Skip this message if you want to find out the hard way yourself.
I have the Iron Spike and am a troll-hating clan. My clan moods are contented/ unshakeable/ unshakeable, and I have a magic item which is supposed to keep the farmers' mood from declining. Cragspider sends 3 trollkin to tell me to stop ann-- ann-- bothering her. I send her tribute, as recommended by 2 ringleaders. The only warning I get is from my chief/king, who says that people will be unhappy if we don't make a show of strength. I lose 2 or 3 points of magic, and breathe a sigh of relief--that wasn't nearly as bad as the time I sacrificed the trollkin to my ancestors.
Then I notice: the carls' mood immediately dropped to despairing (the lowest level). 100 goods in gifts makes nary a dent. I have no Ernaldan competent enough to do the E. Feeds the Tribe heroquest. (I know; I tried.) At first, I thought it was a bug, but when I redid it I found this was a feature. It still makes little sense to me: why a drop from the highest to the lowest morale level, and why were just the carls affected? From the warning, I would have thought that overall mood might have dropped a couple levels, but I could have continued after that.
The game was, technically, still playable from this point. If you could put up with the illogical and extreme results. Dealing with consequences is one of the themes of the game, but I didn't realize that dealing with unpredicted and unpredictable consequences of devestating proportions was a subtheme.
--Martin
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