Looking through the saga.....
"Trollkin came to deliver a message from Cragspider, leader of the trolls. She warned us that she was considering destroying us. We offered them compensation. We sent a delegation to deliver it to Cragspider. They did not see Cragspider, but one of her attendants. The attendant, named Ukkur, received our peace-gift. "Thank you for your tasty gift," Ukkur said. "We not so ready to eat you now. But you far from having proved yourselves. Go now, and not be troll enemies." " at the time, I recall our clan magic dropped by 2 points--which was actually less than I had expected.
Very shortly thereafter, like probably the next season, "The carls stopped work, and refused to start again until the ring addressed their grievances. " Now, it was the the next season, game time, BUT I'm playing during my lunch break at work, and typically stop at sacred time if I'm near the end of lunch. Most likely by the time I saw the farmers lay down their tools, it was a day or two later in real time (I don't manage to play every day). This is why I didn't make the association between giving tribute to the trolls and the thanes going on strike. I assumed that the high number of thanes I had had been driving down the mood rapidly and I hand't noticed, since the mood had been so consistently good I wasn't bothering to check it frequently.
As to them complaining about our dishonoring our ancestors, I'm not
positive. All the saga says is "The chiefs of the other clans
complained that the king had shamed and dishonored them, and demanded
that the king renounce his throne. " but the actual on screen message
was much longer than that. I'm pretty sure there was something in
there about ancestors, but it could be they said that we were
dishonoring their ancestors? I understand the need to summarize to
keep the saga a reasonable length, but sometimes I do miss being able
to review the full, flowery language of the original!
>
> I have never dismissed weaponthanes. Do you get bandit troubles?
37
> doesn't strike me as too many, if your population is over 1000. It
lets
> you send out two missions simultaneously without fretting overmuch
the bad
> guys will stomp you.
I did give the dismisses weaponthanes parting gifts, hoping to keep them happy. Come to think of it, I did have bandit problems shortly afterwards. At the time I thought it essential to the carl's mood to get rid of some, so was willing to run the risk.
With a large, prosperous, clan, I typically run about 24
weaponthanes, give or take a few. I'm comfortable with as low as 17
or 18 thanes available for defence (plus all the help we can get from
Elmal, of course!). This clan has little in the way of enemies other
than horse nomads and trolls. With the golden horse stolen from the
nomads we can consistently outmanoeuvre them on our own tula, and our
allies always warn us that they are coming, so they are not a major
problem. The trolls we have wittled down until they are not much of
a threat (typicall 8 or 9 dark trolls and less trollkin than we have
fyrd). As a result, I can typically support one exploration/trade
mission with four thanes and still assign a few to escort a (much
quicker) diplomatic mission while they are gone, which is enough for
me. (we send just enough trade caravans to respect Issaries and to
buy the occasional treasure, since our trading skills seem to be
rather pathetic. Despite excellent bargaining, I think our head
trader is none too bright, since he seems to think trading 8 horses
and 40 bushels of food for 27 cattle is an acceptable deal...)
>
> --Martin
-Bryan
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