Sorry for the time it took... Real life decided to take its toll on my time, and it's usually better to pay this kind of due. Doubly sorry as this update may be kind of short, as not a lot happened. But it is maybe a good opportunity to discuss about what we should do in the future.
Have there there's been any monster slayers asking to stay at your fort?
I usually get swarmed by them.
I wish, actually. Food is in overabundance, but trained warriors are not. Tho keep in mind this save is very old it must have something like two years. It's older than the monster s layer patch, so I don't know if we'll see them. Maybe they will appear when we build a tavern ?
And that's not gonna be something that'd go unnoticed by other polities.
Yeah, I really don't know. I know my world has mercenaries, some of them actively looking for monsters to kill. But new version monster slayers... I don't know. We'll see !
At least dwarven monster slayers can leave steel gear when they inevitably get their heads smashed open by troglodytes. That's the only reason why I would accept them into my last fort.
Not gonna lie, I'd like to have monster slayers. I really like the idea of running an adventurer hub in the village. I mean this is sort of the plan after all : create an almost obligatory passage point, and sell stuff to travellers. So if we can attract more people with the underground world, that would be perfect.
Besides there is another reason I'd want visitors and that is I am studying, as much as I can, the people and cultures of the world. Having them come to us, in their cultural garments and all, would be an opportunity to record stories from afar. But ey, if they come , they come, if they don't, well, they don't.
Cathar, you said that you thought Thomocemir had killed all the werebeasts--but there were some beasts still forgotten. Which is my lame-joke way of saying that I'd been waitin' on those!
I look forward to all sorts of tragedy from future uninvited guests. Unless the game shows a very low forgotten beast count in this world.
Maybe now is as good a time as ever to say that if I'm confident that Hustra, Zothoabo's wife, is still inprisonned, I am almost certain Valken escaped Thomocemir. Almost. As in « I have no idea where he is ».
You know what, we should put guard dogs a bit everywhere.
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Summer and Autumn 145
Once again, Hauben and his men rushed in the underground world. When they came back, they were shocked and exhausted, but still alive and unharmed.
« It was an old god ! » screamed Mospar, one of the militiamen. « A gigantic teal scorpio with three eyes ! »
Of course, the population was skeptical. Never in the history of the kingdom of Kima was such a beast ever sighted. Someone made a joke about blackberry wine disapearing by the barrel and suggested that Hauben's men may have a hand in that affair.
However, said men were not in the mood for jokes.
« I tell you as I saw it » Mospar protested. « Commander Hauben saw it first and charged the creature, breaking its legs with his morningstar. By the time we arrived, the monster was struggling to stand we jumped on it and we hit it as hard as we could »
And as to prove the truthfulness of his story, he presented his weapon it was covered in a white semi-transparent liquid that was soon identified as hemolymph. For a moment, the people of Kimaeslo Ori were awestruck.
A group of villagers was quickly formed to descend to the underground world and when they came back, they were pulling the gigantic body with strong ropes.
The corpse of the old god Ngethac the Sinful Hex was promtly butchered to avoid the rot, and seeing his flesh was edible, he made of the Aconilun the first human group to ever consume the flesh of a god.
There was however nothing more to be used from the corpse of that underground divinity. Its strange exoskeleton was improper to make armors with having been pierced without trouble with bronze morning stars, and so it was left outside to rot and feed the wildlife.
However, the whole event was taxing for some of the villagers. Mospar's wife, worrying for her husband, started to show worrying signs of stress. The miller, Kamloc, drank more than she should and lashed out against another villager.
Gram stopped her just as the fight was about to start. Kimaeslo Ori didn't have the means to heal wounds, nor to imprison wrongdoers. Kamloc was expelled from the village by the morning it is unknown where she went after the incident. Maybe the punishment was severe, but short of a prison and a hospital, there was not many other choices.
AS for the man who suffered the aggression, he was a new face in the village. His name was Bemta, from the village of Gicastenna.
Two years ago, during a raid on his village, Bemta was robbed by an Ansgeki deserter. He thought he'd lose all his possessions in the best of case, and in the worst of cases, his family and his life, but the robbery was interrupted by a wandering swordsman.
The Ansgeki goblin was slain and the other raiders fled as fast as their legs would carry them. That experience gave Bemta a new perspective on life. He married soon after, abandonned his farm and trained to become a bowman, and started to look for ways to repay the debt he had to the world.
« As I see things, I should already be dead » he liked to explain. « So when I heard about the bridge's construction, right next to the settlements, I came as fast as I could. »
Yes, it its the same Bemta. This is why I'm very happy I record absolutely everything. I met this character in advenure mod and slept on his house. I love this game.
Altho summer was active a season, fall was significantly less so. Constructions would resume. The longhouse is slowly starting to be converted into the farmer's communal house. In the east of the town, a tavern is slowly being built, and in the west, a granary is bei ng constructed also. The first part of the bridge is almost complete, and passage over the interior sea will soon be possible.
It was, of course, the main mission of the Aconilun. However, building the bridge will not be enough. Too much efforts were already sank into the project, and too much debts were contracted to the guild not to generate a profit, now that it is almost complete. They would have taverns, library, temples with a bit of effort, they were to become the cultural center of the world.
For now, the situation is under control. The only problem on the horizon is the migrant waves coming faster than we can build housing. With the new migrant waves, the Aconilun now counts 66 members.
This is a lot.
Among the newest members, tho, two familiar faces appeared
Sug and Jalew Zefer's parents. I took the opportunity to do an in-depht research on their past, and ...boy I wasn't disapointed. I have seen those two for a very long time now, they have been in every single one of my forts, and by followi ng them around, I discovered that they were linked to the history of the kingdom a bit more tightly than I originally thought.
Sug (left on the picture) is born in 93 in Kostupu. Her father, Nisam, was an eingeneer and her mother, Lubbe, was a nurse. She was the penultimate child in a siblinghood of six. Altho she had a rather wealthy upbringing, the region of her birth was severely disputed and was the theater of a number of skirmishes with the neighbouring elven kingdoms.
In 94, immediately after she gave birth to Sug's younger brother, her mother was incorporated in Kostupu's squad (led by Kostupu's lord Nese), following a call to arms from the kingdom. The com bined army was sent to attack the elven retreat of Arileepeve of Wulemaapasi Kingdom, next to the i nterior sea. The battle was lost and she did not came back. Lubbe was slain by an elf, and lord Nese was mauled by a tamed grizzly bear.
In 95, Sug's father became the lord of Kostupu - the same event who took Sug's mother also elevated her family significantly .
That said, it is debatable how much a blessing the rulership on Kostupu represents. Kostupu is a small village to the western coast. Being close to water and covered in thick forest, the western shores present the ideal living conditions for elves. No less than three elven kingdoms are actually ready to go to war for extended periods of time to expel Kostupu's villagers from their hamlet ; the kingdoms of Emepeare, Linicorire and Iferi Fiyopi.
As soon as she could, she accompanied her father in his campaigns against the elven kingdoms of the western shores, but her military career was made brutally short as she received a wooden arrow in her right eye socket during a battle against Emepeare forces. She soon after renounced to the army and married Jalew in 108, before moving with him to Aslamita, in the central settlements she was 15 and he was 13.
Jalew is one of the sons of the remarkably still alive lord and lady of Aslamita. Altho, with the size of his siblinghood, his nobility title is all but meaniningful. Nine brothers and sisters insured him, from an early age, that he wouldn't count too much on a legacy. As a young man, he was lazy and didn't practice neither skill nor art, and lived in the meadhall with his parents, until he turned 12 and moved to the village to work at the port as a fish cleaner. He married Sug soon after.
In 110, they had their first child, a girl they called Apba.
In 116, however, the armies of Iferi Fiyopi massed a great number of souls in the western shores, and Kostupu among other settlements, were directly threatned. Wanting to save his father-in-law and his wife's hometown, Jalew enlisted and went on to participate to what was to be called Nolocstipoth the great manslaughter or more trivially « the massacre of Kostupu ».
Long story short, the armies of Kima had their kidneys broken. The army of Kima and Iferi Fiyopi met in the Pink Dunes, a hilly region where the humans thought they could use the uneven terrain to establish a defensive position. But the 300 men of Kima faced an army three times superior in number, and despite fierce resistance, they had to fall back with only 160 men remaining.
Jalew, among other, fled at this moment. Those who didn't took retreat at the village of Kostupu and tried to barricade it the armies of Iferi Fiyopi followed them and slaughtered everyone, safe for the young children.
Sug's father, after defeating an elven champion in duel, wounding her severely, was finally devoured by a grizzly bear.
After that, Jalew came back to Aslamita. They had two other daughters, before Jalew decided to become a (mediocre) poet and travel the lands, coming back to Aslamita every now and then but otherwise living a life of semi-vagabondage.
In 126 however, he learnt that a fort was being built to the north west to protect the kingdom. Having nothing to do and finding no success in his artistic endeavours, he moved with his family which was now counting two new kids Zefer and Ases to the border fort of Tetzobsha.
Jalew was sent to the mines to exploit a quarry - that was soon abandonned and transformed into an undeground graveyard - and Sug became a tresher.
Since then, Jalew and Sug had a hand in most of the kingdom's project. In 133, they left Tetzobsha for Thomocemir, as lord Ryukan was trying to find a way to pierce the underground lake under his fort.
At the time, Jalew had already become the most renowed expert in the underground world.
During their time at Thomocemir, Sug and Jalew were a quiet couple. Sug worked to develop the textile industry, while Jalew tried for many year to pierce the underground lake, on Lord's Ryukan's request but was ultimately unsuccessful.
However, their children attracted a lot of attention. Their elder daughter Apba married Bookkeeper Asin and went on having children of her own, notably Idem, notable for holding Thomocemir's bridge on her own against Osme's armies, and Dengusa, Thomocemir's smith.
Some of their other children, Zefer « Shining Surge », Ases « Chains of Hope » and Etus « Grieving Iconoclast », went on to become war heroes in their own right.
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That's about it for this season's update. I'm a bit conflicted with the underworld, I'll admit. I hesitate to lock that thing up. Ngethac was defeated with no problem, but it was pretty soft as long as Fbs go. One bad beast and we can lose the village. But if we lock the thing, we'll lose an opportu nity to make history. What do you think ? Do we take the risk ?
Also, the'll be a flourish of promotions in the very short future ; we need pretty much all kind of noblemen. We need a heartcaptain and a medic in case someone goes haywire - that's the most urgent. But we also need a bookkeeper and a manager too.
If you are interested by any of those title, just tell me and I'll grab them for you