Alright folks, we have news from Profound Decisions about the next game of Empire that is running in a couple of weeks (less than actually, I’ll be travelling down for it a week tomorrow!) and so I am going to do my usual summaries for people so they don’t have to read an entire novel’s worth of game info in a week. This is only the posts from the 30th of August, there will be more as time goes on and each day will get their own update like this. Or at least that is the plan, fingers crossed it all works out!
If you have no idea what Profound Decisions or the game Empire are, this is not the best post to get started. To put it as simply as possible, it is a LARP game in the UK that is set in a fantasy world. The players are citizens of an Empire and do their best to keep it going through numerous barbarian invasions and magical afflictions. It is super fun, I would highly recommend it if you can get to it.
OK, let’s get started with these Winds of Fortune.
Hopeless as a Feather
First up is the Plenopotentiary news. Essentially these are the diplomatic messages between the various Archmages of the different magical realms and the most powerful inhabitants of those realms. These Eternals are hugely powerful, some are happy with the Empire, some are not, some don’t care either way. Let’s see what the gossip is.
I’ve said this before, but it needs repeating, a Parley is an official term in this context. In these meetings there is magic in place that will back fire on anyone who attacks. Apparently the Empire lost access to Spring magic for a time because someone acted out in one of these. The important thing is that the danger is for both the mortals and the eternals with this, so pay attention to which meetings are parleys and which are not.
Night – Sadogua – The eternal Sadogua has agreed to meet with the Night Archmage in a parley at 1 o’clock on the Saturday and then again at 10:30 that night at the Hall of Worlds. The meeting during the day will be a public meeting open to anyone who can make it into the Hall, but the evening one will be limited to 6 people, two of which will be decided by a herald called Shuck of the Norn, while the other places are held for Ahzrukhal of Highguard, Spyridonakes of Urizen, Clèrabela Vicente de Metri of the League, and Bærywyn of the Sussivari or their representatives. A herald of Azoth (another eternal) is also going to be coming to the afternoon parley and will be offering magicians of the empire a “unique experience.” Sadogua will also be offering people who have received boons from him before the chance to get their items re-empowered, there are three opportunities for this and by the sound of it the people with the best stories will be getting the chance to do this.
Autumn – Callidus – The eternal Callidus is running a market, the items will be of religious or spiritual significance. To go to the market and to bid on the items you need a ticket, the tickets will be going to specific groups. One to a group chosen by the Autumn Archmage, one to a group chosen by the Grandmaster of the Golden Pyramid conclave order (kind of like magical unions that focus on one idea of what magic should be used for), seven tickets will be up for auction through Cat’s Curiosities Auction House, tickets for two groups will be provided through coin auctions run by some of Callidus’ heralds in the Hall of Worlds during the market, another will be sold to the highest bidder using Liao just after the coin auctions, and some will be available to the Summer Children (actual kids who have gotten a cool thing to do this year). The market will take place between 3 and 4 on the Saturday afternoon. The market will be reached through the Hall of Worlds, but it will not be taking place there, I assume it will have it’s own encounter tent somewhere else.
Spring – Irra Harah – The spring eternal wants to have a parley with Elienne of Dawn and maybe the Archmage of Spring “can tag along if he has to”. Rather than doing this through the Hall of Worlds there will be a conjunction through the Sentinel Gate at 18:30 on Saturday for people to travel through. The main topics will be helping the people of Sarangrave and the Barrens, and also returning an item from the Imperial Orcs that they apparently didn’t use and now he wants it back.
Summer – Meraud – The Summer Enchanter wants to speak to the Summer Archmage about possibly giving the empire some maps of the Summer Realms, which is cool. He also wants to talk about helping the magicians of the Iron Confederacy who are being persecuted and need help. There is a plan to bust a prison and they need 250 mana to do it, some of the mana might also go to helping people flee across the border into Segura. The parley will take place at 5 on Saturday in the Hall of Worlds.
Winter – Unknown and Wise Rangara – Explicitly NOT a parley – So this one is a bit weird. Basically the Winter Archmage has reached out to something even weirder than the usual winter eternals in the winter realm and there is an opportunity to speak to something. Wise Rangara is going to help out because she thinks what is going to happen will be a good learning opportunity for the empire. That doesn’t sound great for anyone who goes, but it will probably be very interesting to hear about later. This will be taking place at 11 on Friday.
Day – Sinokenon – Apparently the Archmage of Day used their plenopotentiary this downtime to send a message through Sinokenon to the people of Tsark to warn them about the oncoming attack from the Grendel and Axos. Sinokenon thinks it is great and has told the people of Tsark who did it.
And that’s it from the Plenopotentiaries! Thank goodness it’s already over a thousand words and I have three more posts to summarise!
Back in the Same Place
This Wind of Fortune is actually the outcome from an Appraisal that someone asked the Civil Service to do. So it’s a player idea that they’ve asked the writers to make happen. Essentially, they were asked to come up with ideas for making a new title which would give the League their own commission slot to build things with.
One option is to expand on the university in Temeschwar in the League. The player running this would have the chance to commission new great works in the League, and also buy building materials for a slightly cheaper amount than usual, the idea being that they would then be able to use them for their building projects.
Another option is to build an inspirational tomb for Lorenzo (super wealthy player character who spent money building things) which would give the player who had control over the site the opportunity to commission new buildings. This one would have a very heavy religious emphasis (for Ambition) and it would also be able to commission new inspirational tombs as well as the usual Great Works.
Both of these opportunities will be open for people to use until the Summer event next year.
Into Tired Shadow
This Wind of Fortune is all about the Highguard armies fighting in Zenith. The Druj seem to be on the run so there are some synod judgements open to players to choose between. Basically they can tell the armies to crush the Druj completely, or to work to stop the land from getting haunted and infested by winter zombies and tortured souls. If the land gains the “Terrorized” quality then it will be more expensive to build new things there and also the people who live there won’t be having a great time.
So basically the Highborn have a choice to make, smash the Druj to smithereens or fix the land that has been fucked up because of them. To make this choice they have to vote in the Synod for either of the judgments, whichever gets the highest vote wins and will be done.
Dear Green Space
Ok, so a while back a big public garden in the League got cursed by Skathe the Hag Queen. She also smashed up all the mirrors in a different League city. People have been trying to come up with plans to fix or make money from the garden and now there are some new opportunities for that.
One idea is to rip everything up and start over. This will be horrendously expensive and it will also get rid of a few of the things that are actually good about the park, specifically a really nice pavilion on the lake that has an inspirational aura and which is a liao sinecure. The winter regio in the wood will also have to be closed which would need a 150 magnitude curse to be cast on it.
A coven have offered to cast the curse if they get access to the wood from the forest, they want to make stuff out of it since it is infused with magic from the winter realm. They will give conclave three of these magic items to give out to anyone conclave wants.
There is another option, the eternal Tharim (also of the same group as Skathe but they don’t like each other) has offered to use magic to destroy the garden and wipe it out for the people to reuse. However, this would be a complete wipe of the entire space. Even the bits that haven’t been damaged by the curse would be destroyed, aka the Marcher Memorial Orchard to General Flowers. The park could then be rebuilt as soon as the area was destroyed. Tharim’s price for this (as well as destroying the nice bits) is two years sworn amity. So we would be allied with him and would not be able to get out of it for two years, which sounds dodgy to me.
The final option is to let the garden stay cursed and even find ways to profit from it.
The same coven who offered to do the curse to close the regio have been keeping an eye on things in the haunted forest, they have offered to take it over and farm it for the magic infused sap. This would then mean there was an ongoing source of winter vis and magical items. For this there would need to be a senate motion and some seed cash to get them going. This would make a new title for people to vote on, the Tender of the Blood Orchard.
Finally, if people really mean to make the cursed garden a landmark in the city, then one option would be to close the gates and have a patrol to keep it organised. People would then pay to visit, and businesses could set up stalls in the garden to sell things. This would add 743 rings a season to a pool shared out between the businesses of Holberg.
OK, that is all I need to do for today’s post. There will most likely be some more updates tonight so I will try to get another summary done tomorrow, but that is a job for future me to worry about.
See you all next time,
K