The tournament is an annual thing held in Maji. Though it is actually part of a larger entertainment business that is active year round traveling from city to city within the Badlands. The particular tournament that is about to take place is actually a talent showcase for a different game entirely, testing for similar skills while being less expensive to fund then the actual game. This open tournament includes a combat arena, a series of marathon foot races somewhat mixed with an obstacle course, an archery competition of some sort involving guns as well, a sort of scavenger hunt, and some silly games where they throw a heavy ball to see who can throw it furthest in a straight line. Each of these games are set up in such a way to be played with teams but I’m not going into that many tiny details for this stupid thing.
I get the feeling you’re going to ask so I’ll go into the actual game this is all for. The game itself at its very core is about putting a “ball” through a goal on opposite sides of the field. The ball is just a rock in the shape of a rounded off diamond so that it doesn’t roll very well nor is it easy to hold onto. The field is about a mile wide by nine miles long, it is held outside of the cities in the open badlands and the game is played with very few actual rules besides ‘get the ball into the goal’. This is where the sponsorship expenses come in, as one of those few rules is that no lethal objects can be used, so players tend to use enchanted weapons that assure the safety of the competitors. On top of that they are usually mounted in some form or another to actually traverse the huge playing field. You can look at it as basically being a cavalry battle though apparently fights on foot break out very often because the ball is not easy to pick up one handed while moving at high speed. Not to mention it keeps getting stuck in crevices.
Essentially its a game on high speed mounts with a combat element to it. Reportedly last year’s season a team won by using a couple war chariots with a ballista on them to pass the ball huge distances. They won by two points, the other team had flying beasts. So at the very least it gets fairly creative. So the sponsorships are necessary given the extensive expenses involved in outfitting a team for more or less war. Mounts, weapons, paychecks, travel expenses, entry fees, more weapons as someone gets a new idea, you get the point. Hence the open games Maji hosts to allow people to showcase their skills on the cheap to be picked up by teams for the actual game.
Most teams in these games are sponsored by warlords and merchants. It is apparently very expensive, especially to make a team from scratch. The market listing is basically an open ad for people to sponsor small teams for the cheap games coming up. That amount would basically see to 90 players being able to attend.
While the market listing is to sponsor existing but unsponsored teams for this exact tournament, if we were to field one entirely of our own people and start from there it would probably be more expensive. Though the only real reason to do that is if you plan to compete in the actual league. Which would see about 330g120m startup costs in order to be competitive with the real teams. Though I use the term competitive loosely here, basically this estimate can keep climbing the more and more ‘competitive’ you want to be for a stupid game. While we can easily afford it since we’re a government and our finances exist on a different scale entirely, funding a 50 man team isn’t exactly comparable to hundred man armies.
Though all that being said, I don’t see that much benefit to participating in all this. While the gamble on a team that could win the actual prize isn’t too bad in terms of risk to reward value, the odds of winning it are slim not to mention the players definitely keep a cut of it if we sponsor existing teams instead of our own who won’t be trained for this.
The league itself on the larger scale might have prizes to be won as well it is somewhat offset by maintenance and upgrade costs. Not to mention paychecks and travel expenses, all for…nothing really useful to us. We’re not exactly pursuing athletic glory here in the north. Though might be worth getting into the scene to figure out the tech behind it, could possibly sell them stuff. Maybe get access to those hovering bike things the Badland raiders have.
Now on to actual business. We’ve dispatched the soldiers to go and assist the mercs with taking down the bounty. We’ll have to see how that goes, travel time and all.
Next tidbit, we figured out what that black market artifact actually does. It is some sort of gateway, there is a second half of it that was not found. The two are linked together and utilizing the artifact basically opens a portal between the two to save on travel time. However, we are not in possession of the second half. We can activate the portal whenever you wish, but we have held off until your command in case it opens somewhere horrible. That way its your fault.
Also Gideon found another village along his way.
Faelyn’s scouts bought at least one of every thing any shop around here sells. So at least they aren’t freeloaders. They’re returning to Lieksä now wagons in tow with samples of all our stuff I suppose. As your advisor of the wise council I feel I should say, her scouting makes me nervous. We may wish to investigate her more as well just so we know what we’re dealing with. Also Ansa took off to Uudistar to go check in on the drow migration. They’ve actually started to move in, though they gripe about the cold a lot.
Meanwhile as an update on the situation at the drow city, things are still oddly quiet. Eilsath is working on planting crops on the surface but Vaslochar is just lurking around waiting for something while Ghuan is in the process of migrating. On a related note, the manhunter finally caught Iraeka enough to explain to her he was just trying to take her home. She thought he meant the drow city and ran off again. Charisma of 0. Reportedly he’s chasing her towards the Badland border. We’ll see if he’s made any progress in communicating his intent to her soon enough I’m sure.
Also, our hybrid program has finally yielded results. It appears that they have discovered a way to manifest mana physically in a variety of forms. Aato Jousen is actually the first to figure it out, we just didn’t realize it was a whole new type of casting until now. Largely because his earlier demonstrations just produced explosions of pure mana, which was a neat trick. He has since figured out how to turn his mana into a disfigured wolf that he can command, as well as a sharp pointy stick. He’s still working on it.
((Unit type unlocked: Manifester. They have a unique ability to spend mana to produce massive effect. They can spend up to 500 mana max to increase an armies power by 1 per mana spent for one battle. They are considered to be at +10 army power by default with their innate casting pool of mana, by spending treasury mana it can spike to 510. This applies even if they are operating alone as an agent. Aato Joutsen has been upgraded to Manifester))
Greetings Keeper! It is a glorious day for the Oda people. Iwanagi is working on talking to the people of the coastal village. Though they are interested in the existence of a wider populated world they are a bit difficult to promise much to due to the distance between us and them.
Occunohaka doesn’t understand trade routes well enough to really get much progress done at the village by the lake. He came from the island to the west as a warrior interested in exploring, not exactly an educated economist. Also similarly, our borders are too far away from them to entice them much into joining the Oda.
We’ve lost two more scouts, particularly the one’s far to the south. They were looking around the island mass we found there. Upon some investigation from Kaze and Hamano that south western area of the sea is considered…dangerous. The tribes refuse to go there since people never come back. North of that, the scout finished looking over the island cluster and has found no signs of people living there. The island seems empty, with the only evidence that anyone has ever set foot there being those lone docks mentioned before.
Kaze and Hamano are on their way to spookyville as you say.
Also the artifact has made it over and been loaded onto the new ships. Speaking of which, remember that thing that sunk Sarkis’ ride across the river? It may have taken an interest in our fleet. The hunter ships were successful in killing it, though two of the hunters were sunk. Fortunately, since the fleet was in the river most of the crew actually survived by swimming for shore.
Yuzuki has made it back home along with Yamoaka. During her recovery, Yuzuki kept training at the monastery and attracted a following of students of her own. Now considered a master simply because the trick she’d been using this whole time was proven effective enough to develop a new ki technique around. We picked one of her new students up for your scout to travel north to see how the concept works out.
Serizawa was always a bit of an…intense fellow. Not so great with the enlightenment, pretty good with the punching. Once Yuzuki taught him the core to the sohei methods he took a quick liking to it and is eager to travel and put it to the test. It seems fitting to give such a restless fellow a mission to travel to the most dangerous part of the continent. That and his skill in the water school has gone into a form of cryokinesis, so if anyone can take the cold its him. For some reason people kept calling him Sub-Zero around the temple.
In regards to your second hiring request, we actually can’t find anyone who fits that profile. We’re not the best when it comes to arcane magic or stealth, let alone someone who is specifically trained to counter divination. Yuzuki and Kyoko can be sneaky but countering divination is a whole other thing altogether.
Our navy has joined the battle at the city to the south with the orcs. So far our ships prove to be a difficult obstacle for the orcs to overcome. Granted we are just firing blindly into the tree line, but with the sheer number of orcs involved, that actually seems to hit things with surprising frequency. They definitely are avoiding the river our ships patrol.
((Sohei warrior monk unit type unlocked. These are monks who are less about enlightenment and more about war. Unlike the traditional monk, they have learned to channel Ki to their weapons as well as keeping up with their hand to hand training. They have dramatically higher combat stats and confer +1 to military power of any army they command. Specifically army, not so great at naval command. However, since they use specialized weapons and such they are not quite as cheap as pure fisticuff monks. If you are curious, the unlock condition was a monk had to go to war and return home alive. Yuzuki has been auto upgraded to Sohei as the founder of the school.))
So in regards to the tournament stuff that Heseli went on about. All that being said there is one potential benefit to competing for us at least. Its cheaper then going to actual war. These games are highly spectated and the players idolized. Katara women are beautiful and as a potential side effect there is a chance of luring men to become princes here if they were to see our girls traveling around for this game. Not to mention the katara are naturally suited to any athletic competition where hitting the opponent is part of the game.
KouKou is more or less fine, just a bit…shaken by the adventure. The forest alone is harsh, a forest full of orcs is bound to induce paranoia. I think she just needs to go with a group on her next expedition so she can adapt to the forest.
As for the warlord collecting units, we could attempt that. Though we don’t know much about the warlords out there, or how strong they are. The only contact we have is hearsay from Nalkas about this Faelyn character and they don’t even know whether or not she’s dangerous. So could try it, though it would be a bit of a gamble. However, a good opportunity to test the might of the badlands since their gangster politics would not provoke them to act upon us for striking at just one warlord.
We’ve sent the gold and hired the mercs, they’re all traveling and stuff. Also as requested we have had the Nalkas turn the golems back on and begun construction of the road to connect our territory.
As for the update on the war…as the orcs reached and began the attack on another city things have gotten even crazier then last time thanks to the arrival of Oda’s navy. So basically a bunch of boats are shooting fire lasers for miles across the horizon, a swarm of orcs are smashing their faces into the walls, werewolves are running rampant eating orcs, the oda navy have some weird girl on the boat who can fire pure explosion that wiped out a quarter mile of forest in one go, their commander is a hydromancer who keeps making the river literally eat orcs, and everything is on fire. Nina will be there next week, meet me by the scrying pool if you want to watch. I made snacks.
Also as a reminder, the son of Orias is still out there somewhere if we were going to get around to that. It might be best to look into that before Nina dies fighting orcs or something, even if Vanessa also works with Orias she is probably not as favored by Orias as Nina is due to the whole…crazy demon knight zealotry.
Now for some good news, Nina found Areti. Apparently she wound up behind orc lines during the all the fighting before and when the army was defeated she had no path to retreat along to get back towards home. With no KouKou to track her down or Ankathi she was just taking a bit of a long way around. She was on her way to Tethalyn when Nina managed to find her. Also we lost about 80 of our civilian army to forest monsters. Turns out they’re not quite as good as the professionals at navigating this place and Nina is having to do most of the fighting against those things. Though there is only so much she can do to stop people from being picked off the edges of camp. However, with Areti rejoining them hopefully that’ll alleviate the situation. As your advisor I feel it worth mentioning that after this whole orc thing, if Areti is still alive we might owe her a vacation with all she has been through.