In 1376, the spirits of our most noble ancestors visit the clan hall. They tell us that great things are in store for us and say that they will grant us a boon. Worrying that our tribal king, Tonalang, will die before the great events come to pass, we ask that they bless him. They do so and depart. Will this be enough to ensure that Tonalang lives long enough?
I’m feeling somewhat burned out on first-person shooters but I picked up Far Cry 3 not too long ago because I have fond memories of the second game in the series. I have to admit that this was very much a mistake as this game seems to share very little in common with its predecessor.
Disaster befalls us in 1365. Our clan leader dies of old age. Not only does this deprive us of his valuable services but since he is also the king of our tribe, this means a new tribal moot will be called to elect a new king. Of course, we immediately elevate another worshipper of Orlanth to the position of clan ring leader, but our new candidate is significantly less skilled in many matters. Indeed, we encounter great difficulty in persuading the other clans in our tribe to accept him as tribal king and finally the clans choose Swen of the Blackrock clan as the new tribal king. We can only console ourselves with the fact that we will have a much easier time elevating one of our own candidates the next time we need a new king and that according to the prophecy, we still have around 15 years until the time comes to form a kingdom.
In 1361 we perform a divination ritual on the strange sorcerous implements we obtained from the servants of the Pharaoh who were hunting the Six Brothers. The spirits of our ancestors tell us that they are cursed. Fortunately we are able to trade them away to another clan for some other goods. Later, a group of tricksters, followers of Eurmal, the god of mischief, present us with a dubious banner. It is always dangerous to offend tricksters though it is hard to be sure whether or not the gift itself is a trick. They might be giving us something useless in order to make fun of us when we make a fuss over it.
The next two years are bad ones for our clan. We are constantly raided and take many losses. We lose additional men in our own raiding attempts. It even comes to the point where the women of the tula, upset with all the dead husbands, worry about the future of the clan and the lack of men. The clan ring decides to hold a Marriage Contest to attract some of the more promising young men from other clans to repopulate our ranks. Fortunately the trouble does not go out of hand as our successes with heroquesting maintains our morale and our wealth allows us to buy our way out of many troubles.
The year 1351 starts poorly as we are raided by the Rakshanti clan. This upsets our people as they are part of the Estarelder tribe that we are supposed to be allied with. Instead of sanctioning their clan or their tribe as a whole however, we ask the Estarelder to join us in a massive raid against the Balmyr tribe as whole, hoping that our weaponthanes would like each other more after fighting together and convincing them that there are plenty of other enemies to fight. They agree and we set the date for the raid for the Fire season of next year.
New year, new Thadart problems, who, once again, is the warrior who was turned into a Tusk Raider. His wife has given birth to a baby who unfortunately looks like a Tusk Raider as well. The entire tula is in an uproar over this. We try to conduct a ritual to ensure that future children by the couple won’t look similar but the portents do not look auspicious. We are resigned to having more Thadart problems in the future.
Over the course of the year 1345, we send emissaries to each of our allies to ask them to come to the confederation moot for the forming of a new tribe. Each clan has its own demands and requirements so we have to negotiate with each of them, sweetening the deals with generous gifts. To the Varmandi, we agree that they would get the Ernalda and Asrella seats on the new tribal ring, that other clans would have to contribute towards the fortifications of their prized temple to the Earth goddess and make annual sacrifices there. In return, they agreed to teach the other clans the secret myths of their temple.