With a new campaign starting in a month I'm interested in changing up a few things from my last, aborted shortly into the Boy King Period attempt. One of the things I want to do is make conflicts more local and personal; one of the best ways would be to use the antagonism between Earl Roderick and the folks in Levcomagus.

So my question is a general one for the most part: what did you guys do with Levcomagus? More specific sub-questions: How far can the conflict be pushed until the Duke of Silchester steps in? How villainous did you portray Levcomagus? Is there any record of Levcomagus' name or stats; I have a notion to make him a secret wizard... maybe it's the "magus" in the city's name.

What I did in the past was make the feud more personal for the PC Knights by creating enemy knights for them, other than just relying on the conflict between the Earl and the Steward.That helps to keep a lot of the fighting small scale. Two knights have a grudge. Perhaps one even kills another in a duel, and it becomes a family thing, and so on.

I even used one of the adventures out of Prince Valiant (the one where the heir has been accused on witchcraft, by a scheming knight, out to get the auccsed's holdings) as part of the fued. A PC Knight stepped in and defended the boy, thwarted the other (Levcomagus) knight, and gaining an enemy.

I haven't used him much; I've had him as the main villain for one year, and will have him show up again in a year or two; in the meantime, the knights have got reports of raiders of his every so often to keep him fresh in their minds.

What I'm using him for is to emphasise the immoral, might-makes-right nature of the Dark Ages. In my campaign, he was in love with Ellen before the Earl came along. The Earl's men beat him up, possibly 'visited indignities' upon him, and then left him bleeding in a ditch. In the meantime, Roderick looked surprised that Levcomagus had vanished, and quickly won Ellen's hand. The knights don't know this yet - they know that something was up, but not what it was. They're also highly unlikely to sympathise with him because what they do know is that he's got some sort of a deal going with the Saxons against Salisbury, which never quite went through because the PCs stumbled on it.

So here's what happened: the knights fought some raiders from Levcomagus and took a few prisoners. The Earl got a critical on his Hate Levcomagus passion in court and lopped their heads off, then ordered the PCs to take the heads back to Levcomagus with an order to the Steward to keep his goons away from Salisbury. They delivered the message, and then spotted a Saxon saddle in the stables on their way out and made a dash for it. The Steward panicked and sent knights after them to stop them from returning to Sarum with the news; the PCs being PCs, they made it through more or less safely. Levcomagus then dropped the negotiation with the Saxons because Roderick was on to them.

However, since then, people have largely forgotten about it, so in a few years he'll renew the alliance with the Saxons. He's going to bribe the mercenaries that the PCs hired to bolster Salisbury's defences; the mercenaries will defect to his side. He's going to get the PCs' Saxon enemy to lead raids into Salisbury; I dunno what he himself will do but his goal is revenge on the Earl and to kidnap the Countess. I expect that the PCs will be offended by this and respond accordingly...

The Steward better hope Duke Ulfius doesn't find out about that alliance.

I haven't used him yet. We are just starting the anarchy period and i'm trying to set up a kind of civil war is Salisbury (at least that is the goal). I plan on having Cerdic and Levcomagnus try to attack Salisbury and claim control. So the whole of Salisbury (all the knights) are not completly sided with Ellen.

The only thing that really involved Levcomagus was that I had a player who kept having family members disappear. She was playing a female knight (she's about to get a bunch of grief for this now that we are in the anarchy period) whose father mysteriously disappeared and whose mother has disappeared twice so far. Through the course of gameplay she heard of a Roman who knew of her fathers wearabouts. Long story short, one of the Romans tried to kill the PC's, the PC's killed them and returned to Salisbury to present the tale to the Earl and King Uther (he happened to be holding court in Sarum that year). The presented a total of 4 manors to the King claiming them to have been owned by these Romans. The King gave them to the Earl of Salisbury who then presented them to the PC's. Levcomagus lost his temper and was appaled at this because, according to him, the manors were located within the realm of Silchester and should therefore be in his control. (big slip of the tongue by him trying to take ownership instead of claiming that Ulfius should be the owner. So needless to say, Levcomagus is going to attempt to take these manors back. I also need to add that one of these manors (the one given to the female knight) was very grand, bringing in 8 libra and have a larger than normal home. So he basically lost the chance to have 4 more knights under his control and have a nice summer home on the banks of a river.

I set up the knights of Levcomagnus as recurring villains in my game. I figured the castellan himself probably has more of a personal feud with Earl Roderick so I invented a younger brother of his called Arnulf Blaines who was more directly involved in messing with the player knights.

Arnulf Blaines got up to all sorts of trouble in Salisbury but would cover his tracks just enough so that it was fairly obvious he was behind the trouble but difficult to actually prove it. Because of this lack of proof, Duke Ulfius would always favour the word of one of his own knights over that of knights from a different county.

This put the player knights in a difficult situation - how far could they act against Blaines without invoking the wrath of Ulfius?

I've been keeping a record of my campaign over on RPG Geek. Here's a link to the entry where they finally confront Arnulf Blaines face to face: http://rpg.geekdo.com/thread/491626/the-cardiff-boys-vs-pendragon-in-the-year-497

Arnulf Blaines? Does he steal clothes from washing lines?

Good stuff and gets my gears turning. I'm thinking I may take the classic angle of killing a knight of Levcomagus inadvertently near the border, escalating things and finally discovering the animosity between Salisbury and Levcomagus over the Countess. I doubt that sort of thing, even if known, would be discussed very much.

To one of my specific questions, what's the limit on conflict intensity before the Duke or even Uther steps in?

To one of my specific questions, what's the limit on conflict intensity before the Duke or even Uther steps in?


Always, when it affects their income.
Variously, when it offends someone's honor.

To one of my specific questions, what's the limit on conflict intensity before the Duke or even Uther steps in?


Always, when it affects their income.
Variously, when it offends someone's honor.



I guess you have to look at Clarence and Gloucester for an example of this. Both are vassals of Uther ,and later Arthur, yet there is quite a severe level of conflict and violence between them.

The King seems to tolerate it was it presumably doesn't affect his income or the number of troops that both lands can provide. In fact in a way the conflict provides a means for soldiers to be tested so a certain level of conflict could be seen by the King as beneficial.

I presume however that should a lord on either side of the conflict appeal to their liege lord for assistance than there would be an intervention. However that would mean somewhat of a loss of face for the lord who asks for help, he couldn't manage his own problems against a "foe" that should be an equal.

So the liege lord is not affected by the fighting and might be quite happy to see it happening and meanwhile the lord doesn't want to show weakness by asking for intervention. So the fighting rumbles on...

I've been using him as main villain in both my previous and current campaign. (both 531+)
They never meet him (till final showdown in last campaign), hiding behind his knights.
He's usually the evil mastermind behind every adventure and avoids blame like no other, which makes Duke Ulfius complain to Arthur everytime something happens (who of course knows beter and doesnt interfere or tries to amend the injured parties).
[I see him a bit as an evil Richelieu]
Earl of Salisbury never officially 'sanctions' raids on Levcomagus territory (he uses the PC's as public scapegoats), chews the PCs out in public, but rewards them behind closed doors.
Salisbury (and my player knights manors) are raided on regular bases by Levcomagus forces, but the Earl is too weak to start a war against Silchester, while Ulfius is restrained by Arthur.
This allows for some healthy fighting/plundering/hate-passions, and PCs building large fortifications...

fg,
Thijs

I've always run the raiding between Salisbury and Levcomagus more openly and more knightly. THere is nothing wrong with raiding someone who had wronged you, according to the mevieval view.

Hence the Earl spending part of the summer raiding Levcomagus (and vice versa) is a widely know, accepted, and even expected series of events. It just the wife life is.