cal cal cal cal cal cal cal cal cal cal cal cal cal = 13
adv adv adv adv adv adv adv adv = 8
You decide to go with your heart and establish the Calendar of various festivals, with venues, artists and organizators being paid by the crown. You also send for dwarves to come and create you an artifact.
1196 AD
You look through the window at your bedchamber, you look outside and you see soldiers on the walls, warming their hands while the Deathtubes, wrapped in cloth, stand nearby. You see the dark barrels of the siege machines that will shoot metal projectiles at ones besieging the capital.
This is not a sight reserved only in the capital, or just Methiant, too; Eldricans have Fireblood, Cydwyllians have Fireblood, and others outside your borders do too. Allies and enemies are developing their own machines of destruction, and those who cannot end subjugated or pushed into the margins of wilderness. Old fortresses fall under fiery showers of lead, new ones become twice as hard to crack with complement of guns on their battlements.
And its not only states and armies that mingle with the deadly black powder; how often you saw young alchemists earning a penny by mixing up powdered metals with a pinch of Fireblood to create sparkles and lights of different colors, to delight of young screeching children? It seemed so natural of a sight just yesterday, when you were on your way to visit the royal barracks.
As you look outside the window, you realize that you're the witness of something special occuring.
A dawn of new Era; the world is no longer bound by mysticism, feudalism and piety, but rather full of mental freedoms and ripe for conquest by wielders of Fireblood; Fireblood the utility, Fireblood the killer, Fireblood the great.
The world has passed from the Age of Iron into the Age of Fireblood!Access to Fireblood will no longer yield great benefits.
Lack of Fireblood access will grant penalties.
Fortifications will have lesser effect in warfare.
Industry and sciences will progress more rapidly.
1196 AD, Mid-Spring
Your wife gives birth to a healthy baby boy! In honor of your grandfather, she names him 'Cidric'.
1196 AD, Late Spring
The dwarves have arrived. The whole group of them are smelly, and with unkept beards, they bow before you, rubbing their hands and showing their golden teeth in ugly grins.
"Greeting, Emperor Yoe. We hear that you need our services, and so we are here. As you're a skilled warrior but troubled statesman, we offer to make you an enchanted necklace that will boost your presence and rhetoric, making you able to move the frozen hearts of even most stubborn of your opponents." They give your Treasurer a hastily scribbled scroll, and he furrows his brows, turning to you.
"Sire, they demand two-thirds of Methiantese treasury for this item!"
A) "That is mighty fine! Let them begin at once!"
B) "This is an absurd, a robbery! Get out of my sights, smelly shortstacks!"
C) "Mayhaps there's room for negotiation, yes?"