(( Oh shite. I just realized that I previously said it took around 5-7 seven weeks to reach the countries that have kyrite. With the knowledge that Preston is a month away, this doesn't make sense. I guess Korlan should be around 3-7 months journey south. I have no idea. Iituem or thatkid please decide))
5-7 weeks on a very fast caravel, by sea. In short, it took
you 5-7 weeks to travel here from there because you had the wind on your side and you had hired passage on a fast ship. A man on a fast horse on a direct road (there isn't one) might take two or three times as long. A man or group of travellers on good roads might take 3-4 months. Armies march significantly slower than individual travellers because of the baggage train, so although it only took Terenos a week on a fast horse to get back from Miring to Elbreth, it took him and his royal escort several weeks to march that same distance back. Marching from Elbreth to Preston takes even longer for the full royal army because of the difficulty of marching that many troops (plus the slight additional distance).
Ships are fast. That's why waterways and ports were so important at this level of technological development.
((A group of men/women who watch and see if any enemies come into the region they are stationed in and report back to the main group. Or- in other words- a unit made only for scouting and wacthing and little to no fighting, hard to catch and see but weak. Basically they are:
- Stealthy
- Weak Fighters
- short sword uses
- Tracking and leaving no trail to be tracked
- Running
Scout Unit: Str 1 infantry. Raise cost 2 Ducats, 1 manpower, upkeep 1.5 Ducats. Confer ambush immunity (units stacked with scouts cannot be ambushed), can take part in defense vs raids but not raider-capable. On a simple d6 roll of 3 or better, can escape from combat before battle starts. If used to boost a scouting check (i.e. the whole unit is deployed for scouting), +2 to the RtD scouting roll - but on a natural 1 the unit is destroyed. Can pass through enemy territory undetected (i.e. travelling through territory rather than just scouting it) on a simple d6 roll of 4 or better. Can be used to counter-scout (find and eliminate other scouts) within an area, adding a -1 penalty per scout to enemy scouting checks, but units used in this way cannot also be used to scout.
Roll all die rolls separately for individual scout units.
by recruit goatherders i ment turn them into my civalisation I should of said convert
Collect rock
convert goatherders by giving them guards to defend them
scout for more habitable lands
Lands:
Elspine +2 defence x1 [cave +1 defence][not improved][+3 defence total]
Elspine +2 defence x1 [Goatherd]
Suul x1 [hunting lodge]
Troops:
Steppe raiders x1 [personal][infantry][Raider]
Treasury:
1 ducat
[3] Your men aren't really equipped for quarrying or mining, but they collect lots of small, loose stones scattered across the mountainside. You could build a drywall with them, but the stone isn't high enough quality or specially cut enough to provide any real advantage to constructing it.
[3] The goatherds are more or less under your thumb anyway, so they decide to join you in name as well. Sadly, they only number about twenty or thirty in total, so beyond the lands you've already taken from them it makes little difference.
[3-2] Unfortunately, Eelspine is still a pretty miserable place and you have no luck at all trying to colonise more of it. Colonising Eelspine is always going to be a difficult, expensive job for anyone who attempts it.
((Perhaps, Micelus, your character could just take an interest in Mahtan's work, and offer to help him research it? As I'm -pretty- sure the GMs decreed him being the first to dicover it was canon. Could be wrong though. 
))
What the hell. Canon/
Cannon (eventually). You get to have invented gunpowder in this part of the world. (I promise nothing regarding distant continents you haven't heard of.) Ballistae are pretty much well described, you just built one out of semi-boredom and inspiration. The design exists elsewhere in the known world, it just didn't reach Elbreth. Crossbows exist too as you've mentioned but the mechanisms are expensive to make, limiting their spread.
[Incidentally, this was the main factor for the limit of crossbow use in Reformation Europe (though the cost of producing longbows also increased around this time due to reduced supplies of appropriate lumber). Whilst longbows were superior to early guns, guns were cheaper to make and train with. Crossbows were superior to longbows in terms of sheer firepower (but not fire rate) but expensive to make if much easier to train with. Repeating crossbows overcame this problem but never really made it to Europe in a big way. By comparison, they were used to great effect during the very end of the Spring and Autumn and the Five Kingdoms periods in early China (~350-200BC) and thereafter, where they pretty much replaced shortbows as the ranged weapon of choice for armies and remained that way for a good thousand or more years.
Whilst I'm on the subject, the Chinese invented rockets, cannons, hand-cannons and long-gonnes a few good decades before they hit Europe. The only thing Europe beat them to in the gunpowder game was rifling.]
Also, on Locanil's spirit-calling, I'm going to rule that whilst technically it would count as magic (spirit summoning, communing, not following strictly mundane laws of nature) it is completely socially acceptable in his culture and considered such a mundane thing that none of his people even consider it magic at all but rather a result of simply being pious - save for the interfering effects of kyrite when trying to commune. In other words, minimal real cost and no social cost when performing it in their homeland. Right now, gunpowder use would be a more controversial practice.
Locanil came in as a lizard-scholar rather than a lizard-priest or lizard-engineer, so he gets to dabble in a bit of both but he's not really either (no bonuses to checks - but I need to remember to give Mahtan bonuses to alchemy and possibly engineering checks in future). Locanil will probably get +1 to lore and knowledge checks, though.
So yeah, Mahtan's hardly invalid. Different characters, different skill bases.
Mahtan excuses himself, cause he'd really like to check out his quarters.
[5] Your quarters are pretty damn sweet. Four poster bed, nice clear tables for you to set up equipment on, plenty of space for you to build things in, wardrobe and ensuite privy/chamberpot. There's even a bell you can ring for servants when you want meals. You've hit jackpot.
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Topic: You are King! (Spring 315a) (Read 188613 times)