Kingdom issues (after claiming Varnhold)

This is the thread we'll use to deal with what goes on in the kingdom (mechanically and rp-wise) after you claim Varnhold.

Someone roll me a Stability check, please. The stats below are what you have currently so you have a +48 bonus and the DC is 56.

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Current kingdom scores: Economy +47, Loyalty +44, Stability +49 (48), Unrest 0, Kingdom size = 36; Command DC 56; Consumption = 9; Treasury = 27 BP

Lakeshore statistics: Base Value = 700 gp; Defense Modifier +10; Districts = 1; contains Castle, Noble Villa, Exotic Craftsman (x2), Caster's Tower, Town Hall, Barracks, Inn, Park, Smith, Dump and House (x4); 4 minor items, 2 medium items

Olegton statistics: Base Value = 700 gp; Defense Modifier +0; Districts = 1; contains Stable, Shrine, and House (x2); 1 minor item

Temple settlement statistics: Base Value = 200 gp; Defense Modifier +0; Districts = 1; contains Temple and Graveyard; 2 minor items

Varnhold city statistics: Base Value = 2200 gp; Defense Modifier +0; Districts = 1; contains Brewery, Exotic Craftsman, Garrison, Granary, Inn, Smith, Tannery, Temple, 3 Tradesmen , and 8 Houses; 3 minor items

I'll let Avi roll this one.

Rowan wrote:

I'll let Avi roll this one.

Oh, come on! It's only 8+ on d20. You can do it.

"All the cool kids are doing it!"

Fine.

The member 'Rowan' has done the following action : Dice roller

'd20' : 12

You risk too much Lucilla

Rowan wrote:

"All the cool kids are doing it!"

Fine.

See - you made it!

* * * * *
With the chimeras that had been attacking the workers dealt with, things are temporarily stable again.

Or as stable as they can be in a still fledgling kingdom which has just doubled its size over the course of a month, adding a settlement as large as its capital and over a thousand people all told to its population. Though Khatovar's current economy and infrastructure seems able to cater to the additional pressures, it does give the kingdom much less of a surplus in its production and raises the specter of serious problems if food and economic production should suffer for any of the unforeseen problems that can arise in the Stolen Lands.

On the positive side, the people are reasonably happy, both the original citizens and the additions from Varnhold. The small magic item economy continues to churn out useful magic items, while timber flows out of the forests and food from the farmlands. Things are ... stable.

OOC: Mechanically the above translates to the following.

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Upkeep Phase:

1 – Determine Kingdom Stability: Success (60 vs. DC 56), so BP +1 because Unrest = 0

2 – Pay Consumption: Pay 9 BP

3 – Fill Vacant Magic Item Slots: 1 medium and 3 minor items

4 – Unrest: None

Now here's the next choice. Are you going to make any changes as far as your leadership positions are concerned?

The 11 standard leadership positions are nominally (I say that because the 4 of you essentially rule as a group) filled as follows:

Ruler: Kara
Councilor: Svetlana
General: Rowan
Grand Diplomat: Jubilost
High Priest: Jhod
Magister: Elga
Marshal: Kesten
Royal Assassin: Grabthar
Spymaster: Leonis
Treasurer: Oleg
Warden: Akiros

You now have a few more skilled NPCs who can fill some of these positions - Xamanthe (centaur warrior and daughter to Aecora Silverfire), Youma Sivis (the former advisor in Varnhold), Fluin Tullier (fomer garrison commander in Varnhold), Retief Ness (ex-colonel in the Aundairan army and Rowan's former commander). You could choose to replace one or more of the above positions with them. You could also create other positions for them (e.g. viceroy or mayor of Varnhold City, liaison from the Nomen centaurs) and/or could choose to slide over some of the responsibilities/benefits of the above roles to them. Feel free to make any suggestions you have.

Well, the first thing let's ask our current council members if any of them would like to relinquish their positions. Some may have other matters to attend to, or would rather hold a smaller position. This will be asked in an open/frank manner and it is not to pressure anyone.

For the new folks:
Xamanthe (centaur warrior and daughter to Aecora Silverfire) - Ambassador to/for the Noman Centaurs
Youma Sivis (the former advisor in Varnhold) - Mayor of Varnhold
Fluin Tullier (fomer garrison commander in Varnhold) - Counter Terrorist Unit - Their role, to work with the spymaster, in routing out terrorist groups
Retief Ness (ex-colonel in the Aundairan army and Rowan's former commander) - Strategic Commander, Allied Forces

Just my thoughts.

If we can get a new position for Leonis, say Pimp of all Dem Ho's, I would be good with that.

Would any of the new members be better suited for the old positions? If so we could swap them out (e.g. if Retief would make a better General, or Warden, or Marshal) and give the new position to the previous holder of it. Getting everyone a position would be great.

Obviously standard: detect alignment, zone of truth, etc would be required. Maybe a Geas - don't betray us

Leonis wrote:

Well, the first thing let's ask our current council members if any of them would like to relinquish their positions. Some may have other matters to attend to, or would rather hold a smaller position. This will be asked in an open/frank manner and it is not to pressure anyone.

Just about all of them say that they'd be willing to give up their position if the four of you wish it, but you're pretty sure that Kesten would take it amiss if he were replaced. Jubilost and Akiros are the only two who seem genuinely impressed in relinquishing their positions - Jubilost so that she can focus on her trading (though she hints broadly that she'd appreciate you considering the work she's done for you when it comes to her trading in Khatovar) and Akiros because she's a little bored with handling the town guards and would like to do something else (like maybe handle something in Varnhold).

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For the new folks:
Xamanthe (centaur warrior and daughter to Aecora Silverfire) - Ambassador to/for the Noman Centaurs
Youma Sivis (the former advisor in Varnhold) - Mayor of Varnhold
Fluin Tullier (fomer garrison commander in Varnhold) - Counter Terrorist Unit - Their role, to work with the spymaster, in routing out terrorist groups
Retief Ness (ex-colonel in the Aundairan army and Rowan's former commander) - Strategic Commander, Allied Forces

Those all sound pretty good, though if you want Fluin to handle anything outside commanding troops, it's probably not something he's had experience with.

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If we can get a new position for Leonis, say Pimp of all Dem Ho's, I would be good with that.

I thought he already believed that was his position :p

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Would any of the new members be better suited for the old positions? If so we could swap them out (e.g. if Retief would make a better General, or Warden, or Marshal) and give the new position to the previous holder of it. Getting everyone a position would be great.

Xamanthe probably doesn't have enough experience with non-centaurs to do well at any of the old positions yet. Fluin would probably be best as Warden (Akiros' current job). Youma would be good as Councilor, Grand Diplomat (Jubilost's current position), Spymaster, or Treasurer. Retief would be a good General, Grand Diplomat, Marshal, or Warden.

One option I'll also give you is to create different roles for them as you wish and pick a total of 11 roles (including the ones your PCs are filling) to have on your council. So the other NPCs may still be filling the roles which they did earlier, but just won't be adding numbers to the kingdom-running mechanics.

Xamanthe - Amabassador for the Noman's.
Fluin - Warden
Akiros = Garrison Commander Varnhold - This would also be a great help to get a feel for Varnhold since we know Akiros
Youma - Grand Diplomat
Jubilost - Merchant's Guild Leader (new position). Especially since he travels he could help recruit folks to the guild. This might increase income
Retiff - General if better then Rowan (up to Mike) - I would like to get him in some kind of military position. With his knowledge it would be great. Maybe Commandant of the Military school. We could start one

Did you mean 11 new positions, so we would have 22?

Leonis wrote:

Xamanthe - Amabassador for the Noman's.
Fluin - Warden
Akiros = Garrison Commander Varnhold - This would also be a great help to get a feel for Varnhold since we know Akiros
Youma - Grand Diplomat
Jubilost - Merchant's Guild Leader (new position). Especially since he travels he could help recruit folks to the guild. This might increase income
Retiff - General if better then Rowan (up to Mike) - I would like to get him in some kind of military position. With his knowledge it would be great. Maybe Commandant of the Military school. We could start one

Did you mean 11 new positions, so we would have 22?

Fluin should probably stay in Varnhold for the time being, to provide some continuity. He knows his troops, and they probably feel some loyalty to him. Why not just leave him as the Garrison Commander? Then make Akiros Warden of the South, Governor of Varnhold, or some other invented position.

Retiff would make a good General. I think that Rowan would make a better nominal ruler than Kara, because she has the diplomacy and leadership skills. If Kara gains rank in her House she'd need to step down as ruler anyway, since members of the dragonmarked houses are not permitted to hold political positions outside of them. For now, Kara would make a great Warden.

A military school is a good idea, though I don't know if it needs to be a formal school. At the very least, the city guard should be trained into a disciplined fighting force, better able to defend the city from attack if necessary. We can also train a garrison of full-time soldiers, and provide militia training to other citizens of Khatovar.

Rowan wrote:

Fluin should probably stay in Varnhold for the time being, to provide some continuity. He knows his troops, and they probably feel some loyalty to him. Why not just leave him as the Garrison Commander? Then make Akiros Warden of the South, Governor of Varnhold, or some other invented position.

Retiff would make a good General. I think that Rowan would make a better nominal ruler than Kara, because she has the diplomacy and leadership skills. If Kara gains rank in her House she'd need to step down as ruler anyway, since members of the dragonmarked houses are not permitted to hold political positions outside of them. For now, Kara would make a great Warden.

A military school is a good idea, though I don't know if it needs to be a formal school. At the very least, the city guard should be trained into a disciplined fighting force, better able to defend the city from attack if necessary. We can also train a garrison of full-time soldiers, and provide militia training to other citizens of Khatovar.

Good ideas all, but did you mean Marshal for Kara? The Marshal position lets you apply Dex or Wis to Economy, while Warden lets you apply Str or Con to Loyalty. With Kara's huge Dex, she'd be much better at Marshal.

Admin wrote:

Good ideas all, but did you mean Marshal for Kara? The Marshal position lets you apply Dex or Wis to Economy, while Warden lets you apply Str or Con to Loyalty. With Kara's huge Dex, she'd be much better at Marshal.

I wasn't thinking in terms of game mechanics, but that sounds fine, if we can do it without alienating Kesten.

Could we make Akiros or Fluin Warden while having them stay in Varnhold to ease the transition?

Rowan wrote:

I wasn't thinking in terms of game mechanics, but that sounds fine, if we can do it without alienating Kesten.

On that note, you're pretty sure that Kesten would take being replaced/demoted by one of you four much better than being replaced by someone new from Varnhold. So you could have Kara take over as Marshal and either find Kesten a secondary position to her or create something new for him.

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Could we make Akiros or Fluin Warden while having them stay in Varnhold to ease the transition?

Yes. Anyone filling a position just needs to be within the kingdom regularly (at least 50% of each month) to provide the mechanical benefits. So you could keep Akiros as Warden (which she currently is) and simply station her in Varnhold to work with Fluin there.

Julia said she's fine with the change. Based on the ideas above, how's this for the different roles?

NPCs contributing to kingdom mechanics:
Ruler: Rowan
Councilor: Svetlana
General: Retief
Grand Diplomat: Youma (also functions as mayor of Varnhold)
High Priest: Jhod
Magister: Elga
Marshal: Kara
Royal Assassin: Grabthar
Spymaster: Leonis
Treasurer: Oleg
Warden: Akiros (posted in Varnhold to help with transition)

Other NPCs:
Xamanthe - Representative to Khatovar from the Nomen centaurs
Fluin - Garrison commander in Varnhold
Jubilost - Merchant's guild leader
Kesten - Aiding Kara and training soldiers/guards

How does that sound?

EDIT: The above changes give you a total of +9 to Economy, +1 to Loyalty and +1 to Stability, which puts you at Economy +56, Loyalty +45, Stability +50 (49). Since the current DC for handling Kingdom stuff is 56, that means you're back to succeeding on Economy checks on a 1 and Stability's pretty good too. Loyalty could use some boosting via buildings and such. Luckily, Loyalty checks come up the least often by far, so it's not that big a deal.

That looks fine to me, though I'd prefer that Xamanthe's title was Representative rather than Liaison.

Rowan wrote:

That looks fine to me, though I'd prefer that Xamanthe's title was Representative rather than Liaison.

Done.

Now on to the important question - what hexes do you claim this month? For what it's worth, a couple of your councilors (particularly Svetlana and Oleg, as well as your new addition Youma) will argue that you should not be claiming any hexes at all right now. Khatovar's still dealing with the massive increase in size, population and responsibilities, and they suggest you focus on infrastructure and building, as well as creating more farmland and roads, before increasing the size of the kingdom.

Mechanically speaking, you do have a current consumption of 9 BP a month, which will drop to 5 if you create two farms. You have 18 BP to spend, but the farms will take 8 BP (since you have to build in hilly areas now) and that doesn't leave you a lot for buildings and roads.

You could claim just the 1 hex with Tatzlford in it, which would increase your consumption by 2 (1 for the hex and 1 for the settlement) but would give you a bunch of free buildings to raise your stats. You would, however, have to make a Stability check to avoid gaining more Unrest due to the transition of adding them to the kingdom.

Or you could just claim the 3 hexes you can now claim a month, which would raise consumption by 3 (4 if one of them is Tatzlford's hex), but obviously increase kingdom size by more.

If you decided to skip Tatzlford this month and instead claim three hexes heading north (closer to the Drelev border), you could gain the hex with the hot springs and then 2 plain hexes (since that takes you out of the central area of forest), which you could then turn into farmland for 4 BP total instead of 8 for building on hills. The hot springs, being a landmark, also add +1 to Loyalty. So for 7 BP you could get 3 hexes and 2 farmland, while lowering your Consumption by 1 (since you increase it by 3 for the hexes and then deduct 4 for the farmland).

In short, lots of options as usual.

Admin wrote:

EDIT: The above changes give you a total of +9 to Economy, +1 to Loyalty and +1 to Stability, which puts you at Economy +56, Loyalty +45, Stability +50 (49). Since the current DC for handling Kingdom stuff is 56, that means you're back to succeeding on Economy checks on a 1 and Stability's pretty good too. Loyalty could use some boosting via buildings and such. Luckily, Loyalty checks come up the least often by far, so it's not that big a deal.

Does that take into account Rowan now having a +7 Charisma, and her (as ruler) being able to apply it two two of the stats now that the kingdom's size is more than 20?

Edit: It sounds like building farms on the two hills are our best bet.

Are there any relatively inexpensive buildings we could build to raise our stability? If not, I suspect that our best bet may be to spend a bunch on promotion to improve the stability and incorporate tatzelford.

Rowan wrote:

Does that take into account Rowan now having a +7 Charisma, and her (as ruler) being able to apply it two two of the stats now that the kingdom's size is more than 20?

Whoops! I forgot to add her bonus to a second stat, so we can apply it to Stability, which'll bump it up to 56 (which is precisely what your current Kingdom DC is, so you won't fail except on a 1).

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Edit: It sounds like building farms on the two hills are our best bet.

Okay. That's 8 BP of your remaining 18 BP.

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Are there any relatively inexpensive buildings we could build to raise our stability? If not, I suspect that our best bet may be to spend a bunch on promotion to improve the stability and incorporate tatzelford.

With Rowan's stats applied, you don't have to worry about Stability right now, and adding Tatzlford should actually help boost all three stats, so that does sound like a good option now. Claiming that hex will cost 1 BP, and you'll need to spend another 2 BP on the last hex of road so that your capital has roadways going all the way to Varnhold city.

That leaves you 7 BP for constructing buildings. In the interests of giving you guys options which also tie into the setting, I'm going to allow you to build a structure devoted to one of the dragonmarked houses (e.g. a Sivis message station, an Orien coach station, etc) for 6 BP, which'll raise two of your stats by 1 BP each. You can also spend 10 BP to do the same and also raise the base value for the city by 500 gp, but right now that's not something you can afford.

Let me know if that sounds like a good option. And, if so, which House you want to build something for first (your options, based on the interactions you've had thus far, are Ghallanda, Orien, Lyrandar, Sivis and Vadalis).

Is there anything that's more focused on Loyalty, since that's the only stat that we really need a boost in?

Otherwise, I say we bankroll the 7 BP, unless we can make a 3rd farm hex. We'll never be able to afford something big if we keep spending all our BP each month.

Rowan wrote:

Is there anything that's more focused on Loyalty, since that's the only stat that we really need a boost in?

You could build a Monument in the small settlement around the Temple that Jhod just constructed. A Monument normally costs 6 BP but is halved due to the Temple, so it's 3 BP now, and it raises Loyalty by 2.

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Otherwise, I say we bankroll the 7 BP, unless we can make a 3rd farm hex. We'll never be able to afford something big if we keep spending all our BP each month.

That's true too. So do you want the Monument or to hold on to the money? You will get a bit of a boost from gaining Tatzlford anyway, so take that into account.

When would we need to roll Loyalty, and what are the consequences of failing a roll?

Rowan wrote:

When would we need to roll Loyalty, and what are the consequences of failing a roll?

Loyalty checks generally come up when something occurs that might shake the people's morale, e.g. when the troll attacks happened, when Grigori was slandering the rulers, or when news of Leonis' indiscretions was spreading. Usually, blowing a roll would increase Unrest, which then gives a penalty to all checks.

It comes up pretty rarely and you can reduce Unrest pretty quickly over a month, by having Grabthar as Royal Assassin (lowers Unrest by 1 each month) and by putting up buildings which reduce it, so even if you blew a Loyalty check, you could recover pretty quickly.

Loyalty would become a regular issue if the kingdom actually went to all-out war, but that's not an issue yet.

Lets save the BPs then. Rowan would consider building a monument frivolous anyway. We have more important things to build, to continue establishing ourselves and becoming self-sufficient.

What does "city base value" do? If it's something significant, then it seems like building a luxury store would be a good value, since we can make one for half price due to our noble villa

Rowan is interested in building a shrine of Dol Arrah, but mainly for personal reasons.

Have you read the Faiths of Eberron book? I was looking through its section on the Sovereign Host, and was amazed that it actually discusses theology, unlike every other fantasy setting and book I've ever read. It's quite well done.