Paths of Civilization

[Academia Nut]

So, as you may have noticed from the picture at the end of the last post I knew people were going to get angry. This is different from deliberately setting out to make you lot angry.

Look, when you are in opposition to the elites of society, handing them more power is unlikely to advance the goals you want. I could have made the upgrade different, sure, but the Elite trait line was always going to increase stratification and the power of elites. Given everything else going on at the time, it fit to increase the power of the dominant faction. However, that much of a jump required a cost, and having it so that the elite now have so much power and support that they can no longer effectively be suppressed via direct action (since they are the ones coordinating every level said direct action) made sense.

And yes, the two patrician Martial Geniuses will be supporting the patrician faction in the event of a civil war, especially if pushed for early. The primary opposers to Distribute Land within the People are the priests and the urban patricians, everyone else is pretty much either for it or completely apathetic to the issue. So for a self-triggered civil war those would be the groups leading the anti-distribute faction.

Also, there were a number of errors that snuck through. Most of them on the action sheet should be corrected, and most of the important ones on the front page should be corrected now, although I'm pretty sure there's still stuff in need of tweaking. As such, I am resetting the vote. Please keep a consistent tagging pattern of [Sec], [Guild Sec], and [Agenda]. Vote will close tomorrow and an update is unlikely before Saturday or Sunday. Also, will probably be on slow mode for the rest of December.

 

[Academia Nut]

Okay, lightning round, gonna give these a few hours each:

There are threats from within and without, where did the People focus their attentions when not forced otherwise by circumstances?
[] [Threats] West
[] [Threats] East
[] [Threats] Steppes
[] [Threats] Internal

Pick a development focus
[] [Focus] Military
[] [Focus] Infrastructure
[] [Focus] Technology/Science
[] [Focus] Culture
[] [Focus] Trade and Diplomacy
[] [Focus] Expansion

 

[Academia Nut]

[Threats] Primary + Secondary -> Internal
[Focus] Primary: Infrastructure, Secondary: Culture

The Ymaryn found their attention increasingly drawn inward, only drawn outwards at times by the aggression of their neighbours. Those neighbours however found a hard core of loyal warriors supported by an intricate network of roads, walls, watchtowers, well tended and managed fields and forests, and a culturally and spiritually unified People. However, this all came at the cost of allowing the various tribes, kingdoms, and empires around them to grow and fight with each other. The People remained stable, prosperous, and safe as the world around them underwent various upheavals - usually kicked off by initial innovations pioneered by the People and then casually allowed to disseminate outwards. However, they were not the only ones out in the world innovating, and one day traders from beyond the Salt Sea brought with them tales of the alchemists of the Far East having produced new innovations with fire undreamed of by the People.

Response to another figuring out gunpowder?
[] [GP] Barbarians know nothing of actual alchemy (x10)
[] [GP] A review of recipes is in order (x2)
[] [GP] Anything worth knowing is worth stealing (x1)
[] [GP] SV attempts to build a sub-orbital rocket with early Medieval technology (x0.2)

 

[Academia Nut]

[X][GP] A review of recipes is in order (x2)

Going over their various recipes and principles, the People found that they had encountered such things in the past, but the components were most easily obtained through improper waste disposal, and significant usage would cut into black soil production. While limited production was taken up in order to remind outsiders that the magic of the People was powerful and to be feared, there was little need seen for doing much other than pyrotechnic displays. The People had no need of barbarian toys, and suggestions for potential weapon usage were scoffed at. The fear of Ymaryn steel and the rain of crossbow bolts was more than sufficient to send barbarian raiders running, flashes of smoke and thunder were wholly unnecessary and in fact less productive than raising more children with well fertilized fields.

The world around them changed, but the Ymaryn remained a rock in a stormy sea. As they had for generations, the peasants tilled the fields under the careful administration of the nobility, who were the fountain of all worth knowing in the world, while the merchants and craftsmen turned the raw materials gathered by barbarians into the wonderful tools that kept the People fed and safe. However, while their more civilized neighbours had long learned to essentially ignore them - the People had no need to go out into the world, anything of value would come to them in time - the truly barbarous savages of the northern steppes remained an eternal issue. Sometimes they fought with the tribes, sometimes they bribed them into going away, sometimes they married the more successful figures into their noble lines or inducted them into their forces of knights. As such, when a new warlord arose whose offers for trade seemed a bit too much like demanding tribute rather than the proper channels, many feathers were ruffled by the affair.

The People's response to this upstart barbarian
[] [Steppe] The steppes are clearly in need of their generational cleaning up (x10)
[] [Steppe] Ignore the upstart, he will dash his forces against the People if he dares further action (x8)
[] [Steppe] Send the traditionally determined bribes (x2)
[] [Steppe] Acquiesce to the larger than usual demands (x0.8)
[] [Steppe] Reach out to further relations with this successful warlord (x0.1)

 

[Academia Nut]

[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

 

[Academia Nut]

[X][Successor] The ancient urban manufactories of the core
[X][Revival] Long neglected diplomacy

The cities had to be fed.

All but the nearest farms that had fed them were in ruins, the farmers scattered or killed or in revolt against central authority for the failure to protect them. This posed a considerable problem. The surviving cities were going to eat out their larders and then eat themselves and everything would fall apart. They had too many citizens who no longer would have anything to do, the supply networks torn apart. There were too many smiths for the ore available and not enough call for their products anyway.

The cities should have just disappeared.

Instead, drastic action was taken. The remaining warriors were equipped with absolutely exorbitant amounts of equipment, just to give the smiths something to do, while massive numbers of conscripts were drawn up from the no longer useful segments of the urban population. Their task was simple: get enough food for everyone by any means necessary. Some of this was going out to the parts of the rural areas that were no longer paying taxes to force compliance, some of this was mercenary work to pay for food shipments one way or another, and some of this was protecting the food shipments. Those who objected were declared traitors and rebels and put to the sword, gutting much of the priesthood that refused to get in line. Citizenship drastically shrank, requiring either noble birth or to perform service in the form of being a journeyman in the guilds or complete a thirty year mercenary contract for the kingdom. Farmers either prevailed to their local nobility for protection via generational indenture contracts, or found themselves replaced with criminals and war captives taken from further afield.

This outright bullying and conquest rapidly stopped when the trade of food was sufficient, the neighbours and former vassals deciding that selling their excess grain for the products of the Redshore and Valleyhome arsenals was preferable to exposing their backs to their other neighbours to fight off the cities. For their part, the core cities weren't interested in gambling what they had trying to bring the wealthier trade cities of the west or the lowlands directly under their control. So long as they got fed they were good with what they had, especially since they possessed a number of sophisticated manufacturing facilities that let them maintain a number of profitable trade monopolies. The only major conflicts for generations were the fighting over the Trelli strait and control of the entire length of the Great River, but the metal foundries soon found that their casting abilities could be turned towards the production of cannon, which was useful for smashing up the fortifications of those that defied them, while also being a great product to sell.

Thus it was that the People survived. While much was lost, the core remained intact; the knowledge within preserved, even if its living implementation faded. The great sophisticated state of old was gone, but something that served many of the same functions remained. Trade replaced taxes, state armies that protected all were replaced with mercenaries that demanded payment, and except in the very core the complex infrastructure that had allowed bumper crops year after year faded from lack of local expertise and funds from elsewhere to maintain them. Free farmers and yeomen were replaced with serfs, indentured servants, and slaves, but the guilds continued to run and the academies of old were not abandoned. While some found this no comfort at all, within a century of the passing of the war, plagues, and famine there were already those arguing the philosophies of old, and how the People needed to turn away from their paths of greed. While the diplomats and traders did much to keep all the various neighbours surrounding them focused on fighting each other rather than the People - both for protection and to ensure that there was always a healthy market for the excessive amounts of arms the People made to keep their smiths busy with the ancient infrastructure - they also fostered ties of friendship and family. While some might call them pirates themselves, the People also heavily suppressed pirate activity on the Yllthon, and out past the Trelli strait when they controlled it.

And then one day the traders in the Southern Sea at the end of the Great River reported an oddity. Among the monsoon merchants that came from the Spice Lands and the Far East by ship, a new flag was seen in those waters - curiously one not unknown to the People. In the Far West the successors of the successors of the successors of the Saffron Islanders (all those to the west of the Trelli straits called Syffrynites, generally) plied their primitive trade, but apparently they had found their ways around the vast deserts and jungles to the south of the Khemetri (who truly were no longer the same people as those mentioned in the primordial writings of the People) by sea. Curious... and annoying as it bypassed the People's status as middlemen in the spice trades. Something needed to be done.

How did the People respond to the development of transoceanic trade?
[] Stop relying on intermediaries, and muscle in on the trade themselves
[] Aggressively secure the slower but more easily policed land routes to the east
[] Finance anti-Syffryn piracy to make it not worth making the trip
[] Directly seize more farmland so that loss of profits will not be as much of a threat to securing food supplies
[] Deepen diplomatic ties to ensure that the foreign traders aren't going to get the deals they expect

 

[Academia Nut]

[X] Deepen diplomatic ties to ensure that the foreign traders aren't going to get the deals they expect

The answer was simple: these Syffrynites were newcomers on the scene, entirely lacking in the contacts the People and their trading partners had. What the People needed to do was to double down on making good with their trading partners, to make sure that their personal contacts and contracts would help ensure that they continued to get the best possible deals. They also knew from the extent of unused land that was obviously once part of the ironworks system that they still had an immense amount of slack in their production of artisan goods, and they had also only grown better at using the powers of wind and water to make up for missing men. They could undercut these foreigners and drive them out.

...

Or the foreign devils could blow up their trade partners!

What barbarous, childish, tantrum-throwing brutes! Whenever the trade started to go against them under diplomatic pressure from the People, the western Syffrynites would just return to their ships and bombard the coasts with cannon, then seize the region, fortify it, and begin using it as their own trade post without having to interact with the locals as anything other than overlords dictating terms. It seemed that the 'Vortuga' - as they called themselves - were entirely intent on completely bypassing all middlemen between them and the spices and silks of the east. Of course, fine Ymaryn glass and porcelain was also something they were looking for, so they soon found that those products were much harder to come by.

Also, the People started selling cannon - both hand and bombard - at a loss to anyone who wanted to use them to blow up Vortug trade posts. This also resulted in unwanted chaos as a byproduct, but in general the People found themselves being looked at as a source of support by southern trade partners, even as it became apparent that the fact that the Vortug kingdom itself could not be directly attacked was a major problem. There were many who called the People the Defenders of the Monsoon Sea, but in truth the ability to project power was limited by the overland route. While the People had a decent route down the Great River, their control in the lowlands was tenuous enough that they could not truly project into the southern seas without first undertaking a massive military conquest of certain key problematic areas, which could in turn threaten numerous diplomatic ties they had fostered. Then again, letting the Vortug run around unchecked was clearly not something they could sustain.

It was suggested that the People could reclaim the glory of their ancestors and simply conquer their way west, through the dozen or so kingdoms between them and the Vortug, and strangle the foreigners in their own homes, but that seemed to be an even more problematic and difficult process.

In general though, it was definitely felt that the People were bottled in, their territory cut off from key points of the world by hostile barbarians or cousins who had chosen the hardships of ferocious independence over the prosperity of cooperation. Something needed to be done.

Ambitions
[] [Ambition] Become Defender of the Monsoon Sea, securing the southern territories to support that
[] [Ambition] Start conquering westward until these barbarians can be dealt with in their homes
[] [Ambition] Restore the Old Ymaryn Empire borders
[] [Ambition] Unify the Yllthon Coast
[] [Ambition] Stay at home, but smith harder

Ambitions fuelled by...
[] [Fuel] Pursuit of new manufacturing
[] [Fuel] Ramp up existing manufacturing
[] [Fuel] Sale of academy space to foreign nobles
[] [Fuel] Seizure of lightly defended territory for raw resources
[] [Fuel] Aggressively dominating in-land trade routes

 

[Academia Nut]

[X] [Ambition] Unify the Yllthon Coast
[X] [Fuel] Sale of academy space to foreign nobles

It was a slow thing, over the course of generations, but in seeking to support their trade partners to the south the People found themselves reunifying with their cousins and neighbours around the Yllthon Sea. It wasn't entirely a conscious thing, but rather a recognition that they needed to secure the strongest thing that would help them maintain local trade, allowing them to subsidize the resistance to the Vortuga in the Monsoon Sea while also protecting their own trade as best as possible. While there were a number of military campaigns, a significant amount of this reunification was cultural and diplomatic. People realizing that they had deeper ties to each other, and that they would be better served working together rather than fighting. It started with making agreements to lower trade barriers and address piracy rather than covertly funding it against rivals, and eventually it grew to alliances and unification.

A big component was actually the opening up of the ancient academies to outsiders. From their founding the academies had been exceedingly exclusive, the domains of the upper nobility, jealously guarded, but at a certain point the state came to see them as just another resource, and opened them up to foreign nobility - although the first "foreigners" were mostly from the mercantile city-states to the west and south that spoke Ymaryn - who could pay. While some objected to secrets and sacred places being used as mere resources, it offset a major cost, and more than that it deepened ties with powerful nobles and wealthy merchants. Soon enough non-nobles who had the wealth from within the territories were being admitted, and then more distant students came with inquiries. To the west, Syffryn nobilities descended from the intermingling of Western Ymaryn, local tribes, and successor kingdoms to the Saffron Islander empires came seeking knowledge; from the north the kingdoms and trade republics of the Gylruv - descendants of Ymaryn traders, local tribes, and nomadic groups who went north and west into the desolate cold - came with esoteric questions on the ancient tending of forests.

And then the People really looked at what they had in their libraries, and felt a deep sense of embarrassment at the absurd wealth of information they had and hadn't looked at. Their ancestors had accumulated the wisdom of millennia and had just sort of... stashed it away. At a certain point they had come to the conclusion that they were the center of the world, and anything useful would either drift into their hands without trying, or then eventually the only useful things came from within. Other people came to them, they had no need to go out into the world. The Ueman Empire, the most significant group in the Saffron Sea for centuries, had entire archival buildings devoted to the various border skirmishes and trade deals recorded over the seven centuries the two groups had interacted, and the People only had a vague sense that they even existed, and that they had collapsed at some point, torn apart by internal tensions and external invasion.

Scholars actually looking at the commentary of the time could only cringe at their ancestors bragging about how they would never be so foolish collapse as the Ueman, their descriptions almost ominous, mocking foreshadowing of what would happen to them in good time.

Soon enough scholars from further afield were practically besieging the libraries of Redshore and Valleyhome, upon realizing that texts thought long lost had multiple copies mouldering in some back shelf. While lack of funding had inflicted tremendous neglect upon many works, the People were all too happy to have their ancient intellectual treasures reproduced for them - people paid them to restore their works even! However, while this revival of the classics brought back some of the bragging of old, new patterns had been established, and the People wanted to go out and meet others, rather than turning inward to the point of disconnection and hubris. The academies and libraries flourished, and new modes of teaching were pioneered in the new atmosphere. While ironically enough it seemed that the far west and far north seemed to benefit the most from the flourishing brought about by the reintroduction of their own ancestral texts, the benefits to diplomacy were significant. Across the Saffron Sea there was an explosion of art from ancient religion, cast in new light.

That was another thing. For centuries the People's relationship with religion had been a bit odd. They had always been less concerned with the exact nature of the divine than the proper veneration of the divine - the Ymaryn were orthopraxic rather than orthodox, in the language of theology adapted from foreigners who had spent far more time thinking about this than them. The People had never particularly seen religion as something worth fighting over in the abstract sense, and in the past groups that cared to make an issue about it had always run headlong into Ymaryn warriors early on and decided it wasn't that big a deal anyway. All their neighbours sort of saw the People as being vaguely heretical, vaguely pagan, but also not so different as to take catastrophic issue. They believed in God, even if the exact pronunciation of His name and the nature of His servants could be a bit strange. In more recent centuries these issues had grown a bit more now that the Empire no longer stood in their way to make the issue moot, while in the former territories the issue of religion had become a critical issue for those whose world had collapsed, but there was something to the People's humours that kept them from getting too excited about religious differences.

However, this had a most unfortunate effect on some of their neighbours as they plunged into their archives. The People had kept texts from the Meshamini, Geoyrgon, and Samynish faiths, along with their own more native Mylathydysm, and they had kept them all, including the ones deemed heretical and/or blasphemous - only, embarrassingly the People had dispassionately kept the political commentaries that talked about why certain religious leaders had declared them heretical in the first place, which meant that more than once a text was found that had disappeared from the west that had been suppressed for reasons that were later found heretical themselves. Scholars discovered centuries of theological debate, and suddenly wondered if they were missing important pieces of their religious texts because of the stupidity of their ancestors... or if they were holding foreign fabrications and lies.

Somewhere out beyond the Storm Mountains a scholar got a copy of a book that suggested that a current piece of locally unpopular theology was in fact a much later addition to their sacred texts, only to be rebuffed by his church's hierarchy. Rather than submitting to what he saw as a corrupt institution spreading lies that could damn them all, he stuck his foot in the ground and ended up sparking a religious revolution. While normally not that much of a concern, the increased communication with the outside world revealed that the Vortuga were allied with the religious authorities opposed to this new movement. Further, the Meshamini within the People largely followed an independent sect anyway, so there would be no internal dissent if the People chose to go take a side in this foreign religious issue. With the Yllthon secured, especially with Trelli, they had secure and exclusive access to a huge number of markets through riverine and sea trade, so they could send some degree of support, as well as having the somewhat limited option to send their own ships through the Saffron Sea to harass the Vortuga and their allies from the east.

Then again, there were also a number of nobles reading through the ancient accounts and noticing that the Old Ymaryn nobility used to show off their wealth and power by inviting in foreign refugees, in order to demonstrate their piety and magnanimity. Just stirring up trouble by sending guns or pirates might be a bit crass when the option to invite these radical theologians to take shelter with them remained available. That might even cause more trouble for the Vortuga and their ilk in the long run!

Involvement in foreign religious affairs
[] [Involvement] Stay out of it (0.8x)
[] [Involvement] Offer limited support (1x)
[] [Involvement] Offer extended support (1x)
[] [Involvement] Throw fuel on the fire! (0.8x)

What form should support take? (More than one option may be taken)
[] [Form] Sell guns and cannons to your preferred sides (2x)
[] [Form] Offer safe haven to the persecuted (1.2x)
[] [Form] Offer mercenary services to your preferred sides (1.5x)
[] [Form] Deploy privateers to disrupt enemy logistics (1x)
[] [Form] Send in direct military aid (0.8x)

Theological debate
[] [Debate] Stay out of the debates (0.8x)
[] [Debate] Get more copies of your versions of texts in there (1.2x)
[] [Debate] Offer theological and rhetorical training to preferred sides (1.2x)
[] [Debate] Fabricate texts more favourable to your purposes (0.5x)

 

[Academia Nut]

[X][Involvement] Offer extended support (1x)
[X][Form] Offer safe haven to the persecuted (1.2x)
[X][Form] Offer mercenary services to your preferred sides (1.5x)
[X][Form] Sell guns and cannons to your preferred sides (2x)
[X][Debate] Offer theological and rhetorical training to preferred sides (1.2x)
[X][Debate] Get more copies of your versions of texts in there (1.2x)

Seeing an opportunity to sow disunity among their enemies, the People sent out all sorts of missives. Their nobility would be more than happy to offer shelter to scholars being religiously oppressed, while also offering major deals on the purchase of military equipment and mercenaries to oppressed people seeking to cast off the yoke of those whose overbearing religious domination threatened them with eternal damnation.

While the People were weird foreigners with strange ways, they were also distant and seemed to have no ambitions to actually take territory, and their offer was great for beating up on their annoying neighbours...

As such, Syffryn soon enough exploded into conflagration as every minor religious leader who found their ways called heretical could flee east to receive shelter, rhetorical training, and access to merchant nobility who they could make friends with and seek out contracts for weapons and mercenaries. Of course, this caused all sorts of trouble for those trying to covertly travel back and forth between the People being waylaid by those who would not want them to escape. The fact that the universities included gymnasia, and a tradition among the People of individual scholars settling intractable matters among each other with contests of physical prowess, meant that soon enough there was a proliferation of unarmed fighting styles among the Syffryn radical theologians. Given that the radicals often disagreed with each other, theological debates in the town square frequently involved a combination of shouted rhetoric and unarmed combat.

The increased demand for religious texts being copied from the archives for transmission into Syffryn also lead to innovations in mass copying methods, soon enough resulting in the Printers Guild springing forth as a number of innovations made in Syffryn were combined with the technical expertise of the People. This soon enough meant that not only were they flooding the continent with guns and mercenaries, but also religious texts and pamphlets containing pre-packaged theological rhetoric.

The powerful kingdoms and religious authorities of southern Syffryn did not take this lying down however, pouring money and troops into suppressing the religious radicals within their own territory and within the more fractured kingdoms of the north and central regions of the continent. Incensed, they also stepped up privateering against the People in the Eastern Saffron Sea, as well as financing border raids from the People's closer neighbours. There were also more enemies for the People, with the Southern Highlanders starting to push back against the People's trade down the Great River, the pastoral societies that had come from nomads filtering into the Horse Mountains and lowlands and mixing with the surviving populations there starting to express themselves, and the Gylruv nations in the north starting to gell together for defense against nomadic groups also being able to contest the People's riverine traffic and rumble towards their northern Yllthon ports.

There were, however, also alliance possibilities. In particular the Khemetri - no longer the ancient god-kings of the past but still a major power in the southern Saffron Sea and participants in trade in the Monsoon Sea - were getting annoyed with the Syffrynites. While also trade rivals and looking side eyed at the religious trouble the People had been stirring up despite being of a competing religion, the Khemetri were no fans of what the Vortuga were doing, and were also concerned with the Hespranxer bringing in large amounts of gold from their explorations, devaluing their gold supplies. Another group was the Kielmyr Triple Crown, from the extreme north, who were using the chaos in their southern neighbours to their own advantage, and who were also rivals with the growing Gylruv kingdoms and republics. Given their skill with seafaring and ironworking - mythically inherited from the Ymaryn themselves - and their distance, there were more than a few who felt that they may in fact have things to teach the People, and could make a more direct counter to Vortuga sea power outside the Saffron Sea.

Even more distantly, there were some members of the Spice Lands and the Tea Lands whose trade in the Monsoon Sea were being affected and were reaching out for potential allies.

So there were many rivals and potential allies to discuss.

Focus on a theater
[] [Focus] North west, with the Syffryn religious troubles (1.5x)
[] [Focus] South west, into the Saffron Sea (1.8x)
[] [Focus] South, into the lowlands and the Highlanders (2x)
[] [Focus] East, with the mountain pastoralists (1x)
[] [Focus] North, against the growing Gylruv powers (1x)

Reach out to potential allies
[] [Allies] Khemetri, trade rivals but not the Vortuga (1x)
[] [Allies] Kielmyr Triple Crown, distant but in more direct contact with other rivals (2x)
[] [Allies] People from the Spice Lands and Tea Lands (0.8x)

 

[Academia Nut]

[X][Focus] South, into the lowlands and the Highlanders (2x)
[X][Allies] Khemetri, trade rivals but not the Vortuga (1x)

The Vortuga's depredations in the Monsoon Sea were starting to get intolerable. Their tactics were strangling trade too much, preventing local traders from doing anything but go through them, and it was diverting vast amounts of money away from the People and the Khemetri. Sending ambassadors back and forth between the two peoples, they came to a conclusion: both would mutually support each other on the Monsoon Sea, and suppress piracy that benefited the Vortuga or their allies on the Saffron Sea. Part of this was a joint diplomatic and military push into the lowlands and highlands to ensure that the People maintained contact with the Monsoon Sea down the Great River. This involved pressuring the Southern Highlanders to abandon any claim to territorial control along the length, as well as securing alliances and annexations at the river mouth so that ports and ship construction facilities could be set up. For their part the People sold tools cheap to assist the Khemetri in revamping their own Monsoon Sea coastal ports to better get their goods and weaponry in place.

The initial direct clashes demonstrated one major point to both the People and the Khemetri: the ocean going ships of the Vortuga were an entirely different breed from ships seen in the Saffron Sea or Monsoon Sea, the hulls built incredibly strong to withstand the storms of the Artemian Ocean and beyond, which let them not just withstand more punishment but also mount much larger cannons on their ships... and the Vortuga had been fighting with other groups that made ships like them for a while as well, refining their design. Both groups had known that these ships were formidable, but they had not expected just how much more advanced the ships would be when directly fighting them. The Vortuga navigational capacities were also a problem, frequently allowing them to disengage into deep oceans that were hard for their rivals to follow.

Still, experience with land warfare meant that the People had excellent cannon casting skills and facilities, and thus they were capable of outfighting the Vortuga when circumstances were right, and they hauled ships back for study. Almost immediately the shipwrights that examined them realized that they had serious questions, and asked if perhaps the king could send an envoy to the Kielmyr Triple Crown to ask about their shipbuilding techniques. Unfortunately, by that point the Gylruv kingdoms were being unified under the leadership of the Nevien Patriarchy and they had begun to shut down the river routes to the north. By other paths it was obvious that Kielmyr had decided to go all in on the religiously fractious states to their south. The People would have to figure things out on their own.

One of the big issues that cropped up right away was the fact that the wood used in the construction of the Vortuga ships was of breeds that neither the People nor the Khemetri had easy access to. Gritting their teeth, the People realized that they would have to trade with the Gylruv for their timber if they wanted to make the best possible ships, and that would cut into their profits even further, and also force concessions to the north that the People did not want to make. Also uneasily, the Black Sheep Confederation out of the Horse Mountains unified large portions of the lowlands that the People had not taken over directly, and offered food and ores in exchange for weaponry. While the Black Sheep were mostly peaceful towards the People, it was also obvious that they were pushing into the Lands of Tea and Spice just across the Monsoon Sea, as well as securing the overland routes to the Lands of Tea and Silk. The former was particularly troublesome, as it sound like the petty kingdoms of the Tea Peoples were starting to ally with Syffrynite traders against the military expeditions of the Black Sheep.

The People remained an intellectual and manufacturing center of the world, but it was also obvious that there were large and powerful groups starting to close them off from the world. Generations of diplomacy and trade did however pay off in making sure that none of these growing powers felt it worthwhile to take a swing at the People, and by all accounts the chaos already sown in the west had taken hold in new and radical ways. Perhaps it was the poor weather in recent years, with the winters in the north being notably harsher while the monsoons in the south were far less stable than in generations past, but there was instability all about. The People adapted as best they could, even if the old texts and religious edicts on forestry and field management no longer made sense as the balance of plants was noticeably different, but granaries were stretched and the budgets of the trade princes were notably looking rather grim, especially as the Vortuga were joined by other Syffrynites in the Monsoon Sea, adding further competition that the People and Khemetri struggled to catch up to.

Something needed shaking up to revitalize a system that clearly was no longer working.

Choose a path of reform
[] [Reform] Land reform
[] [Reform] Social reform
[] [Reform] Religious reform
[] [Reform] Administrative reform
[] [Reform] Educational reform
[] [Reform] Army reform
[] [Reform] Naval reform

Choose a fuel
[] [Fuel] Expansion of existing industries
[] [Fuel] Development of new industries
[] [Fuel] Conquest of minor powers
[] [Fuel] Deepening trade ties with growing powers
[] [Fuel] Piracy