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Nevermet's Manirian Scratchpad


Nevermet

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5 minutes ago, jajagappa said:

1) it was never that significant, even during the heyday and Belintar's early years, so no city grew to any extent.

2) it did grow, but then collapsed possibly within the last two generations

3) while the trade went through, something has kept the cities from growing (elves? trolls? barbarians? disease? some magical aftermath of the God Learners?)

I lean toward all three. Moving backward chronologically, these towns have definitely seen better days. The last half century has been challenging (No. 2) and many of the best, brightest and most mobile have drifted off to Fay Jee, Khorst, Handra and into the trade centers at either end of the route. An increasingly hard core of traditionalists and dead enders remains. 

But there's a secret here: even in the glory days before the Opening, the Road doesn't really seem to have scaled to require or support massive numbers of people (No. 1). Unless there's a robust appetite for mule meat in Safelster, the route is only worth what it can support in the round trip and while the Safelster end will pay for religious artifacts, "philosophical" texts and other luxury cargo, how much can you send back to depressed Nochet? Those mules need to eat both ways or get eaten, much as it grieves me to say.

My suspicion is that they handed extremely high-value cargo (iron for the East) to Desert Trackers at that point and the Trackers threw them a bone to cover costs. While there's a hard constraint on the amount of metal available, limiting the number of hooves on the road luckily also supports artifact prices so win win. Then when Belintar shows up things get a little better but his inner circle probably captures more of the goodies before the stuff even gets on the Road. Suddenly the westward leg has a supply gap. Fewer hooves on the road means you don't need as much support . . . fewer farmers, fewer drivers, leaner service stations. 

Then you've got the forest (No. 3) to deal with. We know Castelain made pacts in order to push the Road through there at all. There are probably hard constraints on land clearing or else a quarter million mreli erase you. Maybe the Switch is also in play so the land is glitchy. If you have to import food via mule train you aren't going to want to feed a lot of people. 

As a No. 4 scenario it would be neat if the Trader Prince population is significantly larger than what's on the maps because so many people are on the Road at any given moment and so don't show up as being "in town." However this is probably no more than 10-20% at the most outrageous.

Side notes, Khorst is really weird. Where did all these people come from? Where do they live? The Marsh is unlikely to support high densities and the town itself looks pretty isolated. 

Before the Trader Princes took over this route Chain Gang probably had a link back to the Shadow Plateau. I don't know when this ended (probably atrophy on the God Learner end and then Belintar does his best to shut it down once and for all) but it's worth teasing out a bit. Trolls were the only people with real access to Dragon Pass ruins after the Kill, so OOO becomes the critical link feeding that stuff into the Esrolian end of the Road. The Safelstrans evidently didn't want to work with the Chain Gang or the Gang didn't want to carry it directly. First thing that comes to my mind is that Arstola would have complained and again you have the quarter million mreli problem, so one way or another Castelain found a way like we always do.

 

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I also think that the Trader Princes are poor heirs to their founder, as they seem more defined by profit than peace through communication, change through equal exchange, so I suspect I'm going to eventually have fun filling in the timeline from 1170 (Castelein arrives in Rhigos) to 1580 (Dormal arrives in Handra).  Humans being humans, there was at least one attempt to unify the Trader Princes in that time.

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39 minutes ago, Nevermet said:

Scott posted while I was posting... will think while I clean dishes and be bac klater :)

I should be doing that too! 

My feeling rhymes with yours that the Princes are probably not the best and brightest. They might have had a golden age once but those days are long gone for most. On the other hand, Hero Wars may get a few to rise to the occasion and recollect themselves. I was gonna make a Kojeve joke somewhere to go with the Habermas, maybe it's in here somewhere.

EDIT TO ADD VALUE: What's interesting is that once Belintar gets the boats working again the first voyage goes west to seed ports in that direction. He doesn't send a mission to Kralorela until well after Handra is happy. This tells me that (options)

1. The stuff he wanted most was in Handra's direction . . . maybe he preferred their tea.

2. It was intelligence he really craved and the mercantile applications were a nice side bonus.

3. Circumventing the Princes would destabilize rivals of his court and give his friends (Prax-facing Issaries) time to pivot. 

Edited by scott-martin
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Ok, back

Regarding trade, according to the Guide, the Manirian Road was primary about luxury items, so I suspect that it was very vulnerable disruption on either end.  So, I suspect the Trader Princes have risen and fell several times.  So, the boom times were great, and then things go bad for a while. 

As far as pressures limiting the population, even before the Godlearners started mucking around, Maniria never seemed to easily support a large population.  The parts that did (The Wenelian Penninsula and the Slontos Coast)  are now underwater.  Scott is 100% right that there are probably a lot of pacts about clearing land, especially around Sweet Valley, Tall Castle, and all of Bastis.  It makes complete sense that the Elves (and the Prlalori by extension) extended their power in Maniria after Slontos sank.  Regarding the Goddess Switch, something I kind of like is that the Manirians are caught in a double bind: the Elves can "heal the land," but doing so means it is a forest and not suited for agriculture.

I did the math.  Both Maniria and Esrolia have roughly 10% of their human population in urban centers, so I can't really argue that there's a cultural difference in how much they prefer cities.  There's just fewer people.

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57 minutes ago, scott-martin said:

I should be doing that too! 

My feeling rhymes with yours that the Princes are probably not the best and brightest. They might have had a golden age once but those days are long gone for most. On the other hand, Hero Wars may get a few to rise to the occasion and recollect themselves. I was gonna make a Kojeve joke somewhere to go with the Habermas, maybe it's in here somewhere.

EDIT TO ADD VALUE: What's interesting is that once Belintar gets the boats working again the first voyage goes west to seed ports in that direction. He doesn't send a mission to Kralorela until well after Handra is happy. This tells me that (options)

1. The stuff he wanted most was in Handra's direction . . . maybe he preferred their tea.

2. It was intelligence he really craved and the mercantile applications were a nice side bonus.

3. Circumventing the Princes would destabilize rivals of his court and give his friends (Prax-facing Issaries) time to pivot. 

Yes, clean dishes are important :D

Sadly, I do not know Kojeve at all.  

And I don't have my thoughts in order about what happens to the Trader Princes.  The short version: Chaos vs. Helerings vs. Neo-Entrulings vs. Glorantha Socialists. 

As for Dormal, I could believe any of those options.

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4 hours ago, Nevermet said:
  • This isn't about that map, but wow the Trader Prince cities are TINY the Trader Prince cities are.  The Silk Road cities were much larger, and I would imagine more population (not just culture) would immigrate from both Ralios & Esrolia.

I always thought the inland Trader Prince "cities" are basically their damn fine Vancian Western castles (the nicest stone architecture for many miles around), with what are basically large pig-villages outside the outer walls. Most Wenelians wouldn't settle in the lap of their exploiters, so the populations stay low; the nobles are busily inbreeding and arranging lucrative marriage contracts up and down the road with whatever rival families seem least likely to assassinate them at any given moment. (I could be wrong, and so could they)

If you haven't read Votan by John James yet, you might enjoy it. The story starts by being about Photinus, a civilised, sophisticated Greek merchant, and his attempts to get to the root of the Amber Road. When for various reasons he ends up "chained to an oak tree, half-way up in the middle of nowhere, with wolves trying to eat [him] out of it" and is mistaken for the Allfather of the German tribes, things get more interesting. A great book, one of my favourites. (I see it's available on Kindle now, with an introduction by Neil Himself, so that's a thing)

Cheers, Nick

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1 hour ago, Nick Brooke said:

I always thought the inland Trader Prince "cities" are basically their damn fine Vancian Western castles (the nicest stone architecture for many miles around), with what are basically large pig-villages outside the outer walls. Most Wenelians wouldn't settle in the lap of their exploiters, so the populations stay low; the nobles are busily inbreeding and arranging lucrative marriage contracts up and down the road with whatever rival families seem least likely to assassinate them at any given moment. (I could be wrong, and so could they)

If you haven't read Votan by John James yet, you might enjoy it. The story starts by being about Photinus, a civilised, sophisticated Greek merchant, and his attempts to get to the root of the Amber Road. When for various reasons he ends up "chained to an oak tree, half-way up in the middle of nowhere, with wolves trying to eat [him] out of it" and is mistaken for the Allfather of the German tribes, things get more interesting. A great book, one of my favourites. (I see it's available on Kindle now, with an introduction by Neil Himself, so that's a thing)

Cheers, Nick

I definitely agree with suspicion and a refusal to leave their clan lands to live in a "foreign" city (insofar as things that have been around for hundreds of years can still be called such) is probably a big part of why the Trader Prince cities are small on the one hand, and on the other the Trader Princes themselves are mostly interested in just having a secure stronghold to meet their needs, service travelers, and facilitate trade. Anything else would be a bonus, and likely a costly one if the Trader Princes are going to be the ones investing in that (and who else would it be?). So a city of 3,000 or so is just fine as far as they're concerned; it doesn't take a metropolis to make money off the caravans.

On the other hand - and I realize you probably weren't actually being very serious about it - I feel like the simple realities of the situation keeps it from being a situation where the Trader Princes are despotic imperialist exploiters of the natives like you've kind of implied. The Trader Princes don't have a strong relationship with their ancestral homeland that would allow them to bring in reinforcements if the natives got uppity (and have also adopted the local languages and a lot of their customs), and they also don't have enough of a technological or military advantage (especially not the latter, since their military is mostly elite mercenaries drawn from the local clans and the Pralori) for their position to really be something that could ever exist without, at minimum, the grudging tolerance of the people around them.

2 hours ago, scott-martin said:

EDIT TO ADD VALUE: What's interesting is that once Belintar gets the boats working again the first voyage goes west to seed ports in that direction. He doesn't send a mission to Kralorela until well after Handra is happy. This tells me that (options)

1. The stuff he wanted most was in Handra's direction . . . maybe he preferred their tea.

2. It was intelligence he really craved and the mercantile applications were a nice side bonus.

3. Circumventing the Princes would destabilize rivals of his court and give his friends (Prax-facing Issaries) time to pivot. 

Notably, when the Guide describes Dormal's companions, one of them is "Edro, an ambitious Esrolian merchant anxious to compete with the Trader Princes of Maniria" and another is "Mendalan, a bankrupt heir of an Esrolian ship building family."

I suspect at least part of the motivation for going west first was that Belintar wanted certain parts of Esrolia to be lifted up and others to be brought down a peg by making the Manirian Road much less of a money-maker while reviving shipping.

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10 hours ago, lordabdul said:

although (if I'm following this correctly) the few cities that are on the coast should have been able to switch over to long distance sea trade after the Opening...

And they did, particularly Handra, which was otherwise this obscure backwater in a swamp.  

 

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9 hours ago, scott-martin said:

My suspicion is that they handed extremely high-value cargo (iron for the East)

This is probably the key item, isn't it?  Iron for the wars...  But that's something the elves (and trolls) are not going to want to see pass through.  That alone would likely encourage the elves to work on suppressing the trade route.

9 hours ago, scott-martin said:

1. The stuff he wanted most was in Handra's direction . . . maybe he preferred their tea.

If we assume he wants the Seshnelan iron, then Handra is a good stopping point (and adds other goods from Ralios). 

It's got the added benefit of being largely beyond the reach of the elves.

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17 hours ago, Nevermet said:

Humans being humans, there was at least one attempt to unify the Trader Princes in that time.

For organization of trade-based cities, it might be worth looking up stuff like the Cinque Ports of England (and their increasingly arcane government forms), the Hansa League (although I realize both of these examples are maritime) and of course stuff like the Arab trading towns and the Silk Road cities (although I know less about these). 

 

I think the clue is that unification attempts would be less warfare and conquest-based, and more something like personal unions galore, or the rise of one city as a regional hegemon with a network of tributaries beneath it. Possible competing hegemons with interwoven tributaty systems, like in Southeast Asia mandala-style states. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mandala_(political_model)). 

Maniria also strike me as a potential place for republicanism to arise and fall (aristocratic, of course). This is a prime place for something like a Magna Carta or other equivalent, a treaty guaranteeing certain rights to traders and aristos/citizens across city-state boundaries, for example (and obviously as fragile as any such treaty is IRL).

Edited by Sir_Godspeed
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1 hour ago, Sir_Godspeed said:

For organization of trade-based cities, it might be worth looking up stuff like the Cinque Ports of England (and their increasingly arcane government forms), the Hans League (although I realize both of these examples are maritime) and of course stuff like the Arab trading towns and the Silk Road cities (although I know less about these). 

 

I think the clue is that unification attempts would be less warfare and conquest-based, and more something like personal unions galore, or the rise of one city as a regional hegemon with a network of tributaries beneath it. Possible competing hegemons with interwoven tributaty systems, like in Southeast Asia mandala-style states. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mandala_(political_model)). 

Maniria also strike me as a potential place for republicanism to arise and fall (aristocratic, of course). This is a prime place for something like a Magna Carta or other equivalent, a treaty guaranteeing certain rights to traders and aristos/citizens across city-state boundaries, for example (and obviously as fragile as any such treaty is IRL).

This exactly mirrors my thinking, to the point that I'm almost irritated that nobody will believe I had the idea independently ;) 

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3 hours ago, jajagappa said:

This is probably the key item, isn't it?  Iron for the wars...  But that's something the elves (and trolls) are not going to want to see pass through.  That alone would likely encourage the elves to work on suppressing the trade route.

If we assume he wants the Seshnelan iron, then Handra is a good stopping point (and adds other goods from Ralios). 

It's got the added benefit of being largely beyond the reach of the elves.

Yeah, while the Guide says iron is a major good on the Manirian Road, it would be so much easier to sail to Seshnela, and the Elves are definitely part of why.

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Just now, Nevermet said:

Yeah, while the Guide says iron is a major good on the Manirian Road, it would be so much easier to sail to Seshnela, and the Elves are definitely part of why.

I think you two just also solved the Lunar obsession with finding a warm water port and, failing that, keeping the strategic Dorastor route open despite immeasurable losses.

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10 hours ago, Leingod said:

I definitely agree with suspicion and a refusal to leave their clan lands to live in a "foreign" city (insofar as things that have been around for hundreds of years can still be called such) is probably a big part of why the Trader Prince cities are small on the one hand, and on the other the Trader Princes themselves are mostly interested in just having a secure stronghold to meet their needs, service travelers, and facilitate trade. Anything else would be a bonus, and likely a costly one if the Trader Princes are going to be the ones investing in that (and who else would it be?). So a city of 3,000 or so is just fine as far as they're concerned; it doesn't take a metropolis to make money off the caravans.

On the other hand - and I realize you probably weren't actually being very serious about it - I feel like the simple realities of the situation keeps it from being a situation where the Trader Princes are despotic imperialist exploiters of the natives like you've kind of implied. The Trader Princes don't have a strong relationship with their ancestral homeland that would allow them to bring in reinforcements if the natives got uppity (and have also adopted the local languages and a lot of their customs), and they also don't have enough of a technological or military advantage (especially not the latter, since their military is mostly elite mercenaries drawn from the local clans and the Pralori) for their position to really be something that could ever exist without, at minimum, the grudging tolerance of the people around them.

The Guide is pretty clear about a few things regarding the Trader Princes and their relationships to the Manirians:

Quote

The rulers are called the Trader Princes. They are judges, priests, and the rulers of the small cities of Maniria, but most of all they are the merchants who facilitate trade between the Holy Country and Ralios. The wealth and status of the Trader Princes comes from their control of the trade along the Manirian Road. They procure the finest luxuries for themselves and distribute them to their key supporters and allies, binding the local chieftains to them.

...The majority of the population are members of Orlanthi clans with their own chieftains and religious leaders. The Trader Princes serve as a hereditary nobility of merchants, judges, and priests, and rule with the collaboration of the local chieftains. The tribes elect a king, traditionally one of the Trader Princes, to arbitrate disputes between the clans. In times of war, they choose a war chieftain, usually an Orlanthi ruler, to serve as military leader. In recent years, the Solanthi tribes and their Ditali allies have chosen to follow the Solanthi chieftain Greymane as their warlord. (P. 350)

The Trader Princes and their cities are an institutionalized part of Manirian society: "The City" is where you go to make inter-clan negotiations, and engage in commerce with the world beyond Maniria.  A king in Maniria is less like Guilmarn, and more a "chief mediator" between clans.  Of course, combining that with commerce means they wield a lot of influence.  They're less despotic and exploitative than they are corrupt and manipulative.  The most powerful Trader Princes control the clans through a complicated web of patronage, favours, and outright bribery.  The most loved Trader Princes are the ones who really seem to be a genuine arbiter between clans.  The most short lived are the ones who make promises and threats they can't afford, like whoever lead the Solanthi before Greymane.

Edited by Nevermet
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31 minutes ago, scott-martin said:

I think you two just also solved the Lunar obsession with finding a warm water port and, failing that, keeping the strategic Dorastor route open despite immeasurable losses.

I live to serve ;) 

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19 hours ago, Nevermet said:

If Handra was expansionist, it'd want to take over Highwater

Yes, but could Handra take it? Its population is around 10 000. How many of these are citizens and how many of these are resident merchants exempt from military service? In cases of total and absolute war (ww2) a country can mobilize around 1/3 of its population. Lets assume Handra would go all in , Thats around 3 000 militiamen +mercs against combined power of trader princes. Lets assume 15 000 spears in total. Yup, they cannot really do that.  Princes also cannot attack Handra,  since they lack fleets, and even if they did Handra has bigger one , and , looking at the size in AAA, they can probably even have farms on some of Handras islands, making it impossible to blockade at  sea and starve it out . The worst princes can do is hamper trade on the river, but then Handra still is a midway point between Seshnela and Holy Kingdom. Handra is in pretty damn great position. The only forces able to touch it are naval superpowers, like returned Waertegi or Wolf Pirates.

I think that the biggest enemy for Handra, at least at the start, would be the pirate kingdom of Smelch, as it directly threatens the way to Seshnela, and losing it would mean quick death if trader princes did what I said higher up. This might be a really high priority if Khorst is Manirian colony (it seems so.) . It might be a free port, but that does not mean that it isnt a personal project of a Handran higher up, or that the leaders of the Khorsty merchant guild do not also have seats in Handra.

If this is true, then it opens up another route of attack for trader princes: capturing Khorst as Handran colony. It sits dangerously close to Ramalian capital, and they probably wouldnt be hard to convince to attack it.

Edited by Borygon
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I want to get back to Castelein & Asharan philosophy, but I need to prep for my game tomorrow night, so here are my current thoughts about Manirian cities.

 

The Manirian city is treated as the territory of a "special clan," a Trader Prince clan.  It is neutral ground for clan and tribe business, and foreigners are granted a degree of freedom and acceptance within the city and along the road (in the clan lands, well... you best have a reason, a GOOD reason, that you can explain quickly).  Generally, TP Cities are organized into 3 wards called "Thirds": The Princely Third, the Manirian Third, and the Welcoming Third.

 

The Manirian Third

Each clan maintains a longhouse in the city, headed by a Matriarch.  The City Matriarchs are the clan representatives to the Trader Princes, and they offer a safe lodging to any clan members visiting the city.  There are almost always some clanspeople in a city, either working semi-permanently in a city, engaging in trade, or something else.  Generally, the Manirian Third within the walls has the longhouses and key temples.  Outside the walls would be secondary markets, farmlands, etc.

 

The Trader Princes

In most cities, the Trader Princes are an extended family comprising 1-5 distinct households.  There are intricate rules identifying personal wealth and city wealth.  Nominally, these laws are to prevent corruption, but they are often subverted easily.  While the head Wizard of the city's Ashara College is usually a member of the ruling family, the priests of the various Orlanthi and local gods and spirits are a mix of clansmen and Trader Princes.

One of the reasons for the cities being hotbeds of politics is that any adult Trader Prince, male or female, could be elected the next king or queen of the tribe.  As a result, personal patronage of individuals to the outer clans is constant and often blunt.

The Trader Princes work off a variant of the Manirian model, where women own the property, and men are administrators and judges.  Thus, one generation you will have a Trader Prince King who is a famous lawspeaker, and next you will have a Trader Princess Queen famous for her vineyard.

 

The Princely Third

This is the portion of the city directly under control of the Trader Prince.  It's often the highest portion of the city, often with artificial terraces and mounds for various people and functions.  These are sometimes of stone, and sometimes of perishable materials.  There is usually a court, elite residences, guest residences for dignitaries, and a complex for the city's standing army (a grandiose term for usually a few dozen mercenaries and thanes on loan from clans).  

(BTW, given the environment, my visual inspiration for a lot of the Manirian culture are the Missippian culture from pre-columbian North America:)

cahokia-ancient.jpg

 

The Welcoming Third

This is the portion of the city for trade and travellers.  This is where one finds markets, caravanserai, warehouses, etc.  Rules vary, but generally strangers to a city are only allowed into the other Thirds if they have an invitation from someone who lives there.  This has created a small business for "city guides" who sell their invitations and help travellers navigate the city geographically and socially.  Guides range from expert ambassadors to manipulative con-men.

 

The Walls

Almost all Trader Prince cities have strong, impressive city walls, though their style ranges from Ralian to Esrolian, depending on geographic location.  The main exception is Highwater, which still has most of its Slontan fortifications.  Though not a Trader Prince city, the walls of Kaxtorplose are worth mentioning, as they are the strongest, most alien walls in the region, as they were built by Kaxtor using earth sorcery.

 

Beyond the Wall

Outside the walls of the city are the Trader Prince "estates," the agricultural lands directly controlled by the Trader Princes.  They are worked by a combination of thralls, Manirian cottars, and even some foreign indentured servants.

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27 minutes ago, Borygon said:

Yes, but could Handra take it? Its population is around 10 000. How many of these are citizens and how many of these are resident merchants exempt from military service? In cases of total and absolute war (ww2) a country can mobilize around 1/3 of its population. Lets assume Handra would go all in , Thats around 3 000 militiamen +mercs against combined power of trader princes. Lets assume 15 000 spears in total. Yup, they cannot really do that.  Princes also cannot attack Handra,  since they lack fleets, and even if they did Handra has bigger one , and , looking at the size in AAA, they can probably even have farms on some of Handras islands, making it impossible to blockade at  sea and starve it out . The worst princes can do is hamper trade on the river, but then Handra still is a midway point between Seshnela and Holy Kingdom. Handra is in pretty damn great position. The only forces able to touch it are naval superpowers, like returned Waertegi or Wolf Pirates.

I think that the biggest enemy for Handra, at least at the start, would be the pirate kingdom of Smelch, as it directly threatens the way to Seshnela, and losing it would mean quick death if trader princes did what I said higher up. This might be a really high priority if Khorst is Manirian colony (it seems so.) . It might be a free port, but that does not mean that it isnt a personal project of a Handran higher up, or that the leaders of the Khorsty merchant guild do not also have seats in Handra.

If this is true, then it opens up another route of attack for trader princes: capturing Khorst as Handran colony. It sits dangerously close to Ramalian capital, and they probably wouldnt be hard to convince to attack it.

I haven't really thought systematically about the areas beyond the Trader Princes yet, but I agree that Smelch is an enemy, as is Fay Jee.  I'm assuming Ramalia will eventually get angry at it, but that's not as immediate.

 

As for can Handra take Highwater.... it'd be hard.  If that happened, it would require Bastis imploding for one reason or another, and Handra would need to hire a lot of Pralori mercenaries and promise a larger toll for a while. (Also, I really need to spend time on the Pralori, aka, the REAL human rulers of Maniria.)

Edited by Nevermet
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52 minutes ago, Nevermet said:

As for can Handra take Highwater.... it'd be hard.

Handra has a Queen.  She'd do it the Esrolian/Ernaldan way: make them an offer they can't refuse.

59 minutes ago, Borygon said:

I think that the biggest enemy for Handra, at least at the start, would be the pirate kingdom of Smelch, as it directly threatens the way to Seshnela,

Smelch + Wolf Pirates.  The former will go after ships to/from Seshnela.  The latter are raiding the whole Genertelan coast.  

Also, we've got the Nolos diaspora underway as thousands flee Guilmarn's advance.  Many will go to Handra and Fay Jee, many go all the way to Nochet.

On the plus side, this brings ships and soldiers looking for employment.  Convenient forces to deal with Smelch, and possibly Highcastle.

On the down side, it brings disruption of local economy, refugees, beggars, religious differences, etc.

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7 minutes ago, jajagappa said:

Handra has a Queen.  She'd do it the Esrolian/Ernaldan way: make them an offer they can't refuse.

Smelch + Wolf Pirates.  The former will go after ships to/from Seshnela.  The latter are raiding the whole Genertelan coast.  

Also, we've got the Nolos diaspora underway as thousands flee Guilmarn's advance.  Many will go to Handra and Fay Jee, many go all the way to Nochet.

On the plus side, this brings ships and soldiers looking for employment.  Convenient forces to deal with Smelch, and possibly Highcastle.

On the down side, it brings disruption of local economy, refugees, beggars, religious differences, etc.

Totally agree on all of this.

 

Partly because it fits the information on the setting, and partly for aesthetic reasons, IMG, Maniria never becomes the site of truly massive battles.  Gigantic armies belong in Dragon Pass or Sheshnela.  The struggles in Maniria will take a different shape.

 

There will be fights, of course.  But Greymane's army is one of the last great armies in Maniria before the flood.

Edited by Nevermet
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On 5/26/2020 at 6:55 AM, Leingod said:

On the other hand - and I realize you probably weren't actually being very serious about it - I feel like the simple realities of the situation keeps it from being a situation where the Trader Princes are despotic imperialist exploiters of the natives like you've kind of implied.

Oh, I don't think that at all. I think they mostly stay in their castles, worrying about trade flows and inter-family rivalries along the Manirian Way. Their castles are impregnable to the Wenelian savages (save for treachery), and while their sorcerously-boosted Western-armoured mercenaries have a big edge over the locals, they're only household retainers - not armies. They're an introverted, decadent, declining aristocratic culture, not Empire-builders and despots.

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As I've been looking up info on Maniria, I can't seem to find this:

In 849, the Middle Sea Empire "proved" their theories by switching 2 Earth goddesses in Maniria.

Which goddesses did they switch?  The only book I own that says anything is Blood Over Gold, which suggests it is 2 local grain goddesses (Inica & Eikorn).

 

According to Esrolia: land of 10K Goddesses, the Goddess Switch came immediately after the Middle Sea Empire invaded Esrolia and attacked the Shadowlands.  It would make sense that one of the goddesses being messed with was Esrolia herself or one of the other central Earth goddesses.  But who else?  A Ralian goddess?  This seems significant.

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