Feudal Quest

[Adyen]

I can easily imagine votes being made based on modern sensibilities bringing the thunder down on us.

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This is pretty much a given considering that there was actually an argument about how similar things were in the feudal ages to the industrial age or even modern ages.

I'm actually leaning towards the Hero Route here if we can manage to marry someone trustworthy (Ezti). We know that she's trained to manage a barony, so we can leave the details to her.

The main problem would, of course, be Rogatica. If we just outright marry her, this might start a feud between us, and that might not be good, especially if we're not there to deal with it. We also might want to introduce our brother to her instead, but then we still need someone trustworthy to deal with the situations at home while we're crusading.

That said, crusading would allow us a lot of freedom of movement - as well as provide Dita with backup if we can steer the crusade towards India. If we're extremely successful, we might be able to take a chunk of Northern Africa and pretty much leap off from there and end supplies back home.

Either way...

What tack you want to take with this:
[X] Tell her about your magic and your dealings with the Chosen, and see what she has to say about.
-[X] Note that Nikolai had been given orders to practically torture Dita and you're not sure what to do with him.


[X] Promise that you'll talk with the Duke yourself at a later time and mention that he's found her.

This is actually a threat. If we talk with the Duke first, and Nikolai is corrupt, then he'll sweat over the fact that his incompetence has allowed Dita to escape from him. If Nikolai had been sending reports that he still had her, then this will probably get his ass demoted at the very least.

 

[fitzgerald]

We should not arrange a meeting between Boris and Ezti if we are going to choose the feudal lord route. Ezti is by far the best marriage prospect for Dominic in our current situation. However it could be a good idea if we go for the hero route.

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I'd seriously prefer either Dita or Kat over Ezti

 

[megrisvernin]

[X] Tell her about your magic and your dealings with the Chosen, and see what she has to say about.
-[X] Note that Nikolai had been given orders to practically torture Dita and you're not sure what to do with him.

[X] Promise that you'll talk with the Duke yourself at a later time and mention that h's found her.

 

[Jiven]

[X] Feudal Lord route

[X] Downplay your recent adventuring, and move the conversation on to a safer topic.
[X] Trying to con your way into becoming a co-conspirator in whatever is going on here.

 

[Walkir]

Feudal Lord route for me... Although the harem route could probably be stomached better under the hero route.

Edit:

Katiana Nevyana - age 17 - Cost: 7 SP/turn
• Earth Sorcery 3 [+1/9]

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Shouldn't that be 1/16?

 

[Thomasfoolery]

Hmm, unrelated to the current decision but I was just thinking about Atalaya's stat stealing ritual, then I thought about our flesh magic and the black beast in the woods. With the culmination of my pondering being to wonder if we could develop some sort of flesh magic application to take power from those we kill. Eat his heart, and gain his Courage!

 

[Robotninja]

Hmm, unrelated to the current decision but I was just thinking about Atalaya's stat stealing ritual, then I thought about our flesh magic and the black beast in the woods. With the culmination of my pondering being to wonder if we could develop some sort of flesh magic application to take power from those we kill. Eat his heart, and gain his Courage!

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Almost certainly Dark Magic. Just master Flesh magic, and create something to buff people.

 

[DarkLight140]

We absolutely must get solid information as to the family's stance on Dita, and Gavrilla is likely to have it. Ask her what the story is there, and what the Duke's plan for Dita is. As long as it's not "kill her off", we are much better off working with the family than against it- and attempting to mediate between them and Dita might result in an arrangement acceptable to all parties.

Once we've gotten the basics on Dita as Gavrilla sees it, we need to consider sharing information like:
-In Pischia, Dita was being subjected to repeated spiritual mauling by the priest supposedly evaluating her for taint. Eventually it got so bad that Dita felt she had to leave. We are reasonably sure there is no demonic taint whatsoever on Dita and she's actually got native holy magic. She was just being intentionally kept crippled- not that they succeeded, since she eventually ran off and made it to our keep even in the middle of a blizzard.
-She's convinced that Grandfather has it in for her and will never let her inherit. She would have left the country already, possibly for good, if we hadn't convinced her to stay with us for a while.
-Dita's Inovian powers extend beyond personal prowess. We had a witch with a third circle demon living on our lands when we arrived; after we confirmed what was going on, Dita prayed for Inovia to send someone and a pair of Chosen showed up to help out a matter of days later. Apparently Dita counts as a priestess of their religion and has a certain measure of authority to direct them. Also, supposedly evil creatures can sense her and will make killing her a priority; while we've seen no evidence of this thus far it's only been a few months.
-We've spent a fair bit of time with Dita, and she's impetuous, irresponsible, and perhaps justifiably paranoid about the Duke and everyone working for him. That said, she is not crazy, even in the sort of Inovian way that the Chosen who showed up are. If she gets positive role models she feels she can trust, guidance from someone who can keep her from getting too much of her alien goddess' mindset, and a modicum of support from the family, she could be a very potent- if somewhat unpredictable- asset. In our personal assessment, it'll be playing with fire- but she's family, and she was born with a torch welded to her hand. We have a duty to our blood to deal with it and help her as best we can.

There's a certain amount of risk in this, and Dita did ask us to keep her presence a secret. That said, we knew from the start that it would be impossible to hide her in the long term. It's better to share what we know with someone competent and who probably wishes no ill on her niece, so that we can come to a solid arrangement on our terms. If everything goes completely south, then Dita's got a couple Chosen around to beat our face in and escort her safely to India, giving us a perfect excuse for why we couldn't hand her over to anyone else.


I am uncertain of how openly we can talk about this sort of thing, but if it would be at all appropriate, we should share our speculation as to what would happen if Baron Rogatica would come down with an unfortunate case of death. If Ezti were to agree to marry us but Rogatica were to die, Rogatica wouldn't be turning those five or six neutral baronies against our family anymore and they'd be bickering over his land instead- but we'd still be up a barony. If our family has the resources to make that happen, it could be a near-optimal solution here. If not, oh well; we lose nothing but our aunt's impression that we probably wouldn't kill a man to get ahead.

We do want to end up a baron, preferably officially but in fact if that fails, de facto would be all right. Maybe if the Dita business works out okay but we don't marry into a barony, we can take over Verzi along with whoever we marry while Dita goes off crusading or otherwise doing ridiculous Inovian things. The point is, Corzu is a great starting point but unless we're given the freedom of action and familial support to take fairly drastic measures to improve it, it's a terrible endpoint.


We should definitely aim to acquire as many skilled refugees (and their families) and refugees with interesting magical abilities as we reasonably can. We're exporting food at the moment, inherent magics are more things that we can study with our flesh sorcery, a population with native magic means more abilities to draw on in our servants and soldiers, they'd be more amenable to magical experimentation and alteration than a native population would be, and perhaps more importantly than all that, more people working for us means more money and power. If we marry Ezti we can have her bring in a priest or two to go over them with a fine toothed comb to discover any actual evil magics in them and ensure there are no vampire/demon cults or anything else nasty in between conversions.


I personally find rulership and politics more interesting than running around killing things, for the most part. That means focusing on lands and lordship is my preference- although the occasional (or not so occasional) adventure to keep the experience flowing at a decent rate would be good.

 

[Arkeus]

Snip Awesome stuff.

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Yup, as always some great points all around. having Gavrilla right here means we can get a good idea on what exactly is the family's stance toward Dita. From everything we have been shown about Gavrilla and our familial rapports, it would make sense to show that we are strong enough not to be overly influenced by Dita, but be able to influence her in return.

If the main fear is that she'll end up like her parents, doing things that can't be covered up, well, then we just have to make good enough arguments that as our blood she deserves the chance to be grounded, and we have been mentoring her since she came to us in the middle of a blizzard last winter and are planning to turn her into an asset for the family.

Also, having Nikolai trying to blackmail us about Dita when we have already made arrangements with Gavrilla about her place means that we can in turn turn the vice on him, and maybe even finally prove that he is going against our family: In that case we could take the 'con' option, but also make Gavrilla aware of this. If she is our family's spymaster, she might be very interested in this, as well as our news about Nikolai's shady dealing with those caravans.

So, it seems we are going with the Feudal Lord route. Ok, that seems fine. Even if we do go with that route, that doesn't mean we can't go adventuring for a couple of months at a time.

We are kind of lucky to have access to Dita, who could most probably ask Inovia for any adventure leads in Berjoria whenever we want, after all.

"I almost wonder if would be better to pair her up with your brother. There's no way Rogatica can attack Kolarovo, so it would be hard for him to do anything but sputter indignantly. But I can see you're trying to get ahead here yourself, and I don't want you to think I'm trying to get in your way on that."

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So, looking at the Map it appears that Balzar is just beneath Rogatica.

If we can convince our brother Boris to marry the Balzar girl, this will pretty much means that Rogatica can't do anything if we marry Ezti, as he would be completely surrounded by our allies. Right now Pichia is beneath Timiswhich makes it difficult for them to help us, especially without Pavel, but with a allied Barony just beneath Rogatica, well, things would change.

Of course, Boris possibly won't want to, but Gravilla did mention those were the best match for both Boris and us.

Of course, it's always possible that the Balzar girl proves very interesting and we want to marry her. If we were to marry her, it would still be possible to use their intrigue abilities to pressure Rogatica into not pursuing Ezti- and if we do it well, we could have an allied block of Pischia/Kisnuc next to Corzu, which is not Negligible.

Of course, we might not want to be satisfied with this either- if Balzar's "intrigue" skills are also including assassinations, it's very possible that we could get rid of the baron Rogatica, and then proceed to carve ourself a large chunk from that barony as he has no heir, making much Corzu bigger.

 

[Jiven]

Well, Darklight and Akeus made very strong points. It all depends on Gavrilla right now.

 

[Captain]

I favor the Feudal Lord approach.

[X] Tell her about your magic and your dealings with the Chosen, and see what she has to say about.
[X] Trying to con your way into becoming a co-conspirator in whatever is going on here.

Nikolai's pretty smart and ambitious. Even if he's playing his own game, he's valuable enough to Pavel that we'd do well to play nice and engage in standard maneuvering until we have concrete proof there's more going on than Nikolai jockeying for better social position and personal power.

 

[staplesdex2]

Personally I hope we would get more adventures traveling around lands near our fief just to level up skills, albeit slowly, all the while managing our fief at the same time since we're not going to go to the crusade.

 

[ShaperV]

[X] "Yet you failed to report Dita missing over the winter to the Duke." Counter attack and press Nikolia hard, Dominic has his balls in a vice grip, squeeze hard and get as much information as possible from him

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Dominic knows better than that. Unless Nikolai is a complete moron he's already taken steps to cover his ass, and you have at least as much to lose as he does. Maybe more – as far as you know he's just carrying out your grandfather's instructions, while you're actively interfering with them.

I didn't really think about this until just now but based on some of the prevailing attitude I've seen from the thread thus far I'm actually somewhat concerned about whether we actually have what it takes to stick to the party line if we take the Feudal Lord route. I can easily imagine votes being made based on modern sensibilities bringing the thunder down on us.

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Yes, that is a serious risk.

Hmm, unrelated to the current decision but I was just thinking about Atalaya's stat stealing ritual, then I thought about our flesh magic and the black beast in the woods. With the culmination of my pondering being to wonder if we could develop some sort of flesh magic application to take power from those we kill. Eat his heart, and gain his Courage!

Click to shrink...

Almost certainly Dark Magic. Just master Flesh magic, and create something to buff people.

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Yes, that sounds more like wizardry or necromancy than flesh sorcery. With your magic it would be more natural to simply study a monster and try to duplicate its abilities, although that will probably only work with physical ones.

We absolutely must get solid information as to the family's stance on Dita, and Gavrilla is likely to have it. Ask her what the story is there, and what the Duke's plan for Dita is. As long as it's not "kill her off", we are much better off working with the family than against it- and attempting to mediate between them and Dita might result in an arrangement acceptable to all parties.

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Gavrilla's explanation of the Dita situation is not exactly going to fill you with joy. According to her, Dita's parents were arrested just after they had completed some sort of mystic ritual that created a spiritual bond between Dita and a "demon" – well, technically it was a young rakshasa girl about Dita's age, but to Gavrilla that's more or less the same thing. The family has had experts perform several exorcisms on her an attempt to save her, but the spiritual taint keeps creeping back. It doesn't help that the creature seems to have Dita completely fooled, since she always used to insist that it wasn't evil. But then again, Dita is obviously deeply affected by Inovian madness. Poor girl, she's barely even human.

No one the family has consulted with has ever been able to determine exactly what was done to Dita, but unfortunately it's obvious that she's never going to be trustworthy. The Duke is getting ready to adopt one of his more loyal captains into the family, so that he can marry him to Dita and put him in charge of her fief. After that, well, it would be nice if we could convince her to just enjoy a quiet life of seclusion, but she doesn't seem willing to go along with that. They had hoped that Chesna would be a good influence on her, but that obviously hasn't worked out. At this rate it might be necessary to… well, Gavrilla doesn't like to think about that. Perhaps you can think of some way to reach the girl?

(One minor detail here the less perceptive person might have missed. At one point Gavrilla refers to Verzi as "her" fief – which doesn't make sense, because it clearly implies that Dita could inherit the fief in her own right. Unless her father actually did finish the paperwork to declare her his heir…)

I am uncertain of how openly we can talk about this sort of thing, but if it would be at all appropriate, we should share our speculation as to what would happen if Baron Rogatica would come down with an unfortunate case of death. If Ezti were to agree to marry us but Rogatica were to die, Rogatica wouldn't be turning those five or six neutral baronies against our family anymore and they'd be bickering over his land instead- but we'd still be up a barony. If our family has the resources to make that happen, it could be a near-optimal solution here. If not, oh well; we lose nothing but our aunt's impression that we probably wouldn't kill a man to get ahead.

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This is the sort of thing that is only discussed with family, behind closed doors, when you're sure the servants aren't listening. Which aptly describes your current circumstances.

Gavrilla quite agrees with you that would be convenient if such a thing were to happen. Unfortunately, there really aren't any contractors in Borjeria who can be trusted to arrange such matters. Well, not until recently. There is a new group data in the capital that has begun quietly advertising services of that general nature in the last year or two, but they don't have much more reputation yet and Gavrilla isn't certain how reliable they are.

Mind you, she's pretty sure that the Balzar family has some retainers with skills of that sort. But they don't do work for anyone but their own family, so that won't be an option unless you actually decide to go through with alliance marriage with them.

We should definitely aim to acquire as many skilled refugees (and their families) and refugees with interesting magical abilities as we reasonably can. We're exporting food at the moment, inherent magics are more things that we can study with our flesh sorcery, a population with native magic means more abilities to draw on in our servants and soldiers, they'd be more amenable to magical experimentation and alteration than a native population would be, and perhaps more importantly than all that, more people working for us means more money and power. If we marry Ezti we can have her bring in a priest or two to go over them with a fine toothed comb to discover any actual evil magics in them and ensure there are no vampire/demon cults or anything else nasty in between conversions.

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The dwarves will be quite intrigued with your apparent willingness to take in refugees that other nobles would turn away as being too strange or potentially tainted. They aren't sure how many such people there will be, but given how conservative all the other nobles they've talked to are you can probably expect to end up with the lion's share of them.

However, it would probably be a good idea to give them some hard numbers. They don't know exactly how many people they're going to be trying to place, and you don't want to say "sure I'll take some" and have them show up on your doorstep with 4000 people next spring.

 

[Thomasfoolery]

Well with the situation with Dita, clearly no one is going to end up totally satisfied, but it does seem like a compromise could be possible, it'll obviously be more unfavorable to Dita but she's in an unfavorable spot now anyway so that's just how it is.

Basically the idea would be this, I believe ShaperV mentioned previously it's possible for someone to give up their holdings to someone else but no one ever does it because it's completely self-defeating. But Dita has already resigned herself about the barony and clearly considers Tavi to be the most important priority. Where as the family obviously considers the land itself the most important and Dita a liability that can be knocked off if she makes to much of a nuisance of herself.

So basically since it seems the barony isn't in Limbo after all Dita should have some leverage and could negotiate to sign the lands over to the family. After which they should lose most of their interest in her as long as they don't have to see her again, and considering she's going to be out in the boonies until she leaves for India in a couple of years that doesn't seem to difficult.

Anyway in regards to the refugees even at the bare minimum of 10 silver/head they're quite expensive, but if we're going to be going the Feudal route we should take up to the limit of what we can. so probably 6-900 based on our 10,000 silver in harvest we've got incoming. We could go for a full 1,000 if we're feeling ballsy but even around 700 is already cutting finances pretty tight.

 

[staplesdex2]

Well with the situation with Dita, clearly no one is going to end up totally satisfied, but it does seem like a compromise could be possible, it'll obviously be more unfavorable to Dita but she's in an unfavorable spot now anyway so that's just how it is.

Basically the idea would be this, I believe ShaperV mentioned previously it's possible for someone to give up their holdings to someone else but no one ever does it because it's completely self-defeating. But Dita has already resigned herself about the barony and clearly considers Tavi to be the most important priority. Where as the family obviously considers the land itself the most important and Dita a liability that can be knocked off if she makes to much of a nuisance of herself.

So basically since it seems the barony isn't in Limbo after all Dita should have some leverage and could negotiate to sign the lands over to the family. After which they should lose most of their interest in her as long as they don't have to see her again, and considering she's going to be out in the boonies until she leaves for India in a couple of years that doesn't seem to difficult.

Anyway in regards to the refugees even at the bare minimum of 10 silver/head they're quite expensive, but if we're going to be going the Feudal route we should take up to the limit of what we can. so probably 6-900 based on our 10,000 silver in harvest we've got incoming. We could go for a full 1,000 if we're feeling ballsy but even around 700 is already cutting finances pretty tight.

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In this case we really should develop a closer relationship with Kat as she could provide precious metals to mine and convert to currency through her magic.

 

[DarkLight140]

Okay, based on what Gavrilla's said it's obvious that Dita is basically never going to be okay. The whole rakshasa thing... even if Dita is 100% right and the girl is fine, if she brought her home and every priest in the country said that the two of them were free of taint, it still wouldn't go over well. If Dita is that determined to go save Tavi, then she's cutting ties with the family to do it.

Which is, I think, something we can cope with. Thomasfoolery has a good point with Dita giving up her lands, but we might not even have to go that far. We've spoken with Dita and she's accepted that she's not going to get the barony... if it would be impractical for Dita to give up her lands for whatever reason, what if Dita was perfectly happy to do exactly what the family wanted?

We can achieve that like this: The family locates a loyal, capable girl. We spend the next few months studying up on flesh magic. We bring the girl to Dita, and use our flesh sorcery and Dita's presence as a reference to make the girl look completely identical to Dita in every way. Then we give Dita a new face, skin color, hair color, whatever. Over the course of the coming winter, Dita fills in the other girl on personal details about her life that others might be unlikely to know.

The family's girl is now Dita, as far as the world is concerned. We clearly exorcised the foul Inovian taint, and now her mind is clear of the insanity that was plaguing her since she was a child. This explains any personality shifts and the loss of her innate magic along with some of her memory. The family's new and improved Dita proceeds to marry whoever the hell the family wants and generally act in all the ways that the family wishes Dita had acted in the first place.

Not-Dita-Anymore leaves the country and is never heard from again, or if she is heard from again it certainly won't be for years and she'll be an outsider Inovian priestess instead of a potentially embarrassing scion, and can be dealt with as such. It would be nice if someone wholly unrecognizable and with incredible superpowers could, say, assassinate Baron Rogatica in the middle of winter before fleeing the country, but that's probably a pipe dream.

If this is acceptable to Gavrilla and the family at large (or rather, anyone in it who absolutely must be informed for this to work, since we can't exactly let it go public), I'd say that we have extremely good odds of convincing Dita to go along with it.


Looking at the map, if either us or our brother married the Balzar girl, we'd be in a much better position to force Rogatica to stand down if the other married Ezti, wouldn't we? Even without bringing assassins into the mix. It could be a very good combination, although any final call will have to wait until after we've actually met her.


I'd want to review our expected income figures... which don't seem to be neatly organized anywhere... before saying how many refugees we can actually accept. But if we're actually expecting 10,000 silver come the harvest then accepting 700-800 refugees would be reasonable. We need to be clear here, though: We need people of talent or unique abilities who are untainted by evil, not random unskilled workers. They can bring immediate families even if those are unskilled, but it is likely that the first year or two will be tough as they settle in and need to build and improve housing, so we can't afford those above working age unless they have truly exceptional talent in some field. Oh, and for our purposes speaking our language counts as a talent, because with this many people coming in we'll need quite a few translators.

We'll also want to ask Gavrilla to see if she can arrange for a priest with a fairly liberal outlook but a sharp eye for actual taint to be sent to Corzu. The dwarves are offering refugees with interesting skills, many of whom have been altered by magic- which could mean all kinds of potentially useful attributes. While normally we'd shy away from that sort of thing for social reasons, in our opinion Corzu's only real chance to gain prosperity instead of languishing in mediocre poverty is through fairly drastic measures. But if people start mumbling about taint we'll want a solid, respectable priest who can tell them they're wrong about it.

 

[Thomasfoolery]

I'm not sure if Darklight's idea about creating a body double will fly, as I imagine with the magic bias in the country finding a candidate would be hard. But the methods do nicely dovetail with another avenue I was wanting us to pursue, as the ability to shift our facial/distinguishing features would be very useful indeed for our ability to perform deniable operations, like shadowing Nikolai or assassinating Rogatica.

 

[Seventeen]

I'm in full agreement with Darklight140 otherwise, but I think thomasfoolery has the right idea to deal with Dita's family troubles. I'd lean toward the upper end of the refugee range, especially with Katiana's useful abilities.

As far as Dominic's direction, I'm all for Feudal Lord Route, though I'd add the sub-route of Sorcerer-Lord in the sense of both a lord who is a sorcerer and a lord of sorcerers. Dominic is already a talented sorcerer, born with an astounding three sorceries, and he will only become more powerful. With the magical refugees en route, and Dita and Katiana, we will be well on our way to having a significant coterie of magic users to draw on as well. I think we should build on that further. One idea in particular that I am becoming more fond of is dropping the idea of birth control and instead using our Flesh Sorcery to make certain that every bastard we sire on our mistresses will also be a sorcerer -- and if any of them are particularly great, ie. 3+ delicious action slots, we can just legitimise them. Obviously this is a very long term plan, and I understand if people are against it even for that alone, but I think it will provide a huge boost in power towards the latter parts of the game.

 

[ShaperV]

I'm not sure if Darklight's idea about creating a body double will fly, as I imagine with the magic bias in the country finding a candidate would be hard.

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There are bound to be peasant women willing to do it for the chance to be a baroness. The hard part would be finding one without leaving a trail of girls who said no, and might talk to the wrong person someday.

Of course, there's also the question of how you get Dita to go along with it. Since, the way she sees things, you'd be asking her to give up her face and identity to help out the people who murdered her parents and arranged to have her tortured periodically for several years. I'm not sure you have enough diplomacy yet to sell that one...

 

[Thomasfoolery]

There are bound to be peasant women willing to do it for the chance to be a baroness. The hard part would be finding one without leaving a trail of girls who said no, and might talk to the wrong person someday.

Of course, there's also the question of how you get Dita to go along with it. Since, the way she sees things, you'd be asking her to give up her face and identity to help out the people who murdered her parents and arranged to have her tortured periodically for several years. I'm not sure you have enough diplomacy yet to sell that one...

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Honestly finding the candidate isn't the only problem, as whoever we find will also be a massive failure point for the whole thing. Though on consideration I doubt Dita would need to change her face anyway, barely anyone has seen her in years and she's not going to be around anyone important until she leaves anyway. In general just abdicating in favor of the family seems more solid after considering all the difficulties though.

If she's not willing to do that just in exchange for non-interference from the family maybe we could push for some resources that would be helpful for her journey to India, not exactly sure what kind of thing that would be though, considering she has chosen on tap adventuring purposes. But considering the family wants to be shot of her perhaps we could push the line that her journey to India is basically certain death and outfitting her with some goodies to help her towards that death is a small price to pay in exchange for the barony. Obviously this would mean she couldn't really appear on their radar again at least until gramps is dead but the chosen seem to work on a global remit anyway so that doesn't seem to be to large a hardship.

 

[Robotninja]

[X]Adventurer
I don't trust that we can toe the line well enough.

 

[DarkLight140]

It would go a lot more smoothly if Dita just signed over the barony, yes. But given that they're talking about marrying her to someone and killing her off instead of having her sign a few papers, I can only assume that for some reason that isn't an option, or it would have been brought up already. Dita's already made it clear that she doesn't expect to ever be Baroness Verzi, but even if she signs it over she'll still be herself, meaning that she'll be running around being a crazy Inovian bearing the family name and actively embarrassing us across the globe. Apparently this is a big enough issue for our family that they'd rather kill her than let it happen, which is dickish but whatever. That's why I proposed a scheme to get around it in the first place.

Locating a candidate for a new Dita shouldn't be a problem of any kind for our family. Making the offer to become a baroness to a random peasant girl would be foolish when they can literally pick anyone they want; our family is large enough that finding a woman with an existing combination of strong loyalty and high competence should not be overly difficult. A daughter of a much lesser branch of the family, a bastard daughter somewhere, a retainer or retainer's daughter- the ability to actually pick out who they want to rule the fief freely based upon loyalty and competence is a huge opportunity and our family is not so incompetent as to squander or underutilize it, should we decide to take this route.

As for Dita's willingness... one of her first lines to us was that she didn't expect to ever be Baroness Verzi, so obviously giving that up isn't an issue. It's not like she can see her own face anyway, and she's leaving almost everyone she knows behind, so that shouldn't be a big problem. The name is closer to her, I'm sure, and giving up that can't be easy... but in the end, she's right that the family are ultimately the people who murdered her parents and tortured her for years. Leave her name behind her, leave her history behind her, and she can make a clean break.

Start a new life as an adventurer, a priestess, companion of her crazy rakshasa bond-mate, whatever she likes; she'll have literally no ties holding her back, no past that will come back to haunt her. The family agrees they don't care about her and she can leave with their blessing, and she can rest easy for at least the rest of this year and through next spring, training and equipping herself to leave. We at least are more than willing to provide her and whatever posse she can whistle up with such weaponry and equipment as we can afford, and given that the family is getting a smooth resolution to the barony problem they'd probably be willing to at least swing a few personal-scale concessions.

And the sad fact is, this is about as good as Dita will get. We gave her what protection we could, but we're reaching our limits now. If she doesn't like it, she can refuse to give the family an inch and run off before our grandfather forces our hand... but they'll still give someone else the barony, in fact if nothing else. She might as well take whatever she can get as she leaves, and ensure that if she does ever need to come back it's not on wholly hostile terms. We certainly would rather she be able to visit every few years without our needing to hide it or try to capture her based on standing family orders; she's a decent person and that would give our whole relationship an awkward spin.

 

[Adyen]

I'm rather astounded that nobody is thinking of questioning Dita on exactly what Tavi is at this point.

While it is not likely to be EVIL per say, we do have 2 Chosen here that could provide additional input on that situation at the moment, and... we REALLY should tell them in case Dita turns on them if Tavi is actually evil and she convinces Dita to put the whammy on the two who has absolutely no resistance to a person they trust.

I'd rather not have the plot turn out that Tavi is evil and Dita starts creating Evil Chosen and destroys half the world, thankyouverymuch.

But anyways, the double idea actually brings in a very interesting idea. How many of you would bet that Kat would be willing to give up her current identity and take on Dita's? Of course, making sure that Dita actually breaks all ties to the barony and give it to Kat.

 

[staplesdex2]

I thought we need Kat for her powers over the earth?

 

[Seventeen]

We can't question Dita or the Chosen at the moment because they're in Corzu and we aren't.

 

[Arkeus]

Of course, there's also the question of how you get Dita to go along with it. Since, the way she sees things, you'd be asking her to give up her face and identity to help out the people who murdered her parents and arranged to have her tortured periodically for several years. I'm not sure you have enough diplomacy yet to sell that one...

Click to shrink...

Does this mean that Dita has enough hatred for our grandfather that she would endanger herself and her ability to save Tavi before 'whatever happens on their 18th birthday' just to spite him? It's not like she currently believes she can keep the Baronny, after all.

Anyway, going to ask more questions because too many plans depends on knowing more from Gavrilla:

1°) If Dita were to be like Pavel, in the sense of being constantly away on crusades far from Berjoria, would the family still consider the need to kill her off, even if there are loyal family retainers taking care of Verzi?

2°) Would it be possible for Dita to officially adopt a child in the family- say, our second son, or whatever- so that even if she is constantly away crusading/etc there will be a clear line of succession for the barony for our Family?

3°)What are the Egyptians' views on Inovia? are they also "she is a crazy goddess that attack mostly evil things", or is it different?

4°)The Family seems pretty damn sure that Dita can't be trusted at all, or at least you (Gavrilla) are. However, you also talked about how she was hoping Chesna could have changed her. How do you know that no such changes have happened? We have heard that the priests looking after her had been saying multiple times that no such taint existed before suddenly changing theirs mind after possible bribes. Given Nikolai has also been lying about Lala and Chesna not wanting to go for their Debut, such knowledge coming from him seems highly suspect. In fact, especially so if Nikolai is in the list of possible husbands for Dita.

5°) Given you have had some hope about Dita being changed, what about me keeping up my mnetoring efforts? Especially if i marry Ezti, a known Devout whom Khersis sometimes directly answer to, we might be able to exert some change.

The way things are, it does seem VERY much harder to help Dita out with the Feudal Lord route. Not impossible- unless ShaperV mentioning changing our Grandfather's mind being possible was a lie half a dozen pages back- but very much harder.

If we want to help Dita be herself, free powerful via the Feudal Lord route, i think there are some vital checkpoints:

*We must have our family's knowledge that we are trying to shape our cousin into an asset for the family, as well as their support. This can be done in many ways like proving we have a strong Khersian presence at home, proving the reports given about Dita were lies (she isn't insane and people have been trying to force the family to lose the barony), or simply having our Aunt be at home often and seeing that we are being a good influence on Dita.

*Tavi must be saved. I don't know what exactly, but /something/ is going to happen on their 18th birthday, and that something might make a demon out of Dita or whatever.

*Dita must prove herself to be, at worse, 'that crazy uncle/aunt'. This might mean her being constantly away in crusades or whatever. It would be much better if she could prove herself to be reliable. Hell, she would do a perfect spymaster, but she needs to learn politics and convince the family she isn't insane for that.

Now, if we believe those things can't happen, Dita could still survive- but it would be in a lesser, fugitive way, and i am not yet ready to believe this is needed yet.

I think it's VERY important for our Aunt to be aware that the reports sent to our grandfather about the taint res-surging were lies.

EDIT:

Truthfully, if we can prove to our Family that Dita CAN Toe the line and that she is NOT tainted, it would be both foolish and malignant to try to get rid of her given she already is a Baroness- or will be, once she comes of age.

Frankly, i am seeing that a big part of the issue comes from the fact that they probably all want to believe they had no choice to do what they did to Dita's parents, and learning that Dita is actually not only free of Taint but a half-angel will make their 'sacrifice' seems like a foolish mistake.... and Denial can be strong when Guilt points out his head.

This is a case of 'This would be so much easier with the Hero route', as then we could just go crusading/adventuring with her for a few years until we get to India, and as she is already a Baroness she could totally comes back with the riches, alliances and armies we would both build ourself and prove herself to be worthy of her own Barony.

Of course, in such a case it would pretty much alienate us from the rest of the family unless we are ridiculously lucky, and as such we can say goodbye to having our own Barony unless we get one from Marriage or conquest.

 

[Adyen]

I thought we need Kat for her powers over the earth?

Click to shrink...

We're only changing how she looks, as far as I understand.

 

[Arkeus]

Dominic knows better than that. Unless Nikolai is a complete moron he's already taken steps to cover his ass, and you have at least as much to lose as he does. Maybe more – as far as you know he's just carrying out your grandfather's instructions, while you're actively interfering with them.

Click to shrink...

Wait, what?

Isn't it Dominic who is trying to carry out the family's wishes, while Nikolai is actively interfering with them?

I mean, we got out Cousin coming to us in the middle of winter, half-dead: If she dies we lose a Barony. Of course we are going to take care of her and prepare her for her future. We have been grooming her to take responsibility for her people, as we had suspicions she was in fact the Baroness once she comes of age- suspicions that were all but confirmed. We have tried to keep her relationship with Chesna open and pleasant, and have tried to make of ourself an example as someone she could trust by helping people that were dear to her. We have been trying to make her believe that if she is careful and toe the line, she can have a future. We have been careful that she keeps in contact with Devoute Khersians that she trusts.

Nikolai, OTOH, has certainly not reported that Dita had stroken a friendship with Chesna as well as a heir to a Barony, nor that she had convinced the priests that she was taint free. Nikolai has been lying to the family about Lala refusing to help Chesna having her debut, trying to keep the barony's cut off from our grandfather except by his own link. Nikolai has tried to make sure that Dita couldn't trust our grandfather. Nikolai has been the one sneding false report saying that she is insane. and we know the reports are false, given that Dita has made friend with a devoute Khersian who is known to have a direct answers from Khersis.

If anything, we have definite proof that Nikolai has been interfering with our grandfather's plans, while we ourself have been salvaging them.

EDIT:

So, quickly, proof we have:
*He stole from Corzu.
*He impoverished Pischia to the point that peasants have been running away to evade taxes. A village was formed by such peasants in Corzu, and 'coincidentally' immediately taken over by bandits, which is very supsicious.
*He made it clear to Dita that she will die soon, making sure that she will not trust the family (and thus pushing the family to kill her)
*He convinced the priest to lie about ressurgence of taints.
*He withdrew from his reports that Dita was good friends with extremely devoute Khersians, as well as Chesna, That she admires them both.
*He has had some shady dealing with bribes from unknown party
*He has isolated Pischia and bullied Lala so that Chesna cannot have her Debut.

From all of this, it's pretty sure he IS actively working against our family- maybe all he wants is make sure Dita is killed after he convinces the family he should marry her, but the whole impoverishment of Pischia and Corzu might mean he is actually trying to get Pischia invaded by Rogatica, and be 'given' Dita or Chesna as a prize.

From this, i am tempted to go:

[X] Tell her about your magic and your dealings with the Chosen, and see what she has to say about.
-[X] When you tell her, explain why we decided to involve the Chosen:
*When we came to Corzu, we quickly determined we had been given faulty ledgers, lying about numbers of hamlet and even about the presence of a knight. Tax had been diverted and stolen.
*Dita came to us in the middle of a winter blizzard, half-dead. She was saying paranoiac thoughts, but we quickly understood she had been told repeatedly by Nikolai that she was going to die soon on orders of our grandfather, something that just seemed strange, as if she was dangerous enough to kill she would never be told so by people loyal to our grandfather.
*We realized that, while she didn't know it, it was very possible that she will be in fact the ruler of Verzi upon coming of age.
*We soon realized that we had a dangerous witch living in one of our village, and so we had to deal with her, though we weren't quite sure how to do that yet.
*Upon asking Pischia for the heir to walk the border for regency purposes, Nikolai tried to pretend he was as good as the heir. Upon coming to Pischia and convincing Chesna to walk the borders, we learned that Lala had been bullied by Nikolai not to let Chesna get her Debut or even leave the barony, and Lala begged for our help in those matters.
*We learned that Dita was a good friend of Chesna and in awe of Ezti, a devoute Khersian who seems to have direct answers from Khersis.
*We learned that Nikolai had threatened or bribed the priest not to say that Dita was never tainted to begin with, even though he himself believed it a strong possibility.
*Upon walking the borders, we were attacked by brigands- they had apparently taken over a village built by tax evaders from Pischia. Apparently Pischia's situation is such that it is becoming more and more tempting for the peasants to commit treason. Furthermore, the bandits finding that village had suspicious timing.

This is why we decided to give Dita a chance to call Chosen, as it appeared that she needed to be pushed in a role of leaders, and be reassured about her family: She trusted Chesna from the beginning, and we had gained a measure of her trust by then. More importantly, having the Chosen around may explain why Dita seemed to destroy dark magic by her very presence. There had been many hints that something not right was going on around her.

*We were told that Dita apparently has Holy Sorcery, which means that she cannot be tainted- in fact, her very presence destroys taint. We tested that with more usual sorcery, and upon confirmation it at least worked there, decided to test it on real taints:
*We purposefully hunted the witch at the height of her power, and confirmed that Dita Holy Sorcery destroyed any kind of witchery or dark magic by its mere presence. Furthermore, there have been many hints that Dita is a priestess of Inovia, and would be closer qualified as a Half-Angel.

This is why we have tried to keep her grounded near Ezti as much as possible: the danger seems to come from Inovia being dangerous in a lot of ways, so my thoughts was to mentor and guide her so that she could be grounded.

Given that you (Gavrilla) seemed ready to give a chance for Chesna to ground her, would you be willing to extend that chance to myself, especially if i marry Ezti, a extremely devout Khersian? After all, the reports on Dita's madness were lies fabricated for yet unknown purposes.

[X] Trying to con your way into becoming a co-conspirator in whatever is going on here.

RE- EDIT:
The point on talking about Nikolai to Gavrilla isn't to prove he is a traitor (that would probably need more than we have right now) but to give her enough irregularities about his behavior that makes every report he sent about Dita very suspect. This is important if we want Dita to be accepted by the family and not have to forcefully prove herseff without any prepwork; It is also important if we want to be honest about Dita being mentored by us to the family.

If we want to go the Feudal Lord route we kind of need to show our grandfather that we are working with him and not against him, after all, so giving honest reports on what we are doing, and our hope that our cousin is either curable or actually not insane at all but was painted as such by third parties may be necessary in order to be trusted by the Family.

Showing ourself to be overly-secretive toward our family, especially when talking to a spymistress who may already know we have Dita, is a classic recipe for backfiring.

 

[staplesdex2]

We're only changing how she looks, as far as I understand.

Click to shrink...

I thought that Dita would either be forced to marry to inherit a barony or be "taken care of" and with the body double idea might make Kat take her place? Or am I misunderstanding something? That and I don't think Kat would go for this if those scenarios are likely.

 

[Adyen]

Isn't it Dominic who is trying to carry out the family's wishes, while Nikolai is actively interfering with them?

So, quickly, proof we have:
*He stole from Corzu.
*He impoverished Pischia to the point that peasants have been running away to evade taxes. A village was formed by such peasants in Corzu, and 'coincidentally' immediately taken over by bandits, which is very supsicious.
*He made it clear to Dita that she will die soon, making sure that she will not trust the family (and thus pushing the family to kill her)
*He convinced the priest to lie about ressurgence of taints.
*He withdrew from his reports that Dita was good friends with extremely devoute Khersians, as well as Chesna, That she admires them both.
*He has had some shady dealing with bribes from unknown party
*He has isolated Pischia and bullied Lala so that Chesna cannot have her Debut.

Click to shrink...

According to Nikolai, everything he has done to Dita is according to the Duke's instructions. And if the situation is as mentioned by our aunt, I could see that sort of happening.

A lot of the stuff above? Has nothing to do with Dita, and probably has nothing to do with grandfather.

I thought that Dita would either be forced to marry to inherit a barony or be "taken care of" and with the body double idea might make Kat take her place? Or am I misunderstanding something? That and I don't think Kat would go for this if those scenarios are likely.

Click to shrink...

I thought the idea was to have a body double who would take over Dita's life while the actual Dita would have her looks changed so she can do whatever she wanted (though I'm still somewhat leery about sending her off to potentially be corrupted to Evil etc. Cause there's no way that won't come back to bite us in the ass).