Warsinger - Chapter Twenty-Two

Riots

Riots are a destructive form of protest which can damage your Renown and Infrastructure. 

Managing civil unrest is a fact of life for all rulers, from village burghers to emperors. When your citizens' Happiness drops between 10-25% in one or more locales, the people of that locale will stage protests on a daily basis. On any given day, there is a base 35% chance that one of these protests will erupt into violence, causing a Riot.

Every day that your citizens Riot results in a 1% drop in Happiness. If your citizens' Happiness drops below 10%, all protests will be violent. Continuous unmanaged Riots will lead to a Rebellion, which pits your personal security forces against the might of your own citizenry as they attempt to depose you. 

Strategies to manage Riots come in two forms:

Placation: Riots can be stopped by addressing the causes of the protest. Your Kingdom Management HUD will show you what metrics must be addressed to placate the riot, and will give you a list of activities you must perform to successfully complete the process. Placating Riots is often considerably more expensive than Suppressing Riots, but gives net positive Renown and increases Happiness, sharply reducing civil unrest and increasing the interval between riots.

Suppression: Riots can be suppressed through the use of force. You must deploy soldiers or other security forces at a 20:1 ratio (1 soldier for every 20 citizens) to successfully put down a riot. Soldiers suppressing a Riot will be able to minimize casualties if you have the any of the following facilities in place: a Jail, Courthouse, Temple, or Hospital. For every facility you have, casualties will be reduced by 20%. If you do not have those facilities, your soldiers will violently suppress the riot, and there will be significant casualties.

Suppressing riots is less expensive than Placating riots. It will reduce the needs of your citizenry by 3% per successfully suppressed riot, reflecting their ability to live with less. However, you will lose Renown at an exponential rate and gain Infamy instead, raising the likelihood of future revolt.

To address a Riot, go to your Kingdom Management menu, drill down to the location where the riot is occurring, and take action.

I had my HUD read the article to me at 2x speed, struggling to absorb it all as I got my head out of nerd mode and back into Jock-of-All-Trades. The courtyard of the castle was swirling with motion and noise: bells clanging, sergeants barking orders, war-bred hookwings hissing as they postured at each other and their riders. I scowled at the KMS as I jogged toward Karalti, a towering black island in the midst of the chaos. She was vibrating with tension, her wings half-spread.

“What’s going on? Suri said there’s a riot?” Her head tracked me as I weaved my way to where the infantry guard were assembling. “What do we do?”

“Hang on. I’m about to find out. Can you listen in telepathically?” 

“Yep!”

I ran to where Istvan was taking the count. He looked as exhausted as when I’d first met him, when he and his army had been the bulwark against the Demon. He wasn’t the only one. The troops had a tired, mean-eyed look to them I didn’t like.

“Your Grace.” Pale, unshaven and pinched around the eyes as he was, he still saluted smartly as I drew up. “What are your orders?"

“We are not suppressing this riot with lethal force,” I said firmly, looking pointedly at the ranks. “Non-fatal tactics only. If that means getting a handle on it less quickly and at more expense, that’s fine. We can’t afford to lose any Renown. I want this put down by separating the rioters and not letting them regroup in the center of town. Do we have megaphones that we brought from Prezyemi?”

“One or two,” Istvan said.

“Split the rioters and isolate them into smaller groups. Take the megaphones and shout. Tell everyone the Volod is sending food and help will arrive in four days’ time. Get them to disperse.”

"Wait," Karalti's voice echoed in my mind. "Don't tell them that! Tell them that YOU went to Taltos to secure food and help for the county. Make sure they know we did it, otherwise, we won’t get any Renown for it."

“Uhh… quick revision to that last part.” I cleared my throat. “Make sure the citizens know that it was me, Suri and Karalti who went and secured food for Karhad. Tell them we petitioned the Volod to make sure all our people would be provided for until the harvest."

“Is it true?” Istvan asked.

“Hell yeah it is. Karalti just reminded me.”

“It will be done, my lord.” Istvan nodded. “You heard him, you cocks! Fall out, double-time, and fight with honor and discipline! No bladed weapons, rubber bullets only!”

"Hey! Sweetcheeks!" Suri called to me from behind. I turned to see her in full armor, striding ahead of Rin, Ebisa, and Kitti Hussar and her entourage. The young Lady of Vas looked much better than when I’d first met her. Her hair and clothes were clean and she’d found armor that actually fit her, a sword the right size for her to use. The girl was vibrating with excitement.

"Hey girl. And hey Kitti - how's it going?" I beamed at her, confused as to why she was out here but glad to see her anyway, and nodded to her scowling beetle-browed bodyguards. "Guys, look, we're going to have to take a double-pronged approach to this: putting down the riot and taking care of some of the city-based quests that caused. What’s your plan?"

“The map on the KMS shows the Marketplace is the center of the riot. There’s a quest there, Clear the Market,” Suri replied crisply, coming to a stop with the others in tow. “We're gonna take it on and clean up the place. I ordered Vilmas to remain back here with a third of our total cavalry and the specialist units to protect the castle in case the rioters take it further than the city."

“I just ordered the troops to use a placation strategy,” I said. “We don’t have enough renown to risk inciting a rebellion.”

“I know.” Suri nodded. “And not enough troops for a suppression, as it stands. Kitti thinks she can help.”

I eyed the girl and grimaced. “Uhh… you’re taking her into this?”

"Kid says she's got to take back her county down south from some old pedo cunt." Suri jerked her thumb over her shoulder at the young lady Hussar. "Seems like she could do to learn some beserking."

I winced. “I don’t know if this is a great idea.”

“She’ll be right,” Suri drawled. “I killed my first man at fourteen. Nothin’ to it.”

"Don't worry about me, your Grace. As long as I’m with Lady Suri, I’ll be fine," Kitti gushed. "Besides, Letho and Gruna won't let any harm come to me. And I know how to use a megaphone!"

Letho on the left - or Gruna, I wasn't sure - cracked his knuckles and grunted.

"Works for me. In that case, Karalti and I'll take on the sanitation quest. We’ve restored water, but the sewers are backed up and that’s why everyone’s having a shitfit down there," I replied. “No pun intended for once.”

“You can’t go into the sewers!” Kitti exclaimed, looking up to Suri. “You’re the Voivode!”

“There’s a big chunk of Renown on the hook for this mission,” I said. “Probably because half the city probably wants to throw me into the sewers anyway.”

"But is Karalti not a dragon?" Kitti asked, wide-eyed. "How will she go with you into the sewers?"

"She can change her shape," Suri replied. "But can she fight in human form yet, Hector?"

I winced. "No. Not really. Vash was going to teach her, but he’s down for the count. She can carry a torch or a magelight or something, though."

Suri snorted. “Roger that. Good luck down there. Kill ‘em dead.”

“Try not to kill them in the market.” I leaned in as Suri did, and let her kiss me on the cheek before pulling my helmet on. I clapped arms with Ebisa, and then – after they stared at my hand a moment – Letho and Gruna. Then I sprinted for Karalti, who huffed with indignation when I was close enough to mount. 

"I can do more than hold a torch, you know!” She flattened her crests, absently preening one of her hands. "I know some of what you know, I just… I haven't practiced it yet! But I cast spells!"

"Don't worry. We'll figure something out." 

Without passengers, there was no need for saddle straps. I bounded up onto her back with Jump, caught the leather grips near her shoulders, and held on as the Queen dragon bellowed a warning and flung herself into the air. She rose with giddy speed, far faster than any normal human could stand. I grinned as my head swam and my heart lifted and thumped down as she swooped over the walls, and leaned with her as she banked hard, then dived toward the smoking city below. After so many days of carrying passengers – Suri, Cutthroat, Masha and the others – it was liberating to be able to fly at full speed, full torque… a welcome relief before becoming mired in whatever shit we were bound to find under the city.

***

The quest began at the entry to the Fol Alugut – Karhad’s main sewer line, which was so old and such a notable part of the city that it had its own name. Access was through a pair of heavy iron doors in the city’s waste treatment plant, where liquid for tanning and solid fertilizer for Racsa’s crops was produced. The plant was currently switched off, the mana tanks that powered the peeling machines lying idle. The collection pools had a smell so intense they had a fucking texture.

Neither the quest or the survey had given us any real clue as to what we were going to find in the sewers of Karhad, just that the blockage was most likely in the center of town: in the Hill District, the oldest part of Karhad. The Hill District housed both the ruined university and the oldest church of Khors in Myszno, the Holy Temple of the Crucible, both of which had been built on and over preexisting ruins left there by some long-forgotten human presence. 

The wiki had some basic information about Fol Alugut. For one thing, it was an actual river, an underground spring that had continuously served the city for over two thousand years. Household toilets, public latrines, and countless other sources of sewerage pumped latrine slurry straight into it, but the water had stopped flowing and so had the waste. A chat with the NPC engineer who met us at the waste treatment plant revealed that the river had shown no sign of slowing throughout the majority of the Demon’s occupation. It had started to dry up barely three weeks ago, and after the city was liberated, two City Engineers and three brave priests of Khors had gone in to survey the system and try and find out what was wrong. None of them had returned.

We started in the maintenance tunnel they had entered, following the small battery-powered lights they’d used to make their way. We had a couple of miles to walk to reach the updated quest marker, but even this far away, the stench was gnarly.

"Gods! It stinks!" Karalti snuffled behind me, pawing at her running nose. "Ugh!"

"I thought you liked poop." I teased aside a curtain of hanging fungus with the tip of the Spear, revealing a slippery cat walk sloping gently down and to the left. "You used to roll in shit all the time when you were a baby."

"Go to hell," she grumbled. "I like SOME kinds of very fresh spoor, okay? They smell like prey animals. It’s like when you go to the market and smell all those different food smells mixed together-"

"Look, I'm an adventurous eater, but I draw the line at deep fried deer shit.

"You don't eat it! You just sniff it, silly. There's so much information in a little piece. You can tell what direction they were traveling in, how recently they were there, if they've had babies recently, or whether they're male or female, or in heat...

"Hey, Karalti. I’m not judging you. Whatever flicks your clit." I paused for a second, cocking my ears as a small ‘bang’ echoed up from the bowels of the earth.

“What?”

“You know. Buzzes your bean? Pokes your pearl?”

"Ugh, you're the worst." She scowled, holding the torch up with one hand and pinching her nose with the other. 

“Not as bad as Fol Alugut. This place is really fucking rancid.”

The maintenance shaft led all the way to one of the secondary sewer canals. By the time we reached it, I was pretty sure all of the skin on the inside of my sinuses had been obliterated. The regularly-spaced lighting ended here. There were glints and glimmers for about two hundred feet to our left, and beyond that, nothing but a dull black abyss.

“I’m gonna say that lighting a fire down here is a bad idea,” Karalti remarked. “I’m gonna get some of those magelights… they don’t throw sparks.”

“Here.” I pulled out two torches, cold and sticky with pitch, then a coil of [Hemp Twine]. “Stick four of them on and tie them to these.”

“Ooh! Good idea! Hang on, I’ll get some.”

Our improvised crafting session led to the creation of two [Arcane Glowstaffs], the fancy way of saying ‘duct-taped magic flashlights’. They cast a steady, cool light that became increasingly eerie as we edged toward the real darkness ahead. Karalti carried both of them while I handled the Spear.

“Something’s off,” I said to her. “Feel that?”

“Yeah. It’s cold.” 

There was a drying channel of decomposing sludge not very far from us: sludge that should have been radiating warmth. As we headed toward the last light in the tunnel, I began to notice other off-putting signs. For one thing, the smell was getting better, not worse, as we went. For another, the ropy slime-mold stuff was drying up. There was no life here, not even algae.

And for a third, the light ahead glinted off dull iron armor: the crouched figure of a man trying to stay hidden by the flared base of a pillar about thirty feet away. He had his head tucked down into the deepest shadows and his hand resting by his side, a sword laying on the ground just below his fingertips.

“Charlie’s waiting for us straight ahead.” I held a hand up, and Karalti halted. “Hang back and keep the light on me.”

I gripped the Spear and activated one of my passive abilities, Mantle of Darkness. The Mark of Matir flared cold on the back of my hand, and a whispering, hissing sound slithered through the air around me. It felt like putting away an energy shot. I dropped to a low, quick cross step, and stuck to the shadows until I was in position. But when I lunged out, weapon ready to strike, the ambusher didn’t leap up or cringe back. He didn’t move at all. He – I was pretty sure the corpse was male – looked like he’d been down here for a hundred years, leathery dry skin clinging to the bones of his face, which was frozen in a grimace of agony. He was frozen on his knees in a spreading pool of black frost. The hand near the sword had been reaching for it - the other hand still clutched his chest.

"That ain't good." I pushed the end of my spear against the man's head, checking for rigor mortis. His neck was stiff, but not the heavy, wooden stiffness of the typically-dead. His body was as light and brittle as dry grass, and when I applied a little more pressure, the end of the Spear punched right through his skin and scattered it into flaky ash.

“Oooh.” Karalti groaned as she wandered forward, sensing that something was off. “That guy smells like bad magic.”

“He sure does.” The man's armor was piecemeal, light on metal and heavy on old scarred leather. “He doesn’t look like an engineer or a priest. Looks more like a bandit.”

“Yeah. I don’t think whatever stopped the sewers is natural.” Karalti's lips peeled back over her sharp, dragon-like teeth, and she scented the air through her nose and mouth. "He was really scared, too. Like he was running for a while before he got caught."

"Anything else you can smell?"

“Cold, ice. Some other kind of nasty smell.” Karalti swept her hair back, then bent at the waist and snuffled around. “You know what it reminds me of? It reminds me of Lahvan.”

Lahvan, the shadow I’d animated in Dakhdir. “You think shades did this?”

“That frost isn’t normal.” She pointed at the snow-flake like patterns of frost still sizzling on the ground. “And he had his life drained. You remember those wraiths we fought at Prezyemi?”

“Pretty sure I’ll always remember those.”

“Yeah, they did the same thing.” Her nose twitched as she looked forward into the tunnel. “Be careful.”

We continued down the corridor, and it wasn't long until we found another corpse, this one lying on the ground. We couldn't see him - only a swarming heap of rats, squeaking and squealing as they ripped at the carcass. Only the sight of an outflung hand and a fallen pickaxe told us what lay beneath the writhing mass of fur and naked tails. The next corpse wasn't much better, but the third and fourth was out of rat-reach and we got a good look at them.

Number Three was definitely one of the priests. The Forgebrothers of Khors shaved their heads and wore distinctive sky-blue robes trimmed in red, with sleeves and hems designed to be tied back and tucked into gauntlets and under sashes when required. He was bent double over a rusted saber planted in his chest, and he was pretty damn ripe – no signs of having had the life sucked out of him. Number Four, however, neither an engineer or a priest. Like the first man we’d found, he was a scrappy, dirty-looking guy in piecemeal armor that looked like it had been looted from three different battlefields. Also like that man, he was sucked dry and had frozen the way he’d fallen. His hands clutched the air in front of him, as if he’d been run through by an invisible weapon. There was no entry or exit wound, other than the coating of dark frost on either side of his breastplate.

“It’s gotta be undead. Some kind of ghost or wraith.” I pulled out the pistol we’d looted from the Bandit Leader, and loaded a Phantasmal Round into it. “Drop on of those torches and take this. I’m pretty sure the Spear can hit incorporeal undead now.”

Karalti set one of the torches down, then came to me – and before I could react, she stood up on tiptoes, placed her lips against mine, and breathed in deeply. I felt something tug, the sensation of data being uploaded or downloaded from my mind, and unconsciously pulled her in close as the rush peaked and then passed.

“Sorry.” Her eyes flickered open, dark and distant. “I didn’t know how to use a pistol, but I know now.”

“If you can… uhh… download that kind of stuff from me, you should take the martial arts while you’re at it.” Despite the awful surrounds – the death, the squeaking and ripping – I found I couldn’t let her go. Even in human form, Karalti’s body was hotter than a normal human’s, and had the mad urge to keep her exactly where she was.

“I might have already,” she replied coyly, looking up at me through her lashes. “But taekwondo is a bit more complicated than aiming along a sight and compensating for recoil. I still have to train it.”

I blinked, then laughed. Then coughed, as the corpse reek pushed through the hypnotic sensation of Karalti’s body pressed against mine. 

“Okay. Let’s search this guy.” Feeling strangely guilty, I peeled away from her and refocused on the scene in front of us. “There’s a story here. The priest was killed with a shiv. I’m betting the pickaxe we saw back there belonged to one of the engineers. We’ve found two armored guys who look like bandits. They’ve got armor and swords… most townies don’t have access to those. They’re possibly deserters. Both of them were killed by some kind of life-sucking incorporeal undead.”

“Wraiths are attracted to dying people,” Karalti said. “Maybe the deserters attacked the priests and engineers, and attracted the undead?”

“Seems likely.” I frowned as a whispering hiss flittered to our ears from the tunnel ahead. “The wraiths chased the last one of the maintenance tunnel, and then withdrew to wherever they normally like to hang out.”

"Yeah. These guys have both got pouches. You want me to search them?"

"Go ahead."

I stood back while Karalti pulled the corpse to the ground. She looted [40 rubles], [Journeyman Tool Belt] and [Holy Symbol of Khors] from the priest, then a few coppers from the bandit before she pulled out a roll of vellum from the front of his shirt.

"Ooh! It's a map." Karalti squatted down, setting the torch on the floor beside her, and unrolled a sheet of spotty vellum. "Uhh, let's see... that's the sewers, alright. There's a note on the bottom here."

"What does it say?" I leaned over to look, but reading the handwriting was a lost cause.

Karalti's eyes scanned the lines. "Goreg says ‘hang a left at the third grate to get around the sewer line and go in toward the catacombs. Once you reach the cistern, take the left door and watch out for traps’. The University is gone so witchcraft shouldn’t be a problem no more. Don't try and hide anything when you get back. All clothes and bags slit open and turned inside out, or no cut."

"Guess our Raiders of the Lost Ark here weren't down here trying to help their fellow citizens," I remarked.

[Quest Update: The World Beneath]

I flicked over, curious to see what had been added.

New sub-quest: The Secret of the World Beneath

The Fol Alugut, Karhad’s ancient sewer line, is backing up and disgorging toxic sludge onto the streets. The filth is leading to outbreaks of disease that have caused your citizens to riot. A maintenance team went into the sewers to try and solve the problem themselves, but appears they were murdered by looters, who were themselves murdered by something. But what were they doing down there in the first place?

Discover what the looters were searching for in the Karhad Catacombs.

Difficulty: High (Level 20-25)

Rewards: 150 EXP, 10 Build points, ???

"Yep. Looters." I accepted and closed the menu. “I guess we can follow the directions-“

"Rats." Karalti scrambled up to her feet, stuffing the map into her breastplate.

"Rats?" I looked one way, then the other, and saw a squealing tidal wave heading right for us from down the hall. "Oh, fuck. Rats."