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Paths of Civilization

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Lightning Round IV
  • Threadmarks
    • [X][Steppe] Ignore the upstart, he will dash his forces against the People if he dares further action (x8)

    Incensed by this tent dwelling barbarian's unreasonable demands, the People refused to offer the nomads anything but hostility if they crossed over into their borders.

    With dense forests, hills, walls, an extensive irrigation works to serve as natural barriers to aid in their hundreds of thousands of warriors, the People felt quite confident in sending this insult. A storm would blow in off the steppes, but such was life, and the People bowed not to the whims of the wind, but broke the storm upon their flanks. Or at least that was what the nobles and knights told the increasingly fretful traders who kept saying that this was something different. Despite many peasants figuring that it was cheaper to send gold than the blood of their sons to the steppes and border regions, the nobility assured them that if they gave the invaders a thimble of gold that would just embolden them and they would start asking for daughters instead next time.

    So the People sent their reply, and all was quiet. And after a year it seemed that all was well and the steppe warlord had taken the hint.

    Then, suddenly, all at once, the borders literally erupted in fire.

    Spies in among traders infiltrated northern fortress towns, slipping fell alchemical devices into gate houses, and causing them to explode in an attack with coordination none had expected. Hard points and fortifications expected to survive months or even years of siege were brought down on a large front, with multiple groups of thousands of nomads penetrating the now porous borders before news of the first strikes could even return to the capital. Riding hard, some groups reached northern cities that didn't even know they were at war and began to sack them, much to the confusion of their mayors and governors, who thought that they had thousands of warriors in fortresses between them and any foes. Massive city walls were breached by skilled engineer-slaves, brought over from mythical eastern territories and armed with alchemical devices and millennia of accumulated skill in urban siegecraft.

    Within six months the northern cities had been emptied out, sacked in a maelstrom of fire. Key passes had been seized, and the rich holdings of the Horse Mountains and the Lowlands were threatened, their walls wholly inadequate for what was to come. It was, in an intense panic, that the king called forth every able bodied man to fight.

    It soon became apparent that the khan they were facing was something else entirely, and each his horse mounted warriors he was the equal of ten warriors of the People when commanded by his skilled and daring generals.

    It was cold comfort then that the People outnumbered him twenty to thirty to one in warriors.

    Defensive works built up over centuries or even millennia were smashed, and the intricate irrigation systems were considered a part of that. More than that, at some point the conflict became a blood match for both sides, the People descending into a psychotic fury to defend their homes, while the nomads howled at their own losses and the reprisals against their camp followers. The lands of the People burned, with refugees driven displaced by the utter destruction of urban centers causing the collapse of farming in the rural areas they were driven into. Damaged irrigation controls and the loss of manpower brought cascading failures of floods. Famine and then plague swirled out from the whirlwind of war. Opportunistic raiders and petty kings from the west closed in on settlements stripped bare of defenses from the distant parts of the kingdom. Cities in the west, exposed to the steppes directly but not first on the chopping block like those in the north and east, capitulated when the nomads sent expeditions their way, choosing submission over gambling that they could repulse the enemy where others had previously failed.

    In the end, the Ymaryn "won", forcing the foe back through sheer attrition, and letting their holdings in the east rise in rebellion now that their nomadic overlords were distracted in the west. Like an elephant mauled by lions, despite victory the mighty and ancient empire was collapsing to its knees from blood loss and infection. Too many nobles had been slain, the loss of administrative knowledge was too great and the restrictions placed by the patrician nobility on the vital knowledge that let them do their jobs was spread too thin. Even if territory could be reclaimed and restored, there was no one to administer it, no one to protect it, and in too many places the ties that bound had been severed. Survivors despised the central administration for not being there for them, and the central administration was suspicious of those who had bent knee to foreign agents. Many cities in the west, having sworn to the nomads for self-protection, decided that they did not think that the king would welcome them back without punishment, and so simply declared their independence. In the Southern Highlands, the kingdom there, long bottled up as an amusing hermit, began to strike at various ravaged holdings in the lowlands and Hathytta.

    Bleeding out, the Ymaryn kingdom crashed and shattered.

    Who revived their light?
    [] [Successor] The ancient urban manufactories of the core
    [] [Successor] The small yeomen farmers
    [] [Successor] The wealthy trade cities of the west
    [] [Successor] The breadbasket of the lowlands
    [] [Successor] The primordial temples
    [] [Successor] Among the patoralists that filled emptied spaces, fascinated by the old culture

    How?
    [] [Revival] A religious reawakening
    [] [Revival] Long neglected diplomacy
    [] [Revival] A cultural flourishing
    [] [Revival] A territorial reunification
     
  • Threadmarks
    • [X] [Successor] The ancient urban manufactories of the core

    Valleyhome will always be the ancient centre.

    [X] [Revival] Long neglected diplomacy

    The Fire is warm

    (Please no cultural revival. We just had all nobles killed off. This is our chance to get back to more egalitarianism.)
     
    [X] [Successor] The ancient urban manufactories of the core
    [X] [Revival] A territorial reunification
     
    [X] [Successor] The ancient urban manufactories of the core
    [X] [Revival] A territorial reunification

    I'm fairly sure the goal of these lightning votes was the end of the government.
     
    [] [Successor] Among the patoralists that filled emptied spaces, fascinated by the old culture
    [] [Revival] A cultural flourishing
     
    Last edited:
    [x] [Revival] A territorial reunification

    Yeah no. We need our territories, if the other nations eat too much of us we are going to be a small fry fish to be eaten. Fuck that.
     
    Also, you guys rolled extraordinarily well, it's just that you were up against a Great Khan in his prime with Not!Chinese engineers and black powder sapping. So the good news is that you weren't overrun, and in fact likely saved tens of millions of other people from the long term depredations of the Not!Mongolians, who are likely to be remembered more like the Huns than as the carvers of the largest contiguous land empire in history. It just cost you millions of your people.
     
    [X] [Successor] The ancient urban manufactories of the core

    [X] [Revival] A cultural flourishing

    Renaissance it up!
     
    Wait.

    How big was the difference between the ignore vote and the bribe vote?

    EDIT:
    My vote:
    [X] [Successor] The ancient urban manufactories of the core

    [X] [Revival] A cultural flourishing
     
    Last edited:
    [X] [Successor] The ancient urban manufactories of the core
    [X] [Revival] A territorial reunification
    What did you guys expect.
    i blame the 50 guys who voted for the 0.1 option.
     
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