Because really, on Beluaterra, there is something greater, and humans are nothing.
This is an experimental forum exercise that I will in fact see to the end (Meaning: Adventurers die, no other way to end this). The purpose is to have two adventurers go through the 5th Inv, and prove, once and for all, that really, in the end, we mortal humans are stupid and incapable of saving our own sorry insignificant asses.
Bon voyage mes amis.
Is this going to be another attempt at a Let's Play?
No. The way this works is I will do whatever the hell I want (Like usual), only y'all get to read every single letter I receive and/or send. Open character. Except for boring stuff like "Next monster location".
Since the two are adventurers, I figure there won't be any great secrets they will learn anyway so no harm done. Also, in case I somehow run into an invader and hear something, it's here to read, not as if it'll make much of a difference though.
So... Nothing to write about? ;)
Nothing at all except for some Enweilan dude giving an item to an advy and that advy asking where there's a sage. And then there was something...maybe. Didn't care. Those, along with hunt locations and gathered items all count as part of "Don't care info". On the other hand, if I get a unique and/or use a special item (magic scroll, book of daimon/monster/undead asskicking, 8...portal stones which do nothing but hey y'all probably want to see it anyway)
Hm, Larry is in Tindle I think (Yeah I think because I don't really feel like checking while posting.) and can now read what that censored portion on the Daimon Worship temple says. It's...er...rather anticlimactic. I was expecting something more groundbreaking, but no...alas it just says what we always thought the daimons wanted to do to us. Well, what most...some...whatever, it just means we're gonna get messed up pretty soon. I'm pretty sure y'all kinda figured that on your own already anyway.
Quote from: Artemesia on December 14, 2011, 12:03:22 AM
Nothing at all except for some Enweilan dude giving an item to an advy and that advy asking where there's a sage. And then there was something...maybe. Didn't care. Those, along with hunt locations and gathered items all count as part of "Don't care info". On the other hand, if I get a unique and/or use a special item (magic scroll, book of daimon/monster/undead asskicking, 8...portal stones which do nothing but hey y'all probably want to see it anyway)
Hm, Larry is in Tindle I think (Yeah I think because I don't really feel like checking while posting.) and can now read what that censored portion on the Daimon Worship temple says. It's...er...rather anticlimactic. I was expecting something more groundbreaking, but no...alas it just says what we always thought the daimons wanted to do to us. Well, what most...some...whatever, it just means we're gonna get messed up pretty soon. I'm pretty sure y'all kinda figured that on your own already anyway.
Don't let these daimons give a bad rep to the previous ones.
I found Prudent to be kind of cute, personally. ;)
Ha...haha...hahaha...I won't do 4 ha's in succession...
But the point is there. Since 4th is over I guess it's ok to say that it was all a big lie or something, even for the humans serving the daimons going around burning stuff up. They had to be "cute"...well, charming and stuff because that's how humans are often best manipulated. You know all those seductive but venomous female villains in those crime dramas? Yeah...
Oh, and some guy named Vincent said:
Larry,
A sage I need, have ye seen one of late?
Sir Vincent (Freeman)
To which I replied:
What's a sage? Haha...
Quote from: Artemesia on December 14, 2011, 12:51:34 PM
Ha...haha...hahaha...I won't do 4 ha's in succession...
But the point is there. Since 4th is over I guess it's ok to say that it was all a big lie or something, even for the humans serving the daimons going around burning stuff up. They had to be "cute"...well, charming and stuff because that's how humans are often best manipulated. You know all those seductive but venomous female villains in those crime dramas? Yeah...
Oh, and some guy named Vincent said:
Larry,
A sage I need, have ye seen one of late?
Sir Vincent (Freeman)
To which I replied:
What's a sage? Haha...
Do you think anyone in Enweil was fooled as per the daimon's intent?
Two ruling thoughts:
1) Keep your friends close, and your enemies even closer
2) The enemy of my enemy is my friend
We knew the daimons would betray us if they ever deemed it desirable. That didn't mean that we were gonna forego their help during that time where we had common interests.
Well, what I am wondering about, especially given all the times Enweil has tried justifying their alliance to the daimons was...Did you ever consider that no matter what nice little justification you try to invent to make yourself feel better, the end result was undeniably that you did, in fact, assist in your own destruction? It doesn't matter what you want to say about monsters. Yeah, you've said that a lot, I've read that many times, and I will come out and say right now, as probably have several others in the past: You screwed up the moment you decided to ally with the Netherworld. Then again, you are hardly alone to blame.
See, here's the thing: You are like the guy who turns his back to a mountain and walks forward. When he turns back and removes his blindfold, he believes he has moved the mountain when he has only moved himself.
Quote from: Artemesia on December 14, 2011, 10:06:47 PM
Well, what I am wondering about, especially given all the times Enweil has tried justifying their alliance to the daimons was...Did you ever consider that no matter what nice little justification you try to invent to make yourself feel better, the end result was undeniably that you did, in fact, assist in your own destruction? It doesn't matter what you want to say about monsters. Yeah, you've said that a lot, I've read that many times, and I will come out and say right now, as probably have several others in the past: You screwed up the moment you decided to ally with the Netherworld. Then again, you are hardly alone to blame.
See, here's the thing: You are like the guy who turns his back to a mountain and walks forward. When he turns back and removes his blindfold, he believes he has moved the mountain when he has only moved himself.
Bleh, I don't buy it. We didn't help the daimons gain anything at all. Had we not allied with them, they would have been *stronger* than what they ended up being, because they slacked off their expansion and made several strategic sacrifices to fight the monsters in order to keep us alive.
Had we not gotten their help, we would have been blighted, along with Rio and a chunk of BK and Fronen probably, and then the daimons would have enherited all of that between the two invasions. Daimons would have probably used that opportunity to blight a lot more of Sint too.
So instead of half a continent, we'd have been stuck with a quarter of a continent. I don't see how that would have been in our best interests.
When you and others say "allied with the daimons", you seem to implied we helped the daimons achieve stuff. The only thing we helped them achieve was find nasty Daishi temples, because common, Daishi just sucks.
When the monsters threatened us, we had 3 choices: become slaves of the monsters, roll over and die, or go seek the means to defend ourselves. I'd like to hear your arguments about *why* siding with the monsters instead, or rolling over and dying, would have given the continent better chances than pitting the invaders against each other.
Otherwise, it's just hollow rhetoric. "Daimons are bad, therefore any form of cooperation with them whatsoever must also, by extension, be bad!" Doesn't work that way. That's like saying "Stalin is bad, therefore helping the USSR against nazi Germani is bad!"
Note: does this count for Godwin's law?
Quote from: Chénier on December 14, 2011, 10:30:52 PM
Bleh, I don't buy it. We didn't help the daimons gain anything at all. Had we not allied with them, they would have been *stronger* than what they ended up being, because they slacked off their expansion and made several strategic sacrifices to fight the monsters in order to keep us alive.
I may be misinterpreting what Artemesia said, but I think his meaning was more along the lines of, "You can argue all you want, but you'll never persuade people on BT that Enweil allying with the Daimons isn't reason enough to destroy them."
(At least, people on BT who already hold that view.)
What I said was essentially: You lost by trying to find a way to "win". That in itself was probably a wrong way to go about this. If you paid attention, the Blight could be dispersed, and in fact it was during 4th Inv around Riombara's south. The mere fact that you wanted to avoid the Blight was shallow and shortsighted. In addition, thinking foremost about your own survival, though natural, probably played into the Invaders' hands. Oh, and I have a sneaking suspicion that, though the 3 "evil" factions were fighting each other, essentially the source was the same. Wait, how does this matter? Oh yeah, you guys messed up Daishi. Kudos for that.
IC, yeah, yeah, I know. Apparently ICly, your characters are idiots. Don't worry, most of our characters were...and still are.
so far, my advy in the north has had zero response from any other advy about trading items, finding sages, hunting, et al...in an advy guild, share reports every day...nada.
i hope if this invasion's RP success depends in part on the participation of adventurers that this area is an exception...even before the invasion started, it was always very quiet, but there are plenty of other advies about
What would be ironic is if the whole way to "win" (like, win for reals as in fulfilling whatever nebulous requirements were set in place by the Mr. Tom guy and/or whatever GM powers exist) is if the fate of the world (or BT at least) depended on the actions of adventurers. Like...most fantasy media tends to portray. No, really, how often do you see nobles in their fancy silks going out searching for the Lost Legendary MacGuffin of Ultimate Deus ex Machina Ass Saving Humanity in the Eleventh Hour miscellany? Yeah, sure, sometimes it turns out the filthy commoner is a royal in disguise/unknown heir to the throne/a god incarnate/some important dude with amnesia/etc. But the point is he starts off and for the majority of the story, is considered a commoner, or some equivalent.
For reference, let's look at the following stuff:
1. The Pyridian Chronicles (Or whatever they're called. You know, the one with the pig that tells oracles, and there were five books. The hero was a pig farmer kid who defeated Arawn or something, and became the high king at the end. Anyway, for the most part, our hero was a pig farmer.
2. The Black Company. Well, technically they were mercenaries, but eh...
3. Lord of the Rings. Yeah, there's Aragorn, the king and all, but he gets introduced as a normal ranger dude. And in any case, even with the powerful wizard guy, the elf dude, the dwarf, etc, the guys who actually defeat Sauron and save the world are a bunch of hobbits from some little hobbit village, who are essentially little commoners, pun intended.
4. Legend of Zelda. For a game example, in all incarnations of our green-clad southpaw, he is a commoner, in whatever equivalent exists in Hyrule. I assume there is nobility, since there's this princess called Zelda (lol) and Link is definitely not part of that class at the beginning, though it seems as though lines aren't as clear since you can talk to her and she gives you quests and stuff. Well, actually, I'm not sure what Link is in Skyward Sword. But I do know in Twilight Princess he started off as a village boy.
5. Fable. Because, you know, it's a lolworthy game. Yeah, I know what happens in 3. But in 1 and 2, you start off as a commoner kid. Then you can grow to own the world, but still, that's a different matter.
My conclusion is that BT is meant to be saved by adventurers. The Invasion will be thwarted, if at all, by the efforts of commoners. If nobles are to play any role at all beyond that of stupid and ineffective, but infinitely arrogant and ignorant annoyances, it would be as human shields to slow down the tide of the daimons, thus buying time for the adventurers to use their Deus ex machina.
Disclaimer: However, it is not guaranteed that the DeM is in any way easy to use. It is far more likely that the game will conspire to have the advies fail because they are also played by human players who are generally pretty bad at working together for anything in this game. Well, especially true in situations like these. It is my belief that a bunch of dudes will find out how to win, but fail to tell anyone, and in that way, fail utterly because they are too dumb to realize that they cannot do it alone. That is also a point about humans: We place too much importance on ourselves. Alone we are nothing. Alone we are weak. A naked human is the most vulnerable animal that walks the earth. Too many people used to living in comfort forget that. Then again...Arrogance. Hubris. The venom that the gods detest and for which they punish humans who think to possess such qualities. So too is it the drug that demons use to seduce men unto their own destruction. Fun stuff yo.
Quote from: Artemesia on December 14, 2011, 10:42:56 PM
What I said was essentially: You lost by trying to find a way to "win". That in itself was probably a wrong way to go about this. If you paid attention, the Blight could be dispersed, and in fact it was during 4th Inv around Riombara's south. The mere fact that you wanted to avoid the Blight was shallow and shortsighted. In addition, thinking foremost about your own survival, though natural, probably played into the Invaders' hands. Oh, and I have a sneaking suspicion that, though the 3 "evil" factions were fighting each other, essentially the source was the same. Wait, how does this matter? Oh yeah, you guys messed up Daishi. Kudos for that.
IC, yeah, yeah, I know. Apparently ICly, your characters are idiots. Don't worry, most of our characters were...and still are.
I play in Riombara. I do not recall 'dispersing' the Blight once it was in place, not ever, so I fail to see how trying to keep regions from being blighted was 'short-sighted'. The Blight was and remains permanent, although we had a very interesting tidbit that dropped from a scouting of a blighted region recently...
"It's not the Blight that kills you..."
Meh. I'm done with that plotline. More importantly: Adventurers > Nobles in the context of this Inv.
The nobility would never admit that though, true to form. Yay. Very rarely does one get to see the story from the nobles' perspective in one of those fantasy "save the world" heroic stories. Mainly because it would be so dumb and frustrating for readers, lol.
I'd like to point out that Chenier never said he was looking for a way to win. He was just looking for a way not to have his realm die like Hetland did.
"Win" = survival in the case I was talking about.
"True Win" = something none of us will ever know now. Unless the Mr. Tom decides to reveal just what the heck we were supposed to do, and what the theoretical "good ending" would have been. Can't hurt (unless some parts are still relevant to 5th Inv) since it's just a story about an alternate universe, like in those superhero what-if comics.
Quote from: Artemesia on December 14, 2011, 10:42:56 PM
What I said was essentially: You lost by trying to find a way to "win". That in itself was probably a wrong way to go about this. If you paid attention, the Blight could be dispersed, and in fact it was during 4th Inv around Riombara's south. The mere fact that you wanted to avoid the Blight was shallow and shortsighted. In addition, thinking foremost about your own survival, though natural, probably played into the Invaders' hands. Oh, and I have a sneaking suspicion that, though the 3 "evil" factions were fighting each other, essentially the source was the same. Wait, how does this matter? Oh yeah, you guys messed up Daishi. Kudos for that.
IC, yeah, yeah, I know. Apparently ICly, your characters are idiots. Don't worry, most of our characters were...and still are.
The blight can be dispersed, eh? Mind telling me why everything that was blighted still is, then? The blight is, in all appearences, permanent. We were even told it wasn't going away. How is trying to prevent a permanent change short-sighted?
"Probably played into the invaders' hands". That's just a load of crap. Tell me HOW an alternative course of action would have been better, please. All you do is say "you sided with the daimons, daimons are bad, therefore your decision was bad". Instead of telling me how wrong I was, how about you say what *you* think was "right"?
The only thing that could have, indirectly, helped them was the threat of action against Hetland. But we didn't. And why did we threaten action? Because Hetland were full of dumbasses and because the Light was arrogant as hell with the sketchiest ethics ever. Don't blame our characters for not feeling safe around the combination of these two.
Uh...yeah...it could have been. Maybe not currently, but during the 4th Inv, definitely yes. I can confirm this because I was checking the D map daily, and at one point brought it up with Anaris on IRC. He also claimed not to know how that happened. That's probably because any additions and removals were manually done by the Mr. Tom. The only question is under what circumstances Mr. Tom would be inclined to change it. You would have noticed too that at first Blight appeared slowly. Toward the latter end of the 4th, Mr. Tom was more aggressive with Blight.
Anyway, I am about 98% certain that at least Rines, or whatever that region's called, unblighted shortly after the Riombaran Light Temple showed up.
Now, I will admit that I don't know what was right. How could I know? I'm just like you: A normal player completely uninvolved with the veiled and aloof machinations of the GM team. However, I have seen enough accidentally to believe that one of the whole points of the daimons was to get humans on their side. Whether this really had any real mechanical consequences, I wouldn't know because I don't understand much about their mechanics.
But...you want to know what was wrong? Helping to destroy the Light temple. You know how I know that? Because...well, one of the instructions to the NPC factions was to get humans to destroy the Light temples because they couldn't themselves, and that would help the invaders flood in more reinforcements or something.
The only Riombaran/Meridian city to be blighted during the invasion was Irombro, which, once blighted, most definitely stayed that way. Rines, being part of MR, never even fell into Invader hands. No Riombaran region was ever unblighted, either before or after the Temple of Light arrived. We managed to take regions back from the monsters before they were blighted on many occasions, but the change, once it happened in a region, was permanent without fail.
Gosh, are we really going to argue this? Unfortunately evidence of this is gone, and probably only one person can say for certain one way or another. I know what I saw though.
I had 'only' an adventurer in Riombara after the first third of the invasion - but as far as I recall no region was ever 'unblighted'. I am not 100% sure but relatively so.
Artemisia, would you be willing to tell us /which/ region(s) was unblighted? In addition is there /any/ chance on learning more about the 4th invasion, the laws that governed it?
I don't remember specifically the regions' names, just that they were somewhere south of Grehk. And the reason is because as you see now, there is only one region line (of two regions) separating Grehk from the southern blight. Sometime around the end of the 4th, there was a second line that suddenly opened. I talked to Anaris on IRC about it, so something definitely happened or I wouldn't talk to him about an actually serious topic in BM.
So uh, since it's clear that the daimons are bad news this time around, I wonder if it's ok to reveal some of the "instructions" back in the 4th. Basically nothing you probably don't already know, which is the whole "get humans to destroy the Light" thing. There was also the whole reinforcements thing and the interference. And finally the Archons thing. That was all really that I overheard.
Quote from: Artemesia on December 15, 2011, 12:40:20 PM
I don't remember specifically the regions' names, just that they were somewhere south of Grehk. And the reason is because as you see now, there is only one region line (of two regions) separating Grehk from the southern blight. Sometime around the end of the 4th, there was a second line that suddenly opened. I talked to Anaris on IRC about it, so something definitely happened or I wouldn't talk to him about an actually serious topic in BM.
It would have been an extremely noteworthy event, not just in Riombara but continent-wide, to see a blighted region return to normal. I'm fairly certain that it would have caused a major stir had it happened; there's little chance that we would have not noticed something like this happening in our backyard. The only event like this that I can recall is when someone (one of your characters actually, if memory serves) somehow managed to become lord of a blighted city. This was quickly declared to be a bug, however.
The line you are referring to is Glongin and Ardmore, I believe. South of them are Rueffilo and Rii, and south of Rii is Irombro.
Rueffilo and Irombro (and everything south of them) were blighted during the monsters' second pass through our territory, relatively early in the invasion. Rii was then TOed by a rogue undead unit before it could be blighted, and we RTOed it back. Rii (along with Ardmore and Glongin) were taken by the monsters during their third pass against us, at which time Rii became blighted almost immediately. Ardmore and Glongin were never blighted, I always assumed because Tom didn't want to completely cut off Grehk from the rest of the world. We traded them back and forth with the monsters for a little while, but they never caught the disease.
Since this falls under "Open Book" category of adventurers...
Torture Report (17 minutes ago)
High Lords and Ladies of the Court,
This is the report of a commoner by the name of Himun of Thilye, who was captured in the northern parts of the forest in Lastfell and brought before your most loyal servant, the steward of the town of Neuropa, who had him tortured until death. Said Himun was feverish when he was caught, and would not have lasted long with or without the torture. He was in the possession of several items that a commoner can not possibly have acquired legally, including weapons and armour. It was believed that he most likely murdered one of the nobles that vanished over the course of the past weeks, and taken his gear. In order to discover the whereabouts of the body, a scribe was present for most of the torture and wrote down the mad story of this criminal, certainly a product of his fever.
Your servant does not believe a single of his words, but as the king has requested any and all information regarding the Daimon threat, he feels compelled to bring these to your attention despite the unlikeliness of any part of it being truthful, as we know for certain that no human being can survive in the Blight for any length of time.
My name is Himun, from the village Thilye in Crim. When the blight covered our lands, my family and friends fled south. But I could not find work nor land to farm, just like many others. So I started hunting the wild beasts that came from the Blight as the Marchioness had put a bounty on them. When they became less and less, I travelled ever closer to the Blight. It is a cursed land, but I had to live.
One day, me and my two companions found an old temple. Very close to where you can't breathe anymore. There was an old priest inside. He had survived through all of it. We brought him south, to safety and he gave each of us a blessing, an amulet. Yes, that one. With this, he said, we could enter the Blight. We never did, as long as there were any beasts outside. But then it just stopped. No more beasts. When we were almost starving, we went in.
The others didn't make it far. It was dark, at midday. All the air was dense and dark, like fog but black. And the ground was, changed. Plants were dead, mostly. No animals anywhere. We had brought enough food, but did not expect us to be food ourselves. We met the first of them entirely by surprised, in the burned-out ruin of some village. We were scavenging for supplies, it was eating the corpses. Or what was left of them, most looked like others had taken a bite before.
It was the most horrible beast I have ever seen, and I have seen my share. It walked mostly on all four, but it could use the front claws like hands, much like rats do. It was almost the size of a man, but much heavier. Scales and fangs, the whole thing. Not an animal of the forest, that we knew right away. But it knew us right away as well. Maybe it was hungry for fresh meat, anyways it jumped us as soon as we'd seen it. Slaughtered one of the others on the spot and ripped his arm off. The other hit it with his axe, but barely scratched it. That was when I ran. Found a trapdoor in the next house. Still hear his screams in my dreams. It must've eaten him alive or something. I don't know how long it lasted, felt like hours.
But it didn't come searching for me. Maybe it was all full. I stayed in that cellar for the night, didn't even dare to make a fire. Only realised the next morning that there was a dead kid in there with me.
Next day I got out. Out of the cellar, out of the village, out of the whole cursed area. Except that I couldn't get my bearings in that evil fog. Must have been noon when I heard something in the distance. Climbed up a small hill I did, and then I saw them, in the village below. Creatures straight out of hell, the one I had seen the night before must have been one of the smallest ones. Fifty or more of them, most twice as big as a man, some large as a house. It looked like they were gathering there, waiting. Didn't look much like animals at all, almost like an army. Organised, if you know what I mean.
Didn't want to wait for whatever it was they were waiting for, but I couldn't move. And then it came. I will never forget that creature in what's left of my life. It wouldn't fit through the town gate, I tell you. But the worst was that it seemed to not be an animal at all. It had a weapon and some kind of armour. A huge sword, saw-toothed, black steel or something. Could probably cleave a horse in two.
Then it spoke, and the others listened. Really looked much like an army then, and many of them also brought out weapons then. I couldn't make out a word, was a strange language. But I had never been so afraid, thought I'd die of fear right then. I got up and ran for my life, never looked back once, until I was well outside the Blight. And then some. It wasn't even what he said. It was his armour. That armour…
The criminal babbled incomprehensible nonsense for a while after this. The torturer tried his best to get him back to his senses, but he died shortly after.As this happened days before the Daimon army marched out of the Blight, your servant feels it falls under the Kings request, even though the entire story is highly unlikely.
I don't even know where this fits in, but since it's "Open Book", then let's open season with the sesame seeds and let our little prince-to-be and his genie friend in.
Mortality (6 minutes ago)
The referendum on mortality has failed, because I had it set to require a very high amount of support, and it didn't get enough support to pass.
So the 5th invasion will play out without mortality. For the moment. If the human realms get beaten badly, I may decide otherwise, but in that case there will be a warning at least a week in advance.
If you want to make me happy, try to make sure people not on BT can follow the invasion as well. The 5th invasion Wiki page is still not all too good, just a collection of some data points. If just five people write a few sentences each, we could have a narrative there that tells others the story - and maybe makes it easier to understand and follow even for those with characters on BT. It would make me very happy.
Yes, that means you. Head over and write something. A couple sentences is all that's needed.
-- Tom
Orders from Dunbor Lorganson (1 day, 9 hours ago)
Message sent to: Artemis, Barry, Dayne, Ingel, Pippa, Vladimir
Everywhere you go you hear rumours of the Thalmarkin Adventurers being summoned to the Draconic Union guildhouse in Orde.
The King is ordering his subjects to join this guild, they say. He wants those with and adventurous spirit to work together with the rest of the North. United for one goal: the survival of mankind and the destruction of the daimonic forces.
From the looks of the heralds and their heavily armed guards, one might get the feeling the orders of the King are there to be followed without hesitation.
Dunbor Lorganson
Duke of Unger
You are welcome into the Draconic Union guildhouse and informed that you can join, gaining the rank of Aspirant, as soon as you are able to pay the 25 gold application fee.
Roleplay from Barry (10 hours, 17 minutes ago)
(Personal message to Dunbor Lorganson)
Barry stares at the25 gold application fee. Then he looks at his empty pockets. He proceeds to go away.
Wow. How does he expect any adventurers to join for a 25g fee? :o
Quote from: Geronus on December 30, 2011, 11:59:20 PM
Wow. How does he expect any adventurers to join for a 25g fee? :o
I didn't exactly know there even was a joining fee.. :P
It's being taken care of... I hope.
The Draconic Union is the communication guild of the Northern Alliance. This is my attempt to organize adventurers internationally, should give us a better chance of finding the necessary items.
Letter from Dunbor Lorganson (2 hours, 54 minutes ago)
Message sent to: Artemis, Barry, Dayne, Ingel, Pippa, Vladimir
The joining fee has been removed. You can all join now.
Dunbor Lorganson
Duke of Unger
Default 5 gold is still required. On a noob advy like Barry, that's not going to happen anytime soon.
There's a default joining fee for guilds? ... Since when?
That has been there for a while. It was added in later after Guilds.
So advy guilds are nearly impossible now... :/
Quote from: Lorgan on December 31, 2011, 01:54:30 PM
So advy guilds are nearly impossible now... :/
5 gold isn't a lot. Sell a common item or two. Besides, the king has ordered the adventurers to join. They can scrounge around for the silver they need.
The minimum 5 gold fee applies only to advies. Nobles have no minimum entry fee for guilds.
Status check for diplomacy (Hey, I might have to care soon enough)
So there are three realms with alliances across the board with one exception (Obviously Netherworld doesn't count as that one exception)
Not counting that one exception, there are four realms alliances across the board with one peace.
Now that one exception?
IVF.
Hmm...Chenier, why aren't you getting the human realms their blues and one red cross?