The Gaming Outpost

I received this from a friend of the forum, by e-mail:

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As best I can tell, Kurt’s last post is at http://gamingoutpost.com/discussions/topic/merrye-olde-kurt/page/8.  (The end post says that the thread will continue in the new forum, but if it did, I can’t find it.)  The last four pages of that have Kyler as referee.

Kurt did get a job bookkeeping for the shire reeve; he’s spying for the Merry Men, hoping to sneak out information on the tax schedule and the supplies expected, and possibly to map the castle itself.  Recently, a knight named Sir Gee of Gisbourne has been sent to find the bandits, and a castle servant named Phil has been following him when he leaves the castle.  Today (in game), Sir Gee asked for his input on where the bandits are likely to be hiding, and he proposed that he could best help by talking to the Saxon peasants to find a way to improve their lives, as they will stop hiding the bandits if they think the authorities are on their side.  The reeve agreed to this, but Kurt believes he is suspected and intends to leave quickly.

Kurt has picked up P0@0 French 1@1 and is using 1@10 Old English 0@0 (partly derived from existing English skill, partly practiced); he also had a 1@9 Teaching P0@1 skill established from prior experience.

If Kurt is following his usual pattern, he has only 3 copper coins on his person; he has more in his room at the castle, about 530 copper coins if I’m counting right.  This is from his salary after expenses.  I’m not sure where the rest of his equipment is.  He also has a scroll stating that he is on official business in the name of the King to enrich the community.

Right now, he is in a bar with Reina, his contact.  He believes they should both flee tomorrow.
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I don’t know anything about Reina, but if you give me a bit of info I’ll play her from here, and we’ll see where it goes. (I did not read the posts on the other thread, but I might yet do so if time is better next time.)

–M. J. Young

I have not read your last post there, so I’m going to be taking whatever you post here as the continuation of the story, and only check there if there’s something I don’t understand; so just keep me up to speed on anything I might have forgotten. (Mentioning the bear and the quarterstaff was helpful, as it’s brought back a significant part of the earlier story.)

–M. J. Young

A few notes on the geopolitical situation might help; these are things you would by now have picked up incidentally.

Nottingham is the chief city in Nottinghamshire, something akin to being the county seat of the county but that of course in England if you have a county you have a count overseeing it. Nottinghamshire is overseen by a shire reeve (or sheriff in later forms). Sherwood Forest is contained within the borders of the shire. As I recall, Nottingham is north and west of London, and the Forest is east and a bit south of the city, such that any reasonably direct route to the capital passes through it. There are open areas within the forest which are villages, supporting farmland. Part of the job of the reeve is to assess and collect taxes. Part of the way the system works is that the King, through the Royal Exchequer, informs the shire reeve how much money he is expected to deliver from Nottinghamshire, and leaves it to him to decide how to raise it. He, of course, is a Norman, and wants to be a knight; there are Norman knights living in Nottinghamshire, whose good graces he wishes to have and who speak French so he does not have to struggle with English to communicate with them. The Normans own everything, but it is not in the shire reeve’s interests to tax them, so he has to tax the conquered (about a hundred forty years ago) Saxons, who are the peasants, to meet the increasing demands of London. The reeve must pay anyone he hires out of his funds, which come out of his tax collections, and must pay the crown from his revenues even if it means that he pays out of his own pocket; but he does not have sufficient assets to pay the full bill, so it has to come from tax money.

The reeve generally hires deputies to do the assessments and collections, and rewards them based on how much they collect. This incentivizes their efforts to get as much as possible from every peasant. From the perspective of the reeve, the bandits in the woods only complicate matters, because when they steal the tax collections he has to go back and collect more, and when they rob Norman nobles traveling through the forest, he has to hire more deputies to attempt to provide better security for the roads.

Reina agrees with your plan. The forest comes up to the edge of the sheep commons surrounding the city beyond the wall, so you can probably justify wandering out that far.

–M. J. Young

The night passes without incident. You pass out the gate with nothing more than a nod from the watch. Sheepfolds are all near the city walls, but the sheep are presently grazing on the commons, attended by shepherds and scattered between here and the wood, although not too close to the wood–wolves are not unknown.

–M. J. Young

At first the shepherds laugh at you, and suggest that there’s not a chance in all of England that Prince John would do anything to help the Saxons. There is a hint in what they say that they trust King Richard, whose courage and skill in battle is legendary and who is believed to be a man of honor exemplifying chivalry, but that his younger brother John is simply money-hungry, trying to tax the working people out of existence to spend on the fineries of court.

You reach the edge of the woods shortly after noon, having talked to a dozen shepherds along your winding way. It took more than a day for you to get here from Robin’s camp, though, so it’s not likely Reina has reached them with the message yet.

If that’s not correct, I’ll change it, but usually the men camp more than a day’s journey from the capital, for obvious reasons.

–M. J. Young

We have something of a confusion here. Sheep farmers who graze on the commons surrounding Nottingham City live in the city, and so either sleep there sleep in the sheep pens with the sheep when they are on watch. If you’re looking for villages, you have to get quite a few miles from the city itself, as the commons is rather large to support enough sheep to provide wool and mutton for the city.

–M. J. Young

Indeed, it’s a couple miles through the trees to reach the edge of the farmland–this piece of forest does a good job of isolating the crops grown there from the sheep pastured here, although you’ll have to look for a gate in the hedge which keeps the deer out of the crops. You can easily be there before sunset, and undoubtedly find a place to stay, as long as you don’t let on that you’re working for the shire reeve.

–M. J. Young

Concerning vectors, it is my understanding that everything you brought with you into this universe is with you now, nothing left in the castle in Nottingham and the only things at the camp a bear cub and a quarterstaff both of which were acquired in this universe. Is that correct?

The people are hospitable to travelers, and with your pack you appear to be one; they are the more hospitable with your offer of a few coins to defray the costs of a meal, and you quickly find yourself sequestered with a family who will be eating as soon as the boys return from the field. One of them will be giving you his bed for the night, although he does not know it yet.

–M. J. Young