Mariage, childeren and blood st

[Kenneth Gauck]

>In a message dated 11-13-1998 5:31:12 AM Central Standard Time,
madfox@wxs.nl
>writes:
>
>> If Avan and his arch rival intermary, wouldn't the resulting
>> offspring have a much larger chance for the Iron Throne?


Consider this. Who else are they marrying while still able to keep their
blood strength in the 60-70 range?

It would be really expensive to keep marrying the run of the mill regents in
Anuire, with their 25-35 strength bloodlines, and spening regency to drag
them back up to their father's level.

Either there is an undescribed "Senetorial" class in Anuire with bloodlines
in the 50-70 range who provide a marraige pool for themselves and the Houses
of Avan, Boerunine, and Dosiere; or Darien, Aeric, and Caliedhe are first
cousins.

One of the reasons states might tie themselves to these individuals would be
the high bloodlines daughters would bring to the line.

But, there is another possible explanation based on Roman custom. This
would be that only the Head of House would have the full bloodline, that is
while you live, your sons are possesed of some small hint of your bloodline
(maybe 10-20%). So for a father to pass his complete bloodline to his son,
a proper investiture is required. Keeping with Roman custom a regent might
"adopt" any person (p. 31) as their heir.

Does Avan's son have d8+6 blood points?

How are bloodlines sustained over time? How long has the current state of
affairs (dominance of Avan and Boerunine) lasted? If its a fluke, and both
the Archduke and Prince were born with bloodlines in the area of 45, then
there is a small but probably viable pool of marriage condidates.

Kenneth Gauck
c558382@earthlink.net

[Gary V. Foss]

Kenneth Gauck wrote:

> How are bloodlines sustained over time? How long has the current state of
> affairs (dominance of Avan and Boerunine) lasted? If its a fluke, and both
> the Archduke and Prince were born with bloodlines in the area of 45, then
> there is a small but probably viable pool of marriage condidates.

I think investiture is a pretty good explanation for the continuation of really
high bloodlines like those of Boeruine and Avan. Assuming that the respective
rulers of those realms don't run off and do something foolish like take on the
Gorgon who might run them through with a tighmaevril weapon, it seems like they
could hand off their bloodlines at the end of their rule and keep them intact
for their heir.

On a sidenote: I've always thought the rule about investiture that said if an
heir is blooded the investiture has the same effect as an act of bloodtheft. If
Boeruine had a child with an unblooded woman that child would have a bloodline
strength of 30. If Boeruine transferred his bloodline to this child through a
bloodline investiture, the child's bloodline would go up to 32. That seems
pretty silly considering he could transfer it to an unblooded character who
would get all 60 pts. It makes for a situation in which a ruler would want to
hold two ceremonies, the first of which is to transfer his child's bloodline
away so that his own bloodline could be transferred to him directly. Investing
a blooded character with one's own bloodline should give the heir the whole
enchilada rather than just a few crumbs.

The other thing to keep in mind is that it is possible that they are using RP to
increase their bloodline. It seems unlikely that Avan would spend 71 RP to
raise his bloodline, but I think that is because most of us are coming at it
from the point of view of someone who has much less bloodline strength, who
rules a much smaller realm, who does not have vassalage agreements like Avan's
and who may not rule as long as he expects to. Avan could easily collect 100
RP/domain turn from his own holdings and those of his vassals. If he sits on
the throne for twenty years he is going to collect 8,000 RPs.

Avan is a young man, so it is probable he has not done this himself, but if his
bloodline was passed to him directly from his father and his father had sat on
the throne for a long time that could be an explanation for his high bloodline.

Gary

[Kenneth Gauck]

It seems to me that the bloodedness and the way it passes is pretty shallow.
That is if only one generation exists, and there is very little transfer the
rules work pretty well. But if you try to envision how this system works
over several generations its obviously not designed for that.

In a sense the very fact that they present so little family in the game,
when it is perfectly reasonable that some campaigns may become very dynastic
prevents us from guessing at how this ought to work.

One problem we have is that several of the rules are clearly designed to
prevent abuse, not to convey a sense of realism.

Gary brought up an example of that when he pointed out:
>... the rule about investiture that said if an heir is blooded the
investiture has the
>same effect as an act of bloodtheft. If Boeruine transferred his
bloodline to this
>child through a bloodline investiture, the child's bloodline would go up to
32.
>That seems pretty silly considering he could transfer it to an unblooded
character
>who would get all 60 pts

I think they are attempting to prevent players from passing their bloodlines
around to each other before dying, or going on suicide missions, or what
have you. IMO, if there are two players Alan and Byorn, with bloodlines of
60 and 30 respectivly, if Alan wants to surrender his bloodline to Byorn,
then Alan has no bloodedness and Byorn has 60 pts, and presumably the rights
and titles &c &c of Alan. If Corwyn has 34 and Byron has 30, then Corwyn
can give up his line to make Byron go from 30 to 34.

But even then I see room for abuse. Lets say Danton has 30 blood points and
a son who has inherited his 30 blood points (thanks mom), and when Danton
retires he gives his bloodline to an unblooded lieutenant. Well you can
certainly say the newly ennobled lieutenat leaves the campaign (goes off to
the Giantdowns or whatever). But it raises an important question: are the
ablosute number of blood points growing in Cerilia?

Or is there some formula maximum (Provinces*5)+(Sources)?

The rules either seem to permit to rapid a growth in bloodedness, or make
increases unreasonably difficult. Since bloodedness seems to be so
essential to the social setting, its hard to envision how the society
operates without a better understanding how the bloodedness business works.

Kenneth Gauck
c558382@earthlink.net