Game 29: King of Dragon Pass - Part 2
- Plays All The Things
- 2 days ago
- 17 min read
Ok, let's try this again. I'd like to note that I have to work harder at this than a lot of historical Kings who were born princes and just became King by default (With all due respect to those who earned their Kingship by murdering people).
I have some different starting options, most notably we're going to try being a peaceful clan - make as many friends as we can, including being nice to beastmen and non-humans. I chose the Trolls for our ancient enemy because in my first attempt they never attempted negotiation, nor did they ever appear to pose a clan-ending level threat, so they seem like they might be a 'safer' choice for a longtime foe.
Starting a new playthrough gives me some insight into what's the same and what's different. Here's the 'new' map.
The clan names have changed but their actual natures have repeated - I see some that I didn't encounter before but I think the actual nature and personalities of the clans in the game is the same. albeit in different locations.
We have again found the Duck people on our land. This time we're being super nice and not even demanding that they feed us.
In these early days I've ended the initial feud we had with a neighboring clan, I'm exploring both my own territory and abroad to find things (sometimes this results in treasures or valuable trade goods when exploring my own territory), and I'm trying to establish trade deals with other clans to bolster my economy.
And I swear I wasn't thinking of this when I named the clan, but a clear opportunity to embrace the essence of the Beetnicks presents itself and will forever guide our future choices.
Overall things seem to be going well. I've had very few raids against me, the extra crop / herd magic has us producing lots of food which I'm alternately trading for cattle, giving away or hosting feasts to improve relations with other clans, I ended the last feud with another clan and I'm starting to make more alliances. I've unlocked the ability to perform the Making of the Storm Tribe quest but I'm thinking I'm going to hold off on performing it until all my neighbors are great friends.
I don't know if it's the extra bit of magic or the blessings or what, but the food production is off the charts - we're making double the food we need.
My efforts at being peaceful have caused the Warriors of the clan to get bored (despite them still seeing occasional action as horse-nomads and trolls occasionally attempt to raid my village.)
My efforts at Poetry have often yielded good results, sometimes been neutral, and never backfired (yet). So far so good.
One thing that's very cool about this game is that as far as I'm aware it's a unique fantasy world, and I'm learning about it as I play through the game. Things like Dinosaurs are real (they ate me last game) and Trolls are accompanied by goblin-like Trollkin. This latest event implies to me that Dragonewts have some form of immortality - when they die they're born into a new body with their old memories, and in at least some cases they want their old body back.
Elves are literally made of wood, I think? In this rather grim event one of my Clan Ring has taken it upon himself to kill some.
All right, I have ample extra cows and goods, and either excellent relations or alliances with all of my neighboring Clans.
Some of these events run in a long sequence - this feud between two families in different clans is constantly threatening to erupt into a larger conflict. At first Randara stole a prize horse, Glendara got it back and killed one of Rangdara's relatives doing it, now Rangdara has killed one of Glendara's kin.
Having met with almost all of the neighboring clans (I had to agree to not accept one clan to please another, so one of my neighbors won't make it in), I convinced all of them to join us by agreeing to everything they wanted.
I even invited a clan that's probably a huge mistake but I can't pass up the opportunity to see what happens. The Hendarti's issue is that they tend to have chiefs that are insane.
Look man, the Beetnicks are not a judging sort of people, we want everyone to get along! And for the price of hundreds of cows and goods, we form a very, very large tribe - and we're not waiting around to be King! After all, we organized all this!
Poetryslam consists of the Clans Beetnicks, Apple, Gorind, Greenwing (shout out to the Pottery fans), Hendart, Karandoli, Stag Hearth, Tanahart, Vanstach, and White Horse.
Now that I'm King, there's two new ways to use our magic - Destiny and Heroism.
Not sure what they do yet but I threw a point into Destiny. I get the sense that magic points spent in an area tends to improve your odds when it comes to some internal random determination for the outcome of an event or battle.
Treasures seem to confer permanent bonuses and effects at no ongoing cost so I'm working on trying to find them via exploration or buy them from other clans (which it turns out is VERY expensive)
After a year or two I don't think being in a Tribe has helped all that much except for doing Heroquests, where calling upon the tribe gets you lots of additional people to help. That doesn't save me from failing one when I misinterpret the story and choose the wrong option.
After awhile the Prophet shows up again and sets us on our future path: Six quests to Honor the Gods
Even though his leadership is 'Reknown', the man I made king of Poetryslam - Sarotar - is as indecisive as they come.
Internationally, Poetryslam is a big deal. The existence of the Tribe prompts the other clans in the Valley to form their own tribes.
Speaking of Poetry, the Warriors of the Beetnicks are unhappy. I don't generally send them on Raids until they complain too much about not being sent on Raids, and since they're not well trained they tend to do poorly when they do go on these raids that they demanded they be sent out on.
The third time I read them a poem to assuage their anger I got some cold looks.
Oh hell no.
I just lost one exploration party last year to an unknown fate, and now this.
You know what, Orlev? I know she's big and strong and probably has magic, but Trolls are our ancient enemies and YOU are EXCELLENT in combat! YOU GOT THIS! Orlev... did not got this. I have lost two exploration parties.
We will commemorate his brave sacrifice in verse.....
Another long-running event series has been Theya's story. As a child our Clan noticed that she had prophetic visions, so we sent her to wise sages to become educated and learn about her abilities. After she returned as a capable seer she was able to complete the Heroquest for Ernalda Feeds the Tribe and grant herself great leadership. Now the time has come for her to marry.
Right now I'm in a cycle of trading off excess food for cattle / goods, trading that for treasure, sending out exploration parties, and occasionally just donating excess food to whoever likes me the least to change their minds. The food surplus has really put me ahead of the economic curve and at times it's challenging to spend it all - the food spoils if I just keep it so I don't want to have too much on hand. In between those actions I'm sacrificing to discover Mysteries for more Lore and Rituals of the Gods. One of my exploring parties comes back with an incredibly valuable battle artifact - Humakt's Raven Banner. If used we'll automatically win the battle... at the cost of the banner-bearer's life.
I think some poor Dungeon Master's RPG party has wandered into town.
There is trouble in the Tribe, and unfortunately I don't know exactly what I'm supposed to have done to handle it - but this is the second time the other chieftains are angry, and I'm really unclear exactly why they're angry.
Having found out that trying to push through this would utterly shatter the tribe, leaving it with only two other clans plus myself, I've chosen to abdicate the Throne.
The King has retired. Long Live the King!
And the bad news doesn't stop there - we lend some magic to a guy doing a Heroquest, and he never returns. By the time the year ends we're down 10 magic and at sacred time we can't allocate anything.
Time to call in favors from other clans to try to get us back up to snuff, hopefully this year isn't too bad.
We survived the year, even without magic the harvest was still plenty good and we had food to spare.
The years go by and I continue to donate to our nearby clans - I suspect that I was focused on improving relations with other non-tribe clans that still didn't like me and simply wasn't giving gifts to my tribe-mates, so I'm trying to remedy that now. I'm also going on additional Heroquests when possible, I heard rumors of Chaos approaching and so I performed Elmal Guards the Stead to protect against it.
Only a few years into his reign, Kagradus resigns due to a pretty rough prophecy.
The Ring doesn't believe we're in good enough shape to win Kingship yet so I support another candidate (Who loses, oh well). It seems at this point the Heroquests count towards our main objective whether I'm King or not, and I didn't really see much actual benefit from being King so I'll focus on getting the Heroquests done for now and then try to position myself to take back the throne when we're closer to completing the seven or so that we need. Militarily we're a defensive powerhouse - I have a horn that terrifies horses that keeps the horse people from making any headway when they raid us and a stone that turns our arrows to fire that breaks up troll raids, and the two of those are really the only things that have been attacking me with any regularity. Beyond that we've constructed all of the available defenses, and no other clan is actively raiding us - being friends with pretty much everyone is working well.
Not everything goes well with the Heroquesting.
That bad news is quickly followed by more, as someone steals the precious Raven Banner - I offer a reward for its return but it's gone. Then the outcome of a battle of Heroes leaves my best fighter, Kallyr, dead. I hope this Band of One Hundred is worth it.
I spend several years in a row unable to successfully perform a fourth Heroquest. I tried Humankt's twice and failed both times on the wrong choice, but even with the correct choices I think there's a chance of failure - I just got beaten up by one of the foes in Orlanth and Aroka even though I tried to fight them, which as far as I can tell is what I was supposed to do.
Failing a Heroquest costs you clan magic which needs to be recovered as well as effectively preventing you from re-attempting one for another year or so, which is making my Heroquest progress very slow.
For all that, the overall situation remains good - we have plenty of food, a ton of treasures (some of which have broken in battle but that's life), and all the failed Heroquests amount to is a significant delay rather than defeat.
One problem that's been nagging at me is overpopulation. The number of our people are growing slowly but steadily, and when I founded this clan in the interests of peace I chose to take no more land than we needed. While we're still producing more food than we need, the higher population is eating more too - and eventually that may become untenable. The only way I know how to get land is to try to raid for it, but every clan next to us is either allied or part of our own tribe.
The Queen of Poetryslam dies in a blood feud (I guess that prophecy that caused the last King to resign was not kidding around!), and the Throne is once again up for grabs.
I'm learning that I haven't nearly been using the powers of Divination enough. All this time I'm sending food gifts to everyone pretty much randomly because I don't have a great idea of what they currently think of us, and I was pretty close to complaining that there didn't seem to be a way to find out what other clan's opinions of you were.
The God of Knowledge is about to get a whole lot of cows sent his way so we can get a better idea of the overall diplomatic situation.
As I suspected, the other clans in our tribe all have a high opinion of us.
Or at least they did until this happened.
I'm not going to try and put the Beetnicks up against this guy, so I try to buy him off... and it works, with a caveat. The other clans in Dragon Pass view the Beetnicks as traitorous cowards.
On the other hand, the Beetnicks didn't get the shit kicked out of us like they all did.
And we got our revenge later.
After many attempts and me being impatient enough to try a Heroquest only a year after the last failure, I finally pull off Orlanth and Aroka. Four down, three to go.
Theya's story has been incredibly tragic - the man she married died and all her children were stillborn. Despite this she is a powerful seer and I have made her leader of the Beetnicks - perhaps we are all her children now.
The problem of overpopulation continues to worry me. My options are as follows: 1. Ignore it - Let the population continue to grow until we have so many people that we can no longer use food as trade goods and eventually starve, hoping we can win the game before this happens. 2. Self-enforce population control by getting our own population killed with poor responses to events and failed attacks on enemy clans. 3. Attack another Clan within the Tribe that we are not allied with to try to take their land and possibly wreck the tribe. 4. Attack the Slapfoot Ducks that we made peace with decades ago and haven't bothered us and will likely anger the Beastmen.
5. Attack the one neighboring clan that we're Allied with but that isn't part of the tribe and suffer the reputational consequences of attacking an ally.
I'd been learning towards option 5 as our least-bad option when an event pushes me in that direction. I hadn't been able to voluntarily end an alliance whenever I wanted.
I hadn't planned on fighting anyone and thus far we haven't proven particularly good at attacking others, but without additional land the Beetnicks will starve. Faced with that dire event, we reorganize as a War clan. The Beetnicks must conquer to survive - or cull their own population by trying.
The initial attempt to seize land fails - not because we lost the battle, we won but our warriors saw the Squat Oak mothers and babies weeping and decided not to take their land after all.
This is not a problem I am accustomed to having in video games.
After attacking the Squat Oaks over the next several months, they are shattered - we take land from them twice and have significantly expanded our Tula. We have room to grow for perhaps decades.
The victory is bittersweet, as the curtain falls on our final attack, Theya dies giving birth to her first living child.
We have enough land, we don't need fan the flames of war beyond that. As the clan ring is reorganized and a new leader is chosen, the Beetnicks once again return to being a peace clan. Apologies are made and gifts sent to the Squat Oaks to prevent a long-running feud.
Turns out I probably owe the Squad Oaks even more of an apology. A couple years after my brief war of conquest, my own people get pissed off that there are too many of us and some split off to form their own clan.
On the second attempt (on the first attempt the Quester was eaten while pretending to be a cow) I manage to complete Uralda's Heroquest. I've failed Humankt's so many times that I'm going to give up on it and attempt others.
When the Kingship of the tribe becomes available again I'm going to try for it, I think I can manage to get the seven Heroquests finished during the reign of the next monarch.
My efforts at diplomacy have gotten me back into the good graces of most of the other Clans, even longtime enemies like the Ernaldori which have been an ongoing source of raids for decades are finally settling down and making amends.
I've just noticed that some of the Heroquests are intertwined with each other's stories - in Lhankor Mhy's Heroquest he's very busy doing his thing and is annoyed when Issaries comes to ask him 'annoying questions' about making peace between these warring peoples - which is the Heroquest that Issaries is focused on.
I don't know if this is something the game normally does or extremely fortuitous timing, but the moment we complete our sixth Heroquest, the current king of the tribe steps down.
This is our time. One Heroquest to go, and Ernaldesta wants the throne for herself. Our best Poet makes our case at the Tribal moot, and I throw in hundreds of cows and goods to seal the deal - this is a chance I do not want to miss. Poetryslam is now ruled by a Beetnick Queen - Long Live Queen Ernaldesta!
Something is going on with my cows. Normally their numbers increase slightly overall from breeding and such, but right now they're dropping significantly on their own, season after season, despite blessings and magic spent on herds. I haven't seen an event that appears cow-related, the Ancestors say there is no curse upon my clan.... and yet we lose them. The reason why is an utter mystery, as many things in the world are mysteries to my clansmen.
I am not the only one trying to become Queen of Dragon Pass. The Chief of the Dundalos tribe visited our village, arguing that she should be made Queen. We rebutted her arguments then, and months later she showed up with an army in tow. Thanks to rumors we had heard, the Tribe was ready to meet her - and had a magic clod of dirt ready that caused an earthquake and shattered her forces.
I have figured out the mystery of the disappearing Cows.
Remember when we took all that land from the Squat Oaks? I put it to use as extra farmland and I was adjusting these sliders to maximize the expected harvest. The only warning you get that this is actually a Bad Idea is from Enfrew here - I didn't connect that dots that not having enough farmers to tend our crops and herds would lead to large amounts of cattle escaping, and I wish the game had had a more prominent notification that this was the cause of my cattle woes. In fact the only way I noticed there was a problem at all was in watching the cow count!
Thankfully we still grow so much food that I've been able to trade for cows to bring our herds back up, but my more frequent trading partners have actually stopped trading cows with me - guess I've been draining their supply too much.
For our seventh Heroquest, I complete The Making of the Storm Tribe again - even though it's the one I did to start the tribe in the first place, re-doing it appears to count towards the quests we need.
That... may have worked but it mightily pissed off many of the Clan's Carls, who left in disgust shortly after. I can't appease the trolls, but if I don't I fear the Clan will be crushed.
Well, maybe I'm damned if I don't, damned if I do here. If that's the case, let's bash some Trolls. The Tribe gets restless and gives Queen Ernaldesta the opportunity to take the Tribe to war as a distraction.
Ernaldesta's reign settles down after that and she continues to rule for many years, during which we end up finishing every available Heroquest.
In a fun incident, there's a tribal dispute over a magical Black Spear. The solution we went with was to hide the spear in the forest and whoever found it got to be part of a brand new Clan.
And then, at long last, signs and portents of destiny!
Our ancestors show up to bless our Queen, and we're ready to begin trying to unite all of Dragon Pass under our rule.
Ernaldesta honored the Beetnicks like no other, by reciting a grand poem upon her deathbed.
This... will be a problem for ruling Dragon Pass. Turns out it was Ernaldesta's time, not ours. She got us to the requisite number of complete Heroquests and then some. From now on I'll be Heroquesting specifically for the various benefits they can offer (and there are many to choose from).
As of now the Saga of the Beetnicks has been going on for 50 years - I was right about having a lot of time to accomplish the goal of the game. Looks like it's going to take a bit longer with this setback.
Despite throwing my hat in the King ring again, the next Tribal King is from another clan (after the last candidate got shanked by someone!).
Actually... it appears that we are simply no longer in the running for rulership. An event featuring the Feathered Horse Queen (which I encouraged, back when I had rulership of the tribe) has proceeded in such a way that none of our Clan are included in the consideration of who's going to marry the Feathered Horse Queen.
I take some consolation that Derek is originally from our clan, so we're arguably in the running here? I'm sure that's what our Thanes are telling themselves anyway.
We didn't win, but this is a much better outcome than our first attempt - the Beetnicks successfully survived the trials and tribulations of Dragon Pass for over a half a century, completed a bunch of Heroquests and had a real shot at going all the way.
And we irritated everyone with lots and lots of Poetry.
Stupid snake.