Stories of Lore 18

 

So we’ve made progress on the horse thing you had us start looking into. We can probably start breeding them reliably now, though it should be noted due to the climate it may be more expensive then its worth overall.

 

Aato mentions that reaching the northern island will definitely take a concentrated naval effort. Judging by the scout reports of the area, the shore is actually very dangerous. As you know, aquatic based monsters tend to be bigger and meaner then most, and the same could be said of northern ones. So here on this northern island, happens to be a nesting ground for one of the only true semi aquatic monster species we’ve seen. Basically, taking that shore is going to suck. Even after its taken these species are likely to keep sneaking up on the coast line from the water trying to return to its nesting grounds. While the dawnbreakers can make short work of that for securing a landing zone, the problem is when the one’s who aren’t on that particular spot of the shore come back from whatever they are doing in the water whenever we happen to arrive. This colony idea will require a near constant naval station in order to harvest the mana from the sea just to keep those things under control…until we make them extinct at least.

All that being said, we don’t know what is further inland. The scouts who sold the report never landed on it for all the reasons mentioned above. Aato estimates we’ll need a force of at minimum 2500 strength for both the land and sea efforts. He was very clear that was ‘the minimum assuming nothing goes wrong’. He then estimated the odds of something going wrong to be about ninety two percent. Aato also assembled something of a profile report on who he wants to go with him and why. Secretary girl wrote down what he said verbatim so…

Essi – “Because she’s nearly unkillable and will be needed to engineer the defenses of the colony.”
Nalky – “Maybe it can assert itself as the alpha. Also its a mana eater so it can find a good spot to set up without us having to send a team of scouts with test tubes who are likely to die without being escorted by the whole army. So it’d just be a good use of resources to have a pig find the truffle instead of an army of people with shovels.”
Iraeka – “practically born for this kind of job. Also she can see at night and that’s usually when everyone dies in these circumstances.”
Chinami – “Self explanatory.”
Iwanagi – “The most experienced sailor in the entire alliance who has somehow not died.”
Ansa – “If we’re going to encounter whole new species of monsters on their home nesting ground, this seems like something we might need her for. Without her talents we could wind up not knowing something important that gets us eaten. While normally not as big of a concern – we are investing a lot into this, we will be far from home, and this is requiring a full military invasion just because of monsters alone. She could save us a lot of pain.”
Literally any druid – “Just fucking because. I’ll take Shime too if that’s the best I can get, but someone write the elves a letter for me.”
Literally any pathfinder – “It’s in their fucking name.”

Iraeka has started skulking about the northern village and found quite a large tribe of aggressive fur wearing folk. Here is the weird part, despite attacking everyone else who has ever gone there they actually think Iraeka is some sort of ghost. More on that in a moment, but they were at least quite willing to talk with her even if a bit tentatively. The northern savages consider themselves part of an alliance known as the Skjöldal. We may have already enslaved a few of their alliance when we took the village near Uudistar. They are in an active war with Alosne, who they see as invaders of the northern lands. Okay, history time.

The true Skjöldal is a civilization that predates the dying night who once inhabited these northern lands. Through the during night they tried to keep ahold of it, doing surprisingly well despite how harsh this place is, especially without sunlight. Due to its abundant mana they were able to at least sustain themselves with various magical ideas. So I think you can see where I’m going with this. Their actual capital is a ruin of a civilization built on top of a ruin built on top of a ruin built on top of one of our ruins. A place we used to call Valkeakoski, though they call it Hellengdom now. This is why they were somewhat perturbed by the presence of Iraeka, they think she is a nalkas because she looks like the paintings. Perhaps more accurately, she looks kind of like Ansa – in terms of a broad racial profile at least. Dark tinted skin, pointy ears, white hair, really intense eyes.

From their point of view, the north belongs to them since they stuck out the hard times here and made it their home. Alosne are a people who just wandered in and decided to start taking over the place in their moment of weakness after the effects of the dying night. The problem has been that Alosne is much more advanced and organized so has been constantly taking ground. Not to mention they have entered into treaties with Faelyn, which gives them access to the badlands military technology. The north is vast, and there are many more villages however Alosne has never gone to the Skjöldal home. There exists an island to the north east, and this is where Hellengdom is. This is also where the barbarians are coming from, they came back to the mainland to try and colonize some of the land but ran into Alosne.

So here is the thing with that, neither of them are actually native to this exact stretch of snow. Skjöldal comes from an island and after the dying night came here to colonize. Alosne were nomads without a home who arrived in the north to find a place to settle down and colonize as well. They were both too invested by the time they made first contact and it escalated into a war. A series of raids into Alosne territory by the savages provoked Alosne into a more militant policy regarding them and that was how it all got started.

This is where I have heard an odd theory that holds up a little too well, but is none the less just an unproven conspiracy theory. It comes to us from our embassy in the badlands. See Alosne only started trading heavily during the escalation of this war, until then they were very independent. Also the Alosne were very well defended, it was hard to understand how a series of raids took place on them the way they did with so little facts in the aftermath having any real evidence. All the raiders disappeared and left no trace behind, which doesn’t actually fit the stereotype of these barbarians. So the conspiracy theory I’ve heard, is that the entire war was actually provoked and sustained by the badlands so they could profit off of it.  The rumors suspect it was Faelyn who did it as obviously it has made her very wealthy, not to mention that is her area of operations. Atop of that it is known she has influence over both of those factions, even having an Alosne and Skjöldal warrior as members of her elite guard collection.

Though I disagree. I get this nagging feeling as if my wisdom check noticed something a lesser man might have missed. Faelyn doesn’t play that way, she’s very direct and makes sure people know for certain when she is involved. Sort of the draconic pride I think, she wants people to know exactly who is fucking with them. When she found Gideon, she sent an army with banners in her name to us. Her antics in the underdark were also very overt. Recruiting in huge numbers, planting her flag in the corpses of the old matrons, selling them technology and so forth. In the badlands her puppet Laura is well known to everyone, she keeps Laura standing right next to her as a pet just like all the other people of interest she has collected. She just doesn’t strike me as someone who would use tactics so heavily rooted in subterfuge when everything about her seems to be equivalent to slapping her metaphorical dick on the table and offering you to measure it.

So make of all that what you will.

Started building the cannons and such, those take a bit of construction time but shall be ready soon. Might want to tell Alexandria to wait up if she wants the cannons though.

In regards to selling Anirace based stuff, actually that seems to be going well. Though they would like to see our field to see what we’re really offering and are sending some people to take a look. It should be done by the time they get here at least. Also our embassy finished setting up in full over in Maji.

 

Greetings keeper! It is a glorious day for the Oda people. In order to build a proper trade outpost in the southern isles we will need to send some boats. While there are plenty of resources we could process there, as all of colonization thus far has proven – you need to be able to protect any colony you try to start. That and also we just need to get the people to build the colony there in the first place, which means a long sea voyage. Which is also dangerous.

Our scouting boat has arrived near Sanctuary to scout out the area. It seems for the most part neither the archdruid nor Cayetano outpost minds too much if we were to set up in the area. However, in terms of the viability of the land itself it is serviceable if the location is of interest though it has no stand out qualities in its resources that might warrant immediate exploitation. It could do with more trees though.

With heavy heart I must inform you that tragedy has struck. One of our scout crews has disappeared into the depths of the ocean while scouting close to the northeastern isle, victims of a monster attack.

Iwanagi found another settlement…this is clearly a very large island. They are a little less friendly though, outright hostile even. They wore a lot of skeletal garments of humanoid fashion and didn’t seem to speak the common language. Fortunately he was able to escape their grasp though had to subdue at least a dozen before he could get his boat back out to sea. They pursued in smaller canoes, though he was able to deal with those as well. So they are apparently quite committed to not engaging in diplomacy unlike the other two we have found. It is worth noting that it was quite a large settlement for a people so violent.

In regards to Yuzuki and Shime’s ongoing scuffle, I wouldn’t say there is much risk of them killing each other. Though Yuzuki is upset that Shime has been so disapproving of the Sohei techniques, it all started when Shime made a comment about weapons not equalling better when kinesis alternatives are available. However, unlike her conflict with Serizawa, Yuzuki proves to be much stronger. Shime lost that fight by a significant margin actually, even when fleeing into the woods to demonstrate alternative solutions to actual fighting, Yuzuki ran her down and, in her own words “beat Shime into the dirt until she stopped twitching”. They’re not quite enemies over the matter, in fact Yuzuki is still Shime’s translator, but Yuzuki has displayed no interest in learning kinesis techniques. Instead she wants to refine the sohei further, and has requested that once the monastery is rebuilt that she be given funding to do an experiment. It might cost about 1g all things considered, quite an expensive project for the monastery to embark upon, though Yuzuki seems adamant. Shime for her part has returned to Haven to train others in her particular style, and continues to disapprove of Yuzuki’s path in turning the monastery away from enlightenment and peacekeeping towards militaristic warfare. Notably Shime has been training very hard at Haven, intent on being able to defeat Yuzuki once she has fully mastered kinesis to rival Yuzuki’s mastery of the sohei techniques.

Also I have a suggestion for the envoy to the elves. We could send Konya on the joint venture by the Nalkas and Katara towards Moncayo pass and have him just hop off the boat at Lennecas. This would ensure he reaches it swiftly and would have sufficient protection for the voyage. He could then just wait for their return trip to bring him back.

Also reconstruction is going well! We hope to be done within the next cycle, at least done enough that we can resume life as normal.

Eliana is here visiting now. She seems quite interested in taking note of how we abandoned the practice of witchcraft so recently. She maintains her “don’t care” stance towards everything, or at least she did. But see…she happened to arrive on the day that Alexandria was burning cultists in the street and it was…awkward. Petrina had to stop Alexandria from doing anything to Eliana it seemed, who is definitely not amused over that. I have Eliana staying here in the palace with us obviously if there was anything in particular you wanted to talk to her about while we have the opportunity. If…your earlier plan to uh… commit necrophilia as you put it still stands then um…you know what you’re on your own for that.

As another bit of news, the Knight’s Sanctum has finished its first wave of training under Petrina now that she’s had time to focus on it since the cult problem has come to a close. All the cavalry under her command have been converted to Knights.

So we picked him up from the badlands, well financially speaking at least. He still has to walk over here. The mercenary goes by the name Ivan Sabantseva and his former city was destroyed by the orcish warpath some time ago. We had to assure him that the curse wasn’t still lingering over our city. Then we found out he’s an actual dragonborn and is a native of Kirillobatov who wandered off to the river city that got destroyed.

Basically he is even stronger then Areti physically speaking and judging by his age he has quite the experience to go with it. A veteran of many battles and skirmishes. He is somewhat refined and reserved in his mannerisms, very professional.

Also we sent up Christina though you may wish to put a more elaborate thought into what you want her to do up there given the complexities of the political situation in there as we’ve seen with their first contact with the nalkas.

Ryo has arrived at Kirillobatov and talked to the elders there.

Also some elves moved back into Tethalyn so the population has gone up a little there, it appears that the people who were fleeing from the orcs are more scared of orcs then mad at us and didn’t trust something that is going on in Aywin’s politics or something to that effect. Also with Ankathi gone even Neyth is a bit less wary of us. So…here is the problem. They came back to Tethalyn to reclaim the druidic temple there and have sort of set up an elven ghetto in that neighborhood. Which means they still have some reverence for the wilds and that temple. Which means they don’t know about Alexandria…and Alexandria is about to pass through there on her way to Moncayo pass. Not to mention she will also pass through Lennecas. Where there are actively practitioning druids. We just gave her an army of snipers.

Oh and the roads are done.

Also our girls made it to show up for their first Anirace game in Ahedama! They did not win. At least it wasn’t an outright humiliation, they did pretty well for their first real game. Juma says going up against the Ahedama team is a tough first match as their team is composed of professional marauders. Though since we own the team we got some of the revenue anyways. We got about 1724g for it. Apparently there was a good turnout as it was the first game of the season and people were curious about our girls.