Debt and Distance
You cannot be everywhere, and you cannot pay for everything at once. Debt buys time; distance sells it back.
Loans: borrow up to your Collect yield from a faction (guilds, veterans, foreign houses). Interest 10%/season, added at each Pay step; repay with a Pay action (interest first). Mint writs follow Income, Taxes and the Collect (up to 20% of last season's Collect, once per year).
Debt clocks: every loan is a 6-segment clock; +1 segment per unpaid season past the first (2 if you miss a promised repayment). At 3 the lender's collectors give −1 to your deals; at 6 foreclosure: −3 relationship, −5 Stability, + a Happening. Max two loans; a third needs a council vote. (Faith and Oaths) Clergy loans cost no interest but 10 Favor with the established faith each; default and lose the Favor and take +10 unrest weighted to the clergy.
Distance: armies and caravans move 15 mi/day road, 8 off-road; sea voyages 2 months port-to-port; orders travel the same speed (one week per 300 miles). Grain in transit loses 10% per 300 miles without granary-chain cover (halved with way-stations every 100 miles or a Grand Granary).
| Distance | Upkeep | Transit loss |
|---|---|---|
| 0–100 mi | ×1 | none |
| 101–300 mi | ×2 | 10% |
| 301–600 mi | ×3 | 20% |
| 601–1,000 mi | ×5 | 30% |
| 1,000+/overseas | ×8 | 40% |
Permanent portals (High Magic module): a portal (Arcanum Wonder-stage work: 100,000 gp, 3 seasons, 1 master + 1 vial/season to build; 5,000 gp/season + 1 vial/season to hold open) moves people, messages, and authority instantaneously between its two ends — but not bulk goods. Grain, timber, stone, and armies-in-supply still march, sail, and rot on the road: portals change command, not commerce.
What a portal does change:
- Influence without distance: a settlement holding an open portal counts as 0 miles for orders, decrees, Trial enforcement, council votes, omen readings, and oath interventions. Governors act on today's news; loyalty checks use the capital's Stability, not local.
- Troops, not supply: soldiers and officers step through armed and ready — muster and reinforcement arrive in a day. But their upkeep and grain still travel the slow road: an army supplied through a portal eats at its real distance band (×2/×3/×5/×8) unless a separate supply line or local needs surplus covers it. Teleported soldiers with empty bellies desert all the same.
- Elites and envoys commute: officers, envoys, priests, and spies posted through a portal cost no travel time and take no transit risk; assassination and blackmail ops through a portal run at −1 secrecy (everyone watches the gate).
- One gate, one throat: a portal is a site (tags: portal, fortified, contested). Close it (action + master), seize it (siege vs its Defense + holder's Power), or sabotage it (Intrigue steal/sabotage op, stage 6 = gate collapses for a season). Whoever holds both ends holds the road that isn't a road. Blockade still works — on the grain, not the gate.
- Costs scale: each portal beyond the first costs +1 vial/season to maintain (the Arcanum bleeds to hold many doors). A realm running three gates pays 3 vials/season before a single war-mage is fed.
Example: borrow 2,000 gp from the Millers Guild, march 300 miles (20 days road, upkeep ×2). Next Pay: owe 2,200. Repay 1,200 (200 interest, 1,000 principal) — the campaign wins because soldiers were paid. With a portal: the Marshal steps through to the far city in a day, reads the ledgers, countermands the disloyal governor, and is home for supper — while the grain to feed his legion is still three weeks out on the road, losing 10% to rain.