rshini

We are now an Ernaldi clan called Fistbeef, who also supported Odayla the hunting god in his hundred day hunt. Our ancestors adopted the Stick people as family (Ernalda doesn't accept thrall sacrifices), we hated the beastfolk and were suspicious of the dragonewts and all things scaly.

We took enough land to grow into.

This means we're known as a clan of hunters, weird for favoring Ernalda over Orlanth, and proper dragonewt haters. Let's go!

This is what our Tula looks like; we see it at the start of every year. As we build shrines, defenses, and increase our herd size, this image will change to reflect what we do. If we hover the mouse over certain areas, we get a little description of what something is.

Generally if you see a small loss of livestock, don’t worry – it hasn’t counted the cattle that are born this year, and the sheep numbers are always off, so you’re better off checking your sheep on the farming panel which you’ll see soon enough.

HOWEVER! If the livestock loss is large, or constant from year to year, then you have something to worry about and really should check to see what is going on and fix it, especially if its cows.

Cows are the most important thing in Orlanthi society, not only are they a source for food, leathers, and drinking horns, they’re also a symbol of wealth. In fact, Cows are our currency – you’ll see the nobles and events referring to “X cows’ worth of goods” or depending “X cows for this”. You can ignore pigs, you can just keep horses in a stable population, but you must pay attention to your sheep and expand your cows.

This panel is Sacred Time, basically the first week of the year were we look at omens, and arrange clan magic for the year.

to the left is our prophecies, they can range from muddle signs to specific commands such as 'Orlanth demands you raid before you are raided'. Following the prophecy's demands when possibly grants us additional magic, and sometimes respect of the other clans. More rarely, we can receive goods or information. If we fail to follow these demands, bad things happen. Right now, we gotta throw some cows at our ancestor's ways.

To the right is our magic arrangement, we currently have seven magic and a ton of places to put it to. Most of these are self-explanatory, but I'll go in depth on a couple:

-Children: Unless you have a prophecy about special children, don’t put any points in these. Generally, you will have no shortage of the little buggers, and they eat as much food as Carls, but as they are children, they don’t work, so they’re useless freeloaders that will eat your clan out of house and home.

-Quest: if you don’t plan to heroquest this year, you can ignore this. You start with one slot, and it rises to two once you have a tribe. Having a trickster on the ring increases the slot by one, which for most folks is reason enough to keep one around.

-Mystery: Basically it decides how successful we are at entreating the gods for knowledge or a blessing we don’t have active.

Since we have only seven magic this year, we'll use it all now. But if you can help it, don’t spend all your magic at once, since magic also functions as a luck modifier, and the more you have in storage, the better things go.

And there will be events that will take points away from your magic, even putting you into the negatives. Negative magic is a BAD thing; it attracts bad events, and makes you more likely to fail at things, and it can lead to a chain of suck after suck.

Below the screen is an inventory, how much people, food, cows, goods ("easily transportable cows that don't moo"), warriors, and magic you have.

And below that is our nobles (Experienced KoDP players may get excited now).

As a rule, soon as you’re done allocating your magic for the first time, you will want to immediately reorganize your ring as the default set will be bad and will actually make you lose magic.
The only position you need to watch out for is the leftmost panel, anyone place there is your clan leader; everyone else’s position is determined by their highest stat. Without fail, you will always want someone who is a follower of your chief god in the leader seat unless you’re running a self-imposed challenge.

As we see, some pigheaded Orlanthi managed to get in that spot, so we'll boot him out. We hit proceed, then the Reorganize button on the main interface and it brings up to a list

Noble skills rank from fair (the lowest) to Heroic (the best), and for whatever role you want your noble in, you'll want them to be at least Excellent or higher, though at the beginning, you may have to settle for very good.

Chief: tiebreaker, the face of the clan, and provides morale support. S/he must have high leadership or else the clan will get restless and complain, and you don’t want anyone else to have higher leadership then you’re chief. Excellent combat, custom, and/or magic skills are helpful additions to your clan chiefs. They will be Orlanthi (or Vinga), Ernaldi, or Elamli depending on your clan. You can put other worshipers as chief, even a Trickster (see below), but your clan will bitch and bitch and bitch about it.

Lawspeaker: Either a follower of the knowing god or the one with the highest custom, the game prefers the lawspeakers. They handle your legal cases, explain Orlanthi tradition, help determine how other clans view you and generally act as your attorney and vizier.

Trader: Follower of the Talking god, or one with the highest bargaining, the game prefers Issaries worshippers for this role. They can tell you how valuable items are; assess the worth of trade routes, the wealth of other clans, and they tend to be diplomats.

Warleader: The highest combat skill, they can tell you the strength of your defenses, the strength of rival clans, and determine how well you fare in battle. Having good leadership and magic on him helps to bolster his skills.

Animals person: Any of the Domestic Goddesses, Bantar and Odayla can fulfill this role. They can help increase your herd, tell you how many tides of land you need for them, how many hunters your land can support. If you have a noble with high combat and animals, they also act as the hunt master, who can boost the effect of hunters in battle.

Plants person: Ernalda and Bantar worshippers tend to be in this role. They help your crops grow. Not much to write home about.

Magician: The person with the highest magic skill. They can interpret omens, detect signs of magic, and deal with supernatural creatures.

Special Roles

Healer: Chalana Arroy worshippers, having one on the ring increases your health slot by one at sacred time, and reduce the numbers of injuries and death, the higher their magic the better.

!Trickster!: Eurmal (note the “ur”) worshippers, and only Eurmal worshippers. They add a slot to the Quest, because they fulfill a role in the Lightbringer’s quest that no one else can. You can if you have a trickster if they have three balls in their portrait like Lhankpent has.

They also possess exclusive magic that is akin to localized reality-warping. And as tricksters, there are several events that have special options that only appear if you have a Trickster on the ring and they can set off their own unique event chains, for good or ill. Seasoned players considered the rewards to outweigh the risks and will restart the clan generation until they start off with one. As we started off with one, even if he's really old, we get to see some of the fun right off the bat!

Also, remember that special role in the light bringer’s quest? It’s Treachery. Tricksters are religiously obligated to betray, deceive, and humiliate people, while a trickster bound to a chief will restrict her mischief to outside the clan, the chef knows she will betray him at the worst possible moment, or cause strife with allies. More commonly, Tricksters are killed as soon they’re revealed as they can be incredibly destructive. This is also why you can never have a Trickster Tribal King; no one is going to be that crazy.

Having an even amount of men and women boosts clan fertility, while having too much of one or the other hinders it, it’s negligible, so you can safely ignore it. But you should have seven different gods on the ring to boost HeroQuest success, I'll talk about religion in the next update.

Now here's our current ring. As you may notice in our previous screen shot a little text box above our old leader. You can click on the nobles for advice, and they'll tell you what they think based on their specialty, religion, and personality. All nobles have personality quirks, and some will set off events.

To the right is our clan mood, you'll have to keep it at reserved or above, or else you'll get rebellions. You lose if your clan disbands. To the left is our population totals. The Half-circle is a wheel that jumps us to different functions we'll have to look for.
From left to right: Farming, Diplomacy, Trade, War (and defense building), The screen we're on now, Religion screen, the world map (also our exploration mode), the world lore and our known hero quests, and a record.

The raised sections in populations mean we can change the number of hunters, weaponthanes and crafters we have working (and ignore the nobles' advice, max out your crafters), and recruit new farmers (Carls).

The Reorganize button changes whether our clan is war, peace, or balance, we would very rarely need to change this. Gifts and Feasts lets you spent resources to improve the mood of your clan, and gifts can let you decide whether you're going to favor the Carls or the Thanes.

You can save, restore, quit, adjust sound, and see who made the game by clicking on the mouse button on the far right corner right about Jostharl's head. You can't save during events.

Currently we are in the SEA Season, when we're suppose to be planting stuff, sacrificing to the gods, and not raid the shit out of people. More on that next time as we actually get into the meat of the game.