Update - May 1, Year 1
Project Results
Dominic - Visit Castle Pisch & Walk the Borders
This turned into much more of an adventure than you expected, and ended up consuming all three of your projects for the month. However, you have now finished dealing with every border except the one with Rogatica. You've also gained quite a bit of practical experience in numerous skills. So, apparently adventures can give much faster advancement than training if they're dangerous enough…
Dominic - Research Flesh Sorcery (Healing)
This turns out to be a tricky field, and your initial ideas about bolstering the subject's life force or balancing disturbed humors don't seem to work. After a week of fruitless research you're nearly ready to give up when you happen to stumble across a completely different approach. It feels more like sculpting clay than healing, but you've found that you can cause small cuts to close up in a matter of minutes. This is fairly tiring, and it doesn't seem to actually repair all the internal damage caused by an injury, but could be an effective way to stop bleeding.
Bialas - Collect Taxes
Your knight grumbles a bit about spending the month squinting at records and counting pennies instead of leading troops, but he gets the job done. He reports collecting 974 SP, and there are another 28 families who owe payments at harvest time.
Dita - Training
Your cousin finishes training her Light Sorcery up to level 2, and then gets with Kat to investigate whether she can actually do something about purifying corruption. This research is such a resounding success that she suspects the hand of her goddess at work. Not only can Dita cleans Kat's wards of corruption, she's pretty sure she's actually banishing the fel energy back to whatever hell it came from instead of just dispersing it into the environment.
As a result, Kat's construction rate is now doubled whenever Dita is at the same location. Providing regular purification does not use up a project for Dita, it's a free effect she can provide to anyone nearby. Kat and Dita both think the speedup will get even bigger once they have a few months of practice with it, and get a better feel for what they can safely do and how to organize things efficiently.
But while this is all well and good, Dita is getting anxious for some physical training. She's determined to spend the next month working on combat skills of some kind, although she'll listen to your advice about what to study.
Jaroslaw - Train Rangers (Skill)
Your ranger training is finally complete.
Katiana - Construction
Kat apparently took your instructions to mean 'get ready to do the job right' rather than 'grab some guys and get right to work', which may or may not be what you meant.
At this point Kat has completed a survey of the current state of the keep, organized a 20-man work crew out of the labor tax you're owed, had them haul off a lot of the debris, recruited carpenters from Tamasi and Igal to supervise the woodwork, practiced purification methods with Dita, drawn up possible floorplans to use for the repaired keep, and shored up the stonework to make sure the place doesn't collapse while it's being worked on.
When you return from your adventures she presents you with a plan to complete the work using four months of her own time, another 140 man-months worth of labor tax and 115 SP in cash. You'll need to decide whether you want the renovated keep to have an internal layout meant to quarter a maximum number of troops, or one that gives you a proper audience hall and comfortable quarters for yourself and your important retainers.
Kat has also demonstrated her engineering skills by pointing out a number of other problems and possible projects for Corzu Keep (see Shaky Foundations, Tower Loft and Unstable Cellars in the status post).
Traian - Audit Tariff Collection
Your accountant writes to report that he encountered quite a bit of resentment and petty obstructionism during his stay in Eztergrom, but he's managed to reach an understanding with the harbormaster. Their recordkeeping is a bit shoddy, and he suspects there was some pocketing of funds going on before he arrived, but having an honest accountant on hand pretty much put a stop to it. He's been collecting Corzu's cut of the taxes at the end of each business day instead of waiting until the season is over, and currently has 1,350 SP waiting for you in a lockbox at the local bank. Licenses are still being sold, and he projects you'll end up with a bit over 1,500 SP
Investigation
Your limited investigation of Atalaya makes it clear that everyone who lives in Tamasi is terrified of her, but they seem to think they'll be cursed if they say anything. Mira actually starts crying when you remember she's from Tamasi and ask her about it, begging you not to make her talk because she 'don't wanna die like that'. Aldona shushes her urgently at that comment. But the next day, you notice that a single lock of Mira's hair has turned white…
Dita finds occasion to visit Tamasi in secret at some point during the month, and reports that Atalaya's house is suffused with black magic. She's pretty sure there's a powerful creature of supernatural evil that visits the place regularly, which has her a bit concerned about what will happen if you go after the apparent witch. She offers to ask Inovia to send one of her Chosen here to investigate, although she has no idea if her goddess would actually listen to such a request.
Other Events
Katiana provides the requested birth control magic with a knowing grin. But the spell she's familiar with isn't as convenient as you might like. It's a ward that prevents the woman it's cast on from conceiving, which takes ten minutes to set up and lasts about six weeks. But she doesn't know a version that works on men, so if you want to be safe Kat's going to end up knowing exactly who you're fooling around with.
Dita and Katiana have become friends during the course of the month, and you've caught Kat sharing gossip with Mira and Aldona a couple of times as well. Your mistresses seem to be in awe of the exotic foreign sorceress, but for some reason Kat has been going out of her way to be friendly with them.
Your peasants are all hard at work in the fields now, performing all the myriad tasks involved in getting the spring planting done. You should probably avoid calling in too much of the labor tax until they finish.
