Sagrem leads the townsfolk of Tullum through days of labor.

Time passes while he does this, and the passage of time takes him into December.  The weather is cold and wet, and soon it will begin to snow.

Still the Huns from nearby have not made an effort to retake the town.  They are occupied with other things, it seems.

The older people in the town remember that before the coming of the Huns, December meant you started getting ready for the Winter Solstice.  This will be the first actual holiday season in many years for them. There is a lot of hope, because some of them remember, for the Winter Solstice, you were supposed to decorate pine trees, and these have been collecting in the lumber yard.

A week has gone by since Voca departed.  Sagrem has his lumber yard, and the stocks of pine branches and wood.

And Tullum has a visitor, arriving at the south gate.  A young woman... and they don't travel alone very often, even in the most civilized areas.  This one, though, Sagrem remembers.  Tavi, the strange priestess from Lingones.

Sagrem directs the men on repairing and getting ready for winter.  There are some doors that need repair before the first frost hits.  He aslo sends the women to make wreaths for the holidays and encourages cleaning of the barracks and homes, but doesn't partake himself.

Upon hearing of Tavi coming to town, Sagrem rushes to meet her.  Giving her a hug, he tells her how happy he is to see her.

"Tavi!  It is great to see you!  I am so glad you came!"

Reaching out, he gives her another hug and kiss on the cheek.

It is so nice for Sagrem to see the face of a friend after the hard work he has been putting in here with everyone that is new to him.
This message was last edited by the player at 04:24, Thu 11 Oct 2012.

Tavi is surprised at Sagrem's emotional greeting to her.   She seems stiff and awkward when he hugs her, and it takes her a few moments to let herself loosen up.

Then she says:  “The trees of here called me.  They have been bad treated for a long time.  The forest is weak and hurting here.  It can be a good friend, but if the people are being good.”

Her command of Germanic is improving.  She lays out to him her immediate plans:  settle in here, find a place to stay, find a place for Diana's shrine, and take some walks in the forest, and learn about the forest here.

Sagrem was solem and nodded.  He felt a tinge of guilt, and wanted to reassure Tavi.

"The town has taken many trees to repair and fix the town.  I will speak to them and no more trees cut down right now.  Let me show you where the temple area is."

Taking her directly to the temple area, Sagrem let her get set up.  He called all the men together in the lumber yard and let them know to harvest no more trees.   Now was a time to simply be repairing and fixing things in the town.

Setting to work with the men, Sagrem started to repair things in the town and work on making clubs, javelins, and spears.

Tavi is impressed with the temple district.. at least, its size and former grandeur.  They temples are not in great shape, but that can be fixed.  Anything can be fixed.  And besides, most of her worship is done outdoors.  Much to her liking, one of the temples has a large garden.

It is actually very common for temples to have gardens.  This one has not been cared for in a long time.  It is wild and overgrown- the plants have made a feral green riot of trees and shrubs.

To Tavi, it is supposed to look like this.  Life, in its struggle to exist.  Shrubs should not be pruned into dainty shapes.

The workmen are of mixed emotions when Sagrem tells them to stop cutting trees.  On the one hand, it was cold and scary work.  On the other.. .there are so many trees, who is this crazy priestess who values trees over humans?  On the third hand... there are some structures that can be cannibalized for wood.  On the fourth hand, they are used to being told what to do and they don't openly complain.  And on the fifth hand, it is getting cold.  People will need firewood, and firewood needs to dry.  They cannot tolerate a long break from wood cutting.

Sagrem checked on Tavi on occasion, but stayed busy with rebuilding the city.

He prioritized the work and worked with the men on the larger projects.  Building gates and doors took priority followed closely by making "safety" repairs.  Run down road work with lose cobbles or missing stones that could trip a beast of burden or hurt someone trying to simply walk down the road.

It was tireing work, but he kept a positive attitude and worked at it with the men.  Checking on the women, he asked if they needed anything to clean or supplies.

Part of his daily ritual was to visit Tavi and worship midday and in the early evening, but that was equally to say hi to her and check on her.

Lastly, he checked in on the lumber yard.  Any men who appeared restless or wanted to "get more wood" he encouraged to get dead wood and stack it in the lumber yard.

"Do not fell anymore trees.  Simply dead wood on the forest floor."

Sagrem goes back to work, and Tavi goes to her forest, and for the next day, the two do not see each other.

But Sagrem hears the stories- the girl is weird.  The baffled townsfolk tell how she walks among the trees, talking to them, holding conversations with no one, in that strange babbling Slavic language she speaks.  How can anyone understand that nonsense?

Dead wood starts to collect up.  The men of the town are grateful for there being no Orcs left.  Usually, when they collect and chop wood, the Huns keep most of it.  Working for themselves... despite a small tax the Chamberlain collects... that is different.

Sagrem has never seen a man with an armload of wood consider himself "rich".  But that's the way it goes; people adapt to whatever circumstances they are in.  If you are used to having one turnip for dinner, two turnips is a feast.  Even the times before the Huns were not that prosperous there.  The last century has been one of warfare and instability and overall decline- no one remembers the good days, a century back.   Elves would, but there are none here.

Sagrem decided to make a push with the men, and put the word out that the next morning he wanted all able bodied men in the lumber yard.

When morning came, Sagrem loaded a side of beef and some tea on his cart and headed to the lumber yard.  He handed out some beef and tea for them early as they assembled.

"I have gathered you all here this morning to discuss what needs to be done for winter and work we need to accomplish.  I will have the men seperate into groups.  Those to work on repairs of the town over here.  Those who will fish, hunt, and gather crops over here.  Those who take care of livestock and have them over here.  Thos who are confused or don't have a job over here."

"I need you all to discuss concerns and problems that we need to work on.  No idea or question is a dumb one.  Could be the difference in us getting something done."

Sagrem listened to each group and worked with them to address ideas.  He spoke to the group which had no job.

"What interests you all?  Hunting and gathering to provide for the city?  Working with wood, repairing, and gathering wood?  Being a guard for the city and learning weapons and how to protect the city?"

All in all he worked with the men in organising them and getting things going.

One of the “problems” with Sagrem and City Building is that that with long term projects, it is easy to run ahead of  time of the other story lines.  Especially since he has no other PC’s to communicate with.  While I can manage this over a short stretch, it gets harder and harder.  It’s even harder now as other characters’ time is moving slowly, with the climactic battles going on or approaching.   After that I expect the schedule to open up some as we cross the winter into season 2.

But in the mean time, I have to restrain Sagrem’s progress a bit, to keep the stress on the space time continuum down.


In the years of Hun occupation, things like "what interests you all" were unheard of.  There were no interests, no choices.  You did what they ordered you to do and hoped it was enough to turn away their wrath.

Sagrem gets a lot of cautious responses.  Habits and fears are hard to change.  A lot of people ask "what do you want us to do?"


The skill set here is not complete.  The Orcs demanded that they farm, and raise livestock, mostly pigs, to provide meat for the Orcs, but they have not been farming well, because they kept so little of it.  Some, Sagrem quickly, sees, are known to be better farmers than others.  People don't like to admit that their neighbor simply works harder.  They say he's got "The touch".  "Green Thumb".

Another problem Sagrem sees is a terrible shortage of good iron tools.  The Orcs handled most of the blacksmithing, and most of the effort went to providing weapons and armor for the Orcs.  That's another reason most of the housing stock is in such poor condition- the Orcs didn't want the smiths wasting time on nails, hinges and latches for those miserable humans!  Fortunately they bought some tools from the merchants.

Smithing is one of the few jobs Orcs considered acceptable.  But there are a few older men who remember, and a few younger ones that served as smithy-slaves.