The rest of autumn 1424 was supposed to be a time for celebration. We’d just added a new business to our empire and Harold Kant comes of age. He becomes a fully controllable character and boringly ends up looking like an exact clone of his father. As Georg had taken to making and storing barrels of Alderman’s Brew back at the house in his spare time, we even managed to complete a guild delivery contract when the event popped up. 600 cash and bonus guild reputation per barrel is nothing to sneeze at.
But then things start going wrong. First, our new brickmaker’s shop way up north gets burglarized. The monetary loss is less than 100, insignificant, but we don’t want repeats. It may even be Wilbur Eaton, that irascible rogue again, but we have no evidence. We hire a second thug to look after things up north.
Next our orchard gets bombed. Seriously, someone ups and tosses a bomb on it and the whole thing goes up in flames. Since I wasn’t paying attention to that part of the map, I have no idea who did it too. Harold and his mother Julia automatically stop whatever they were doing to put out by fire. They move back and forth to get buckets of water from the well to splash on the burning orchard. A good number of random passersby help too. Georg strangely elects to stay in his pub and continues making barrels of Alderman’s Brew.
Eventually the fire goes out but we have to spend money to fix up the place. Our first and best henchman (employees automatically gain levels every season it seems) tries sniffing around for evidence. We find out that Wibur Eaton has been very, very naughty indeed, but there’s nothing in there about us.
As we can do nothing but pay extra attention to security, we continue making money and save up enough to buy the next title, that of full “Citizen”. What’s interesting about this is that it opens up a whole lot of political posts that were previously closed to us. However it does cost a whopping 10,000. Basically daylight robbery.
Peace is broken again soon, this time in an even more brutal way. A level 5 thug launches a direct physical assault on our pub! Luckily our own thug is level 5 too and arrives quickly to defend. A short time after the assault starts, a special action appears to “Alert the guards” but I didn’t notice it until the battle was almost over. It was a very close fight but our thug wins and the guards come running up just as she finishes off the enemy thug.
The bad news is that this leaves our own henchwoman very badly wounded. The good news is that we do know who sent that thug, the Selmeczi family. It’s not hard evidence that shows up in the diary but at least now we have a target. We hire yet another thug, the third and last one that we can until we get a bigger house, and send our wounded guard to the medics.
So let’s take stock of our enemies. It turns out that we have quite a few of them though none of them are our designated rivals, the Muresans. They’re neutral to us. Our enemies are two powerful families, the Selmeckis and the Banffys. Wilbur Eaton is also listed as an enemy even though we let him off the hook last time. Ungrateful bastard.
None of the Selmeczis currently hold any political posts but I swear at the beginning of 1424, Kalman Selmecki was sovereign. I interpret that to mean something like mayor because there’s a king above him. Of the two Banffys, one is the current sovereign and the other is the Marshall.
Other things are going on the background while our family is gathering information about our enemies. Our country, Hungary, fights a war with Austria. We’re invited to contribute fighters and war material at one point but we passed. All I saw was a whole bunch of soldiers gathering near the city armory and then marching off the map. A short while later came the announcement that we’d won.
In spring 1432, we watch the Muresans get into a big fight right outside our orchard. They’re knocked unconscious but don’t die. I don’t know who attacked them. It’s none of our business so we don’t get involved. I should mention that you have to pass wages for each employee every season and paying for the three thugs who don’t generate an income stream of their own gets expensive.
I also have Harold court and marry a wife of his own, Beatrix. We have to keep the family going you know. A pity his sister Clarissa seems doomed to be an old maid forever. I can only actively control three family members and the rest just sort of wander around town randomly. I swear however that when Harold consummated his marriage, his sister ducked into the room to peek at them.
But we also manage to find the necessary evidence against the Selmeczis. It took our lead henchwoman one full season to heal her wounds but eventually the team delivered the goods. I have Harold triumphantly march into the council building to demand justice.
And so our quest for justice is shut down in the most inane way imaginable.
Next: justice at last but the stakes climb higher!
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