Governor Adeeb Wasirri
You are Adeeb Wasirri. When you were young you developed a fascination with tales of swashbucklers and duelists, and as you grew older you took to attempting to act out and live the fantasies of your childhood. Your parents were willing to indulge you in your fascinations by hiring you tutors in the gentlemanly arts, and as such you have developed a minimum competence in riding, and courtly manners, though in truth swordsmanship is the only thing you took to with true glee. The minutia of military logistics and the hard training of a knight held little appeal to you, despite attempts by your relatives to foster an interest in such practical matters.
Instead of seeking a respected profession you delved into duelling culture and everything that entailed. Over the course of your attempts to establish yourself as a respected duellist you both attended the schools of respected martial artists and brushed shoulders with the seedy underworld of professional fighters and mercenaries. The former you found boring, and the respectable masters who managed such classes and took apprentices in sword-work were more interested in gaining the patronage of a noble family than in entertaining your lust for adventure. The latter however, gave you all kinds of opportunities for adventure and offered danger and excitement. You gained experience dealing with smugglers and gladiators, and occasionally got yourself involved in troublesome dealings merely for the thrill. Eventually though the skulduggery grew boring and needlessly serious, so you abandoned it in search of the spotlight.
You took to challenging fellow members of the nobilty to duels with live steel, whether fellow duellist or not. Most rejected your challenge, but eventually after a day of needling and insulting you managed to get the young nephew of a count to accept your challenge. He was four years your junior, and far from a warrior, totally unprepared for a challenging opponent, and quite by accident you lopped off his limb at the forearm, leaving him crippled. The scandal left a stain on your family's still short legacy, and while your father managed to protect you from formal charges it would have looked badly for him to keep you around. All of your old companions and tutors abandoned you for fear of being associated with you, and the betrayal of those you had regarded as friends leaves a sour taste in your mouth. Only Vest has stuck by your side, a lowborn duelist and former smuggler who is as much banished as you are at this point, and who has offered to join with you.
So he's sent you to Dhum-Blud, a festering wound of a borderland province, to govern it in the name of the crown. In large part the province is only crown land in name, with only a few tiny Velgarian settlements and almost no maintained infrastructure. What isn't overgrown wilderness is controlled by bandits, or by the warrior-chieftans who legally don't live there. The claim that the land is part of Velgar is as dubious as the suggestion that you are being "rewarded" in being named it's Governor. Your father hasn't left you completely high and dry however, nor cut off ties completely. He's given you the services of twenty of your family's household gaurdsmen, as well as a bag of gold and a well-bred riding horse, and assured you that if you ever find yourself in a totally dire position he would be willing to give you help, dissapointing as he would find it that you cannot stand on your own two feet.
...
After a long ride, you, your guardsmen and your only remaining friend make it to your new castle, Bonewatch, though you muse that it being yours you could name it something different. Actually, now that you're looking upon the thing, the name of "castle" to begin with is far too generous a term. It's little more than a tiny stone keep on a hill, a bailey really, with a rickety wall surrounding it and a handful of other buildings. The garrison is skeletal in size, judging from the completely unmanned watchtowers on the periphery. It takes well over five minutes to coax the lazy guards to open the gate, which you truthfully could have had your men break down faster. Once you're within the rickety walls and the guards know who you are, you are met by a trio of men claiming to be the last governor's advisor's. The first is an impossibly old seeming man named Aldagor, apparently a Barister, dressed in plain grey robes but covered in so much tacky gold jewellery that you muse it's a wonder he can stand up. The second is named Balpher, the garrison commander at Bonewatch, he's dressed in a rather impractical studded leather jerkin and is truthfully much too unfit looking to have much credibility as a military commander of any sort. The third is Desan, a steward, and you would find it hard to believe he's any older than are, maybe even younger.
So far it's hard to fight down the lump of despair building up in your throat, but you suppose these are your councillors now, and this is the first impression they will have of you.
Author
Topic: Delegation: A fief management suggestion Game (Read 25507 times)