He isn't good at waiting. He folds his arms over his ample belly, huffing until it's his turn to speak. Then he stamps forward and addresses you in a voice that silences the hall.
His mask is a smiling porcelain youth. They say it was cast from his own face in his prime. Which of his concerns will you address?
Available actions[]
1.
"The bandit-chiefs have called a council." "If the bickering devils forget they hate each other, Serault's roads will run red."
Result: Familial pride Serault's bandit-clans are riven by feuds. The Black Knot hate the Shuttered Lamp, who have warred on the Blasted Oak since Serault was young. The Dead Rose and the Corpse-Dancers have been locked in a spiral of betrayal and betrothal for a decade. It seems impossible they could put their difference aside, but if they did... "We should harry them before they have a chance to unite," counsels the Baron. "Like your mother and I did back in the Bright Summer! Time to make some songs of your own, Huntress/Scholar!"
+2 Peril
→Outlaw Councils
2.
"My lands are plagued by rumors of apostacy." "Bandits and beasts I can deal with, but sorcery?" he grimaces. "I thought given your family history-" here he winks, heavily, "-you'd be better informed to deal with it." Subtle.
Result: Accusations "My western villagers blame the woods-folk. They swap children for sickly changelings, it's said, and boil up storms in a copper kettle when the moon is black. "I'd call it peasant superstition, but last week a farmer brought a calf to my hall. The thing was born with two heads - one of them endlessly sleeping, the other as mad as your great-grandfather, Maker spare his damned soul."
+2 Twilight
→Rumors of Apostacy
3.
"On my way here I overheard these curs impugn your honor." He shoves three peasants to their knees before you. "Go on! Tell your joke again. Lets see if the Marquis finds it funny." The peasants quail.
Result: The butt of the joke The oldest of them - lanky and straw-haired, with dirt-gray fingers - speaks. "We meant nothing by it, your Highness-" "Your GRACE!" the Baron bellows. The peasant flinches. "Your Grace, I mean! We just said that it was looking like a good harvest, and that...that you'd be happy as a puppy when you received your next tithe. And...and then I did this:" He puts his hand behind him, next to his tailbone, and wags it enthusiastically back and forth. It's an old story: that the Shame's descendants are marked by abomination. Your mother, it was commonly held, had a forked tongue. Apparently, you have a tail.
-2 Dignity
→Quick Wit in Low Places
4.
"Am I to be summoned at the griping of a handful of lazy peasants?" He's irate, but you've heard troubling reports of the conditions on one of his vassal's estates.
Result: Hard choices He huffs. "Of course the peasants are complaining! It's the privilege of those who serve to whine about those who rule. If they were able to grasp the decisions we need to make, they'd have been born in a castle, not in a pig-pen! Come. I'll take you there and you can see for yourself." It's a day's ride to the domain of his vassal-knight. The Baron grumbles the whole way. As the western sky begins to turn the colour of roses, you enter a tiny, pocket fief of overgrown hedgerows and fields as thin as the peasants who work them.
-2 Prosperity
→A Life of Toil
