Okay, so the diplomatic front worked out better than I was expecting! I don't know what sort of boost that gave us exactly since the post that keeps track of those relationships isn't quite updated yet, but given that the southern tribes went and actually lined up behind us rather than one of their own I think that our policy of strategically setting people on fire ended up paying off. I'd still like to spend a diplomatic option on solidifying our relations with the northern nomads yet more, though... we should try to minimize as much as possible the potentially dangerous fronts that face us. The west is fine for now, assuming no rebellions take off and get too popular... the southland is in turmoil, but they've projected north before and they'll do it again when the son consolidates his reign. We can only assume that the east is hostile due to banning their religion, not to mention that we officially claim territory way beyond the Kurlaks that they likely actually occupy. And on the north, we have restive nomads hoping to unite the steppes. Out of all these, the north has the most hope because we've already claimed the allegiance of about half the tribes and intimidate the rest... if we can make that a solid working relationship and convince Brandt to unite with us, we not only secure the entire northern front (and likely extend it to the oceans, too) but also gain powerful, experienced warriors well-suited to our native terrain to be used against the others. So I think it's in our best interests to charm the nomads a bit more, and maybe figure out a bit more of his traits? A marriage would be a fantastic way to unite the steppes with our realm, and the guy does seem a bit brave to stand his ground when we so intimidated him what with the setting his people on fire and all.
In the martial sense, I'd just keep raising some Horse Archer goodness for now and probably jump on any other enticing offer that pops up if there's something special. I'd like to have at least two of them to each man on the Flame Guard.
For stewardship I want to fortify our land a bit more to give our relatively squishy legions some proper defenses to work with, and also populate the frontier regions so that we have more advance warning of when people are moving against us as well as better supply bases near to our borders. I think it'll be very important to take the Off the Beaten Path option... before we extend the road, we ought to do some surveying to see if there's anything nice that we want to extend it to, right? We don't want to build a superhighway in the desert and miss oases and the like with it, it'll be inefficient and expensive to connect later not to mention the added difficulty to constructing it in the first place. Fortifying the capital is also good, I just hope that we don't mess it up to the point that that's a great investment... there's more potential to expanding south and east, though less immediate military benefit. I think we can afford to bring our focus to the depopulated south and eastern regions for the moment, though... the southland is still a mess and we have some mountain fortifications in the east, so there's some time to spare still.
Our intrigue continues to be our weak link, but maybe we should send our person out east? Just to check and see what's in that realm. Or we could double-down and search for the sister's murderer, I don't particularly care. Our intrigue choices seem to just give us more trouble than they're worth, in all honesty.
Really unfortunate with the faith options, I'd hoped that we wouldn't be spreading in this sort of way. We ought to take any choice we can that provides more structure to it, especially since I imagine whatever's in that book is going to start spreading eventually and we don't want people to be swayed by it. I guess our uncertainty about the east was at least removed in part, since now they're certainly now hostile to our faith and through it, likely us.
The learning spirit is a nice benefit. It has 30 learning, so if we make that one the boss it might be able to pull off three actions per turn? Incredible stuff. We might want to have it hang around the steward to pick up the languid trait, it's the only one that seems to significantly add to learning and it'd be at most of the way to 40, which would be bananas. All the actual options in the learning section are decent, I don't really care that much about which ones we'd pick out of them but I think that the weapons one would be probably one of the better options along with the mystery metal one. Anything to give us an "edge" over the competition, haha...
For personal actions, definitely looking into marriage is one I'd like to do. Maybe it might give more info on the would-be king? At least, I'd like more info on what the fallout of that may be. Some in our kingdom may be less than enthused with us getting hitched with a viking horselord... but my word,
think of the thighs he'll have! All that horsing around has gotta be good for something.
