Your Weary Bailiff returns from The Kindly Knight's manor damp with sweat from his frantic ride. "The Elusive Iconoclast was at his court! At her advice he has declared the manor a freehold, wherein no person is held in bondage to any other. A council of peasants advises him! They sit in judgment over cases criminal and civil. Every man calls every other 'Lord' in jest, and the women 'Lady' or 'Dame!' They have paid only a part of the taxes they owe, saying that the full amount was too burdensome.
"They have set these laws down in a writ, and ask for your seal to be set to it, confirming them in perpetuity!" He passes the document at you. It is written in a skilled hand. It uses words like 'liberty', 'equality' and 'mandate.' At the bottom, a seal bearing a candle-flame - the sign of the Iconoclast.
Available actions[]
1.
Tear up the writ The Kindly Knight's indulgence has gone too far. Demand he return his lands to their proper governance. Oh, and you'll have those missing taxes, too.
(Uses 1 action)
Result: In proper order You send an detachment of guards and chevaliers to ensure all goes smoothly. The Elusive Iconoclast is, of course, nowhere to be found. Under your Bailiff's fussy eye, the manor is restored: noble, freeman and bondsman all in their proper place. And paying their proper damn taxes. The fledgling freehold is wiped away almost as soon as it began. It lives only in whispered stories told around humble fires - a brief, bright week when the world was turned upside down. Your nobles praise you, but in the Kindly Knight's manor they use your name like a curse.
-10 Freedom, +12 Dignity, +5 Bags of Royals, +10 Rumors of Revolution, -30 Clues, unlocks The Martyr, You dealt with the Kindly Knight's Freehold
2.
Attach your seal to the writ The Knight and the Iconoclast deserve a chance to make the freehold work.
(Uses 1 action)
Result: So far so good? Despite the outrage among your courtiers, Serault does not immediately collapse into anarchy and cannibalism. The taxes from the freehold are still light. There is a spate of runaway serfs making their way to the freehold in the hopes of being granted shelter and freedom. But so far, no disasters. Serault's eastern neighbors have a new subject to mock her with, of course: "...so poor she can't even afford proper nobility, and has resorted to dressing peasants in cloth-of-gold, instead."
+12 Freedom, -10 Dignity, +30 Rumors of Revolution, +1 Authority, -30 Clues, unlocks The Martyr, You dealt with the Kindly Knight's Freehold
