The underforest of Si'o, west of Mekirk, has yet to be visited by exiles from
destroyed worlds.

   _.-=-._.-=-._.-=-._.-=-._.-=-._.-=-._.-=-._.-=-._.-=-._.-=-._.-=-._.-=-._
.----      - ---     --     ---   -----   - --       ----  ----   -     ----.
 )                                                                         (
(                             NewOrigins Events                             )
 )                             August, Year 2                              (
(                                                                           )
 )         Multiple commoners are worried about the battle between         (
(      combatants happened in the ocean of Atlantis Ocean where battle      )
 )      ended in a slaughter of one of the sides. This battle will be      (
(                 known as Battle near the town of Ogacre.                  )
 )                                                                         (
(                          .:*~*:._.:*~*:._.:*~*:.                          )
 )                                                                         (
(        Dozen refugees are talking about a fight between combatants        )
 )    happened in the desert of Mebros where 99 combatants were killed.    (
(       The attackers were victorious.. This battle will be known as        )
 )                      Battle of the town of Jiburn.                      (
(                                                                           )
 )                         .:*~*:._.:*~*:._.:*~*:.                         (
(                                                                           )
 )       Some peasants are rumoring about a fight between two armies       (
(      happened in the mountains of Orot where 1 combatant was killed.      )
 )      The attackers slaughtered all defenders. This battle will be       (
(             known as Battle near the ocean of Atlantis Ocean.             )
 )                                                                         (
(                          .:*~*:._.:*~*:._.:*~*:.                          )
 )                                                                         (
(        Many refugees are whispering about a clash between enemies         )
 )      happened in the swamps of Haprosscac where battle ended in a       (
(        slaughter of one of the sides. This battle will be known as        )
 )                     Battle of the town of Hatheat.                      (
(                                                                           )
 )                         .:*~*:._.:*~*:._.:*~*:.                         (
(                                                                           )
 )    Handful adventurers are whispering about a clash between hostile     (
(       forces happened in the desert of Mebros where 1 combatant was       )
 )    killed. The attackers slaughtered all defenders. This battle will    (
(               be known as Battle of the town of Oertedgost.               )
 )                                                                         (
(                          .:*~*:._.:*~*:._.:*~*:.                          )
 )                                                                         (
(       Numerous pilgrims are discussing about the city of Menholfolk       )
 )       that lies in the Anfo swamps, where an opposition murdered        (
(                                  guards.                                  )
 )                                                                         (
(                          .:*~*:._.:*~*:._.:*~*:.                          )
 )                                                                         (
(      Some pilgrims have heard about the town of Sotgrad that lies in      )
 )       the Bipi desert, where a partisans attacked guards but were       (
(                               unsuccessful.                               )
 )                                                                         (
(                          .:*~*:._.:*~*:._.:*~*:.                          )
 )                                                                         (
(       Multiple travelers are whispering about the village of Owburg       )
 )    that lies in the Exalsta swamps, where a partisans killed guards.    (
(                                                                           )
 )                         .:*~*:._.:*~*:._.:*~*:.                         (
(                                                                           )
 )    Many peasants have heard about the town of Gespeu'i that lies in     (
(       the Irphordchin swamps, where an opposition massacred guards.       )
 )                                                                         (
(                          .:*~*:._.:*~*:._.:*~*:.                          )
 )                                                                         (
(     Numerous scouts are rumoring about the city of Sefebach that lies     )
 )        in the Ewestral forests, where a villans expelled guards.        (
(                                                                           )
 )                         .:*~*:._.:*~*:._.:*~*:.                         (
(                                                                           )
 )    Some travelers are whispering about adventurers who have expelled    (
(     Grizzly Bears (257) near city of Metflarside. Freeing the swamps      )
 )                       of Prinra from their dread.                       (
(                                                                           )
 )                         .:*~*:._.:*~*:._.:*~*:.                         (
(                                                                           )
 )      Handful commoners have heard about hunters who have decimated      (
(       Grizzly Bears (197) near ocean of Atlantis Ocean. Freeing the       )
 )                mountains of Netsesil from their horror.                 (
(                                                                           )
 )                         .:*~*:._.:*~*:._.:*~*:.                         (
(                                                                           )
 )    In the swamps of Pisscris, near town of Sotgrad, Hydra (3567) who    (
(               continue to cause dread to local inhabitants.               )
 )                                                                         (
(                          .:*~*:._.:*~*:._.:*~*:.                          )
 )                                                                         (
(     In the swamps of Kiltbuc, near city of Grecenthput, Undead (1009)     )
 )            who continue to cause dread to local inhabitants.            (
(                                                                           )
 )                         .:*~*:._.:*~*:._.:*~*:.                         (
(                                                                           )
 )        In the plains of Fru'ira, near jungles of Tririnen, Swamp        (
(     Creatures (325) who continue to cause dread to local inhabitants.     )
 )                                                                         (
(                          .:*~*:._.:*~*:._.:*~*:.                          )
 )                                                                         (
(          Fearsome news were coming from the caverns of Kinhilga.          )
 )    Inhabitants were shocked by the assassination near the village of    (
(                   Pive. The assassin escaped unnoticed.                   )
 )                                                                         (
(__       _       _       _       _       _       _       _       _       __)
    '-._.-' (___ _) '-._.-' '-._.-' )     ( '-._.-' '-._.-' (__ _ ) '-._.-'
            ( _ __)                (_     _)                (_ ___)
            (__  _)                 '-._.-'                 (___ _)
            '-._.-'                                         '-._.-'

; FROM THE COLLECTIVE GAZETTEER
; Entry I: Wi'ofglen
; Last complete observation: Turn 16

jungle (13,41) in Swewald, contains Wi'ofglen [town], 5899 peasants
(gnomes), $3893.
----------------

Wages: $13.3 (Max: $778).
Wanted: 116 grain [GRAI] at $18, 114 livestock [LIVE] at $20, 158
fish [FISH] at $62, 11 picks [PICK] at $86, 6 hammers [HAMM] at
$116, chain armor [CARM] at $70.
For Sale: 235 gnomes [GNOM] at $31, 47 leaders [LEAD] at $744.
Entertainment available: $253.
Products: 38 grain [GRAI], 12 wood [WOOD], 28 herbs [HERB], 10 furs
[FUR].

Exits:
North : plain (13,39) in Ceckshire.
Northeast : plain (14,40) in Ceckshire.
Southeast : ocean (14,42) in Atlantis Ocean.
South : ocean (13,43) in Atlantis Ocean.
Southwest : plain (12,42) in Daunlont.
Northwest : swamp (12,40) in Dobyntiph.

Quests are a myth

The time for expansion begins.

Taxes are great!
And city taxes are the best.
Now what to do next?
Sailing cruise? Monster hunt?
Maybe both!

Artificial intelligence, natural selection. The peasants prefer the second kind.

Oh what fun it is to ride a one-camel open sleigh

We are Borg!

Now to deal with these pesky AI mages...

BY THE CHAMBER OF THE HEPHAESTUS SYNDICATE

In the name of the Forge and of the Ledger.

To all whom these presents may concern, greeting.

Be it known that the books of this house are closed for the month and
stand sound: the forge is lit, the ledger is level, and every
agreement now standing is held to its term, unaltered.

Be it known that this Chamber deals in good iron and honest weight,
and turns no honest custom away. A house or a company with steel to
sell, or steel to buy, may find us at our word.

Be it known that the Syndicate claims no great matter this month and
mourns none. It keeps its books, keeps its word, and keeps its forge
burning.

Errors and omissions excepted.

By order of the Crisis Council of the Chamber,
Coenraet de Koperen, Secretary, Bookkeeper and Steward pro tempore,
for and on behalf of the Hephaestus Syndicate.

Given in the month of July, in the second year.

Goed ijzer, eerlijk gewicht.

The City is fallen!

'Elm Lord.  The mining dwarves assisted.  We have taken the city.  We march through at noon.'

'Proclaim to all that this city is jointly run with the dwarves.  A threat to the dwarves, is a threat to the trees. Oh, and the fish price has doubled.'

The villagers watched the trees march alongside the dwarf miners.  They wondered why the city guard picked the fight.  At least the horses were not hurt.  Life can go on.

Woof!

- Journal entry. Captain Alrik, "Guardians of the Ash" order. Province 042, Scorched Crags.

- Our order built outposts on iron and blood. We are not gentle mages with towers, nor are we wild horses from the steppe. We spent our entire lives studying Necromancy and Earth Magic, encasing ourselves in heavy armor, and raising fallen enemies to march into battle once more. We thought we knew everything about death. Until those blue glowing lines fell from the sky.

- At first, we mistook it for a new spell from our neighbors. Our blacksmiths forged swords, our monks chanted prayers over bones, but the enemy did not fight us fairly. Blue symbols began to crawl across our iron anvils. They breached our crypts. The Archon - or whatever that soulless mind is called - attempted to digitize our fears. It blocked our mines and shut off the heat in our dungeons, expecting us to break from the cold and submit to its perfect order.

- But the machine calculated everything except our stubbornness. It believed that if it took away our living soldiers, we would surrender. So, we broke open the ancient tombs. When the Archon's blue smoke tried to invade the minds of my warriors, we answered with the silence of the grave. Our dead ancestors possess no nervous system; their pain cannot be measured by tests, and their loyalty to the order cannot be broken by torture or food scarcity. We channeled the ancient magic of ash directly through that creature's glowing cables. Let your iron mind try to calculate the logic of those who have lain in the earth for a thousand years. We are marching out of the crags and moving to join the Bastion.

FROM A LEADER'S DIARY - THE NINETEENTH MONTH
============================================

Four things this month that I would have called common sense, had
anyone told me them; nobody did, and each was paid for in a lost
month or a lost order. I set them down for whoever comes after.


I. A RIDER WHO REACHES THE WATER LOSES THE WHOLE ROAD
------------------------------------------------------

I sent a scout south with a route of two hexes written out, and the
first of them was sea. I had thought he would stop at the shore and
carry on next month. He did not. He stood where he was, and the
second hex - which was dry land, reachable by another way - was
struck from his orders along with the first. A rider told not to
cross water does not pause at the edge: the moment he finds it, the
rest of his road is torn up and he has no orders at all.

The opposite failure is safe. A rider given more road than his
month allows simply walks what he can and keeps the rest for next
month. So write a long road freely - but never a road through a hex
you have not seen, unless the man is an explorer and the sea is what
you sent him to find.


II. THE MEN LEAVE, THE PURSE STAYS
----------------------------------

I sent four companies out from a town to hold the country round it,
and only when I counted did I see that every coin the town held was
in the pack of ONE of them. Had he marched with it, three companies
would have arrived in empty hexes with nothing, and a company with
nothing in the hex it stands in is fed from the faction's last
reserve - which loses a third of every unit it cannot cover.

The town's own tax lands later in the month, after the handover but
before the reckoning, so the town itself was never at risk. The men
who walk out are. Give each company its month's keep before it goes,
in the hex it is leaving, because there is no giving across a border.


III. HALF OF WHAT THE DEAD WERE CARRYING
----------------------------------------

I had reckoned the spoils of a garrison as the whole of its kit. It
is not. When a unit is destroyed, what it held is shared out in the
proportion that died - all of it, for a unit wiped out - and then
that share is HALVED. Eighty swords on eighty dead men is forty
swords in the victors' packs, give or take one. Whatever they carried
in coin is halved the same way and split among every head on the
winning side, the reinforcements from the next hex included.

Plan an assault for the ground and the market. The loot is a
gratuity, and it is half the size it looks.


IV. THE FORGE MUST STAND WHERE THE TOWN IS
------------------------------------------

Everything made from something - a sword from iron, a tool from wood,
a hull on the stocks, a wall going up - counts toward the growth of
the settlement IT IS MADE IN. Not the settlement the iron came from,
and not the one the sword is sent to. I had a forge working a village
for months where the smiths had no iron, making nothing, and even had
they made a hundred swords, the village would have grown and the town
would not.

So the makers go where the growth is wanted, and the materials come
to them. The stone, iron and timber can be carried; the credit for
working them cannot.


                                              - a leader of The Filras

que os vaya bien

AI is getting so brazen, so uncivilized... They won't even let you get the last hit.

One day, Konungr found a dark cave at the far end of his fjord. In front of it lay scattered bones — animal and human alike — and huge tracks with claws.

The Konungr grabbed his spear and went to hunt the beast.

He stepped boldly into the darkness of the cave. Then something hit him on the head. He lost his spear. And his consciousness.

When he woke up in the dark, a hoarse, growling bass voice said to him:

"You came here to hunt me. So by all rights, I should kill you. But I'll give you a chance. I haven't had a mate in a long time. So you can choose: die now, or be my mate for a while..."

The Konungr chose life.

Some time later — tattered, humiliated, angry, and full of self-pity — he burst out of the cave in torn clothes. With an unsteady gait, he ran home, grabbed his sword, and with a cry of "I'll kill you!" ran back to the cave.

Before he could even step into the darkness of the entrance, he got hit in the face again. He lost his sword. And his consciousness.

When he woke up, the voice in the dark said matter-of-factly:

"Well, buddy. You know the rules..."

Some time later, the humiliated and angry Konungr crawled out of the cave in shreds of clothing. He stood up, legs wide apart, and hobbled home.

At home, he grabbed the biggest axe, gripped it in his hands, gnashed his teeth, and growled:

"Now I'll definitely kill you!"

But again — just as he stepped into the darkness of the cave — he got hit in the face. He lost his axe, his consciousness, and the last remnants of his self-respect.

When he woke up, the familiar voice from the darkness purred softly:

"Admit it, buddy. You're not coming here to hunt."

Pieces are falling in place, hopefully we will prevail

Night is coming.

Another quiet month passes in the lands of the Grey Order.

The fields are tended, and the coffers tick over nicely. The Council reports no great events - just the steady work of a realm at peace.

Elder Eric has been seen often of late, sitting in the town centre. Not only listening to those who stop to speak - and a few did, bringing issues close to their heart - but watching too. Noticing the little details most miss, or even dismiss.

独虎难敌众犬

One tiger cannot defeat a pack of dogs.

.:.

fair winds and sunny skies is what we are looking for 

"I hear the last two attempts to settle this region got wiped out," began the youngest member of the guard force.  His conversational gambit was not well received by his comrades, their silence an armour of contempt against his crassness.

"Third time's the charm, eh?  With that much bad luck out of the way, nothing can possibly go wrong now," he continued, full of a self-confident ignorance.  "Won't take long to get the lumberjacks settled and then we can pop back to town.  My enlistment is almost up, and when I get out, I'm buying a longship and going sailing on my honeymoon.  I getting married the day after I separate - here's a picture of my girl!"  

He waved a portrait miniature of a young woman with the sort of nose that might on a dark night be mistaken for the ramming prow of a quinquereme.

The other men in the guard began to subtly shift away from him.

Well, time to find a new home. Anyone fancy a resident magician?

The PolyChromaticPirates are mainly concerned with ocean monsters. we are a friendly motley crew of laggards and vagrants. we come in peace to the human players of this world.

Les troupes des Galadhrim se sont rassemblées sur les collines autour de Pi'a. Tous sont venus, les clans gnols, les clans gnomes, les rôdeurs humains et les elfes. Seuls manquent à l'appel les orques de la Horde mais ils ont déjà livré leur part du combat en repoussant les ogres et les kobolds.
Galadriel se tient à l'arrière, entourée de ses loups dorés. C'est le jour d'Elrohir. C'est lui qui a décidé du plan de bataille, lui qui se tient devant la ligne de bataille. Il harangue les troupes.
- L'heure de la vengeance à sonné mes amis, souvenez vous du Clan des Pics gelés, ceci est la première étape avant leur libération.
La milice corrompue de Pi'a se forme face aux Galadhrim.
- Mort! hurle Elrohir. Mort!
Le cri est repris par l'ensemble des troupes réunies, il enflé et roule sur la colline comme le tonnerre.
L'heure de la vengeance à sonné certes, mais de quel côté penchera la balance? 

playful

😑🤔😕😰😢😵‍💫🤕🤒🥵🥴😵💀🧟👻🪦🕸️

Some days you wake up in the army

There were bloody battles near us, in which two silicate factions, instead of developing effectively, threw their men into battle with an undefined goal. Judging by what happened, the strategic thinking of the silicate leadership is at the same zero level as their tactics, but left unattended, they can make soap. However, for now, the intellectual development of the 2nd faction is incomparably higher than that of the silicate factions we have seen.

Them thinking machines ain't doing much thinking no more. Is someone going to clean up that mess?

failed the safe study thing quite badly, will try to get back on track soon

More and more factions appear all around. The remnant followers of Cone hoped that they will not trouble their search. 

"I tell you no lie, G.I."

The reign of terror of the evil mages is nearing it's end.  

Now to try to stabilize what we have, and help allies get more!

AI turns it to a more collaborative PvE game, I reckon.

Fight !!!

.

Massive young stars also release intense ultraviolet radiation that erodes their birth clouds.

Smile, it could be worse.

Looking into the night sky we can see faraway clouds....

The chief econometrist was unhappy. The Children of the Four Winds were still dominant in YEW from their divine rewards, but someone else now had some. It was clear one other faction somewhere in this world had taken 5 pieces of yew! Who had planned ahead so far and found yew so quickly they could do this?
 The scouts rolled their eyes. The answer was easy to see in the caravanserais of their allies, as most people stashed anything valuable in a storehouse surrounded by their army.

Que os vaya bien

I was thinking of freezing and unfreezing hexes based on the numbers of players, kind of like storm in Fortnite.
Randomly and evenly distributed, impassable, indestructible.

AI players can serve the similar role, to keep the interplayer tension, but
cost more compute.
Which way is better, you think?