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Aquila › Manual

The road

The road is an experiment. It is being tried out to see whether it is worth building properly, and a season you start may not survive a new build.

A skirmish begins at the muster and ends at a box, and nothing carries over. The road is the other way to play: your company walks a small march for one season, from the town until the snow closes the pass, and every fight it has is fought by the men the last one left.

Setting out

On the muster, Take the road with n sets out with the men ticked Marches, in the kit you gave them. You are asked once whether a lost battle may be fought again (see A second chance), and the answer holds for the season. From then on the muster offers Back to the road, and a season is kept in the browser between visits, as the muster is: opening the page again with a season in hand opens it on the road, where the company is.

The company leaves the town with 12 days' pay. Each man is paid 3 crowns a day, fought or not, and the purse is shown as the days it will last at that pay. A company that cannot pay runs up arrears, and a man unpaid for more than 5 days is gone in the night: the least loyal first.

The season is 140 days long.

The march

The board is sixty-one hexes, each about twelve kilometres across, and every season's march is made fresh. The ground runs from high hills and the mountain in the north-east down to marsh in the south-west, and a river crosses it from north to south. It can be crossed at two places only: the bridge, beside the keep, and the ford, beside the shrine.

On it stand the town, where you set out, a keep, a shrine, three villages, and the raiders' camp. Roads join the town to the rest.

Select a hex to choose where to march; the hint says what is there and how many days it is away, and the way is drawn. March toward spends a day walking that way. Rest a day here spends one standing still. A day is one of those two, and whatever the day costs is told afterwards in the journal under the board.

A company walks two hexes a day on a road, and a hex a day of wood or hill. It goes at the pace of its slowest man: a man who limps on the field limps on the road, and the bar names him. A man who cannot stand is carried, and that slows the company by half again.

Who lives there

Six parties share the march:

The town's board, in the panel, lists each of them and what the town pays for a head. Where a party lives is known from the start and marked on the map with a question mark. Where it is is known only when it has been seen, which is within two hexes of the company, three from a hill, and one less if it is in a wood.

Reading the ground

A party will not usually be standing at home when you arrive. A wolf pack keeps to the ground within two hexes of its lair and covers two hexes a day, so the marked hex is where it lives, not where it is. There are two ways to learn more, and neither is a guess.

Its lair. Stand on the hex a party lives on and you have found the den itself — beaten paths, bones, bedding — and you know the ground it holds to. That does not say where it is tonight. It says where it can be, which is the ground to search, and if the party is the one your contract names the map washes that ground in gold.

Its trail. Stand anywhere a party has been within the last 4 days and you read its tracks. Tracks show the way they lead, so the map marks not where it stood but where it went from there, with how old the sign is. Hover the hex to read the age; four days is as long as sign lasts, and after that the ground says nothing.

What is known is drawn three ways: a party seen is a filled marker with its number, a party known only by its trail is a hollow one where the tracks led, and a party with neither is the faint question mark on its lair. A contract's gold ring follows the same knowledge — the party's own hex while it is in sight, the end of its trail while that is the freshest thing you have, and the lair only while you have nothing at all. Gold on this map is the contract and nothing else; the dashed brass lines are roads.

Nothing about this is rolled for. Sign is on the ground or it is not, and a company that walks over it finds it.

The town pays by the head: a party's bounty shared among the men or beasts it was. Heads are carried until the company is back in the town, and paid for there. A party driven off without being destroyed goes home, and does not come looking for the company for a fortnight. A party beaten twice never comes looking again, though it can still be found at home.

Keeping kit

What is left of a piece is shown on it wherever it lies, as a bar along its foot, and in words beside its name: how sound a piece of armour or a shield is and what is left of a helm's lining, and a weapon's edge and its point.

A day's rest hones every man's blades, his own and those in his pack, by 10% of their edge and their point, up to 90%: as far as a whetstone in the field will take them. A day's march hones nothing.

The smith grinds a blade sharp again, and beats out a dented piece of armour or a shield and patches its lining. In the town, select any piece on a man, in a pack or in the cart, and Have the smith mend it. A blade costs 0.25 of what it cost new for every whole edge and point it has lost; armour and a shield cost 0.5 of new for every whole piece lost, so a piece at 40% costs 30% of new to mend. It is done at once.

Contracts, and the town's regard

The town's notice board holds up to 3 contracts at a time, posted again every 7 days or whenever it is empty. There are three kinds:

Each says its fee, the advance paid on taking it, the day it must be done by, and how many days away it lies. A job is taken in the town, one at a time, and 0.25 of its fee is paid at once. The rest is paid when the job is done: for an escort, where the cart arrives; for anything else, when the company is next in the town. The job's target is ringed on the map — on whatever is known of it, which need not be its lair (see Reading the ground) — and the bar counts its days down.

A job not done by its day, given up, or lost with the merchant's cart has failed: the advance is owed back, out of the purse or as arrears if the purse cannot cover it.

A job's fee is what its party would count for at the muster, larger for every day it lies from the town, raised or lowered by the town's regard, and haggled a tenth either way. An escort is paid by the day of road.

The town's regard for the company is one number, from −5 to +10, shown above the board. A job done raises it by one, or two for a large one; a job failed lowers it by two. Every step is 5% on every fee, and it decides what the board will offer: a company the town does not trust is offered escorts and a rabble to see off, and the bear, the troll and the raiders only as its regard grows.

Fights

A fight begins when the company walks onto a party, or a party that hunts catches the company. The box says who is there, and Stand and fight takes you to the field, where you form up as you would in a skirmish.

Every man of the company who is fit takes the field, up to eight. A man too weak from blood loss, or who cannot stand, stays out of it. If nobody is fit, everyone is caught where they lie.

When it is over, Bury the dead and march on takes the field back into the season. First comes the hour after: every open wound that can be bound is bound, and the rest bleed by the battle's own rule until they stop or the man is dead. A man with an open femoral artery at the end of a fight may still die of it after the fight is won. A company that loses falls back to the hex it came from.

The chase

When the last of them breaks and some can still run, you are asked whether to Run them down or Let them go (see How a battle ends). It matters because of what each of them leaves:

A wolf is quicker than a man, and a pack that runs is mostly gone. A man with a leg cut from under him is not.

Kit, the cart and the field

Every man's kit goes with him from one fight to the next as the last one left it: a dented helm stays dented, a cut mail shirt stays cut, a quiver stays as empty as he left it, and a sword dropped on the field is not in his hand. Quivers are filled to the brim with bodkins in the town.

The company's baggage rides in the cart, a grid of 12 by 8 cells. Every piece stays in the cell it was put in, turned the way it was put, until you move it or Sort the cart, which packs it again from nothing, the largest pieces first and like beside like, and leaves it as it was if it cannot fit everything back in. The cart draws 400 kg, which stands for a horse on a road; loaded past that, the company marches slower in proportion, twice the load at half the pace. The bar under the board shows the cart's load.

The cart and kit, beside the day's orders, opens the cart on the left and a tab for each man on the right: the man himself, with everything he wears and holds laid on him as the kit screen in a fight lays it (see Kit in the fight), his pack, and the arrows in his quiver. Drag a piece where it should go. A weapon goes in his hand, a shield on his arm, armour over the parts it covers, and a quiver at his waist; whatever that takes off him goes where the piece came from if there is room, and into the cart if not. A two-handed weapon takes his shield off. Ctrl-click a piece (Cmd-click on a Mac) to put it on the man whose tab is open, and Alt-click it to put it in the cart wherever it first fits. Either, on a piece in a shop, buys it. Select a quiver and Open it to see its arrows; arrows go into a quiver one to a cell, and nothing else does.

The field belongs to whoever holds it. When the company wins, Bury the dead and march on opens the field beside the cart: everything the dead of both sides wore, held or carried, and everything lying on the grass, as each piece was left, but no one's severed limbs. Every dead wolf, boar and bear leaves its pelt, rolled. A pelt is the beast's own hide: as large as the beast, as heavy as that much green hide (a wolf's a few kilograms, a bear's tens), and spoilt where blows cut it open. A cut across the whole of a flank spoils the flank's share, and a spear's hole only a sliver. A wolf clubbed about the head gives a whole pelt. A square metre of sound pelt is worth 20 crowns new for a wolf's, 30 for a bear's and 6 for a boar's, and the dealer pays his share of that by how sound it is. Nobody buys a troll's hide. Drag into the cart, or onto a man, whatever you want, or Take all to put in everything that fits, largest first; March on leaves the rest where it lies, and no day passes on the choosing. The field waits if you close the page. When the company loses, the field and its own dead's kit are lost.

In the town

Whenever the company is in the town, the town is shown in place of the board: its buildings, each opening what is done there.

The town's shops

In the town, The cart and kit also opens three shops, each a grid of its own: the smith, who sells weapons, shields and harness; the fletcher, who sells bows, quivers and sheaves of arrows; and the dealer, who buys anything and sells what he has bought. Drag a piece out of a shop, into the cart or onto a man, to buy it; drag a piece in to sell it. A shop buys only what it deals in, and a piece the purse cannot pay for stays on the shelf.

A piece costs what the muster charges for it new, less whatever it has lost to dents and cuts, and a shop pays 0.4 of that. Sell all of it, over the cart, sells the whole cart to the dealer. The smith and the fletcher restock every 7 days: what they had goes and new stock comes in, but whatever the company sold them stays for sale.

Resting in the town is as resting anywhere, a day at the full rate of mending; what the town adds is paid bounties, full quivers and its shops, on any day that ends there.

Wounds that carry

A man's wounds go with him from one fight to the next, part for part, as the wound chart showed them. The panel lists every man's wounds and the blood he has left, and says whether he is fit.

Wounds close by the day, at the rate the tissue closes, and at half that rate on a day the company marches. A shallow cut to the forearm is shut in days. A deep one to the thigh takes weeks. A bruise fades. Lost blood comes back, most of it within a day or two. A wrenched joint is sound after a fortnight's rest.

Some things do not mend in a season at all: a broken or cut bone, a cut nerve, a joint out of its socket or torn, a lost eye, a lost limb. A man keeps them, and the wound chart shows him as he will be once any numbness has passed.

A second chance

Setting out, you choose whether a lost battle may be fought again. Without that choice, a battle is taken back into the season the moment it is decided, before the box is shown, so closing the page changes nothing. With it, the box also offers Fight it again. That puts both sides back as they stood when the fight began, and fights it again under new dice. The journal says how many times each battle was fought.

Hiring

In the town, Hire a man takes on a spearman with a levy's kit for 120 crowns. A company can be up to 12 men.

Letting a man go

A man too badly hurt to fight still eats his wage, and a season is long. Under each man's card, at any place on the march — a town, a village, the keep, the shrine, the camp — stands Let name go, with what it costs on the button. It asks twice, as giving up the season does.

He is paid what he is owed, which is his share of any arrears, and 6 days' pay on top of it: a man turned out in a strange place with nothing is a man the next place hears about. The purse must cover both. A captain who cannot pay a man off is not rid of him, which is one more thing the float is for.

His kit is the company's. He is stripped before he is paid, and every piece of it goes into the cart — so a company that pays off its mailed men and keeps their harness walks slower for it. Sell what you do not want at the dealer.

You cannot let your last man go, and not while a fight is waiting.

The end of a season

The season ends when the snow closes the pass on the last day, or when there is nobody left. Its box says how long the company was on the road, how many fights it fought, who came through, and who died, when and of what. Give up the season, under the board, ends it early.