[SurvivalistMerc]

Thanks for the responses. I am having an interesting time against Ry'leh (?sp). And I'm thinking about building a fortress along my coastline directly adjacent to his home province. Does anyone else do that? It's good to know that it won't pull resources from his adjacent territories. I would love to be able to go down there and seige him, but I haven't even found troops that can go underwater yet as it is early in the game.

I'm adopting that same strategy with my pretender...took a sage and ulm. Really makes the research flow well. I'm actually ahead of all the ai nations in research atm if you can believe that.

Thanks for telling me that there *are* some blood sites out there. I was beginning to wonder. I usually only take 2 in blood because of how easy it is to raise if you can get some hunters.

By the way, do those items you get change your skill levels on the overland map or just in combat?

I guess the general concensus is that bless effects do not change with subsequent empowerment of the pretender or with the pretender's disempowerment by death and being called back?