Bair: Plot of Holski, the Prodigal Princeling

A princeling of 13: a political, literary, and social prodigy...

has taken the throne after his father died.
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• Holki Dairska is shrewd and calculating, wanting more power for himself, but also better things for Bair ...
• The boy believes that he is destined to be the greatest and most popular king that Bair has ever known.

• He has looked back in the histories and legends and found proof that this is so.
He is also very self-centered and immature in a few ways

• Since his coronation he has already cracked down on major dissenters within the population.

• Even before he took the throne, there were aides and advisors that groomed him, and he was willing, soon surpassing them in knowledge and understanding of political situations in and around Bair.
• Now they are his servants, willingly carrying out his whims.
• care less for Bair than for their own interests, and Holki knows this…

• He will “use them for the good of the nation,” so he thinks.

Why is he like this? Perhaps the naïveté of youth, or the dreams of his mother (before her death) to be closer to the elven people. Certainly she never would have advocated for this route to that goal.

• Holki Dairska (King Holki) intends to press westward into the borderlands, and south into Karrnheit, to secure more land, and trade routes with the dwarves, gnomes, and elves.

The elves in particular (he says) have something he wants. He will not tell anyone (as far as anyone knows) about what this is, but there had been cloaked and disguised visitors to the palace on and off for months. Some believe these to be elven visitors; Why? Actually they are intermediaries–a half elf group–that brings information north, and delivers it back south? Also they are a strategic ally: the Skarabrough The only Elves left in the Ursa Wood, with great knowledge of it Advisors know that the youth obsessed with his own “boyhood,”

• that his youth is the key to all his success and power in the world.
• He has not yet come of age, and he privately dreads it, dreads “growing up.”

So Holski could be seeking an elixir of eternal youth from the hands of the Laq Elves (not the Skarborough, whose herbology is less sophisticated as such) There may be Elves among the Laq who have less than pure motives for sharing the magic: There are great riches to be had in this transaction… All of this will be much easier when Karrnheit is subdued or defeated.

The route of this communication will be secured, and the King will have more open access to the trade and knowledge of the Elves.
• At this point, the Elven people trade almost primarily with the Karrnheits,
• appreciating their gentility and kindness over the more harsh and direct ways of the Bair up north.
• Holski would change this.

WESTWARD

• This campaign is under plot right now. Bair plans to ally with any pragmatic source. For example:

• Hill Giants will be given a basic promise of wealth and whatever resources Hill Giants desire, if they will join the forces. These Giants latch on to the plan, with a particular aim of defeating the other races of giant whom they hate so much.

• Orcs are being called to alliance as well, that they might share in the wealth and defeat rival tribes.

• Bairen Generals privately recommend a full-on war against the westerners (human clans, as well as dwarves, ogres, giants, orcs, even dragons), making casualties mostly non-human if possible. It looks to be a very destructive and angry conflict.

"Strange Bedfellows" KARRNHEIT Meanwhile, in Karrnheit, the Coalition of Counties will offer Bair a plea for peace. They have no chance of defeating them militarily.

• The relationship has always been a beneficial one of trade and mutual support,
• despite the different in governmental structures.

• They would(helplessly) rather let Bair take over than fight.
• Many fear the rule of a monarch, as they have been at least semi-democratic for so long.

So Holki schemes.
He sees the beginning of a Hobgoblin War in the waste, and he knows

• it will draw regional attention from Bair and its doings.

• Elves will be absorbed, and the Karrnheits looking that way,
• possibly sending what troops they can.
• (In other words, Holski is taking advantage of Karrnheit’s benevolence to overrun their country.)

It is perhaps a major oversight that the invasion of Karrnheit will also jeopardize the relationship with the Elven people, but Holki assumes that the Elves need this trade.
And that is true in many ways; a portion of the Elven economy would collapse if trade with Karrnheit ceased.
Once the invasion of Karrnheit begins: There will be a strong and relentless underground opposition to the Bairen invasion,

• by elves, half-elves, and humans especially.
• Some kobolds will also join.
• They will spread information, magic weapons and other magicks, and strategies for undermining and boycotting Bairen forces.

HOLSKI DRAMA ALONG THE WESTERN BORDERS OF THE URSA

MID JANVAR: HOLSKI (HOLSKI DAIRSKA ("King Holski of Bair"))

Northwest Bairen Frontier

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This is the far northwestern reach of Bair itself, so far untouched by the forces of King Holski. This area is under the old system of tribes and clans. Will they bond together and fight off the Kingdom?

THE HOLSKI DRAMA

see also LD II: November Sessions 2024 
ARMY CAMPED UP AGAINST EASTERN URSA FOREST
rapidly clearing wood from the Ursa's periphery
hunters and sentries and patrols and lumberyards.. direct sign of preparation for war. Holski himself somewhere among these camps?
He is troubled by his dreams
and prophecies he gets from Braille, his oracle:
The King's destiny tied up with Lolth, Demon Queen of Spiders By the vision of Braille,
Looks for "the Blue One," and will not stop until he finds her and brings her to him
She is the key to his destiny, the slayer of Lolth, Great Lady of the Drow.
"My conquest cannot safely keep any land while the spider queen lives."
The Skarbarough, the wood elves still in the forest

• cowed (no choice really) into a truce with the armies of Bair, promised peace and sovereignty late.
  
Informed even before Willabunk (the wood giant)--actually inormed at all--about the locale of the party
• Once again forced into service by the massive threat

• HOLSKI DAIRSA, KING OF BAIR: TACTICS and ASPECTS
• First, Holski Dairska is obsessed driven to distraction and driven to distractionwith two things:
• Elves (his self-serving alliance with the Skaraborough for example)
• Assumes they worship him like anyone else
• They really have no choice
• Have been given a promise of liberation and "rule" over the forest
• Some are more loyal than others...
• and His Own Youth (looking for it, especially by the Laq Elves)
• "the Blue One"

ARMY

• gradually encircled the main portion of the north Frontier
  
• soon they will move forward with an assault to conquer, the (Broond and Blennd already taken soon after the party left)
• Encircle lower Frontier, then assault the Orcreach, as a from which to march south to Karnnheit, the next big goal
  

Will keep a force on the eastern Ursa
Especially to find "the blue one"
Nova

• He believes frantically and with paranoia that this "blue one" is the only
• One that can save the realm. that it can survive

• Since he learned of Lolth and the Drow and their (supposed) danger
• Holski worries most about he himself, and the Spider Queen, and dying by her poisonous jaws
• She is the one thing he truly fears (an arachnaphobia really; his only weakness)

Along the way, the army attests to the "liberation" and "the Bairen empire"...
anyone that can hold a weapon is "compelled" to join...
Creatures joined up (mostly Opportune):

Holski Orcs,

Hobgoblins and Goblins and Bugbears

• Ogres
• Hill Giants
• some Gnolls
• and of course legions of humans as well

In any case, to summarize:

• A boy-king has inherited the throne. He is intelligent and shrewd far beyond his years: a social and political prodigy.
• He is obsessed with staying young forever. He suspects the Elves in the Lakewood can create some magic of this kind.
• The Elves trade now almost exclusively with the Karrnheits, as they are seen as more gentle and kind the the Bair.
• King Holki plots to invade and overthrow the Karrnheits to gain access to the Elven trade, and its magic. (The majority of Bairens would oppose this plan if they could.)
• The King also plans to expand westward to gain more direct access to the goods obtained and manufactured in the far west beyond the Deepwash Mountains.