Turn 2: Holding Steady
1621 AGF, Reign of Ydrys the 170 King of All Ymaryn
[X] Plan Rebuilding forces
-[X] Recognize the land of the Tin Tribes as an integral part of Greenshore.
-[X] Disperse, order the Gentry to fight a guerrilla war
-[X] Hire Mercenaries
During the first month of 1621 AGF, Ydrys acted in a way that would've been unthinkable to the Last King: he ordered the People's merchants to begin spreading word that the People were looking to hire. It took weeks to organize and then weeks further for the message to be dispersed across the Syffron and Monsoon seas, but it was out and the world could react.
Results were not promising at first. The People were seeking anyone that could fight, but they wanted an army. There were countless fighting-men to be found throughout the world, but entire armies needed to fight a war? Those were uncommon. Most of the ones that already existed owed allegiance to existing crowns or local power brokers; they were not free agents.
It took six months before their bad luck broke in a big way. The first army to arrive were from the west, survivors from the lands of the last King of Klett, a region that had apparently been conquered a few years before by the Sorkan-Lenka people in a lightning fast campaign. Their nominal allies proved their loyalty threadbare by fighting to restore the Kingdom of Klett as a puppet state to be ruled by one of their own relatives. Finding themselves without a master or a home to return to, the kingdom's former soldiers had packed themselves and their families up and started to wander. Without anywhere to go, they had sold their swords as the Brotherhood of Mark. The years and cut-throat business had not been kind to them so the People's offer was received with immense skepticism. The Ymaryn wanted mercenaries? The people who cannot grow angry and never fight in war? Aren't they a myth? Still, silver-in-hand was enough to convince them to take a risk on a myth
Several weeks after that, reports came from Txolla that several clans of mercenary-soldiers were arriving from the great river plains east of the Thunder Mountains. Calling themselves the Ujjafa, they were a loosely affiliated tribe of mercenary-soldiers consisting of a number of clans tied together by interlocking marriages. Apparently, their land of origin was beset by something that all soldiers fear: peace. The Great Spirit had used them to conquer most of their homeland, unifying the once fractious princes into one realm with one purpose. After that, however, there were no more wars to fight and the Ujjaya had rapidly found themselves redundant. Instead of a hundred princes with a hundred armies, there was now only one without need for any of the others. Disdaining any other trade besides the clash of steel, only a tiny minority of the clans had managed to find roles as peacekeepers and enforcers within the new regime. For the rest, they had been forced into near destitution and if they had not heard the call of the Ymaryn would likely have ended up disintegrating on the winds of history.
As the year passed and word continued to get out, more mercenaries in loosely-affiliated bands poured into the Core, drawn mainly from the Syffron Sea by the promise of endless Ymaryn silver. For Ydrys, it had taken time, but he finally began to understand what Prydyer meant when he talked about the prices of the People being different from those around the world. On average, each mercenary demanded six bwyll per week, with mounted warriors earning double that. They seemed thrilled with the wage, especially since it was paid consistently without fail and their food and other supplies would be provided by the Crown.
To someone living in the Core, those wages wouldn't even be enough to provide your daily bread. It was true that the mercenaries didn't have to worry about food or housing, but to sell your life for so little?
On the other hand, when the mercenaries discovered that quality Ymaryn plate armour was available for a mere four gylders — slightly less than four month's wages — and the Crown was willing to spot the purchase against their future pay, they had started demanding it en masse, nearly every man. Followed shortly behind that were demands for swords: 1 gylder each. Where once the mercenaries were armoured in cheap iron and leather, they now shimmered in the sun bearing weapons of highest quality, swaggering as if they were ten feet tall.
Ydrys personally didn't see the appeal of swords; they were virtually useless as weapons compared to polearms or warhammers, but foreigners always seemed obsessed with them. What use was a weapon that was going to chip or shatter as soon as it struck good steel?
What truly had shocked him was the seeming reluctance the foreigners had in purchasing a quality crossbow. 3 gylders was slightly steep as far as price went, but as a weapon, it was far more useful on the field of battle. The body was made of hollowed steel affixed to a solid steel bow. The entire contraption was powered by an integrated winch-and-pulley system that served to fire a single cast lead bullet. It wouldn't penetrate good Ymaryn armour (virtually nothing did), but it transferred energy so effectively that it could put a man down as if he'd been kicked by a horse.
The crossbow comprised the peak of Ymaryn military engineering and weaponsmithing. And the foreign mercenaries preferred beating each other with sharpened metal sticks.
Regardless, the Guilds Factoria were more than able to fulfil the demand of the mercenaries now that iron, tin and gold were once again flowing from Greenshore. The prices were noticeably higher than the records said they should be and the quantity less abundant, but not so much it was clear Celik was gouging the People. It was clear that the Great Khan's brutal repression of the Tin Tribes had damaged them, just as it did the People.
It truthfully cost nearly nothing to get the Celik to reopen to the People. Just legitimizing the Great Khan's conquest of the Tin Tribes. Some deep, dark part of Ydrys burned at that. He, like all Ymaryn, closely nurtured a deep seated rage against the steppes; to give the Khan who'd taken so much from them anything was . . . painful. But what was the alternative? As much as Haul had glossed over it, the People needed the Guilds. Without their production, how would the Ymaryn create the tools needed to rebuild farms and cities? They might have been able to persist for years, slowly recycling the millions of arms and armour produced to fight the Khan, but they would've run out. Not today, not next year, but soon enough.
Regardless of how or legality, the land was now in Greenshore's hands and like all lands under the Ymaryn, it would never leave. The first Commandment of the Gods was to cultivate the land, doing your best to build on and enhance what was there. It was a personal duty, charged to each Ymaryn and solemnly reaffirmed a dozen times throughout life. To give land away and forsake its cultivation was unthinkable. To give the lands back to the Tin Tribes would mean giving it back to slavers. "There art naught a more loathsome mote in mine eye than the continence and conduct of the slaver." Another of the People's most basic truths: a quote from The Book of Beginnings, Chapter 4:12 and the highest admonishment ever given by the Ymaryn gods. The unpopularity of forsaking land under the People's cultivation to give it back to slavers would be incalculable. To actually do so would've likely meant slaughtering all of the Ymaryn settlers down to the last suckling babe and when Greenshore rose in the settlers' defence, them too. It would be a war of extinction, worse than what the Great Khan had inflicted.
At least this way, if pushed, Ydrys could always blame Celik and the People's temporary weakness for the naked conquest and still avoid that dark future.
Thankfully not all conquests went as well. In Txolla, the Highlanders had finally started to be pushed back. The Gentry had served as an excellent tarpit, pulling them down into the dirt until the foreign mercenaries arrived as a hammer blow, scattering them. The Highlanders had picked their tactics with care; they knew the People were weak. The north had mostly burned to the ground under the Khan's wrath and if they could manage the same to the south, the Kingdom would starve and collapse. It was a vicious way of thinking, but effective and minimized the Highlander's central weakness: lack of warriors. The Highlanders knew that there wasn't even the faintest possibility that they would be able to defeat the People in open combat so they must not fight fairly.
As best as Ydrys could guess, the Highlanders numbered perhaps one million people in total based on the area known to be under their control as well as their (poor) farming ability. During the Great Khan's war, nearly eight million Ymaryn served under arms at various points in the campaign. Even now, if they could repair the Census, Ydrys was confident the People could field an army of over a million men. The Highlanders were fighting a colossus and the only reason they were even a vague threat was because the colossus was tired and off balance.
Regardless, the changing tides of war had produced something that could be particularly valuable: prisoners. Apparently both the Brotherhood of Mark as well as the Ujjafa had extensive experience taking and managing prisoners. The former because of the chivalric traditions of their homeland: captives could be ransomed while corpses were worthless. The latter had been forced to hone non-lethal techniques before being turned away by the Great Spirit as they were stained in too much blood.
Despite the best efforts of the Highlanders, of the thousands encountered in battle and defeated, hundreds had ended up in captivity. At least at first. Dozens died mere hours later, desperately taking their own lives the instant it was possible. Some chewed off their own tongues; others caved in their own skulls, slamming them against the ground; others still simply refused to eat or drink and wasted away after weeks. Prisoners had to be watched at all times and frequently restrained just to prevent them from being a danger to themselves. Feeding them was rapidly becoming an issue, both because many of the Highlanders already seemed partially starved, but also because they would refuse everything offered to them.
It unnerved the mercenaries, and it unnerved the People as well. What could drive a man to such suicidal insanity?
It was like the war, Ydrys thought. People crawling on broken fingernails just to slay one more of the enemy.
Either way, the situation had shifted, moving against the Highlanders, but it would take another year or two before Ydrys felt comfortable calling the situation resolved.
There were other things that should have his attention.
"We've a critical 'versight," Rhys said one evening. "The 'Ighlanders. We sh'ulda seen it."
"How were we supposed to know, expect, or even consider this?" Ianto asked. "The Highlanders have remained in their mountain holds for centuries."
"The Highlanders are the Bearfolk," Prydyer said in reference to the Book of Yenna. "Ev'ry time we turn our backs, they're there to sink a knife in it."
"No," Rhys said. "The 'Ighlanders are only . . . mostly like that."
"Have you ever spoken to one, read their writings, or even seen one?" Ianto asked. "The last time we sent an envoy was in 1226 AGF and they beheaded the entire party and staked their tortured bodies out in the sun to rot. The last exile from them died in 1478 AGF and her last confirmed descendant died in 1537 AGF. It's been two hundred years — at least — since the Highlanders did anything of note. Unless you are admitting to diplomatic contact off the records?"
His response was silence.
"My King," Rhys said. "G've me leave to speak with the pr'sners. It'll take time, but this opportunity to understand the Highlanders'll never come again."
"Or, you could do your job," Haul sneered. "Diplomacy is most often the prerogative of the Heir." Both because they were the ones who'd have to live with the results once they ascended to the throne, but also it was less harmful if they were captured or killed by whoever they were negotiating with. Or, be replaced if their agreement was too onerous to complete and required repudiation. "What will the Highlanders tell us? That they hate us and want nothing to do with us!? They've been violent isolationists for so long it is literally mentioned in the earliest Holy Books from before the God Fist! You think you're going to change a fifteen centuries worth of history?"
"Haul," Ydrys said. It was clear that the artisan was angry and resentful and it had been coming out more often in the last year. He'd been pressed into negotiations with Celik and the shame of negotiating with nomads had clung to him most heavily. He was also a mere artisan: expendable compared to the Heir. To him, it must have seemed as if he was set up to fail. An expendable artisan negotiating an internally damaging deal. He could easily be set aside so as to clear the air of scandal in the King's court.
How many people had Ydrys seen or known of being destroyed in such a way? He'd lost count.
"Where will you focus your efforts next year?"
The man's jaw tightened, but he relaxed, eyes falling to the floor. "With iron and tin, the most critical shortages for the guilds have been addressed. However, for full capacity we'll need copper, zinc, lead, female antimony, and mercury. The first three can most easily be found in the Thunder Mountains, the last two in Hyatha. The problem is that negotiating with either will be harder than dealing with Greenshore's Khan."
"The Thunder Mountains've expelled the officials from the Last King's government and the people there loudly proclaim their independence. The only reason they haven't'ed used military force against 's is 'cause they've none," Rhys said. "Only Western Wall suff'rd more than the Mountains."
"And as for Hyatha, they need female antimony and mercury as much as we do." Haul sighed. "They won't sell it to us as raw materials when they can craft it and sell more expensive finished goods."
"Now that we've gold, tin, and iron, could we negotiate with Gylyes? He will be attending his daughter's marriage next year."
"No," Rhys said immediately. "He'd take it badly, like'e tryin' to exploit them or hold hostages."
"If I were a metallurgist, I wouldn't trade for iron and tin; Hyatha has more than enough of both. Gold is basically worthless," Haul said. "Mercury is rare, beautiful in its own right, and highly useful in the extraction of silver from lead. Female antimony forms the most basic building block of most of our heat proof material."
In other words, not an option. That likely meant either sending Haul to Thunder Mountain to negotiate with people loudly proclaiming they wanted nothing to do with the Core, trying to find sources locally, or find an alternative application. Ydrys could ask the man to work on organizing tools and work gangs to the interior, but the actual effect that would have would be minimal. It would basically be telling the Guilds to do what they're already doing, but harder. Even then, the limit to rebuilding the Kingdom's interior wasn't a question of material but organized labour. Finding someone who knew how to build a house, shore up a hill farm, manage soil quality, or repave a road was much harder in the mass of millions displaced internally than finding the resources to do it. It wasn't even possible to tap the Guilds to assist, either. Not directly. They depended on enormous Factoria, each of which was a marvel of water-powered machinery. Dispersing Guild workers into the countryside would be less effective than leaving them where they were.
The Guild needed a project, something new to work towards, but Ydrys hadn't the faintest idea of what was needed. Haul's telescopes could be used in the interim, but they were a fad. They needed something transformative.
"Prydyer? Ianto?"
"My King," Prydyer started, "My pre'rence'd be to assess our internal markets t' determine what goods and 'ow much is flowing. As'd been . . . pointed out t' the council, exploring external markets may find hostile audiences. 'Side from that, the biggest things holding us back from more's t' state o' the watches and the market towns."
That was true. Right now, as it sat, goods could barely be shipped two dozen miles before encountering transportation difficulties. Ydrys could see an easy synergy between himself having towns rebuilt while Prydyer worked over their internal markets. Determining which goods were produced by the people and where they were needed. All Ymaryn knew the basics, but the details were easy to get lost in.
On the other hand, the neighbourhood watches essentially served as the interface between the common people and the Crown. While they had at one point in time been a mere peacekeeping service, they had quickly evolved a role as contacts and supporters for the common people who had the antipathy of a local guild or patrician. They served as the ultimate check on abuse from local powers and were the fundamental unifying organ of the Crown as a bureaucracy. Without them, the Crown was effectively blind to everything afflicting the peasants. Instead, they had to rely entirely on entrenched local patricians and guild masters with no way to keep them honest.
If it hadn't been for his efforts last year, Ydrys couldn't even have begun to guess how blind.
"My King," Ianto intoned. "I wish to continue working on the Catalogue for the Great Khan's war. While it is a substantially more massive undertaking than I initially expected, it has proven fruitful already. After this year, I should be better able to estimate how much still remains. As always, I am at your command."
"Before we adjourn," Prydyer started, "Have you given thought to . . . expanding the council?"
"A general would be of use," Ianto said. "I've spoken with several over the last year, trying to assess the Khan's War. They are . . . primed to assess threats."
"If you're looking to work metal, you get a smith," Haul said. "And I suspect our future will hold a lot more smiting."
Looking over at Rhys, the golden man just nodded. "It'd'e a good idea."
You have (1) Authority and (2) Influence
Ydrys should focus on (Up to 2):
[ ] Ydrys: Look for a Martial Advisor
[ ] Ydrys: Rebuilding Market Towns
[ ] Ydrys: Repairing Salterns
[ ] Ydrys: Reseeding Farms
[ ] Ydrys: Constructing City Levy (Valleyhome)
[ ] Ydrys: Preparing Public Health
[ ] Ydrys: Nurturing Neighbourhood Watches
[ ] Ydrys: Serial Killer Taskforce
[ ] Ydrys: Recreate the Census
Rhys should focus on (1):
[ ] Rhys: Interrogate Highlander Prisoners
[ ] Rhys: Investigate a Councilor
-[ ] (Haul/Ianto/Prydyer)
[ ] Rhys: Wide web across the Ymaryn sphere
[ ] Rhys: Focused Contacts
-[ ] (Western Wall/Greenshore/Hyatha/Forhuch/Txolla)
[ ] Rhys: Monsoon Sea situation
[ ] Rhys: Syffryn Sea situation
[ ] Rhys: Great Plains situation
Haul should focus on (1):
[ ] Haul: Contact Thunder Mountain
[ ] Haul: Perfecting Telescopes
[ ] Haul: Applying Current Telescopes:
-[ ] (Army/Navy/Sale/Communications)
[ ] Haul: Survey the Core for resources
Prydyer should focus on (1):
[ ] Prydyer: Reseeding Farms
[ ] Prydyer: Assessing internal markets
[ ] Prydyer: Evaluating foreign markets
[ ] Prydyer: Move People to Txolla
[ ] Prydyer: Move Txollan specialists to the Core
[ ] Prydyer: Build Loyalist sentiment in Txolla
Ianto should focus on (1):
[ ] Ianto: Cataloging the Great Khan's War (Part 2)
[ ] Ianto: Investigating the Great Khan's magic
[ ] Ianto: Curate the Cults
[ ] Ianto: Delve into the Royal Archives
[ ] Ianto: Crack Open a Holy Archive
-[ ] (Blackbird/Carrion Eater/Spiritbonded)
