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Total Members Voted: 7

[Alexandria]

Maybe. Maybe not. They won't hit us in full force for a long time they'll underestimate us first, then hesitate and try to get information on us and try a smart play like a night attack.

We have months before a full scale invasion comes at us and in months we can train a tidy little defense force but we need enough smiths to get it fully armed and armored and I need some to cover the weapons and armor for the group I'm going to build.
No sense wasting the chance to recruit them if it comes up.

When they try an invasion I intend to have a nasty shock for them up my sleeve. Not including the fact that I'm building an underground city to hide things from them in. Wouldn't want to let them see everything we have up our sleeves until it's party time.

[GreatWyrmGold]

Let's assume that, somehow, a force that we a force of magically-powerful individuals plus a poorly-armed militia can't drive off but if we give the militia more arms and armor could invades in the next couple months. How will we make this armor? All the smiths in the world won't help if we don't have the metal for them to work. And we likely don't. If you're so concerned about such things, we should look into golem armies or somesuch.

[Alexandria]

We have 2 elemental mages in the group. We can locate a metal source once we return easily enough given that we can just scan the ground for concentrations of it. Once we locate it golems dig it up and the smiths set to work and even if we don't find it in time why waste the chance to recruit them now?
A few extra pairs of hands will be useful enough.

[GreatWyrmGold]

Why "waste" the chance? Because each non-smith we recruit will bring their own set of skills, skills we completely lack and yet which are important to making a town.

[Alexandria]

I agree. I'm still waiting for the reason we can't recruit smiths. Other then that it steps on your toes. Will recruiting a smith in some way alienate other people?

I'm fairly sure a 10 minute chat with a few smiths to recruit them isn't going to change our ability to recruit other people.

[Culise]

Besides, we can always buy the armor or weapons, and we probably should at first.  What a smith is absolutely critical for isn't armor or weapons at all.  We need horseshoes for horses, plow blades and tools for the farms, and always, always nails and fastenings for everything we build.  Now, you can use wood for almost all of this with a good carpenter (gods know I know this; the panokseon didn't use iron fastenings because of rust issues), but wooden pegs and tools aren't as sturdy, not all tools can be made from wood, and wooden plows simply can't handle dirt that's too dense. 

I'm in agreement with GreatWyrmGold.  What we should do is start with establishing a firm foundation before we start expanding.  Get enough people that we can feed ourselves, train up a light militia, and if we need weapons and armor, buy them rather than paying for an armorer.  Get a blacksmith, not one skilled in weapons or armor or outfitting nobs with fancy duds who we'll likely need to pay off to move off to the far edge of nowhere (because their skills are going to be just as much in demand in civilized areas), but one that can churn out what we need to start the town in the first place - an apprentice or something, looking for a position.  Get a tanner for leatherworking, get farmers and fishermen, masons and carpenters.  Hunters, to take advantage of the forest and the game within.  Butchers for rendering, maybe one that knows a bit about chandlery if we can swing it.  Timberworkers to take advantage of the wood. 

[Alexandria]

By all means thats why I'm leaving the town stuff to SJM. He can gather up the people you need.

I'll recruit the smiths and bowyers I need for myself while I'm gathering up students. While your building the town I'll build a force to defend it.

[Culise]

But...that's working before we have a foundation in place to support them.  That's the issue. 

I mean, if you can actually find someone with the skills who's willing to come up to the far end of nowhere and essentially waste their talents working for a town of maybe a few dozen settlers, then the more power to you.  I'd wonder a little at the motivations behind such a person to get away from everything instead of exercising their ability where there's monetary compensation available to them and demand for their particular skills, but let's be honest: plenty of us have something in our past that the government's already tried and found us guilty for. 

[Alexandria]

Perhaps but if the chance presents itself I see no reason not to take it. The students will be easy. To date magic is taught in 3 ways.
Random learning from a book most often resulting in the user killing or injuring themselves and or others by accident.
An experienced mage choosing a student they like and training them which given the low number of experienced mages is not a huge number.
Or a few rare magic school which require you to have some skill already before your accepted meaning they don't add much to those numbers since most of the members learned through the above methods.
All in all the vast majority of people who want to be mages never get the chance and I'm going to take full advantage of it.

I'm going to accept anybody who wants to learn into my school which should give me a nice starting group and an influx of more as word spreads. Which I'll ensure it does during this trip. I'll train them all in elemental magic and necromancy. Then I'll hand select the best students who've graduated to offer summoner training to. Some of them will die in training during the final test.
Then I have a nice force of mages and the most powerful of them are summoners who also act as the cadre commanders for the cadres I'll form out of mages. Of course If any of you have anybody you need trained I'm happy to graduate them as mages as well for you.

With a little luck I can find a few smiths while I'm working and convince them to join me. A smith who makes weapons and armor I'm sure can manage basic tools and equipment so he'll earn his keep and my mages and I have skills we can use to earn ours.

None of those I bring in will be freeloading. Adventure and the chance to get rich on the frontier can be a good motivator. As can any number of other things I'll just have to see if luck is on my side. My first idea for instance. A large town will have more then a few of them. The biggest and most impressive will get most of the real high paying work the rest scrape along and have no real chances to ever become really wealthy or important.

I offer them the chance to join a community in which they're part of a small group of smiths, they're very important, well respected and most of all. I offer them something thats all but impossible for them to get. The chance to learn enchanting which will instantly turn an average black smith into a very important one. I'd say a few of smiths will be interested in that kind of chance and I'm going to choose from the lower ranking smiths. The new guys or the ones that never got really big. The ones looking for a better future.

The reason I need the smiths and bowyers is that 99% of mages have the same weakness. Once they run out of mana or have the ability to cast in some way restrained they're sitting ducks for even an average soldiers.
My mages will be trained to fight with magic, with melee weapons and shields, With crossbows and javelins and will be given the weaponry and full sets of armor. Both because it removes my mages major weakness by turning them into powerful mages and skilled warriors and because it's the same gear all our soldiers will be using. So the enemy will have to consider every single one of our soldiers to be exceptionally dangerous. Which is an edge we can use.
I'n essence my school is a training ground for an order of warrior mages who's over riding purpose is 3 fold.

The towns security and protection. Naturally this means my cadres will be available to assist the rest of you when required assuming they are not all already spoken for.
The defense of the innocent against the not whenever we are asked for help.
And the total annihilation of any and all summoners who seek to explit or mistreat summons in any shape or form.

[GreatWyrmGold]

I agree. I'm still waiting for the reason we can't recruit smiths. Other then that it steps on your toes. Will recruiting a smith in some way alienate other people?

I'm fairly sure a 10 minute chat with a few smiths to recruit them isn't going to change our ability to recruit other people.

Do you really think we can recruit infinity people? Do you think you can convince entire villages to migrate deep into gnoll territory to join a new startup that doesn't even have houses for all of them? Frankly, I don't think you'll get any choices as to prioritizing what jobs you want...but if you do get choices, you'd better believe that you're not going to be able to encourage a whole bunch of people to come. "Well see, I would come, but since Jeb's going I really can't. One of us has to take care of Ma, after all."
Besides, we need to feed all these people you hope to bring.

[Alexandria]

When did I mention large numbers or infinity?

I'll search for people who want mage training by telling people of my school and letting them decide. I'll go to blacksmiths and bowyers directly and speak with them. Try to convince them to come with me or failing that try to convince them to train a couple of people who agree to come with me in the skills I need. I don't expect mass migration just to convince individuals or maybe if I'm lucky some small groups.

My students until they graduate will live with me in a big dormitory I'll add on to my underground home. I can expand it easily enough to fit them and take care of real homes while they're in training. As for food. I'll see what I can do about livestock during my travels and getting seeds to set up farms for crops. A few nets and a bit of magic work and I can probably set up a fishing pool for us to add to our supply.
I'll figure that out when it comes up. Until then my first priority is security and security will be stronger with a few mages to back me up then with just us.

[Culise]

We aren't building an army, here, and we're not Prussians.  We're building a community.  Once we have a community, we can think about building an army.  We can't afford full-time soldiers, and even full-time students will be tricky (though it seems you have your heart set on going about that immediately - just bear in mind that there are reasons why universities were housed in only the very largest and wealthiest of major cities almost exclusively in the medieval era); we barely can afford more smiths than the bare minimum.  We need one, maybe two tops to churn out the metal goods we need.  For instance, that article I linked - if its research is accurate, a town of 1500 people would have one smith, based on the demographics of medieval cities like Paris; smaller towns scattered over regions might have one smith to cover the needs of them all, or else rely on itinerant smiths and the like (tinkers).  Now, obviously that's a bit weighted; Paris was a wealthy city, after all, so it would have a disproportionately high number of trades that require wealth.  Besides, very few smiths are going to be "just scraping by" in this era, any more than doctors would be in ours.  Smithing is a very intensive, well-trained profession in this era, frequently organized into professional guilds for the regulation and protection of their trade, and pivotal in many respects to the functioning of a region.  It's very unlikely to find a professional smith, especially one trained in something as specialized and expensive as the manufacture of weapons and armor, that will be willing to drop everything at the promise of something as nebulous "adventure," especially someplace where there's no large market for their goods.  And if you can train them as enchanters, why can they not find an enchanter in the city willing to do it?  One that won't drag them off to the far end of nowhere? 

Essentially, I'm not saying that it's impossible, but I am saying that you should very much not pin your hopes on it.  You'll be far more likely to get apprentices who are unlikely to be able to obtain their own shop in the first place (and would not yet have the skill or experience to make such complicated things as a good sword or armor), or, if well-trained, someone with "baggage" that forces them to head out to our little corner of nothing instead of remaining in civilization with its amenities and people willing to buy their products.  Moreover, we can't really support more than one at this time, and we don't need someone who can make weapons or armor.  We can always buy that sort of stuff, and at the most, hire a smith who can repair it, a far less intensive task.  Once we have something to offer them, once we have a settlement actually worth the name, then we can consider actively recruiting specialists.  Until then, while it wouldn't hurt to ask around just to get our foot in the door, I highly doubt that we'll actually succeed. 

[Alexandria]

Question.

Where do we get the money to buy decent quality weapons and armor? That is going to be extremely costly and we aren't exactly right. I'd rather have to buy in some food which is easier to acquire and cheaper then buy in weapons and armor which are more difficult and a hell of a lot more costly.
But I think I can manage to sustain a group of students and use them in a way that will make it worthwhile and the smiths. Well a smith who can make tools and weapons is more useful then a smith who can only make tools so if I can get one or two then I will. If not I'll find another way to prepare everything.

I'm not expecting to make a fully armed army in a month but I can certainly get well under way in that time. Enough that it gives us a fighting chance.

[GreatWyrmGold]

When did I mention large numbers or infinity?

You didn't, but asking why you couldn't recruit as many smiths as you wanted without impacting your recruitment of anyone else kind of suggests you weren't considering the limits of recruitment.

And seriously. We're not a wealthy city, we're not a major town, we're not even an average village. We're a dozen people squatting on gnoll land, next to a cursed sea, with barely enough houses for ourselves. Who the hell will want to move here? This ain't Dwarf Fortress.

You already all saw the first Gnoll patrol and it's difficult. If thats only a patrol what do you think an attack would be? I'm sorry if we can't fully sustain it though I think I can manage it but it's a risk I'm willing to take.

A full attack would be more than we could take, no matter how many smiths we had. What makes you think we'll find large amounts of iron ore before any kind of valuable metal? Why are you so convinced that giving a bunch of people metal arms and armor will elevate our martial ability to godlike levels? And how are we going to convince these people to come here?

[Alexandria]

I didn't say godlike, again your putting words in my mouth. I said a fighting chance, nothing more. A pair of smiths and ore I can hopefully find means better weaponry and armor which boosts our fighting ability and that of any people we bring in.

I never even said I could recruit any at all I said if the chance came up then I would. Which means I hope I can but I don't know. Not I can recruit as many as I want. Convincing mages well I'm sure I can find a few who'll take the risk of moving here to get training they would be extremely unlikely to ever get otherwise. A huge number I doubt but a handful? Thats quite possible. As for smiths. As I said. I'll take the chance. If that fails I'll try to get one of my recruits trained instead before coming back.

Failing that I don't know, maybe try to convince somebody important that arming us to fight the Gnolls is good for them. I'll figure something out when the time comes. I've considered all the risks involved as well as what we gain if it works and in my opinion it's a risk worth taking. If the rest of you don't agree then I'll handle feeding them and covering the costs on my own and we'll leave you all to your own devices. I have no problem with leaving you all to your own devices and dealing with mine on my own.