Good Pretender design for Marverni?

[SelfishGene]

I'm having trouble coming up with a Pretender build for Marverni that doesn't completely suck. Of course i have some preconceptions...

First, i think Marverni should take 3 Productivity, because this underpowered nation doesn't stand a chance unless it can really pump out the troops (and even then it might not matter in the long run). I also think they need a fairly reasonable dominion in order to enjoy the fruits of having good scales.

OTOH, i think that a "Rainbow" Pretender with 3 or 4s in many path would be preferable because you'll need lots of summons and magic in order to survive. But in order to get all these things, you need to make the Pretender Imprisoned, which rather defeats the whole purpose of using a site-searching Pretender. PLUS, you HAVE to have blood on your Pretender (and preferably high scales) in order to make any use of the Blood Sacrifice ability....

You can make a 9-path Dragon, except that you have no use for Fire gems and the Nature dragon kind of sucks. And Marverni isn't a very good bless nation...

There are just too many issues that a Marverni Pretender has to overcome, as an Early Era nation.

Or you could wreck the scales and make a Vampire Queen SC Pretender, but this isn't very thematic or unique to Marverni's abilities in any event, since anyone can do that...