"What Did I Do to Deserve This?" - KoDP AAR

[Grinning_Colossus]

So here we go again. Hopefully I won't let this one crap out the way the last one did.


One of my favorite things about King of Dragon Pass is the extent to which it's grounded in anthropology. The Orlanthi have all the traits of a real shamanistic society, and, although it's clearly supposed to be a fantasy setting, the effects of magic seem to be more psychological than physical, and there's some ambiguity about whether these people are actually seeing what they think they're seeing.

The game focuses on a pseudo-Norse hill tribe, called the Kartveli for the purposes of this AAR, who, unwilling to put up with the rule of a usurping tyrant called the Pharaoh, recently departed their homeland. They and a few dozen other Orlanthi tribes settled in Dragon Pass, terra nullis since the previous colonists were supposedly eaten en masse by dragons 200 years beforehand.



----------------------------------------------------------


After settling in, our first order of business was the reorganize the tribal ring.



The ring is a decision making body comprised of seven of the tribe's more competent nobles. Those symbols on the bottom right of their portraits represent the gods they follow. It's always best to have as many different gods represented on the ring as possible.


During this year's Sacred Time, our godtalkers said that our chief deity, Orlanth, wants us to go raiding, so we began to militarize. We planned to recruit weaponthanes and build up our defenses until Storm season at the end of the year.


The lunatic with the dots is a trickster god devotee, so he'll be a mixed blessing.



Early in Fire season, however, some bullshit happened:





Since time immemorial, our tribe has opposed the taking of thralls, particularly when someone else takes them and they're our farmers. Honor wouldn't permit any response but war.

To make the point as clear as possible, we threw everything we had at them, sending all available warriors, footmen, women, and farmers, using all of our battle magic and even asking our allies for help.

Die you fuckers.

During the battle, Swen was separated from the rest of our fighters.


But who cares about Swen?

He fought heroically, but he was overcome by Vanstali swords and fell. The rest of our fighters fled the battlefield in ignominious defeat as the Vanstali took 18 of our women auxiliaries captive.


When we returned home, we found that our clan regalia was missing, which delivered a terrible blow to our tribal magic. We sent a small party led by young Orlanth devotee named Kesald to find new regalia.


When winter came, we raided the Vanstali again. We knew that, if we raided in Storm season, Orlanth, the Storm God, would look favorably upon us. We again called our allies and sent everything we had against the Vanstali.

With Orlanth thundering behind us, our swords and arrows struck terror into the hearts of the slaver Vanstali. The Vanstali fled the field, and we liberated all of our auxiliaries as well as the original four farmers. We also took 14 of their people captive -- after the battle, we were able to ransom them for a considerable sum.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

This is going to involve a lot of updates. Luckily, as I don't plan to save-cheat, it won't go on forever. I'll almost certainly end up with everyone dead of starvation or eaten by ducks within 20 or 30 years.

[Maximus]

Made me fire this game up again. I agree with you about how it give that bronze age feel.

[Razgovory]

I really like the "Myth as ritual" aspect.  I also like how many of the myths have inexplicable aspects.  Such as catching a giant stone wheel and trapping someone in a small iron cage.  That gives it an authentic ring since many real world myths have aspects that don't make any sense to us.

[Grinning_Colossus]

KoDP works on my computer again, so hopefully 1 game year won't always equal 9 months in real time.





The year started ominously enough, with three freaky dragon-looking things with beehives on their heads working some sort of weird hocus pocus on our territory. They freaked us the fuck out, so we hid behind rocks and under bushes, watching them from a distance.



Their weird ritual may have had something to do with the arrival of these angry angry aardvarks on our land. We couldn't let them keep eating carls, so we did the only reasonable thing: Have the local schizophrenic lead them to our enemies' village with his magic pipe. Inexplicably, this worked and they went away.



Then some haggard looking types showed up and wanted to stay the night. They were of our supra-ethnicity, so we let them. As it turned out, while fleeing from our ancestral homeland, they'd gone a bit too far and run into some horse nomads somewhere off in the western plains. We decided to let them join us, since it's the sort of thing that our ancestors would have done.



Our explorers encountered some ducks who'd established some sort of agricultural civilization. They also claimed to be of our people but that's just silly because they're ducks. Our war leader, anxiously anticipating anatidine antagonism, advised against attack, but he was overruled by the rest of the ring. Let's get dangerous!



And boom, ethnic cleansing with minimal losses. How great is that?



A map of Kartvelian territory, newly expanded at the expense of the ducks.



Then some horse jerks showed up from the west and wanted their moochers back. With renewed confidence from our victory over the two foot ducks, we attacked... and killed all the horsemen. Looting their corpses added goods to our stockpile.

We were then subjected to a series of attacks by horsemen and trolls, the worst of which ended with the death of a ring member.



But he was old, so it could be worse.



Some of our explorers down in the misty mountains found a budget dragon. Wryms hoard gold despite not participating in the economy in any meaningful way, and, insofar as the ring is mandated to control deflation, we decided to reintroduce the money into the open market. Fisto taught the thing how to gamble and then won all of its money in a game of craps, significantly enlarging our tribal treasury.


At the end of the year, an incompetent and apologetic Kesald returned with news that he was too stupid to find, steal, or manufacture any new regalia.

[Barrister]

I've never played the game, but I suspect it was a bad idea to mess with the duck-people.

[Habbaku]

Yeah, but it gave him an excuse for lengthy alliteration.

[Admiral Yi]

So you guys are saying a game with lizard people, duck people, and dragons has a real bronze age feel to it? 

[Valmy]

So you guys are saying a game with lizard people, duck people, and dragons has a real bronze age feel to it? 

Yeah Bronze Age people believed in that sort of thing.

[Razgovory]

So you guys are saying a game with lizard people, duck people, and dragons has a real bronze age feel to it? 

And it's cheap.  You can get it for six bucks.

[Queequeg]

Kartveli?  Isn't it a little lowland for a Georgian tribe?

[Razgovory]

Kartveli?  Isn't it a little lowland for a Georgian tribe?

When I saw the name he picked I wondered if you were going say something about it.

[Grinning_Colossus]

It's called Dragon Pass. They clearly inhabit a mountain valley. By analogy, the horse nomads are the Russians, and, judging by the reaction to them, the dragonnewts are Armenians. Kero Fin is Kazbegi.

Anyway, some of them also live in the Kolkheti Lowlands, which happens to be where I'm posting from.

In the year 1332:




During planting season, some carls found the remains of a horrific beast with the beak of a duck, the horns of an antelope, and teeth meant to rend flesh from bone. We traded it away to a passing bone grinder and aphrodisiac salesman.



We then realized that we needed some more horses, so we sent Harsaltar off to trade for some. He got us a fairly good deal.



Then this bitch showed up and started complaining about something. We asked her who put her up to it, and she launched into a stump speech for an ambitious noblewoman named Insterid. Hengall patiently addressed her concerns point by point and she went away.



Some priests from the Orlundi clan showed up and said that one of our infant girls matched a description in an ancient book of some kid who'd grow up to be magic and fight evil. We gave her away in exchange for some details of a myth about Chalana Arroy.



The horsemen came back, but we fought them off again, happily ending our horse shortage in the process.




Some green haired tramp in the woods was seducing our men, so we sent out a party to capture her. She refused to talk when they brought her back, so we slapped her around a bit and told her to beat it.




Shortly thereafter, the guy with the beard from the previous picture came down with the clap. We considered asking everyone who'd encountered the oozy floozy to come forward, but Heortarl reminded us that that would only piss off their girlfriends, so we cast a preventative spell on all the men. Four more idiots died anyway.



Meanwhile, our explorers found some rocks. Hengall wanted to boast about them, but we decided to send for shamans to awaken the spirits within then. The shamans demanded 15 cows for service, which we grudgingly gave them, and then told us that the spirits said that they'd intangibly improve our craftwork. Hooray



In late winter, some more moochers showed up wanting food and shelter. We needed farmers, so we let them become landed peasants.



Then our explorers found some rags and pieces of skin. We conducted a divination, and our priests told us that the spirits told them that we should put on the ancient clothes and ritually reenact the battle. We did and a little later, by direct causation, some weaponthanes from a far-away land showed up and joined our clan.


During the Sacred Time, the gods told us that the next harvest will be very poor.

[Ed Anger]

The part where the women get uppity reminds me of Meri.

[Darth Wagtaros]

The part where the women get uppity reminds me of Meri.

You mean Marty

[Grinning_Colossus]

KoDP isn't working on my computer today, and will possibly never work again, so no update today or possibly ever again.