Those towns are a lost cause now. We don't have any special wisdom to impart to them, even if we did risk this communication. A prescription to "eat a simple diet, rest, and drink cool water" is not a profound eureka that must be zealously passed to all corners of the county as a life-saving moral imperative. We simply shut down the spread in ways that other towns were not serious about. Now we're starting to get a little unserious again.
Well, that depends. Remember the healer who prescribed leechings? If that's the general attitude, our advice would have a great boon on the health of those within, as it did in Feroshire. The quarantine was the big player, but the proper treatment helped--just like most of the gravitational attraction between the Earth and the Moon is from Earth, but some is the Moon's.
My suggestion? Start flying a black flag on our borders, and tell our people that it represents the plague still ravaging all the lands beyond our borders, but tell any outside refugees a far different tale that we are plague-hit in a most grievous way and that bodies bloat and fester everywhere within our territory. Then send them back.
Even if people believed that (we've been plague- and black-flag free for over a month), that's hardly moral. I'm not sure that it's justified; we have, after all, kept it out with our current measures.
Also, keep up the organization of the city into the four wards. The plague is all about us. There is no room for slack yet. People can go about their daily lives in order to transact business, not to engage in merriment or social gatherings.
Ah...I wouldn't forbid "merriment or social gatherings," but should the plague rear its ugly head in Feroshire, yes we should return to full quarantine, and caution is definitely a good idea.
Forget the mines. Worthless yellow shit anyway. Take these workmen that want gold and give them gold from our own purse. Then ask them if they expect to eat today. Tell them that we provide that food at our largesse, and it currently happens to cost exactly whatever the gold we just gave them. We hear food is going for much cheaper in Curbiston, hear that there's a hell of lot of meat just lying around in the streets, by all accounts, if that's where they'd rather be right now. Then tell them that we aren't feeding people who skive off all the fucking day and complain about worthless inedible gold. Then tell them to start laying that clay pipe to drain our wastes downstream.
...
Have you forgotten that much of our great success is from us having been halfway decent to our people? Unless you can give me a good reason why returning to the mines would risk the plague coming back--bearing in mind that gold is not actually a living organism that a virus or bacterium could survive within--I am against this and for returning to the mines.
Also, have a talk with the people in each ward. Lay out what has happened beyond our lands, address the issue in Silverhills head-on with blunt frankness, and remind them that we will kill any person who endangers all of us by breaking curfew or quarantine rules. Right now, through our firm leadership and their calm trust and obedience, we Feroshireans alone have gained respite in a county otherwise filled with death. If any in the assembly think that killing one curfew-breaker is a worse act than suffering all to catch the plague, then those of that mind will not be prevented from leaving our territory right now.
Sounds good...well, not
good, but justified evil.
Silverhills had an outbreak. Some of the dead were killed violently in the uprising, some died sick, some are probably half-and-half cases that we can't sort out. We clear that place at our peril. By all rights, it should be burned to the ground. This is the analogue to the Black Death, not a case of the sniffles.
The sniffles is actually more likely to linger in a city than the Black Death. The Plague follows fleas, which follow rats, which generally don't swarm in cities/villages once people stop bringing them food. It's a town with some corpses, not Chernobyl*. Yes, there's a danger; no, it's not significantly more than keeping them in Feroshire, where there were also plague deaths not too long ago.
*Yes, I know Chernobyl is actually pretty safe. Shut up, I'm making an analogy.
Fact of the matter is that gold and silver are not worth much in a crisis. We give those workmen shelter in a world gone mad with sickness. It's time for us to stand firm like a rock in the tempest, not be pushed over by opportunists looking for shiny metals.
We should be acting like everything is normal when we can, and I don't see why we can't.
This "benevolence" stuff needs to be nipped in the bud, too. We sent a young woman to death on trumped up charges because she endangered our political situation. Plague is even worse endangerment of far more than our politics.
However, the plague is pretty much dead. Yes, if it shows up again return to lockdown; no, don't keep Silverhills abandoned because you don't want to send people from one recently-plague-infested village to another.
There's also the fact that I, at least, am referring to benevolence
to the commoners, which has brought us success, and not to nobles, which has a less impressive success record.
Sometimes, you have to be cruel to be kind. We're saving lives here, and people are babbling about benevolence. If we need to impose any more curfews in the future, everyone must very well understand why and to what extent it will be enforced. This is called leadership, and it involves making decisions that don't feel warm and fuzzy. Or feel like that hollow rubbish called "benevolence" that makes you feel good about how your soft decisions killed hundreds of people.
I don't think that we're saving lives by forcing people to stay in Feroshire* rather than letting them return to Silverhills.
*I know you said they could leave. My question is, why is it so much more dangerous in Silverhills than anywhere else?
I know, but he just suggested lieing to everyone and damning them all to the plague! Also turning us into a freaking horse's arse.
I guarantee that you're the only one who wants to take in more refugees. No one else is saying that's a good idea, because that brings the plague back, and it's more mouths than we have food. We can either be honest that the plague is not here, and have to kill more refugees that seek us out. Or we can lie. And we do lie. We lie whenever it suits us, in fact. That's clear from the character history.
I agree. While keeping our (functionally) healthy population under strict control seems unnecessary, that's because we've wiped out the Plague as much as we're going to. That's not true elsewhere. At best*, make the refugee wannabes stay in quarantine, eating their own food, until the point where newly-sick people would be dead.
*For the refugees, I mean. Just to clarify.
Here's a thought. Just throwing it out there to change the conversation.
We could leave Finn in charge of Feroshire and go to Curbiston alone, reunite with Gunther there, and attempt to save it in person. If Arthur is truly dead as the reports say, then the entire city is in danger of descending into bedlam. We could try to save it, and I think we just might succeed, too, if benevolence doesn't get in our way first!
Just to clarify, this is sarcasm?
I think we should try and share our 'techniques' to combat the plague with our neighbours. We can even use messages tied to arrows to do that.
I'm in agreements with Origami that we can't leave Silverhills to well... rot and fester, Its a damned shame that we couldn't prevent things from escalating there.
We don't have any techniques. The sober diet is the answer a monk/healer has to any disease he doesn't know a cure for. Basically, it's a treatment which main accomplishment is not having any negative influence.
Well, a good diet is actually better than nothing...and if the general wisdom is leeches, like the one healer prescribed, then it's definitely a step up. I don't think we know enough about the general medical knowledge of the region to say if the monk's advice would be helpful or not.
about the Refugees... If we ignore their problems and simply look out for only ourselves, I wouldn't be surprised if there was an uprising or at the very least a very sharp increase in banditry... I mean that's where bandits come from right? people forsaken and hopeless.
I think we should prepare to take refugees in, but do it in a controlled manner. set them up in separate camps, not in the town. tighten the belt buckle a bit more. and use the same techniques we used to get the plague out of Feroshire.
The refugees are running away from the plague. Some of them are plagued. If we announce that there's no plague here, then we will most likely be overrun (You don't think refugees who left everything behind are going to remain in quarantaine, right? They'll break out as soon as the first sign of disease is spotted. These people are desperate). If we don't, then yes. Those who survive will become bandits. However, that is not our problems, because well, those refugees are living in other lands.
Cold, but true. We need to look out for us--not us as in Stone, our shared character, but us as in Feroshire.
Besides... We're going to need the manpower to get Silverhills up and running again.
We have enough people around. Besides we really don't need another devastating plague.
A plague from where? The air, which surely settled long ago and quite possibly* doesn't carry the plague anyways? Or from plague-ridden squatters who don't care that they're not allowed because no one's around to enforce it?
If we act quickly, no one will have time to take advantage of the abandoned town. If we wait a couple months, someone surely will.
*I'm not an expert on the Black Death...or the specifics of medieval European culture, actually, I'm more of an "obscure knowledge" guy. However, even if the main vector is airborne, after days or weeks there wouldn't be plague in the air. Unless someone infected moved in in the meantime and started breathing more, of course.
Here's a thought. Just throwing it out there to change the conversation.
We could leave Finn in charge of Feroshire and go to Curbiston alone, reunite with Gunther there, and attempt to save it in person. If Arthur is truly dead as the reports say, then the entire city is in danger of descending into bedlam. We could try to save it, and I think we just might succeed, too, if benevolence doesn't get in our way first!
Going to Curbiston, Yeah I think that may be a good idea... if we can stabilise the situation there it could mean less refugees to deal with. and if Arthur is still alive we can get a feel for what kind of ruler he is turning into.
I don't believe you can be a good leader without being benevolent. Power either comes from the people through admiration or it comes through suppression. Benevolence really isn't some kind of dirty word is it?
It's a risk, but yes.
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I'm not sure that it's a risk worth taking. Or that Gerv was being serious, since it contrasts heavily with his previous statements and the general feeling of his suggestions as I understand them.
You don't need to be benevolent. Power can come from fear, admiration, but also from respect. People will tolerate a harsh rules if he's capable, and does what needs to be done. (Also, irony)
Yes, but we got power through benevolence. Why throw out the baby with the bathwater? Be harsh but kind, and don't cause unneeded restrictions on peoples' activities.
If benevolence seems to be a code word for weak leadership that feels good now and costs lives later, then perhaps it ought to become a bad word, Talvara.
I'm not convinced that it would cost lives, though.
This is starting to seem like a true Black Death. The kind of thing that people remember for a thousand years. Controlled manner? You start taking people in, and they all will mob toward us when it becomes common knowledge. Panicked mobs are scary things, almost as destructive as forces of nature. How many men do we have? So much for controlled manner.
For the record, I don't support letting refugees pour in. I don't see how that's connected to, say, reclaiming Silverhills, and hence still support that.
Bandits might be in other places that have become lawless, but not here.
...If they're not lawless, why would they be bandits? I have a feeling I'm misunderstanding a comment that's not particularly important to the discussion at hand, however.
It's a risk, but yes.
It would be among the riskiest things that we have done in this game. Riskier than any battle yet. We have not only the plague to fear, but also the turmoil of the city itself, and whether any guards would even accept our commands if Arthur is dead. I have yet to convince myself, but it would certainly be heroic, and there is a benefit in saving other people in this county, simply as mutual defense and trading partners, but even moreso if we are positioned to become Count afterwards.
I KNEW it was sarcasm!
Also, two last things.
Gerv: Have you noticed that a couple of people have said that they'd stop paying attention to your posts? Have you considered that they might have reasons for this that you should address? Hint: They're not trolls. They're well-meaning people who don't see eye-to-eye with you. That's not the problem; I don't see eye-to-eye with lots of people, but I've never managed to alienate two people in the same suggestion game, let alone within the same topic of discussion. You may wish to reconsider both your style of suggestions and your attitude.
And Bay12 in general: This is what happens when I don't check a thread for 24 hours.
