by Galen Wolf
I went to log off, but I just couldn't. Every time I wanted to quit and go to my real-life bed, I just kept waiting there in the Greenwood for the next development. I waited for the next lot of timber to build up, for the next load of stone to arrive from the forest. It was the early hours before I decided I must leave, my eyes were heavy and I was no longer thinking clearly.
I logged in early the next morning after only a few hours of sleep, and saw that our wood stock had built up during the night and our wheat was now ripe. The two children had grown to maturity and were able to work. This meant I had a population of eight adults and two children. I put the adults to work in the wheat field to harvest it and appointed the woman who I first created – the woman I saw wander out dazed from her new house – as the Miller.
I had two of the other adults go cutting wood in the forest and the final adult I sent to look for more stone.
When the wheat was harvested from the field I sent to the Corn Mill. It would take some time for the Corn Mill to grind all the flour but then we could begin producing bread. Once we had a bakery at least. I wanted to build a bakery but I was also aware of the fact that we desperately needed that stockade. It was around midday when we had enough wood to build the stockade and I set all the population except the miller and the two children to work building a palisade of sharpened tree trunks bound tightly together with rope. I hadn't created the rope; it appeared that came for free. I made the stockade to cover as wide an area as I could. It ran along the south-eastern banks of the Great River into the Old Forest as far as we had cleared then came back to form roughly a rectangle. It completely enclosed Ermine Street, which became Pennred's main thoroughfare.
The final act was to build gates, and I appointed one of the NPC workers as customs officer.
I left the village to fly over to Woodheart for the cattle where I saw Ahn.
He stood and shook my hand as I landed with Aquila on the platform of the Guild house. "I've been following the development of Pennred through the HUD. As Guildmaster I get an overview of all of our settlements."
He was grinning broadly. "Well done, Barcud, it looks like you're doing a great job. It seemed your boasts that you'd played this kind of strategy game before were not idle."
"Gee, thanks, boss." I smiled.
He said, "Have you looked at the tolls we are getting from merchants using Ermine Street?"
I had neglected to look while I'd been flying over the Old Forest back to the Guild house. When I looked at it now we had collected 25 gold pieces in toll. I gave a fist pump and a whoop to the air. "Money!"
He said, "We should have done this years ago. The only reason we didn't was that we didn't want to provoke Horrabia. That and that most of the rangers can't be bothered with town building. Most come here to live their lives wandering the woods and picking herbs and poisons, and fighting of course. Your skills are a welcome addition. My hands are full, with my role as Guildmaster and overseeing Woodheart, which to be honest more or less ticks over."
I arranged that Ahn would send some cattle over to populate my field. I wanted two cows and a bull. He said he could spare them from the stocks at Woodheart.
My old friend Griffin came back with me to see the new village. When we landed on our Eagles within the brand-new stockade, I saw that the population had increased again. I also saw there was an altercation going on at the village gate.
We wandered over and saw a player character from the pirate city of Salonika was arguing with my NPC customs master.
It seemed Griffin knew this man. He was old with bushy eyebrows and watery brown eyes. He had a battered felt hat jammed on his head and his brown pants and cloak were mud stained.
"Hi Tom," Griffin said. "What seems to be the problem?"
The old man was fuming. "You rangers have no right to build a village here. This is extortion. You want two gold pieces? I can't believe it but, this guy—" he jabbed his finger at the Customs Master "—says he wants two gold pieces to allow me to go through this piss heap of the village."
"That's about the size of it, Tom", Griffin said.
I looked at Tom's wagon and saw it was piled high with beer bottles and kegs.
"So, you're a brewer?" I said. "That seems to be a lucrative business. I understand a lot of the NPCs are paid in beer. Though, we feed ours from the fields and gardens."
"Beer's cheaper," muttered Tom. He puffed out his chest. "I am a trader. My livelihood depends on me using this road. And I do not take kindly to being charged to use the public highway."
I said, "Tom, I don't know you but I don't want to fall out with you. I want to have good relations with all the traders coming down this road. In due course, we'll be able to offer protection to you and your cargo when you're going through our territories. I know bandit attacks and attacks by wild animals cost traders who are using these roads. We'll stop that, but we'll need to make a charge to reimburse our costs." I smiled sweetly. "I'm sure you can see the reasonableness in that."
Tom swiped back his hat and I saw his forehead had beaded with sweat. "The Horrabians are not going to like this one bit. They won’t take kindly to anyone putting any kind of hindrance on trade on their road."
"But it isn't their road, Tom," I said. "It's ours. So, pay up, and we'll let you through."
"And what if I don't pay up?"
I shrugged. "Well, Tom, you'd better try to find another way round."
"You know there's no way round between Horrabia and Salonika. We have to use this road. The land's covered in trackless forest and hills and bogs. There's no way I could get my brewery wagon round."
I gave a thin smile. "So, I guess you'll have to be using our services. Two gold pieces. It seems a fair price to me."
Tom narrowed his eyes. "You're a new guy, aren't you?"
"Newish."
"What's your name?"
"My name is Barcud."
"Barcud, eh? I'll be sure to remember that." And with that Tom reached into his inventory and pulled out two gold pieces. As a brewer, I was sure he had plenty more where that came from. He just wasn't used to having any overheads at all. Now things had changed for Tom and all the other traders that passed through Pennred.
After Tom departed, muttering, Griffin and I wandered around the village and made plans for new construction. We built some more houses, cleared some more fields, and set up a workshop. Then we sketched out an area where we would build a barracks.
It took several hours before we had enough resources to build the barracks. Griffin watched me set it up. The population was growing. We had more houses and around twenty people. I sent ten of those to train as militia.
Before I logged off a dove fluttered in and dropped a message. I opened the message, breaking the red wax seal of my guildmaster Ahn. The message read: We have had the first official complaint from Horrabia. The Horrabians are asking us to dismantle the village. Of course, I said no.
So, this was it. I felt a chill. I only hoped we would be ready before they marched against us. I looked at Griffin and raised my eyebrows.
He shrugged. "We knew it had to come."
5
Shoddy Infantry
Developing Pennred consumed all my time in the game. I logged into the game each day as another real-life dawn broke in the east, and stayed at my duties until tiredness drove me away from it at night to my real-life bed. Sometimes other rangers came along to see what was happening or to give me moral support, but mostly I was on my own.
Two days after we received the threat from Horrabia, tension was mounting. I could feel it from the rangers I spoke to, but the village had developed in this time. We had more houses; we had a bakery now, a workshop producing tools, a sawmill, and a village hall. The village had increased to level 5 with a population of 500, and I could upgrade the barracks.
I sat on the thatched roof of a house and watched the NPCs busy about their daily tasks below me on the streets of Pennred. Dogs ran around the streets and cats sat scratching at roa
d corners. In the fields, which now numbered six founded on land cleared from the forest by the woodsmen, cattle and sheep grazed. Children played in the gardens and ran with balls upon the roadway. A regular traffic of traders' carts rumbled by on Ermine Street and paid toll in gold for the privilege of passing through our village. Not all were happy to do so, and I heard them curse and mutter, but I pointed out that our militia patrols were keeping the roads safer for them.
In the past, these roads were dangerous because of the forest bandits that frequented the area and the wild animals that came out of the forest. These were a danger to NPCs in particular. Many merchants who relied on raw materials going up and down Ermine Street hired NPC guards to defend their caravans and cargoes as they plied their trade on the road. That was less necessary now. The militia was up to 40 men and, apart from manning the customs posts at the two village gates, they went on sweeps of the Old Forest nearby and cleared it of bandits and wandering goblins.
I founded a forge in the village that enabled us to manufacture metal goods. We found deposits of nickel and copper and iron in the nearby forest, and I designated miners from the population to mine the ores and bring them back. The forge allowed us to smelt the ore into ingots, which we could either sell by trading down to Vinab, or use ourselves to make better weapons and upgrade our troops.
At level 3, I did the first barracks upgrade. Besides the basic militia unit, we now could produce archers and skirmishers, and at level 4, we would be able to raise units of spear. The units themselves increased in level just by time in the game. I had read that they would also increase faster in experience through victory in combat, but we had not faced a battle situation yet, and the minor skirmishes of the militia with wild animals and bandits did not improve their military experience, though it did help them level. I read that training would also improve their skill levels.
Each unit had an experience level that came from combat on the battlefield, and the individual troops also had their own levels. The game had an awkward split between individual combat and battlefield combat. For individual combat the NPCs leveled in similar ways to PCs, so a militia guard could rise to be a Level 20 warrior, though he would never equal the skill of a human player - the AI just wasn't up to it yet. By killing bandits and wildcats my militia increased in level. I could also improve the effectiveness of my troops by equipping them with better weapons. That's why I had founded the forge. I also needed to create a leather tanning workshop. A Tannery was a level 4 building. Once we had the resources in wood and stone and could afford the price of 400gp, I would build one. Then when we had a tanning workshop, we could create leather armor for our troops and shields of leather and wood.
I looked at the pre-requisites for the creation of spears for the spear unit I hoped to raise soon when I upgraded the Barracks. I could do it now, but I needed a tannery too. Spearmen required wood and iron for the spearheads. That would not be a problem as we had growing stores of iron ingots and timber from the forest. The timber lay in piles lengthwise under the leaves of the Old Forest close to the village.
I went to the un-upgraded Barracks and raised a unit of archers. We had the comms in the form of wood obtained from the Old Forest through our own efforts and leather for the armor that Woodheart gifted us. The archer unit was 90 strong and when I raised it depleted the population of Pennred, leaving us with 420. I didn't want to deplete the population too much as I needed workers to cut down timber, mine ore and produce food.
The unit of archers came with its own officers and non-commissioned officers. As we had upgraded the Barracks at Village Level 3, there was already a parade ground. It was a pitiful thing with a surface of beaten down grass. They paraded on it under the orders of their sergeants and went through offensive drills. I watched as they all placed arrows on their bowstrings, sighted the bow, drew back the string, and let fly at the large targets along the edge of the parade ground. They mostly missed. This training would help increase their level. I had no idea yet how fast they would advance up the levels, but I needed them to be battle ready as soon as possible.
I debated whether to raise a unit of 80 Skirmishers. I worried about reducing our production of raw materials, but I needed to get troops out and leveling, so I did. I thought as the village was doing well and its population was thriving, I could afford 80 and still have 340 workers. I also needed the skirmishers unit to train and get better before we had to throw them into combat.
I watched as a unit of Level 1 skirmishers came out of the barracks straight after they been raised and paraded next to the archers. They were a raw bunch—shoddy actually, but then they were newborn Level 1. They wore light armor with greens and browns predominating. Some of them were barefoot and others had rudimentary leather shoes. Facially, they varied in skin color and hair color but they were all Ranger types. Their purpose in any combat was to harass enemy troops. Particularly, if I could hide them in rough terrain where their lightness would be an advantage against heavy infantry. They had javelins so they could advance undercover through broken terrain, hurl javelins at enemies, then retreat. They would be much faster than their enemies. And I looked at the unit statistics to see they counted as Light Infantry with a movement rate of 3 mph against a heavy infantry movement rate of 1.5 mph. When running the skirmishers could achieve 8 mph against any heavy infantry pursuing them who would only manage around 3 mph. Cavalry of course were another matter. Cavalry and especially light cavalry would catch the skirmishers and if they caught them out in the open, they would massacre them. I looked around at the terrain we would be defending and saw little open territory. Cavalry could not operate effectively in this thick woodland.
Although I could only raise light troops, I believed that would be an advantage at Pennred. When resources allowed, I would create at least two units of spearmen. These troops were more heavily armored with shields and leather armor and would be able to defend against oncoming cavalry, but not against heavy infantry. I needed a tannery for leather and timber comms to raise the spearmen.
All these ideas whirled around my head as I walked around the village of Pennred marveling at the life it had taken for itself. All in all, the village was thriving, and I was proud of its pretty houses and the smoke that rose from the workshop and the sight of the families of NPCs living their lives in a place I'd created.
One interesting thing was that the game's AI had brought immigrants into the village. The population increase was not down wholly to natural growth. This was proved when I saw a dwarf family had moved in. I later found out the dwarf was a player character called Khuzud who simply chose to live at Pennred and earn his living from the forge.
Mostly, I chose individuals from the population to be the miller and the baker, but in this case, I created the forge then left it because of other things on my mind and before I turned back to it I found the dwarf family had moved in there, and had begun to work.
Some elf workers and two families of halflings also arrived looking round before moving into empty houses. It was amazing that they came here, but when I read the wiki, it seemed that if there was peace and prosperity in a village it would attract immigration.
I was using some of the militia to guard the customs posts at the gates at the north-west and south-east entrances to Pennred. Most of the militia had risen to around level 5 or level 6. I guessed they would rise to the level of the NPCs found guarding the big cities such as Vinab where the guards were around level 20. The purpose of having such high-level guards at your gates was to stop malicious NPCs entering.
It was toward the end of the day that I noticed my militia unit was down to 37 instead of 40. I wondered about the causes of that drop, and my first guess was it was natural attrition from their patrols in the forest. And that would have stayed my guess until I happened to be walking near the customs post that faced over the bridge towards Horrabia when I saw the dead body of one of my guards. The graphic of the dead body would naturally disappear after around three minutes and it was
just luck, or bad luck, that led me there then.
I hurried over and spoke to the other NPC guards. They had noticed nothing until their companion fell to the ground dead. It looked like he had been stabbed.
I stood and stared towards the bridge. There was no sign of any enemy, particularly no bandit nor Wolf or any other creature that might have killed him. Then I began to suspect that my guards were coming under attack from player characters. Because they were only level 5 or 6, they wouldn't put up much resistance to a player character up to four times their level.
It seemed that in the intervening days between the message from Horrabia demanding that we dismantle Pennred and us complying with this demand, Horrabia was conducting a dirty war. I suspected they were coming into the village when I was not there, or even when I was there but preoccupied with other things, and murdering our NPCs, and I guessed they would destroy and sabotage our buildings if they could.
I sent a dove to Ahn and within ten minutes he arrived on the back of his eagle, dropping from the sky to land near where I stood. He slid off his eagle and stroked her feathers before walking towards me. As I explained my suspicions, he stood there, his dark eyes averted thoughtfully.
He stroked his beard. "I think you're probably right. We were foolish to think they would let us develop our village in peace. However, the fact they're doing it with stealth is encouraging. It suggests they aren't ready to go to open war, and that means we have a little time left to prepare.”
"And we need it", I said. "I need to level the village more and raise more combat units. The trouble is the population isn't growing fast enough for me to raise a whole lot of soldiers without compromising the village's growth itself."
Ahn said, "I'll move two units of spearmen from Woodheart through the Old Forest and station them here."
"Won't that give the Horrabians the excuse to attack us directly?"
