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Let's start with religion in the game! The symbols on the lower left hand side of the noble portraits tells you what faith they are, if you can't read what it is, you can click on them in the reorganization screen to see it spelled out. Occasionally you'll get a noble that worships two gods, usually it's Orlanth/Elmal, Orlanth/Vinga, or Ernalda/Uralda Let's go symbol by symbol:

Swirl: Orlanth, the supreme god, he has three mods: Orlanth Thunderous, young hotshot adventurer, your typical murderhobo, Orlanth Rebel Storm God, the impudent, brash man who rebelled against Yelm the Bad-Emperor, and finally King Orlanth who had matured (but is still kind of a brash dick) and became a decent ruler. The symbol represents a storm. They are excellent leaders and warriors.

Square: Ernalda, the All-Mother, the earth goddess. She is no fighter, but do not discount her as weak. She is quite cunning and able to out-think any obstacles, and is quite skilled in magic. If that fails, she can beseech her Dark Earth relatives (Sister Maran Gor the Earthquake Goddess, or Aunt Ty Kora Tek, ruler of the under world, or her dark daughter Bebeesa Gor the woman of revenge). Her followers excel in plants, leadership, magic, and animals. Her symbol is mean to be a basket.

Horse: It's Elmal the Sun God, Horsefriend, and vigilant guardian. He is subordinate to Orlanth. He was one of Yelm's sons who had been blinded to the tyranny of his father by his own radiance until Chalana Arroy cured him of the blindness, and then swore fealty to Orlanth. Elmal worshippers excel in animals and combat.

Triangle: Odayla the hunting god, a brother of Orlanth, also friend of Yithkin, Orlanth's kitty baby half-brother (and his favorite). Not much is given, he's not one of the lightbringers or a major god, so he has no hero quest. His domains are hunting and alynxes (Cats). I am not sure what that symbol is suppose to be. His followers are combat and animals focus

H: or two people shaking hands. This is Issaries the talking god. A trader and fast-talker, he loves new things, but keeps putting his foot in his mouth and speaking without thinking, having once traded the Truth away by accident. Issaries have good Bargaining, some also have decent custom.

Y: Lhankor Mhy the knowing god. All followers have beards, even the women. He is also responsible for literacy and law. The knowing god is grumpy sourpuss who tends to horde knowledge. As a knowledge god, his worshipers both excel in Custom and Magic, so they tend to do double-duty as Lawspeaker and Magician. The Y is the truth rune.

Cross: Humakt the death god, the last brother of Orlanth. Also god of warriors. Humakt is a foe of all undead, and is against all attempts to muddle the border of life and death. All worshipers are exceptional warriors, no question about it, and many also are good blacksmiths, capable of crafting deadly swords. As expected they pump out nobles with high combat skills, but they also tend to be the least xenophobic of the Orlanthi, viewing all foes of undead as allies. The cross is actually a sword, known as the Death rune.

Hourglass: Uralda the Cow Goddess. She is one of Uralda's daughters, personification of all cows. Bullheaded and persuasive. Her worshipers score high in animals mainly. Her hero quest is the most lethal one in the game. The hourglass is a hoofprint.

Anchor: Actually a plow! Bantar is the only male of the domestic gods, he is Ernalda's son, and the god of Farmers, he created the plow, and hitched the yolk. He's rather bland and tends to enjoy working and being in the background. His worshipers tend to be strong plant-animals. No heroquest

Cowhead: Urox the storm bull. He reeeeeally hates Chaos, he really do. He's your boisterous, meat-headed berserker who rampage from place to place looking for chaos to punch in the face. Most Uroxi are roaming bands since they're way too destructive and restless for clan life. These guys also tend to be fucking loaded as clans pay them cartloads of goods to destroy chaos and they don't really use the goods at all. Uroxi are combat monsters. Symbol is self-explanatory. No Hero Quest.

Pinwheel: Vinga is Orlanth's and Ernalda's daughter. She's the redheaded woman warrior who went 'fuck basket weaving' and grabbed a weapon. Remember the icelord from the enemy screen? She's the one who hit him with a spear from a mile off. She can enable women to defend the clan, and protect travelers. All members of her cult dye their hair red, and girls born with red hair are considered blessed by her. For all intents and purposes, Vingan worshipers can stand in for Orlanth worshipers at no penalty, and have similar state arrangements as Orlanth. Her symbol is a small whirlwind. the game uses a genderflipped version of Orlanth and Aroka for her hero quest.

Three Lines: Chalana Arroy the healing goddess. She was part of Yelm's court, but she could not stand the fighting, so she healed the wounded Yelmi, healed Elmal of his blindness, and went over to heal Orlanth's people, eventually she ends up siding with Orlanth permanently. She and her followers are strict pacifists and will heal anyone regardless of their allegiance, so Orlanthi tend to keep them far back so they won't heal enemies. Chalana Arroy will be really offended if you sacrifice thralls to her and will curse you. Her worshipers tend to excel in magic. The symbols are bandages.

Three Balls: Eurmal the Trickster. He brought death to the world, helped and betray the light bringers. He can turn into animals, pull any body parts off, change genders, he is both wise and foolish. Popular among players, but viewed with suspicion by proper Orlanthi. You can't build a shrine to Eurmal, nor can you hero quest for him because that is crazy. Their stats are all over the place. His symbol is the illusion rune, also refers to juggling and the fact he literally has three balls.

U/W: Not gods, but emblems for Clan Chief and King, they represent a Torc and Crown respectively.

In Orlanthi society, there are distinct gender rules, but neither are considered inferior to the other, and there are cult/gods that accept non gender-normative and transgender Orlanthi, but that's beyond the scope of the game.

And these are just the faiths that you can have as nobles, there are references to other gods and cults and we'll get to them as they come up.

Let's look at the interface!

Our crop interface, we can decide how much farmland we can allocate to what, and only in the spring we can decide our crop make up. If you're not sure, you can just leave this alone. If you futz around, don't lower any of the crops below 20% of the grain goddesses (Ernalda's minor daughters, a goddess for each grain type) will get pissed and ruin your crops.

The stone you see here and most of the screens is a blessing stone, it tells you what blessings are active.

This is the Diplomacy screen, it tells you who hates you, loves you, who owes you a favor, who you need to pay back, and if there's any tributes going on. selecting a clan tells you a bit about them, like a history of mad chiefs, or they're good at pots. Hitting emissary allows you to send a mission to a clan.

Trade screen, it's easy to mix the two up. This tells you who has the most of whatever, who you are trading with, how many trade partners you can have. You can send trade emissaries to well... trade, and also buy treasures.

Our religion screen. We can click on a god, sacrifice goods, cows, or thralls to learn a blessing, details of a Hero Quest Myth, or favors. Once we learn a blessing, we can then build a shrine, which makes that blessing permanent. Otherwise, you have to re-sacrifice to get the blessing again.

You can also upgrade some gods to temples, and the big gods to great temples. A common newbie error is to build as many shrines as possible, but the problem with that is that you require sheep to maintain them, so if you build too fast, you will deplete your sheep supply and will have to dismantle temples and wait for them to go back, so it's best to focus on learning all the blessings of the gods first then pick and choose temples from most to least needed.

War screen.

We can also recruit Thanes here, assign how many are outer patrol (Spots raids), and inner patrol (stops cattle raids, basically your Orlanthi version of panty raids). You can also select defenses to build, they cost goods, from the 10 goods of our current watchtower to the 150 goods stone wall. They impede raids, and make it harder for enemies to win against you in a defensive fight.

This also goes for other clans, they have different defenses and will factor to your raids.

And now the raid button. You click and decide who to raid, and whether it's a cattle raid or full on raid.

Cattle raids are just that, you sneak in, steal a few cows and come back. It's considered annoying, but nothing to get worked up over unless you keep hitting the same people over and over again. You'll want to keep the number of raiders low so they can sneak in undetected. If they're caught, they'll have to fight their way out.

Raids - you'll want to send as many people to spare, the Thanes to fight, Auxiliaries to provide fire support, and women to keep them from dying of wounds. Remember if all your thanes out fighting, it leaves your Tula defenseless against other clans.

DO NOT RAID IN SEA OR EARTH SEASON

Even if you got some nobles suggesting it, don't listen to them. They're idiots. Sea is your planting season, if you raid, you have less time to properly tend the field and plant everything, and your Carls are unhappy about that.

It also pisses off the clan you raided even more since it disrupts their planting.

Earth is the harvest season, and you'll get a lot less food from your fields because you're leaving swaths of land to rot. Like Sea, it pisses your Carls off and other people.

The best time to raid is Fire - the growing season, or Storm - late winter. If you're lucky, you can raid in Dark - early/mid winter. Though with Storm and Dark, you can get snowed in and your raid gets thwarted. If you picked the Icy lord of winter as your enemy, he would often sent blizzards in Storm to stop you, but if you manage to raid despite that, you get magic.

The map, you guys might've noticed the white blot on the trade and diplomacy scene. It's the unknown areas of the map. You can select to see clan boundaries, tribe boundaries, and trade routes. Clicking on explore like I already lets you select a noble (use a non-ring member with good bargaining + combat), and you use a cross to select a section on the map. Then choose how many warriors you send with the noble and how quickly they will travel.

Sometimes they come back with treasures, events, or 'nothing at all'. Other times, they don't return at all, and the noble and the people you sent with him are presumed dead. Some map areas are riskier then others for exploring.

Let's do some game stuff now!

Poor Asborn seems really confused. Since our ancestors demand it, let's give them top sirloin. And not only do we fulfill the prophecy, we gained the protection ritual, which gives us warning of impeding threats.

Then we get our first event!

Not the most exciting, but we have more enemies then friends so having an enemy peace out is really good for us at the start.

Everyone except for Jostharl either wants to peace, or have the Oaktree clan prove their trustworthiness. Jostharl wants to refuse and raid them which is utterly dumbnuts as our Humakti explicitly stated they're stronger then us.

So I decided to peace them and give them 30 goods for their 21 goods and feud ended! Horray!

Notice a difference? Well, here's a little secret few players know. If you hit space bar during an event, you can hide the text, allowing you see the full image - which can be rather revealing at times.

Not shown: I built a shrine to our ancestors, recruited more thanes, and this event fires. You can basically do about 2-4 things a season before an event triggers, and resolving it changes the season.

Trollkin are basically deformed mutations of the Urz, who are cursed to not have proper troll offspring, as Ernaldress said, the trolls don't give a shit about them, and will even use them as a food source.

Our Issaries wants to trade them off, while everyone else wants to kill them, drive them off or enthrall them. As we're against thralls, we won't be doing the latter.

I'll be nice and drive them off this time.

Now it's Earth Season. Let's get some VOTING in.

Should we focus on Defense, Diplomacy, or doing God Things until next Sea?