Part 143: Ducks

Looks like another heroquest year, along with assorted raiding the shit out of the Vostangi, trying to get treasures, & trying to be diplomatic with our neighbors. Hopefully the spoils of war make up for the wealth spent being nice to other people, since we're not exactly rich yet.


Our clan mood has gone from Grim to Ugly. That's an improvement, I guess.


Here's our current cropland/pasture/wilderness allocation. I mainly put this here to show off how your nobles will underestimate the amount of pasture your animals need - Harvar is Very Good at Animals(and no one else was willing to give pasture advice), but even nobles who are more skilled at animals will give you numbers lower than what you really should have.

I increase the amount of pasture to stop the overcrowding and also increase cropland - even if it's more than the amount your nobles say your farmers can handle, more cropland=more food. The only downside is constant "we don't have enough farmers" messages(in fact, I got one immediately after changing all this), but you guys don't have to see those.


Who needs nature, anyway?




Ugh. I want to preserve our magic for this year's heroquest, so here's hoping that murdersword, sacrificing a cow to Humakt, and outnumbering them are enough. I debated between maneuvering and charging(Horse-spawn tend to skirmish, which gets a bonus against maneuvering, but sometimes they'll charge instead) and stuck with charging. And yes, I did go with kill as many as possible - I took the screenshot before picking my options.


Sarotar is Very Good at combat and only Good at leadership, so I don't want to bank on the options that involve leading others. It's hard to go wrong with "fight bravely", so I go with that.


Sarotar decides to be a leader anyway, but to good effect.


We're not good enough yet to get away from Horse Spawn fights unscathed, but we still did a number on them.




Ducks from a place they call the Upland Marsh, accompanied by warriors of the Rakstanti clan, petition you for aid in their fight against the undead creatures of the marsh. "The ghouls and zombies have grown very strong of late, and it is time something was done about them. We are ready to mount a serious assault on them. We want your devotees of Humakt to enact a ritual at your temple, one which will strengthen our sword-arms and weaken our unliving foes." They offer you twenty-five cows in exchange for this service.

-Accept their offer.
-Ask for higher compensation.
-Perform the ritual, asking nothing in return.
-Perform the ritual in exchange for an alliance between your clans.
-Refuse them.

We have no special relationship with the Rakstanti, but their attitude towards us is already positive. We needn't make undue sacrifices for them.

By building a temple to Humakt, we created the expectation that we would willingly fight the undead.

This time the zombies are strong. I can feel it.

Twenty-five is a goodly number of cows.

Our relations with the ducks are good. If we disappointed them in this matter, it wouldn't be the end of the world.

Determined were the hill-thanes to slay the corpse-men.

Our magic is strong now, and we are likely to succeed. Performing the ritual will reduce the strength of our magic, however.


Also, here's a preemptive question: When raiding the Vostang this year, should I make the objective plunder(which will get us more loot if we win) or killing them all(which gives us the bonus of Humakt's Sword, but doesn't give us quite as much loot)? Or some combination of the two(ie. weakening them first by slaughtering them, then going for loot?)?