercy for those who would contaminate the pure.
Pros: Bonuses to resisting disease and foreign influences
Cons: The impure and unclean must be eliminated
For the actual plague though... things were not going well. Even with Uvothyn spending every waking hour trying to organize things, there just wasn't enough to go on, with the facts being sparse. The spirits causing this plague were both shy and rural, but were capable of lurking in enclosed spaces where people had been for at least a day or two if it was not exposed to fresh air and sunlight. Their curse lingered in the lungs for a time before abruptly growing worse, but Uvothyn was fairly certain that there were more cases than they realized, with most of those exposed fighting off the curse. Still, by far the most curious thing was that those with the telltale cough often reported feeling mostly fine, other than the cough, which they said often didn't hurt as much as it seemed. More than a few reports had idle musings that those afflicted during the middle stages were like rich patients who were abusing the milk of the poppy or other potions when they were mildly inconvenienced - the poppy was no cure for anything, but its magic might make you feel like there was nothing wrong with you.
Hmmmm... perhaps whatever demon was behind this plague had woven something extra into its spell? Something to make a man feel more alive than he was, to get him to carry the curse further? Perhaps, although it certainly did not keep pain at bay, just every symptom but the cough and the heavy breathing, right up until everything fell apart. That was probably just the first curse leaving the body vulnerable to other demons letting their own curses get their hooks in when otherwise a man could fight the disease off. Hmmm... yes, there were some potions and poultices that could help with disease by helping with debilitating symptoms but paradoxically left the body weaker to further infection, so perhaps that was what the demons responsible were doing: casting a low level healing spell as part of their curse of disease. Strange, but oddly plausible.
Didn't help much with dealing with the situation, but perhaps adding things that disrupted the humours and caused the nose to run and fever to creep in to treatments might counter the malicious healing magic the demons were spreading alongside their curse? Worth a shot at least...
Uvothyn's note to distribute to the doctors was disrupted by a panicked looking city courier running into the Great Hall where everyone was hard at work, calling out that they had a pass through quarantine priority message for the king. That was rather significant, since someone writing a message in a medium that could be passed through a sacred flame of purification and had a royal seal to get it immediately brought forward meant that there was big news. A clerk in pure white cotton robes and veil with sacred calf leather gloves took the brass tube and unscrewed it to take out the sacred vellum message inside, reading it aloud while everyone else stood well back.
"News from the east, great king! The Thunder Horse send a report on the situation in the mountains with the Mountain Horse! They announce-" the clerk then paused as he stumbled over his words, choking for a moment before he said, "-they announce the complete annihilation of the Mountain Horse!"
The message quieted and normally stern crowd of advisors all erupted at once into shouting, causing Uvothyn to wince and duck his head for a moment before he barked out, "Silence!" Once the guards managed to bang the butts of their spears on the ground a few times to get everyone to comply, he then asked of the courier, "Is that all?"
Shaking his head, his face no doubt pale as his robes under his veil, the man said, "They continue with as much detail as they know. As reported previously, there was some combination of disease, civil war, and steppe nomad invasion. They can now confirm that however it started, the steppe nomads have completely overrun the valleys and plateaus of the Mountain Horse, the cities that had once stood as impregnable hardpoints abandoned in plague. Worse yet, they claim that the entire warrior body of the nomad host now rides horses as the Spiritbonded do, allowing them to outpace most messengers bringing warning of attack - there is a side note that the governor prays this message outpaces the enemy. Worse yet, the nomad chieftain is a madman who claims religious inspiration, that the gods have decreed through the plague that not only are cities dens of wickedness, but so are the farms that support them. All who settle in one place to farm rather than moving on are guilty of avarice, and thus it has been decreed that the only buildings permissible are mines for warrior metals such as iron, copper, and tin. Everything else is to be burned - and by all accounts, this has already happened within the Mountain Horse, with all major settlements reduced to rubble and ash, their populations slaughtered to water fallow fields fit only for flocks of animals. None know if the nomads suffer from the Blood Cough, but it is said that since the only prisoners they take are smiths and miners and all the rest they kill, it is possible they have simply killed faster than the disease. The message finishes that by the time it arrives, the nomads will almost assuredly be attacking into the lowlands."
The king summed his thoughts up succinctly.
"Fuck."
A vassal is being attacked
[] [War] They're on their own(-1 Stability, -1 Legitimacy, ???)
[] [War] Scramble what warriors are available (Sends a Sec War Mission and Mercenary Companies to the east)
[] [War] Scramble everyone (Sends warriors east, Switches to Mass Levy policy and removes Isolated Economy status)
AN: Without Isolated Economy you double the number of Disease rolls you take per phase, and Plague Rotted Economy deals damage to Martial, Mysticism, Culture, and Tech in addition to the damage to Econ
What do?
[] [React] We need more fast scouts to counter the nomads! (Sec More Spiritbonded)
[] [React] Forest and hill scouts are what we need! (Sec More Blackbirds)
[] [React] The armies need to not get sick! (Sec More Carrion Eaters)
[] [React] More effort! (Extra Sec War Mission, cannot be taken if east abandoned)
[] [React] Keep looking for a cure! (Sec Study Health)
[] [React] The economy, fools! (Sec Expand Econ, cannot be taken with Mass Levy active)
[] [React] Stamp down on those tearing the kingdom apart! (Sec Restore Order)
Patricians (5* {10}) - Power: Add or subtract their faction power from factions they are supporting/opposing. Objective: Have Light cavalry at or above 3 within 2 turns. Success: Free equestrian tech
Guild (5) - Power: Half faction power added to Max Wealth. Objective: Have a level 3 Ironworks within 4 turns. Failure: -1 Stability
Traders (2) - Objective: Have Naval power 3 or above within 3 turns. Success: +1 Naval [1/2]
Yeomen (1*)- Objective: Have a new province within 3 turns. Success: Free Random Plant [Good] action [0/2]
Priests (2)- Power: Adds faction power to RA. Objective: Have a new level 2 temple somewhere within 3 turns. Success: +1 RA tolerance. Failure: -1 Stability
Urban Poor (4) - Power: +1 Max Legitimacy every 3 full power. Objective: Have a Level 2 market and a Level 1 market in another city within 3 turns. Success: Grand Bazaar Megaproject completion, no faction power increase These counters iterate at the next main-turn. The numbers in brackets indicate the general faction strength.
Shit I have no idea what to do, we can't abandon a vassal
The Purity trait sucks major dick
We still have major plague fucking us and a war. Cause Nomads All I know is
[X] [War] Scramble everyone (Sends warriors east, Switches to Mass Levy policy and removes Isolated Economy status)
[X] [React] Keep looking for a cure! (Sec Study Health)
Yeah, this isn't just "Civilization ending but maybe something will survive", this is a straight up "Absolutely nothing will survive" clusterfuck.
We may as well never have existed by the time these fuckers are done with us, because they have every intention of burning everyone and everything we've ever done to the ground.
So we got our mystic, who probably was a crit fail hero mystic
and nothing has been solved and now were under attack, so were definitely rolling low as usual.
New Spiritual Value Gained! Purity
Only through physical purity can spiritual purity be attained. There can however be no mercy for those who would contaminate the pure.
Pros: Bonuses to resisting disease and foreign influences
Cons: The impure and unclean must be eliminated
[X] [War] Scramble what warriors are available (Sends a Sec War Mission and Mercenary Companies to the east)
[X] [React] The economy, fools! (Sec Expand Econ, cannot be taken with Mass Levy active)
Don't think we have the resources for Mass Levy. Zero Stability is untenable.
[X] [War] Scramble what warriors are available (Sends a Sec War Mission and Mercenary Companies to the east)
[X] [React] The economy, fools! (Sec Expand Econ, cannot be taken with Mass Levy active)
Heads up; we are at 21{7} Econ. We need an Expand Econ action now or things start going to hell really quickly.
EDIT: Correction: Arriving at hell. Upon further thought we are already in the "going to hell" phase.
1. We take the initative and throw all our bodies in a attempt to transfer the plague to the nomads or
2. Hide in our hills where their cavarly is less effective then drown them in bodies as they attempt to come up.
3. Send in the banners and try and build up our cavarly as our vassals hold them off.
[X] [War] Scramble everyone (Sends warriors east, Switches to Mass Levy policy and removes Isolated Economy status)
[X] [React] We need more fast scouts to counter the nomads! (Sec More Spiritbonded)
[X] [War] Scramble what warriors are available (Sends a Sec War Mission and Mercenary Companies to the east)
[X] [React] The economy, fools! (Sec Expand Econ, cannot be taken with Mass Levy active)
@Academia Nut - why are we only at 6 EE?
What happened to our New Settlement actions?
What happened to the EE refunded from the 3 Econ damage we just took?
*Shrugs* Well, we need to send somebody to at least slow the nomads down. I very much suspect they're just killing people so quickly and moving so quickly that the disease hasn't 'caught up'. If we can bog their khan down for a bit, even by losing a few battles but keeping him in one place, disease will fuck him over too- if not the Bloody Cough, something else.
The nasty bit about this kind of disease is, as said, it's an incubator for other ones. So while it's remotely possible the nomads are flat-out immune to the Bloody Cough, they can't be immune to everything Bloody Cough victims catch.
Gg we are dead.
Either we let the vassals die and suffer death by our values or we try to save them and die by DOUBLE dissease role
Edit: Does the nomad count as a great power as to proc king do not kneel?
[X] [War] Scramble what warriors are available (Sends a Sec War Mission and Mercenary Companies to the east)
[X] [React] The economy, fools! (Sec Expand Econ, cannot be taken with Mass Levy active)
