I know Rhys is hoping to name the kingdom Montserrat or Montesserate or some variant spelling thereof... I will go with that if the others want though I don't particularly like it as there are no nearby mountains since it literally means serrated mountains... I offer an alternate name for the Kingdom... Johara (Jewel in arabic) for short. Official name Johara Al-Jenubiya (pronounced Joe HA Ra (the 'h' is slightly aspirated) aj-JEN-noo-bee-uh (the l in al becomes silent and is assimilated and becomes a 'j' or something like it... it literally means Jewel of the South. People would be Joharans. Just a thought... any other suggestions? Or we can go with Montserrat. lol So, since we are going to be plotting out our kingdom for the course of a year... we have two options in front of us. The first is we claim and annex the nearest hexes around Lakewatch. Too bad we missed some of the ones to the direct north as we can't claim them until they've been fully explored. Something to take into account is the kobolds... If Newtooth does indeed return to Sootscale, all the better for us. If not... I foresee there being friction between the two camps. In either case, I am not sure this is an option or not, we can offer to make them a vassalage. Which means making one of them a Viceroy or whatever. So, going that route I see the following path: Hex
north of Lakewatch (2), River Crossing (3), Offer Sootscale to become a vassal
of the kingdom (4), Nettle’s Crossing (5), Old Sycamore (6), Rickety Bridge
(7), Camp Newtooth (8), Gold Mine (9), Explored hex east of gold mine
(10), Mithral Meteor (11), either hex to west of Mithril meteor or the Radish
patch to incorporate wooded lands into kingdom. Benefit, it will be easier to
travel from one end of kingdom to the other in the least amount of time... drawback, we don't have a direct line back to the north. Other route would be to make a beeline directly back to Oleg's. hex
north of Lakewatch (2), River Crossing (3), Rickety Bridge (4), Gold Mine (5),
Camp Newtooth (if kobolds are still there… offer them the opportunity to become
vassals of the Kingdom and all it entails, if kobolds are not there… no worries
just incorporate the hex) (6?), Mithril meteor (7/6?), Radish patch (8/7),
Oleg’s Trading Post (9/8?), Bokken’s Hut (10/9?), then whichever two or three
hexes are deemed suitable by council possibly as farmland. Benefit is we are tied to the Northern Kingdoms once a suitable road is made. I guess my other question is... do we actually have to annex hexes each round since they cost building points? Or can we minimize expansion to just needed hexes and start building the farms, fisheries, etc needed to actually start building up our stability, loyalty, and economy? Having not played Kingmaker and also having not tried looking into what the mechanics are other than seeing we have four phases to the Kingdom: Upkeep (determine stability, Pay Consumption, Fill Vacant Item Slots, Modify Unrest), Edict phase (assign leadership, Claim/abandon hexes, build terrain improvements, create/improve settlements, create army units, issue edicts), Income phase (make withdrawals from treasure - which I counsel not doing, Make deposits to treasury - which I counsel doing once we get more settled, sell expensive items for BP... means no loot for us, but more things we can do for kingdom... collect taxes), and the Event phase which I gather is when Jeremiah surprises with something to keep us on our toes. Just trying to get a feeling of what we are planning on doing so next week things can go a little bit smoothly and we can get a lot accomplished. I know in a lot of games if you try to do too much all at once you tend to go broke and can't do anything. What is the minimum we can do to get the maximum benefit... or the maximum we can do to get the minimum penalties. On that note Jer, I plan on using my portion of last week's loot (I think it was little over 4k per person?) to buy myself a +2 headband of Alluring Charisma to provide a +1 to my Kingdom stat (and for you others, what should I place that +1 in initially... stability or economy?) And then down the road when I accrue enough gold or whatnot, I can then pay to have the headband enhanced to a +4 headband, correct... just have to find someone with the appropriate skills? From what I remember being said, we have to spend one week out of each month in the capital. Should we agree on what week it should be... I would recommend it all being the same week so the "royal council" can hash out where we want the kingdom to go, etc. I think one day or perhaps two days should be set aside for petitions from the citizens and we need to figure out how that's going to work. Bim does not relish sitting on a chair listening to cases all day long by himself. I guess at a minimum Svettie will be there as she is Councillor... General John I think would be excused if he didn't want to be there. Ambassador Jeb as well unless it involved foreign dignitaries... I think Madar should be involved as there are bound to be religious disputes and Bim is not that highly of a religious minded person. Magister Evestar could be there or not... The Marshal .. I forget who that is... Rebekah? or is she the Royal Enforcer? In either case, I think both Marshal and Royal Enforcer should be there to enforce whatever laws we proclaim... more on that. Spymaster Rhys could attend or not as he sees fit... Treasurer Oleg does not need to be involved unless it is a dispute on taxes etc. And Warden Keston should probably be seen in the room in order to protect us from citizens that are not happy with the decisions... guess we just need to come up with how we are going to deal with complaints, hopefully of which there will be little. Perhaps Lord Bim on his chair/throne in the center with the Council on either side to add their input and then I make the final decision based on that? Back to the Laws. What laws are we going to proclaim for our happy little kingdom. I would hope each member of the council would submit laws regarding their areas of expertise. We need to get them up and posted before we are swamped with people looking to settle the area. No laws, chaos ensues... but hmmm I guess I like a little chaos. mwah ha ha ... ahem. no. we are a Neutral Good Kingdom and I will try to see that it stays mostly that way. As I do not foresee Bim getting married or having a consort or concubine in the nearby (or far distant) foreseeable future, if it is okay with the group, I would like to appoint Aleks as my Heir in the event of my untimely demise. Until time we elect a new King/Lord/Baron/whatever we are going to call the Head of State. (I prefer Lord Bim to King Bim... or Baron Bim but that is just me). That way, the Heir can become the Ruler during the vacuum of my death and no large penalty occurs. We also need to decide how long my 'rule' is going to last... be it a year or 5 or 10... or until a consensus is reached that I should be replaced? We can make that part of the Constitution or whatever... Uhm what else... Oh, we may want to reevaluate our association with the Olipher the Orelord... I seem to recall that he told us he was not affiliated in any way (I could be mistaken on that) with the Stag Lord and/or bandits. That he was an 'honest' business man that had found the mine and just wanted to be left alone. Well, I also remember that he said that Jex was his associate and that he would keep said associate in line.. and yet who did we find down at the Stag Lord's Keep? Yep a nasty Tiefling named Jex. So, I don't think Olipher was all that honest with us. We should determine how to approach this down the road. Then there are all those places of interest that we are going to eventually come across again when claiming hexes for the Kingdom... like the Fairy nests, dead trapper, trap-filled glade, and then there is the Barbarian Cairn where I had my infestation of scarabs. I seem to recall the nasty undead Tiger Lord thing saying there were two more such cairns that had stronger denizens within? Or was that from Rebekah reading the scrolls I can't remember. So back to expansion... is it better to build a lot of farms and fisheries to compensate for our burgeoning kingdom in the beginning or just a couple and then more later? Again not to clear on the how things impact us in way of the mechanics... As for our Capitol in our capital city... I think we need at least a Meeting Hall or chamber for petitioners which could also be used for Jeb to meet with foreign dignitaries unless we want something more 'lavish' for those ambassadors. I think we need a barracks or whatever for John Basil to grow his armies. I think a temple, shrine or something for Madar to deliver his sermons to the Good Gods... Ah, Rebekah, we need to get you a ... uhm... hmm place ... uh. lab... for uh ... torture ... no not torture.. uhm. examination chamber far away from the eyes of the less able to hold their lunches. Maybe the pit where we fought the not badger but wolverine druid? Fix it all up? Gak. And Rhys... perhaps a Tavern or whatnot for meeting your shadowy contacts... I think for the most part, our castle/keep/fortress whatever will be mostly a minimalist aesthetic decorated building. Maybe a tapestry or rug... or anything that the populace gifts to us or items brought by foreign dignitaries to try to influence our opinion of them. We have a graveyard out back (not sure if we just clean it up it will count as already being there and we get the +1 for whatever from the chart Rebekah gave us... ) Though Madar might have to consecrate it to prevent anymore possible undead denizens from visiting us... and there was that building in the middle... who knows what that was? I guess we need to have an Inn eventually sooner than later for visitors to our capital... homes? Any of you more experienced have any pointers without really Meta-gaming? Can you tell I have been giving this a lot of thought over the last couple of days? LOL Cya all on Tuesday!
