Handsome Gracchus's page

Ravounel is likely self-sufficient in terms of staple foods and building materials. But in terms of metals other than silver, textiles, and most manufactured goods I imagine it's in considerably worse shape. Some of those deficits are things your characters could address with a farsighted economic policy, but in the short run they'll need trade partners.

And I did not think much trade (at least volume enough for food supplies, etc.) was making it through the Gap (before the pc's close it.)

given the limitations of overland transportation, the only thing merchants were likely to use the Gap for would be exporting silver and importing something of comparable value.

there's a racial strain in the construction of the gaucho

Oh god you're right, I totally forgot about that. I'm definitely not firing on all cylinders today

The Nidalese were supposed to have been horsemen before Earthfall, and some of that tradition probably survives on the North Plains.

Zimm's suggestion from upthread would give their plight an even greater emotional/narrative weight. In all likelihood, Melodia's herds are descended from ones that her ancestors stole from theirs, along with the ground that they're standing on

Plains: What problems would ranchers in the Delronge family horse-breeding business have?

They're migrant farmworkers working on a hacienda, so quite a lot. There are the obvious ones: low wages, dependence on a Delronge-owned general store for food and necessities, the resulting inescapable debt, and all the myriad inconveniences of living in an isolated shantytown.

There are others that are more specific to being a ranch hand on Melodia's estates. Golarion's horse-rustlers and predatory wildlife can be far more dangerous than anything a gaucho* would realistically encounter in our own world, so rates of death and injury would be notably higher. There's a LE Abadaran sect that operates in the shanty the way that the Salvation Army would act in early 20th century US Hobo Jungles. Most ominously, since the night of ashes the managers of the estate seem to be making a concerted effort to reduce the gauchos to complete debt peonage. Punitive fines are multiplying, prices are increasing, etc.

Sorry, i have more thoughts but busy, hopefully elaborate tomorrow

*I'm definitely picturing them as Chelish gauchos now and I suggest you do the same

The treaty is overtly neocolonial, complete with a clearly one-sided trade arrangement, a Chelish military base inside Ravounel's borders, and an obligation to send soldiers to help Cheliax maintain its hegemony over other former colonies.

There is nothing that requires the Board of Governors to continue after appointing a Lord Mayor with the right to invoke the Kintagro Contract. Indeed it is in Ravounel's interest for the Board to be permanently disbanded so no future Lord Mayor can reverse the stance on Thrune's presence. The Contract swings both ways - if it takes a legally correct (in Contract terms) Lord Mayor to invite Thrune out, it takes a legally correct Lord Mayor to invite them in. If there is no Board to appoint such a Lord Mayor, Thrune is out permanently.

I had to go back and reread the text to be sure, but damn that interpretation seems just as logical as my initial one. And it could simplify a hell of a lot.

If you really want to scare an aristocrat though, threaten them with a deeply public humiliation. Explain that the Sarinis are going to face a public jury trial where their servants, serfs, and secret tiefling children would testify against them in front of a courtroom of gawking commoners.

State it plainly: the last two books of HR have the player party betray.

I mean, you're entirely right. In fact, the ways that the campaign reduces oppression to an issue of personalities instead of structures, conceptualizes radical politics as something handled by teams of experts, and paints compromise with reactionary elites as a victory.... It's an oddly prophetic portrait of how US liberals would respond to their own night of ashes.

Rereading it, my last post sounds breezily confident when it was really more of a thought experiment. But both the version I gmed and the version i played (neither of which got far past book 3) were planning on handling the endgame quite differently.

And even more disappointingly, two of the most reactionary families of the old ruling class remain close to the center of power, rather than having their assets and titles stripped from them before being sent into exile. Along with the terms of the Treaty, it's absolutely a defeat for the movement.

But I don't think it's necessarily as catastrophic as you're framing it. As you said, democracy is midwifed by class struggle. As long as the player party keep their grassroots supporters mobilized around a set of radical democratic demands, I think it would be possible to reduce the vote of the governors to a ceremonial ratification of the popular vote without technically violating the contract. And for Tanessen and Delronge to be thankful they were left with even that much. It all depends on what happens between Barzy's final death and the opening of the Ravounel Constituent Assembly

EDIT: I don't want to anyone to think I'm saying that sort of fragile rules-lawyering with the terms of the contract is a viable solution in the long run. Just that it might be possible for Ravounel's revolutionary process to continue even after hitting that considerable roadblock.

I was assuming it would be somewhere like Sarini's county seat. The result of an active and ongoing missionary effort bankrolled by their House, who are deeply embarrassed by the "superstitious backwardness" of their subjects.

If we're bringing up the Carlists, Ravounel has pretty much the same natural resource base as the Basque country, and Bilbao's population in the 1870s was around 17,000 iirc

Of course a whole population wouldn’t have one viewpoint but there could be a real rabbit hole to go down here if all minutae were explored. And roguerogue’s post seemed to be looking at the idea the rural population was anti thrune when there is a good chance a fair portion would not have been particularly in favour of the free wheeling arty kintargo that existed prior takeover . But we don’t know this for sure

I actually want to return to this, because by focusing solely on the rural poor we might have accidentally given the false impression that the SRs wouldn't face any deep reservoirs of rural conservatism in Ravounel. And of course they would. For one thing, there's a substantial minority who are fairly economically comfortable, and whose conservatism is likely to take the form of loyalty to their Count(ess)/Baron(ess) rather than the queen.

There's also the Church of Asmodeus: while most people in Ravounel regard it with sullen indifference, I'm sure there are areas where it has managed to set down roots among some segment of the population.

Speaking of Korvosa, they have an illegal trade union in their local iron foundry, and Clegg Zincher is supposed to be the head of the longshoremen's union in Riddleport. While both of these things are from early setting material and saw no play in either Curse of the Crimson Throne, Second Darkness, or Return of the Runelords, in my Golarion the trade union form has spread along a significant stretch of the Steaming Sea.

I've had similar thoughts. If you combine that with Vespam nascent cooperative movement and the agrarian program we were just discussing, you start to see the foundations for a genuine alternative development model for Ravounel.

that might deserve its own thread, though

Yeah, they were imported from korvosa. It was something the GM came up with to accommodate a player who really wanted to play a shoanti hunter.

Your comment about Halfling miners has me thinking though. There would likely already be an illegal mineworkers union, loosely affiliated with the Bellflowers, operating in many of the pits. Maybe Lara sends the players to reestablish contact with them, and the SRs gain a team of Freedom Fighter/Saboteur hybrids.

that's an excellent pretext. more cynically, alleviating a bit of the aristocracy's debt burden is a useful carrot to be able to dangle if they start to dig in their heels against the pace of reforms

adding to the list of rural poor strata: for horsebreeding to be a profitable export industry, there'd probably need to be a decent number of landless ranch hands. In my old campaign Delronge used Shoanti indentured laborers.

The rural poor in societies like Ravounel are often quite prone to rebellion, but you're right that they're not likely to take up arms on behalf of restoring the status quo. Their most pressing issues are, as zimmerwald1915 said, based around land reform and the abolition of usurious debts; any program that doesn't include something along those lines will have trouble winning more than lukewarm sympathy.

Beyond that, they're likely to raise demands for the new government to start investing in rural infrastructure and eradicate illiteracy, for local elections, and for the legalization of their traditional religious practices.

I'm thinking about using the old Bundist anthem "Di shvue" (the oath)

Hi James, I hope this evening is treating you well. I noticed recently that that many aspects of Ravounel (geography, natural resources, fierce independent streak etc) are really similar to the Basque country. Was that deliberate?

3. A small but viscous-looking dog wearing a studded collar walks around the crowd, sniffing and growling. People are looking at the happenings at stage and no one notices. The dog sets his misaligned eyes on a small child standing alone, staring at the mutt as if transfixed. The animal slowly advances on the little boy, a deep growl contradicting the dog's size emitting through yellow fangs. (The dog belongs to the rat catcher Giggs the Ratter, who sweeps his dog Mauler up in the last second if the PC does nothing. If they attack Mauler they'll earn Giggs' animosity. And Giggs nevah forgets, no sir-eh...)

If you were a player in my campaign I would give you 100 xp for that WFRP reference