Bryan Thexton wrote:
>
> From: Bryan Thexton <bethexton_at_...>
>
> Here is my take on the tula stealing game. To do it,
> you need to move boundary markers over a very wide
> area, and probably perform some ceremony before,
> during, and/or afterwards (at a guess, you need to
> plow at least a token amount of the land). You show
> up, and your footmen start moving stones, plowing,
> whatever it is you do. The home clan scrambles
> together as many folk as they can, and race out to
> drive you off. During the course of the fight, they
> probably re-move some of the stones again, try to kill
> your plow team, and generally disrupt your actions as
> well as try to drive you off their tula altogether.
> In the meantime, as whenever a clan is raided, their
> god-talkers are performing dire ceremonies to their
> most warlike gods, getting ready to call down great
> calamities upon your head.....but these ceremonies
> take time. Perhaps you defeat them, and chase them
> all the way back inside their fortifications and make
> off with a little loot along the way. You patch up
> your wounded, and gather up the stragglers, and then
> get the heck out of there. The only reason you have a
> chance at all of defeating them on their home turf is
> the factor of surprise.
>
> In general, your magic will be strongest on your home
> ground, and so will theirs. This is the ground their
> ancestors know, this is the ground that they regularly
> call their gods blessing onto, and so on. I figure
> that part of the reason you can only take two major
> actions per season is that to project your clans magic
> to protect warriors, explorers, traders, or
> what-have-you outside your tula, even briefly, takes
> extensive ceremonial preparation. When it comes to
> the intensity of a battle, it is only good for one
> battle. So come the morrow should you battle again,
> you would be little better off than godless outlaws,
> while the home team would have had a chance to prepare
> all of their gods most potent blessings against you.
> You really don't want that�imagine what wrath of
> Orlanth (or whoever) several hundred people with their
> back to the wall could call down with close to a day
> to prepare. This is also why after a great victory
> you can only burn a few steads or tear down a piece of
> fortification. You are on a clock.
>
> This would also make a decent explanation of why you
> can't fight your way through a blocking clan to get at
> another one. Not only are you not magically equipped
> for two battles, probably your ceremonies name your
> enemy, so attacking anyone else would again be without
> the benefit of magic, and as soon as you showed up at
> their doorstep looking to cross and they decided they
> might not let you, they would have started their
> ceremonies, just in case.
>
> --Bryan
VERY well said! I had forgotten about those little Law marked stones that appear throught the artwork. And, of course, if you can't set up yoru boundary stones, then the opposing clan can just toss them into the river.
I would also suspect that, unlike a feudal landscape, a clan's tula is all one piece -- even if a bit gerrymanderish in places. An intervening clan would block the magic off and make it not a part of that clan anymore.
Good, good thinking! I's gonna use this.
Jeff
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