Middle Era, Cradle of Dominion PBEM

[Twan]

General message from the Machakan stock exchange :

The kingdom of Machaka will be glad to buy your extra gems. Our minimum guaranteed prices are :
- 18 gp for fire
- 14 gp for earth
- 11 gp for astral, death, nature
- 8 gp for water, air
Never alchemize for money, we offer more.

[solo]

Ulm offers:

19 gp fire gems
15 gp earth gems

Magic items can be forged to fit your needs and budget.

Let's make a deal!

[upstreamedge]

Just over two years have passed in the Ascension wars, and much has happened. The nations of the north-western continent rallied together and drove the cave-dwelling Agarthans from the face of the world, leaving a shattered (caved-in) husk where their kingdom used to be.
The smiths and miners of Ulm dug deeper than any man before them, and tapped a vein of the world's own blood itself. It remains to be seen how the world's other nations will deal with this affront to the planet.
Machaka has defined itself as the largest power on the planet in terms of land, forts, dominion, and income. Ulm has the highest gem income and research. While AI Pythium has the world's largest army.

6 famous heroes live on the world, and I encourage their nations to write a little of their amazing exploits here for the world to see.

[Twan]

The Cradle Economist (spring of the year 3 issue) :

When the offer seem to be small on the earth gem market, the demand is huge and Ulmish and Machakan companies have started an economic war. After hearing that the first producer was speculating on these gems, the Machakan merchant's guild has increased its prices and now offer to pay 20gp for Earth Gems.

[Twan]

In the north east all his quiet. For a young sorceror, the life in the Machakan court is terribly annoying. Machaka has ended its expansion, and now live a terribly quiet golden age. The relations with its neighbours are globally good (if there were some tensions on the Jotun border some months ago, the two empires finally got along) and Machaka looks asleep in its peace and opulence, asleep like its god who refused to be called back after he had strange dreams featuring him chased by a big horror.

The only distractions are the fights in the many arenas the kingdom have, the jewelry expositions, and the site searchers supplicied for having found more arenas or mines instead of interesting gem sites. From time to time some barbarians invade a province or two or destroy a temple, providing some exercice to the army, but the help of sorcerors was not even needed since the coming of a vampire count 6 months ago.

So, no heroic story to tell for the moment, nor many news to give. The most popular tale for the Machakan is still the story of Kigoma, our first prophet, who died in the second month of the first year of the ascension war trying to convince his soldiers that their faith will protect them from arrows. His last words were "Look they can do nothing against us". Marked by his death and the defeat of our first army against only a dozen of lion tribe archers, and fearing his fate to be somewhat prophetic, the Machakan then become very prudent prefering to build as many forts as they could to have walls to protect them from arrows. They also appointed an heavily armored commander of foreign origin as their second prophet.

[Hadrian_II]

In the east of the map, the peaceful nation of Arcoscephale is slowly beginning to prosper and magical gems begin to fall from the heaven, our only problems where some skirmishes with the gigants from Jotunheim, but after short negations they went back into the cold.

Now the people are eager to see the Awakening of their god who will bring great joy to the people. The prophet Achilles is the great hero of the people, and in power only surpassed by the gods of Man and Machacka.

The only bad thing that happened to us was that some far east forest province was conquered by evil villains, but our phalanxes are on the march and will soon eradicate them.

[Twan]

The only distractions are the fights in the many arenas the kingdom have

Like I've said arena fights are a speciality for Machaka.

We salute the 3 courageous champions who perished in the death match.

[tibbs]

Jotunheim's champion, with more brawn than brains forgot to bless himself before battle making it just a bit easier for his opponent to put him to task.

There's always next year....

[Meglobob]

Personally, the 'champion' I sent was hoping no one else turned up.

[Cainehill]

Ah, nifty. Despite sending in the correct .2h file with plenty of time to spare, I got staled.