Knights of the Cardboard Castle

The next few years starting from 1340 begin with confronting a number of minor problems. A woman from our clan is discovered making love with a notorious troublemaker from the Old Owl clan while being betrothed to a warrior from an allied clan. We elect to tell the truth and the warrior agrees that the marriage should continue. Some time later however, he comes back to complain that he agreed to the marriage only because he thought that we had told him the story of the affair only to test him and he is upset to discover that it was true after all. We managed to mollify this extremely stupid man with the legal argument that he had willingly agreed to the marriage and could not go back on his word.

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Two events of note occur in 1337. Despite our frequent expeditionary forays, we don’t have many magical treasures. Thus far we have the recently acquired Raven Banner, Blacktail the Prize Bull and the recently born White Calf. So we are quite pleased when Sora Goodseller, a famous trader-priestess of Issaries, shows up in our tula. She offers us Ernalda’s Oven, which can bake bread with one twentieth less grain than usual. Since we will likely never use the Raven Banner, we trade it for the magical oven.

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In the beginning of 1335, our exploration team from the previous year returns with a powerful artefact: Humakt’s Raven Banner. It is a legendary banner from the First Age which guarantees victory in any battle, but always kill the bearer. We choose to keep the treasure. We may never actually put it to use, but the fact that we possess it should add to our prestige. The rest of the year goes by with no great events of note. We sacrifice to the gods and learn the Morale blessing from Humakt, the god of War and Death, and the Friend of Yinkin blessing from Odayla, the god of hunting.

Towards the end of the year, the Woodpecker clan approaches us to hire our weaponthanes for an attack against the clan ring of the Orladnast clan. Both of these clans are neutral to us and are far enough away that they are unlikely to be part of any tribe we might form in the future. We agree and the attack is successful. Our clan is rewarded and the blame goes to the Woodpecker since Orlanthi custom teaches that mercenaries are neutral. As usual we send out an exploring team in the Storm season but fail to hear back from them before the end of the year.

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1333 turns out to be a less eventful year. Our explorers report encountering some foreign warriors riding strange beasts. Since we Orlanthi are a traditional people, we elect to warn the other clans about them. We also have to deal with a problem involving two other clans on good terms with us, the Ernaldori and the White Horses. One of our warriors want to marry a woman of the White Horse clan. That woman’s mother asks him to steal a magical plow from the Ernaldori and gift it to the White Horses so that she would give her blessing to the marriage. We decide to warn the Ernaldori of the plan and gain their goodwill. Our warriors agree with us that the plan was foolhardy anyway.

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We begin the year 1332 much the same as we have in the two previous years, save that we decide to attempt a heroquest this year and so allocate extra magic to Questing. This is when the entire clan combine to pray so that a chosen clan member, the quester, may enter the plane of the gods and reenact the events of a chosen myth. The magic of the clan and the skills of the quester will be sorely tested. But if successful, heroquests can bring great benefits, enrich the magic of the clan and greatly raise the mood of the entire clan.

At the beginning of the year, our god-talkers tell us that we would be greatly rewarded by Oranth and Uralda if we successfully increase the size of our herds over the course of the year. So we begin by building a shrine to Uralda to gain the permanent effects of the Calf Blessing, which increases the fertility of our cows. Next, we review the knowledge we have on the myths. We can only attempt heroquests for myths for which we know the complete story. We can gather such details either by sacrificing to the gods or learning about them from other clans.

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The Sacred Time before the beginning of each year is when we reflect on how well we have done over the past year. We find that we have 17 more clan members, 5 more cattle and 24 more sheep. We also consumed less food than we produced and thus have a small reserve, though some of it is lost to spoilage. It is worth noting that the herders will automatically slaughter cattle, pigs and sheep at appropriate times to supplement the food supply but we can also cull our herds for emergency food when needed. In essence, the herds act as a store of food for bad times.

We choose not to make any changes to our allocation of clan magic but we do note the auguries for the year. The god-talkers say that Orlanth has let them know if we sent no more than a dozen warriors along, our first cattle raid of the year will be extraordinarily successful.

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For the Orlanthi clans, a year is divided into five seasons and we begin the year of 1330 in the Sea season. This is when our farmers are busy in the fields planting crops. Each clan is led by the seven members of its Clan Ring, chosen from amongst the nobles of the clan. As this is our first full year in Dragon Pass, we begin the year by reorganizing our Clan Ring. As our primary god is Orlanth, it is important that the leader of our Clan Ring be a worshipper of Orlanth. As such Orlkarnth, an Orlanth worshipper with excellent leadership skills is chosen to be our leader. Our only regret is that Orlkarnth is already 60 years old and will likely not be able to serve for long.

For the six other positions, we strive for a broad diversity of worshippers of different gods and goddesses while ensuring that we have advisers who are skilled with animals, bargaining, combat, custom, magic and plants. The remaining six positions are filled with a worshipper each of Odayla, god of hunting, Issaries, god of trade and travel, Vinga, goddess of adventure, Lhankor Mhy, god of knowledge, Chalana Arroy, goddess of healing, and Ernalda, Queen of the Earth respectively. A worshipper of Elmal, god of the sun, who is good at fighting would fit very well in there somewhere but we have no such candidate available.

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We are the Red Fox clan. We are Orlanthi, worshippers of Orlanth, King of Gods and the god of Storm, and our history stretches back untold millennia to the ancient times when the gods walked the earth. To prepare for the marriage of Orlanth and Ernalda, the Queen of the Earth, our ancestors whooped and drank with Orlanth. Our earliest Famous Event was the Procession of the Animals, when Uralda, the Cow Mother, led the Sacred Herds to Orlanth’s shed and hence under the protection of the two-legs.

During the Storm Age, after our clan had proved ourselves robust and capable of survival, Orlanth’s son King Vingkot placed a remnant people under our protection. Instead of treating them as thralls, we adopted them into our clan. During this time, we fought against many enemies, but our chief enemy was Chinkis Mor, the Elf Warlord.

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