Feudal Quest

[fitzgerald]

I'd title the Dardai as Arch Rivals rather than as arch enemies.

 

[Walkir]

Was thinking of the French when labeling that (without looking up our relationship with them), so there's that. But that change would be minor enough anyway.

 

[fitzgerald]

Thanks for the map though.

Minor quibles.

-> Different color for Baron Rogatica rather than Dardias red
-> Fathers Barony instead of Boris inheritance

Also any comments on my conversation topics?

 

[Walkir]

Also any comments on my conversation topics?

Click to shrink...

Too tired for that right now.
I notice though that Boris+Zarana and Dominic+Ezti would make a lot more sense from a continuous territory point of view... Which would also make Dominic+Chesna look good, but that's a no go from different angles unless she becomes mistress/3rd wife.

 

[Arkeus]

The forum shrunk the picture, which is okay with me. You can enlarge it by clicking on it.

Corzu and Korovalo are the same color due to a) family connections and b) being far enough from each other that I can reuse the color (and red is just enemy, so I guess I should Timis a well.
The rest... yeah, missed it.

Click to shrink...

Much better, but you still seem to be using the thumbnail map. If you are having trouble seeing the borders and accessing the original format on ShaperV's site, Here is a re-upload (click on the image to zoom it).

Too tired for that right now.
I notice though that Boris+Zarana and Dominic+Ezti would make a lot more sense from a continuous territory point of view... Which would also make Dominic+Chesna look good, but that's a no go from different angles unless she becomes mistress/3rd wife.

Click to shrink...

Silly you, we don't get Balzar if we marry Zarana- and in that case, it actually makes more sense territory-wise to marry Zarana as if Rogatica dies mysteriously Balzar can invide from the south while we invade from the north .

Also, Balzar doesn't touch Kolarovo, and Balzar doesn't include Rupea. Likewise, Verzi is actually quite small, not the humonguous thing you have there.

 

[Walkir]

Okay, that giant map might help, didn't notice the third zoom in...

Well, it's too late for further edits today, maybe I can do so tomorrow morning. Sunday the latest.

 

[ShaperV]

Uploaded a map with better faction boundaries on it Here

How long would it take Kat to survey Corzu and map its resources (salt, clay, coal, tin, copper etc), aquafers, and places with fertile lands.

Click to shrink...

Corzu is pretty small, so that would only take her one action.

What high value crops can we grow? Looking at grapes for wine.

Click to shrink...

Wine is possible, but it usually takes years to develop a decent vintage. Grain is a decent export (there are large cities downriver that always need to buy food), but low-value for its bulk. Brewing beer might be a viable trade option.

Maybe i guess there is a significant difference between having a spymistress and a female spy (possibly the spies Zarana has access to are all male), maybe the Barzal family is unique, or maybe Zarana herself was able to create her own branch of female spies thanks to her knowledge of the trade from the family and her alchemy. Still, not sure what to think of it.

Or i possibly am misreading that quote.

@ShaperV:
1°)The previous quote is still true right?

Click to shrink...

Most likely she's referring to male spies. Although Dominic is beginning to see how female spies might work to a limited extent - Zarana and her crew are probably collecting all sorts of interesting info in Corzu right now, and you could imagine her pulling the same maneuver on anyone who's willing to invite her to visit.

2) Alchemy is a sorcery unique trait that also run on Soul?

Click to shrink...

You're not sure if it's an innate talent like sorcery, or just a body of knowledge like wizardry. Zarana is quite careful not to give away too many details on that.

 

[Arkeus]

Uploaded a map with better faction boundaries on it Here

Click to shrink...

That map has the Barony of Medias as belonging to Dardais as well as Arany (which i thought was only allied with them?) and not Borsa or guran (which is just hostile), however the first page has:

Dardai - The chief rivals of the Petrans. They control the Dutchy of Dardai in the SW part of the kingdom, as well as the Baronies of Borsa and Guran and assorted minor fiefs.

Click to shrink...

Which is correct?

Edit: Also, why are Kun and Crvenka Hostile? Just because they are allied with Dardais, or something else?

 

[ShaperV]

That map has the Barony of Medias as belonging to Dardais as well as Arany (which i thought was only allied with them?) and not Borsa or guran (which is just hostile), however the first page has:
Which is correct?

Edit: Also, why are Kun and Crvenka Hostile? Just because they are allied with Dardais, or something else?

Click to shrink...

That's what I get for expanding on the background material without re-checking what's already posted. Updated the lore entry, corrected map here.

Kun, Crvenka, Timis and Rogatica form a group of conservative, mostly rural territories that are fairly intolerant and tend to see your family as a bunch of corrupt, decadent city folk. While they aren't always allied they do have a lot of old family ties with each other, and Rogatica and Crvenka both have recent grievances against the Petrans as a result of wars with Pischia and Supola. Mind you, they don't especially like Dardai either.

Arany and Medias currently have strong alliances with Dardai. Guran is traditionally anti-Petran but not necessarily pro-Dardai. Supola currently has a marriage alliance with Petran through your older sister.

 

[staplesdex2]

Maybe next action turn we could include Rogatica's assassination. He is a direct threat at the borders and has the army to crush our fief.

 

[Walkir]

Uploaded a map with better faction boundaries on it Here

Click to shrink...

Well, that saved me work and is correct by default - thanks, Shaper! Still... it's a dead link for me. And did you Adda a Zarana marker on her fief in this version? Would be helpful later.

Most likely she's referring to male spies. Although Dominic is beginning to see how female spies might work to a limited extent - Zarana and her crew are probably collecting all sorts of interesting info in Corzu right now, and you could imagine her pulling the same maneuver on anyone who's willing to invite her to visit.

Click to shrink...

Pretty sure the concept of pillow talk didn't elude him, so the validity of female spies as a concept shouldn't be really new to him... I guess he just never thought about it.

[X] Discuss Egypts new crusade and the oppurtunities it brings
-> Hold the fact that you are taking the more exotic refguees private.

Apart from being a major developement it gives both parties a fairly neutral point of discussion

[X] What one project to improve Corzu Keep {after all the repairs} would she suggest?

Aka if we commit what would make our backwoods keep a better home to live in

Click to shrink...

I can get behind that - I don't see any obvious problems with it. Except the possibility of her asking why we stay at home.
But saying our people need us and we have to improve Corzu first while sending troublemakers to die should be a good answer, so that isn't a big concern.

 

[BFldyq]

Maybe next action turn we could include Rogatica's assassination. He is a direct threat at the borders and has the army to crush our fief.

Click to shrink...

If possible, Timis and his son as well. Cause the region to experience some turmoil, weakening possible enemies. And if we can incriminated one of their neighbours instead, all the better.

 

[fitzgerald]

Thats an awful time to do it.

One we wont have troops in place to sieze nice chunks of his land

Two neither will Pavel or Ezti will be able to invade either

Three is that too many assasinations at the same time is going to raise alarms.

Four our little sister is of age to marry, Baron Rogatica might end being our brother in lawp

 

[Walkir]

Yeah, at least wait until our military deserves the name, all but 15 (we didn't get a full 20-man set?) of our men only have the clothes on their backs and their weapons. That means we'd lose so many men to marching in bad (or without) shoes, not having a tent to safely sleep in or other equipment-related reasons that we might not have much of a fighting force when it comes to exchanging the first blows.

 

[Arkeus]

Yeah, we need a bit more troops to fully take advantage of Rogatica's death if we want to do a traditional small-scale invasion.

There is, however, another way that might be worth thinking about: If winters are as bad in Rogatica's territories as in our own, we could have him killed just a month or so before the snow blocks all travel, and then take advantage of the fact that we can use fire magic to move around with 2 company of troops (one thanks to ourself, one thanks to Kat).

In that case, we would have the only mobile troops worth speaking of, and we could pretty much secure a nice chunk of Rogatica's territory. We would still need to have him dead a month or so beforehand in order to create plausible deniability, and we may need to train our fire magic a little bit to ensure we can move our troops fully without problems, but it may be doable.

Anyway, as for Zarana, i am more and more convinced that i want Dominic to marry her, as long as she is not just pretending because she wants to betray us to the Dardais or some such.

 

[Seventeen]

That's a good plan, especially because it gives me a nice reason to suggest training Fire instead of "Burning things is fun!"

 

[Walkir]

@ShaperV: how easy would it be to learn the refugees' language before they arrive? They obviously have to learn Bojerian, but it can't hurt if we keep that skill alive and we plus the lower government can talk to them while they settle down here.

Edit: both for finding teachers and learning language skills& how they're mapped to fluency levels.

 

[Emdemian]

Can we please not talk about assassinations. That would be extremely hard and could easily cause a BIG backlash. Unless ShaperV contradicts me I'm taking the view that nobility do not kill each other on a whim. In medieval times high nobility getting killed (unnaturally) was not a common event and was often viewed in surprise. I don't think that would change too much with a magical apocalypse. Even in war (against presumably non-magical enemies) the objective was to capture enemy nobles not kill them (though accidents happen...) and sources roundly criticise purposefully killing upper nobility. Plotting to kill someone was extremely rare and almost universally condemned. I have doubts our character could even think of killing potential rivals (i.e. other landed nobility) at this stage of his life in a non-combat situation.

Now using intrigue to place Rogatica in dangerous situations could be possible but would be risky and might be morally dubious for the mc. There much more uses for intrigue than just killing.

Edit: the only other scenario I could think of killing mid to high ranking nobles would be after a rebellion. And even that has conflicting sources. Wholesale slaughter of rebelling nobles was unheard off, usually iirc a few leaders would be executed and the rest moderately punished. But sometimes even that was condemned, in some countries the liegelord settled rebellions with just stripping lands and titles. That was considered punishment enough in some countries.

Of course its ShaperV's world so its his decision as to what the rules are in all the above respescts.

 

[Seventeen]

I'd say that's a poor assumption to make without evidence. Given that the Christian churches, the source of the majority of the ethics and philosophy of Middle Ages Europe never formed*, it's entirely possible that, much like Rome in the Late Republic, assassination is a widely used tool of office. It really could be anything from that to the anti-tyrannical and religious assassinations of late Medieval and Renaissance Europe, to Viking Age Iceland where if you killed someone without telling people you were an outlaw and anyone could kill you freely. It could be like pre-Meiji Japan, where killers might write a zankanjou detailing why their victim deserved to die. It could be, if it were extraordinarily lenient, like modern Western countries where making plans to kill someone is a crime that can put you in jail for life. There's really a whole range of historical examples of killings and assassinations, and the legal consequences to them, that you're ignoring in favour of a reasoning that doesn't necessarily hold here.

*This was probably due to the early fall of the Roman Empire in Feudal Quest's world, by the way. Without it, there was no Constantine I (also Constantine the Great, or Saint Constantine) and thus Christianity was still widely persecuted. No Constantine I also means no Council of Nicaea, and thus Christianity would remain a diverse range of small, secret-ish groups all with varying opinions on matters Christ-related rather than the relatively homogeneous Chaldedonian and Oriental Orthodox Churches of the first millenium.

 

[ShaperV]

Well, that saved me work and is correct by default - thanks, Shaper! Still... it's a dead link for me. And did you Adda a Zarana marker on her fief in this version? Would be helpful later.

Click to shrink...

I had to replace it with the corrected version, which is also in the Lore post now.

I didn't put Zarana's name on her home fief because she isn't going to inherit it.

Can we please not talk about assassinations. That would be extremely hard and could easily cause a BIG backlash. Unless ShaperV contradicts me I'm taking the view that nobility do not kill each other on a whim. In medieval times high nobility getting killed (unnaturally) was not a common event and was often viewed in surprise.

Click to shrink...

The nobility would certainly like things to work this way, but reality tends not to cooperate. If you bring it up in public most nobles will piously claim that they'd never stoop to assassination or regicide, and they'd certainly never settle a succession dispute by killing women and children.

In reality it depends on the nature of the conflict. If two lords who owe fealty to the same liege get into a fight they'll keep things civilized so their lord doesn't feel he needs to intervene. Barons frequently fight limited border wars that neither side really wants to escalate into a full-blown existential conflict, and during times when there's a strong king on the throne everyone tries to avoid atrocities because they don't want to attract royal displeasure.

But right now Borjeria's king is so senile he wouldn't notice anything short of an assault on his palace, and his heir is a child. So the fighting is getting more and more vicious as everyone with an old dispute decides this is a good time to settle it, and the more ruthless nobles slowly realize that they can get away with stuff like murdering a rival and forcibly marrying his daughter. If a civil war breaks out over the succession that will be even worse - that's exactly the sort of situation where the gloves come off, and whole families can get wiped out.

As for assassination in particular, it has historically been rare and universally condemned in Borjeria. But that's partly because there haven't been any competent assassins available for hire until this new group appeared. If these new guys turn out to be reliable they could end up with a lot of business, especially once the fighting starts.

@ShaperV: how easy would it be to learn the refugees' language before they arrive? They obviously have to learn Bojerian, but it can't hurt if we keep that skill alive and we plus the lower government can talk to them while they settle down here.

Edit: both for finding teachers and learning language skills& how they're mapped to fluency levels.

Click to shrink...

I'm going to assume you arranged with the dwarves to hire an Egyptian translator.

Dominic will need several months of either intensive study or full immersion to pick up a new language, and the same will be true of most named NPCs. Kat already speaks eight languages fluently, and can probably learn another one in her sleep.

The refugees will be handled realistically. A few exceptional individuals will master Borjerian, but most of the adults will never really get the hang of it. Naturally, the children will all grow up speaking Borjerian as long as they get regular exposure to it.


Edit: I've also updated the Corzu Keep floorplans to show what all the rooms are being used for. You're pretty much at maximum capacity now.

 

[Thomasfoolery]

Hmm, looking at the updated map we're in a rather weaker position than I was thinking, definitely makes trying to get Chesna into a marriage alliance with the Czene more important. Doing something to neutralize the northern baronies before things devolve into civil war looks pretty necessary as well.

ShaperV, since you mentioned that all the northerner's are pretty heavily related through old ties can we take that to mean that they are the ones that would begin feuding over inheritance if Rogatica was killed?

 

[BFldyq]

Well, since this seems like the time to ask: roughly how likely, and how difficulty would it be, for Dominic to end up the king of Borjeria?

 

[staplesdex2]

For assassination, how long could we have Dominic train up to be this guy?

And also if this weapon is viable enough to be built here?

Along with the blueprints?

 

[Adyen]

Well, since this seems like the time to ask: roughly how likely, and how difficulty would it be, for Dominic to end up the king of Borjeria?

Click to shrink...

Not bloody likely, since after the king's death his kid will have to die as well, and THAT is going to be hard to pull off if we don't control the regency. Even then, it's very likely our family will actually look down on it as 1) it means killing the old king's son, and 2) we're not even a major power in the kingdom - who's going to support us?

So if we want to become King, there's a few things we HAVE to do: we first have to become heir apparent for all of our family's holdings. We need to gain enough support (or outright conquer) all of our rivals. We need to gain enough fame that the common people and most minor nobles will be willing to accept us if we forced the young king off the throne.

I also get the feeling that Ezti will not support us in this kind of action, so picking the right person to marry will also be important.

Btw, I think marrying Zarana is still the best choice - if there's a strong alliance between us, Kiscun, and Balzan, there's nothing Rogatica can do since fighting any one of us will get him surrounded and gobbled up.

 

[fitzgerald]

Can we stop with the assination talk.

This isn't Assasins Creed the Quest.

Besides which Dominic wont be needing to use assisans, Dominc will be going "Say hello to my Squad of fire elementals. Oh amd I find your lack of faith disturbing"

 

[staplesdex2]

Fine. We could either train up force or fire sorcery next action turn. Is that acceptable? I'd rather have Dominic train the former up to five so he could choke a target several hundred miles away.

 

[Seventeen]

Of course Dominic would never use assassins*, how dastardly! What's that you say, Barons Rogatica and Timis are dead, as are their heirs, leaving their lands unclaimed and unprotected? Oh, how... unfortunate. We simply must take control of their holdings. For the good of the peasantry, you see.



*not to mention the word probably shouldn't have come to European languages yet

 

[Thomasfoolery]

Can we stop with the assination talk.

This isn't Assasins Creed the Quest.

Besides which Dominic wont be needing to use assisans, Dominc will be going "Say hello to my Squad of fire elementals. Oh amd I find your lack of faith disturbing"

Click to shrink...

I agree with you in regards to the pictures posted, but trying to imply assassination shouldn't be a viable tactic for us to use is pretty foolish in my view. Also your proposed alternative is just... not exactly useful for solving problems we'd want assassins for.

 

[Emdemian]

snip

Click to shrink...

My bad, I stand corrected.

I had completely forgotten there was a new group of assassins in the kingdom that are very successful in the recent update. And your reasoning makes perfect sense. Sorry if I sounded harsh to anyone, this sudden talk of assassination came out completely at random for me and I posted out of instinct. I quite like this quest even if I don't post much.

Ironically, in my previous post the inner history buff clashed with the perpetually scheming inner CK2 player.

So what is our current plan of action again?

 

[fitzgerald]

Oh true.

Its a tool that can be useful, but it should not the main tool used to advance Dominics cause.