My Life As A Gamer: The New Model Colony Smashes Two Invaders In As Many Weeks

When we last saw the New Model Colony, we had a influx of merchants and emerging Treant problems. Let's return to the Domain and see what's gone on since.

• The plan to erect watchtowers every mile (i.e. every hex on the smaller map) reached out to five miles in all directions, with camps down the coast in both directions to the mountains on each side where future towers will be built.
  
  These are simple three-story square wood towers with a fence about them, and men of the Fighter's militia rotate through them to establish and maintain control over the area. The towers have signal fires on their roofs.
• The Architect takes the initiative to deal with the Treants. Accompanied by the Cleric and the Magic-User, he finds them and parleys with them.
  
  The Magic-User and the Cleric report that the Architect disputed with the Treants' leader for a week straight--"like watching a duel play out beat-by-beat, but as if slowed down, between two expert swordsmen"--and the Architect's acumen at Rhetoric wins the Colony an accord.
  
  The Treants, looking out for the health of the forest, saw the Colony as being no different from the despoiling monsters they cleared out.
  
  The Architect demonstrated this presumption untrue and proposed a mutually-beneficial arrangement that allowed sufficient logging to occur, at the cost of active cultivation of the forest- and in striking this bargain, the Architect also learned valuable lore of immediate use to the Colony.
• The Merchants, seeing the opportunity, propose a tree farm. A portion of the trees grown are given over to the Treants in the form of their reforestation efforts, greatly accelerating that process.
  
  In return, the Treants mark those that are detrimental to the forest--monstrous flora and fauna, overpopulation of game, etc.--for the Colony to dispose of. The Treants accept. Patrols in Treant-dominated areas become far more friendly and routine.

The latter is a big deal. Treating productively with the Treants opens the door for the Colony to gain access to Classes heretofore disallowed: Druids, Rangers, and Bards. The Architect's time is going to be spent training in the Bardic arts, which are derivative of the Druidic arts, and will found the local Bardic College by next month. So long as the Colony can maintain its good diplomatic relations with the Treants, NPCs able to train others as Druids, Rangers, or Bards will remain available.

There is another possibility at this time, which is that access to the Elf race may become viable due to extant relations between Treants and Elves; we'll see how things turn out from here, and other Treant-friendly NPCs may make themselves known (such as Psuedo-Dragons, suitable as familiars for Magic-Users) and become allied to suitable PCs.

The cost--to be active guarantors of the forest and support its growth--marries the Colony to the Treants in the form of ensuring that the Forest expands to fill the region between the mountain ranges, which--as the Architect learns--was how things once were ages ago before a series of calamintous events occurred that lead to monsters despoiling their woodland realm.

That concludes Old Business. Time for New Business.

We're rolling on the Inhabited table, but without a road network we roll once per week.

• Week One: Orcs (230+)
• Week Two: Hobgoblins (180+)
• Week Three: Men, Berserker (30+)
• Week Four: Men, Dervish (110)

The Treants' accord occurs against the backdrop of two back-to-back incursions by hostile monsters. Remember the Orcs that got previously encountered? This is their tribe, coming in force to see what happened. One of the subchiefs are at the head of this column, and they did not expect to find the Colony here.

They expected to fight the Ogres and the Hill Giants. Instead, the Fighter took the bulk of the militia--thanks to the watchtowers sending warnings--and met them in a pitched battle in the forest, catching them in column and thus reenacting the Teutoberg Forest massacre.

This is recreated when a Hobgoblin tribe sends in a large force after the Orcs. After both battles, interrogation of survivors reveals that the Hobgoblins trailed the Orcs as they both serve a superior master and jockey for position. The Orcs thought that they could oust the Hill Giants and Ogres, take control of the region, and use this area as a base to stage a campaign against the Hobgoblins.

Word of both battles reaching the Treants turns their opinion of the Colony to the Colony's favor, allowing the Architect to win over the Treants. Finishing the job was when a band of Berserkers arrived in the forest.

The Architect, seeing a chance to nail shut this accord, pointed to the Treants that this group of men embodied the wild spirit of the forest. That gambit paid off when the band arrived and their leader was a shaman (Cleric) seeking battle and glory to honor his god, symbolized by a boar. This band would be the first group taught to become Rangers (in game terms) by the Treants. The Cleric took note of this band's shaman and resolved to learn of this man and his god.

At the end of the month, the first ship to arrive after the Colony's established men made landfall. The Cleric welcomed a group of Dervishes, allied to his order, to his ranks, but their leader did not like the idea of being under the authority of a man clearly his junior. The Dervishes formally are under the Cleric's command, but their leader (who is higher level than the Cleric) seconded them all to the Fighter "because of clear shortages in manpower".

(Note: This is not out of line; two characters of identical Alignment can come into conflict in a manner that is internally consistent with their respective beliefs; in this case two Lawful Good characters are in conflict because the NPC is higher level than the Patron, and LG has Hierarchy and Authority as key virtues, so they are disputing over who outranks whom).

As we end this month, the Colony gets massive expansions in political and economic capacity yet again that translates to more playable character options for character coming out of this location. More of the lore is revealed, and the following is resolved:

• The watchtower network is to be expanded, and a road network suitable to the Treants established to connect them. Liason protocols are to be established.
• The influx of Colonists means that it is time to expand and upgrade the Keep and its surrounding area. Mines are to be identified, roads to the Colony put down, and work camps established (because the Magic-User doesn't want to be casting Wall of Stone and Stone Shape every day.
• The Merchants' establishment of all necessary physical plant for fulfilling all sorts of work orders is to be finished, and homesteading to be established.

We'll check back in just before Halloween.