Inactive [LP CYOA] Overlord

[Elfberserker]

We could asked the priest to come with us!? And votes are locked?
DAMN THIS READING COMPHERENSION OF MINE!


One last ditch effort to flop : C,A, TWINS, RUNDE, ROBUST, RIN AND THE PRIEST.

 

[Nevill]

What have you done! You have ruined our tie before the priest could get traction!

It's sad that the marketplace didn't win, as I am not sure what to do with the mines to get that fancy ore (goblin squad could at least capture and hold it for the Shining Emprah) - but them's the breaks. Onwards!

Spoiler

Once again we prove that the 'Dex and its money are soon parted.

Aslo, the place hosrs merchants from 3 different kingdoms, and we are looking for information.

 

[Elfberserker]

oh, fuck.
flopping to C,B,Twins, Runde,Robust,Rin and the priest

 

[Nevill]

We can do this, bros! The ride vote never ends! Vote a village drunk for #HighPriest2016!!!

Tally

Baltika9 C B
Lambchop19 C A
lightbane C A
Nevill C B
Grimgravy C A>B
Azira C C
asxetos C A
Elfberserker C B
Kz3r0 B B (flop if tied)
GreyViper C A
Esquilax A A
archaen C A
Smashing Axe C B
Rex Feral C C>B>A
Jester A B
Storyfag C A
Kipeci C C
FrankHamilton C x
ScubaV C A
Kayerts C A
Absinthe A B
profreshinal C A
LWC1996 C B

A - 3
B - 1
C - 19

A - 10
B - 9 (10)
C - 3 (1) Rex Feral
x - 1 vote not cast (FrankHamilton)

 

[treave]

Indeed. I will probably update tomorrow if the tie is broken, if not, then after the weekend.

 

[asxetos]

C,A, TWINS, RUNDE, RIN AND THE PRIEST

 

[Kz3r0]

Voting for whatever breacks the tie.

 

[LWC1996]

Voting CB.

 

[lightbane]

After considering it a bit, I'll switch my second vote to A. While a mining village may be quite boring by itself, since this is a fantasy setting there's bound to be an ancient tomb from a forgotten civilization, buried deep within the mines. Said tomb is most likely filled to the brim with hungry monsters... But also countless treasures, which would stay safer in our hands than those from some dirty hero.

Therefore, I'll switch my vote to 2.A.

 

[Nevill]

Said tomb is most likely filled to the brim with hungry monsters... But also countless treasures, which would stay safer in our hands than those from some dirty hero.

I will hold you personally responsible if it doesn't and if we miss on learning about the other nations by going to a trading hub their merchants frequent - for nothing.

But I think we would be more likely to find the mines infested by kobolds monsters who could be talked into paying us tribute if we spare their lives.

 

[lightbane]

We can still try to acquire said magical minerals to speed up our research projects, if all else fails. Otherwise... Well, they say that the best reward is the journey itself.

Besides, we might be able to visit said trading hub in the way back anyway. That is, assuming we don't end up in the wrong end of the prince's rape dungeon or an even worse fate.

 

[Nevill]

We can still try to acquire said magical minerals to speed up our research projects

Well, we'd better, seeing how the most cited reason for going there is to improve our magical capabilities!

Besides, we might be able to visit said trading hub in the way back anyway.

Nah. We rarely get the chance to visit a town (that is not critical to the plot) twice in these kinds of LPs.

 

[Baltika9]

I will hold you personally responsible if it doesn't and if we miss on learning about the other nations by going to a trading hub their merchants frequent for nothing.

But I think we would be more likely to find the mines infested by kobolds monsters who could be talked into paying us tribute if we spare their lives.

Uh, maybe stuff like volunteering to clear a gold mine of goblins, only you secretly come out of it with new goblin soldiers and blackmail material on the mine's owners which you can leverage to weaken the kingdom's fiscal health, that sort of thing?

 

[Nevill]

Meh. I'd rather cause an iron crisis or two.

 

[ScubaV]

Did I miss an edit or something? What's this about a priest? I don't remember a priest being mentioned anywhere.

 

[Nevill]

Here.

 

[Bibbimbop]

(I've been travelling myself, thus the lack of input lately.)

CA -- companions choices in two groups: Rin and bandits; Us and the goblins + priest

Several reasons to pick the mining village.

1. The hills around them are absolutely the place to find more gobbos.
2. Probably better trades than the trading hub, actually, if only for grain convoys.
3. Remote location and therefore a better way to approach the capital without eyes on us.
4. Remote location and therefore a place ripe for shenanigans.
5. Maybe some side quests with the mines or whatever...

We are headed to the capital, so no need to go a smaller trading hub first, even if it is on the border. We already made enemies across the border so why get closer now? Only allows more eyes on us and more whispers before we reach the big city. That road between trading hub and capital will be watched and heavily trafficked.

Also, trading hubs tend to have lower prices because they are well-supplied in everything. I dispute that we would make more money with common goods in a trading hub. The mountain mining village is not well-supplied, and our cart full of grain that we will buy from the Erise villagers will do wonders in a hungry mountain town with little farmland.

(I see our cargo as mainly those things that we can get from Erise, furs from the goblin village, and the loot from our battle, which is mostly weapons and armour.)

Here's a devilish plan to get the most out of our trades in the mining town. I am thinking that we could create the perfect conditions to sell the grain and armaments from our battle to the mining town. The Barzams have already been raiding the area, so a little more raiding won't raise more alarms, and there's already rumours about who is doing the raiding. Let's send Rin ahead of us to harass the roads leading to the mining town, laying waste to a few caravans. We enter the town with grain and weapons when they need those things the most.

The local bandits are small potatoes, just local no-goods probably, who lack the leadership to attack better pickings than a sleepy farming village. Let's go do some diplomacy and get them to join us in a big hit on the mining town's trade routes. Tell them it's gonna be big, make them a fortune, and they'll mostly be there to look menacing and pick up the loot after Rin does the killing. They wear the gear that we got from the Barzam raids, looking like Galbady troops. They find an ambush site and make the mining town scared and a little concerned about food supplies. They gather a loot cache from picking off whatever caravans seem doable. Maybe even let some survivors escape to confirm that it is Barzam/Galbady at work.

We wait a few weeks after the hits begin, and carry grain and the less identifiably Galbady portions of the armaments into town with a squad of our gobbos, Runde, and the village priest. The gobbo squad is not a drain on our wagon load capacity. They march beside us on foot, with our goods and the few important people on the cart. If anything, get them to exercise by carrying even more grain sacks on their backs. We sell the grain and weapons that everyone in the mining town is panicked and eager to buy.

After we do business in the town, we can meet up with Rin again outside the town, and continue to the capital, paying off or killing the bandits that we recruited (silence is best imo)

 

[treave]

The mountain mining village is not well-supplied, and our cart full of grain that we will buy from the Erise villagers will do wonders in a hungry mountain town with little farmland.

Ontoglia, a thriving mining town

They have a lot of trading partners and you can assume them to be quite well-supplied. Better supplied than Erise, at least. You have a cart, which won't carry enough goods to be vital to a town like that. Your cargo capacity is rather limited and should preferably be used for small but valuable items rather than large objects to be sold in bulk.

As a small community Erise mostly grows enough for self-sufficiency with some extra left over for taxes, so there's not that much food to work with in the first place. Take over the village and implement those agricultural reforms first if you want to make big money trading grains. Also, you should ask if it is harvest season yet and if they even have enough spare stock to sell after the raid.

 

[Bibbimbop]

Who needs a cart for the heavy stuff? We have gobbos with sturdy little legs and strong backs. It's uphill anyway, so wheels aren't that hot an idea on an incline, as bicyclists can confirm.

I know the economics of a mining town. I lived a good deal of my life in the coal hills of Shanxi province. First, there won't be many roads cut into the hillsides, because that's hard work and prone to high maintenance with land slides and such. The steep bottoms are prone to seasonal floods, which is why roads are universally cut into the higher hill sides. The roads snake along contours and it's slow going. So I'm rejecting that it is a nexus of many crossroads.

"Thriving" is put in that context, because a mining town is never extremely well-supplied like a lowland farming community with straight and level roads to the market towns. What comes to and from a mining town is bare essentials in, and the raw ore out. Them roads is windy and steep, and down is an easier direction than up. They'll buy grain dear, and sell ore cheap. Especially if we interrupt their supply for a few weeks and they panic about needing to hoard enough to cope with interrupted trade.

Now, whether it's harvest or not, Erise just lost a lot of villagers in the raid, unless Aria and Arlin were hella unlucky... so fewer needing to eat now from the grain stores, and less seed corn needed next year because fewer people alive to work the fields. Regardless what season, there's a surplus of some size. Food is the smart sale in a mining town, and we'll haul down what ores they have on trade.

The raiding suggestion is separate, but it finally gets some overlordish-style action going, and gives Rin her quota of blood, allows us to possibly "save" the mining town from the raiders when we clean up loose ends by killing our bandit collaborators. We can say we and our gobbos saved the day.

 

[treave]

It's not a nexus of crossroads, but being a major supplier of rare ores, a location of importance to the kingdom and also a settlement considerably larger in size than Erise, it is not some place that can be fed by a dozen sacks of grain and defended by twenty swords. You'd be quickly dragging the Methussian army into the situation.

As for the bandit plan, I'll give some spoilers and say something like that is already planned for in the next update.

Edit: I'm not against the plan per se, just saying that it's not likely to be anywhere near as lucrative as you think it is because of factors you are unaware of yet. It's more useful for the goodwill in driving off bandits and the subsequent reward than the trading aspect.

 

[Bibbimbop]

Sure, this is already half-written, probably, so too late to start anew.

Still, I'm not afraid of a Methussian army that already is primed to think all raids are Barzamite/Galbadian attacks. People are easily fooled by their expectations. Rin does a few hit and fades to stoke fear rather than a real siege. If you bring twenty swords to a place that is afraid of being attacked, you might not make the difference in defending it, sure, but as a merchant you'd only care that people will pay far more for each and every additional weapon when there's an obvious need. Here where I live, every rainstorm the merchants are out on the streets selling umbrellas. Never during a drought, and never enough to keep the entire town dry, but enough to make a profit off the passersby afraid of a little wet. If we get a panic going in the town, what weapons we do bring will sell at a steep multiple. And we have about 70 of them to sell.

However the next update goes, I would be in favour of CA and bringing Rin along, a gobbo force to escort us as far as we want (no reason not to do this... they walk) and Runde + Priest for their brains and knowledgeable side commentary. I just don't see the point in travelling small until we reach some place closer to civilisation. Then we can turn the gobbos back, if conditions make that seem more advisable.

 

[treave]

Still, I'm not afraid of a Methussian army that already is primed to think all raids are Barzamite/Galbadian attacks. People are easily fooled by their expectations. Rin does a few hit and fades to stoke fear rather than a real siege. If you bring twenty swords to a place that is afraid of being attacked, you might not make the difference in defending it, sure, but as a merchant you'd only care that people will pay far more for each and every additional weapon when there's an obvious need. Here where I live, every rainstorm the merchants are out on the streets selling umbrellas. Never during a drought, and never enough to keep the entire town dry, but enough to make a profit off the passersby afraid of a little wet. If we get a panic going in the town, what weapons we do bring will sell at a steep multiple. And we have about 70 of them to sell.

My point was actually that they'd sooner get the army to help than arm themselves, assuming they aren't already sufficiently armed. We'll also have to assume that driving them to panic wouldn't also provoke an exodus from the town, reducing the pressure on their foodstock for those remaining. Then there's the issue of how much money you can make vs the time invested: in a trading center trades can be made quickly, and a clever merchant can more than triple his investments there instead for the weeks spent hiding out in the woods waiting for the raids to exert sufficient pressure. Also, you didn't kill all the seventy soldiers, not all of the weapons are in usable condition to be sold, you traded a bunch of it to the villagers, and armed the goblins with some of it. I suppose twenty might be low-balling it a bit, but you actually don't have that much to deal with though.

Well, this is just why I think it's a plan more useful as a false-flag op for less tangential gains with the trading as a side benefit. Even so, it's not out of character because reasons and I'm not ruling it out.

Anyway, companion votes were already closed, but I can reopen it if you guys want to.

 

[a cut of domestic sheep prime]

Lambchop is for criminalizing update delays caused by voters. Vote Lambchop.

 

[lightbane]

So, I assume Rin+the twins+Runde won with for this travel to the mining level town, unless some Codexers get in a mad frenzy and flip-flop their votes massively. Is that right?

 

[treave]

That is right, votes are now closed and Codex has picked to go delving into deep dank mines with stinky kobolds rather than obtaining a bevy of buxom monster girl slaves from the trading outpost.