[X][Cycle] Gwarlon
[X][Baby] Give to Evatine to raise.
[X][Sangere] Accept their diplomatic offers.
[X] Plan Diplomacy Dad + Taming
-[X][Spirit] Focus on Blessing
--[X][Spirit] Elairamur's Idol
-[X][Spirit] Focus on Bolstering the Harvest
--[X][Spirit] Avawyr
-[X][Avatar] Construction
--[X][Avatar] Stone Wall around Avawyr: 18/20 Progress
-[X][Avatar] Raid
--[X][Avatar] Shadow Monsters in the Eastern Hills
-[X][Avatar] Visit
--[X][Avatar] Seryn at Bedwyn
---[X][Avatar] Make it known that we wish to see if we can "tame" the shadow spirit, and see if it can make the rest of the shadow monsters stop attacking people.
--[X][Avatar] Edryd at Sangere. (Requires Diplomatic Overtures to be accepted)
-[X][Leadership] Diplomacy with Edryd
-[X][Leadership] Raiding the Shadow monsters and "taming" the Shadow spirit
-[X][Leadership] Attempting to discern what you can about the nature of the shadow being from Elairmur's idol.
***
You have no idea about how to feel about this cycle. By all rights, it should be a good one, but certain events leave a bad taste in your mouth.
It started off okay with you reluctantly accepting the Sangerish diplomatic overtures. While you really did not like the southerners, you could not deny that they had the power to match your own forces. If you want to preserve your own people, peace was the best option.
You also give the baby girl you found to Evatine and your brother has decided to call his new daughter Ymaryn.
The Sangerish diplomat sent is one of their spirit-chosen, an older man with plenty of grey amongst his brown hair by the name Gryff the Safeguard. He offered a stop to the raids between Sangere and your people and carries an offer from Edryd the Master to open talks.
From what Gryff tells you, Esclalf does not directly run Sangere unlike every other village in the region. Instead, he provides healings and various blessings to the Sangerish villagers and lets his mortal followers rule themselves with minimal input.
While Gryff is reluctant to part with the details, he provides enough information to paint a picture that you do not like. Seven Chiefs rule over Sangere with warrior-farmers supporting them. The Chiefs themselves are chosen from the ranks of the warrior-farmers and all warrior-farmers are male. Below the warrior-farmers, you have their child sons and then even lower than the male offspring of the warrior-farmers, you have slaves, men forced into servitude to perform non-war or non-farming tasks such as making stone tools or cooking. Then you have the women, who the Sangere use only for children, both making them and rearing them into adulthood. To your outrage, Sangerish warrior-farmers would collect women like a shiny prizes with a major source of prestige within the village being collecting an additional wives.
The Sangere also have a pattern that they follow each cycle, integrating it into what they call a cycle. During the Growth Season, the warrior-farmers plant their harvest and then they raid and fight each other for prestige and challenge their old Chiefs and wives in the Sun Season. In the Harvest Season, they collect their harvest and then in the Cold Season, they make babies.
It turns out that Esclalf is not just a farming spirit, but he also has an Aspect of Fertility. Not only Esclalf provide a perfect harvest each cycle, but he also provides a blessing to make each woman fertile enough to get pregnant each year.
As much as it disgusts you, you start to get an inking of how much manpower Sangere could throw around if shove comes to push in the long run and how dangerous the southern-most village could be in the future.
Just as you develop a strong distaste for the Sangerish culture, Gryff is shocked at how your people operate with women being treated as equals and all of your warriors are now females. He is also surprised at your reveal that you have five villages answering to you and a sixth allied through you decide to not mention how Bedygan is empty and how Prylake is incredibly peaceful.
Despite how horrible you find the Sangerish to be, you do resolve to visit their leader Edryd to try and achieve a lasting peace if the price is not too much to stomach.
When you leave Avawyr, the village is in good hands. Terwyn is formalising the unofficial leadership positions within the village while Gwyn crafts and Eulyn helps out where Avawyrish are in need of aid. Arwyn sets out on another expedition to the Bydi Forest to map it out more and Bronwyn states her intention to bring Seryn's villages into the trade between Avawyr, Evalon and Prylake.
While you have plans to head north to deal with the new shadow monster spirit, you first head south to meet with Edryd to hopefully hammer out a lasting peace before the Harvest Season ends and the Sun Season begins.
The initial negotiations go poorly. While Edryd strikes you as progressive and open minded for a Sangerish, he is still Sangerish. As of such, while he is smooth and confident talker, Edryd also steps on several sore points.
For example, he offer you some wives and slaves as a show of goodwill. Edryd also suggests that to strengthen ties between your peoples, you and him should marry one of the other's daughters.
In the end, you and him are both left annoyed by the talks and it is Seryn who steps in to resolve things.
Your daughter decides to explain how things work within her domain and offers potential service to the Sangerish which Edryd is swift to take advantage of. Apparently, Seryn has the potential to deal with many of the Sangerish problems.
For starters, it turns out that the reason why the Sangerish have been attacking you is because Edryd has mentioned to use his fighting skills and sharp tongue to unite the other Sangerish Chiefs under his leadership. However, that left him with the problem that if the Sangerish were united, who would the warrior-farmers fight to prove their worth and earn wives?
So when the tensions over this matter were rising, Bronwyn and her explorers revealed to the Sangerish that there were other people up north and Edryd rallied the Sangerish under the ground that they could prove their worth against the northerners.
Of course, between losing close to a thousand warrior-farmers and gaining a grand total of zero wives whilst getting beaten back by female warriors with supernatural prowess, the Sangerish have mostly lost their appetite for fighting with the north.
With her position as the Goddess of Femininity, Seryn is ideally placed to solve Edryd's problem of the Sangerish having too many men and not enough women.
When she has gotten the direct attention of the Sangerish leader despite being female, your daughter decides to push the idea of her blessing the Sangerish warrior-farmers. Having faced the Cath Wyrs in battle, Edryd, along with most of Sangerish, is more than willingly to acknowledge the martial prowess of the warrior-women from the north despite how they treat their own women.
Seryn's plan is to have it so the greatest of the Sangerish warriors will seek to accept her blessing to become even greater and stronger warriors. Even though that would require becoming a woman, Edryd feels that the power offered in gaining such a blessing would easily overcome that, especially since it goes directly against the Sangerish idea of women being weak.
After Seryn had salvaged things, the only problem was that Edryd started to flirt with Seryn using his charming wits and sharp tongue and then to make things even worse, Seryn return his seductions with genuine interest.
As the father of Seryn, you could not approve of a pairing between your daughter and someone like Edryd even if Seryn herself seems to be pleased with Edryd's advances.
In the end you came to a conclusion with Edryd in the negotiations with Seryn's aid before heading back north to deal with the shadow monster spirit.
A Gift of Goodwill
Edryd wishes to gift you with half a dozen wives and a trio of slaves.
[] [Sangere 1] Accept the 'gift'.
[] [Sangere 1] Reject this so-called gift.
[] [Sangere 1] Write-in.
A Prestigious Wife
While you have outright rejected any idea of you returning this offer, Edryd has offered you the hand of his second-eldest daughter Catlyn as a first-rate wife.
[] [Sangere 2] Accept Catlyn into Avawyr.
-[] [Sangere 2] Actually marry her.
-[] [Sangere 2] Just let her live in the village.
[] [Sangere 2] Refuse to take Catlyn as your wife.
[] [Sangere 2] Write-in.
Southern Exiles
Edryd has also asked if he can send Sangerish undesirables north to Seryn's village. Seryn herself has no problems with his.
[] [Sangere 3] Accept the request
[] [Sangere 3] Reject the request.
[] [Sangere 3] Write-in.
The Tribute
With no desire to cause trouble with someone who has the might of a half a dozen villages, Edryd is willing to offer you a tribute each cycle. While you have no need for food, Sangere has no shortage of spare bodies. You pick any mixture of wives, slaves and young children.
[] [Sangere 4] Reject any tribute
[] [Sangere 4] Wives
-[] [Sangere 4] Pick between 0 and 25 Wives.
[] [Sangere 4] Slaves
-[] [Sangere 4] Pick between 0 and 10 Slaves.
[] [Sangere 4] Young Children
-[] [Sangere 4] Pick between 0 and 20 Children.
[] [Sangere 4] Write-in.
Cycle 19 Part 2 Perspective?
[] [Cycle] Gwarlon
[] [Cycle] Seryn
***
If you wish to not make peace with Sangere, reject all of the others and attack Sangere in Cycle 20 as Seryn.
