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As it says, in PoP women aren't treated quite as bad. Though male lords still taunt you and I believe women still get the renown bonuses, women don't have to deal with the fact you aren't awarded a fief if vassalized.



We are to choose our gender, I pick female as there are some bonuses you get for being female. The aforementioned renown bonus (I believe) is nice, the ability to marry a male lord and basically get ownership of his fiefs, and after getting so much renown male players get offers to be vassalized by kings... and if you refuse you lose relations. I'll get to that, and boy will there be words about the relationship system...

Also just female, the "Pretty Female" is erm... . Don't worry, we'll still see some characters using the pretty female model eventually...



Now we answer a few questions, kinda like the questions asked in Morrowind that determines your class. Except we don't get the option to say "I don't like this class" and manually select what we want. You get stats, skills, items and starting cash depending on your answers. I'll be deciding these for min maxing purposes to make the early game easy. The other questions and answers I picked(and paraphrased, there is a paragraph for each question and answer) are:

You were born years ago, in the Land of Barclay, far to the West and South of Pendor. You never knew your mother, who died when you were young. Your father was... An impoverished and displaced minor Noble from Pendor.

You came into the world the daughter of impoverished nobility. Your family fled the Southern Pendor city of Janos. Upon purchase of a tumbledown manor in an outlying district of Barclay, your father managed to provide you with a good education and trained you in the duties of the aristocracy and life at court. You start with negative relations with the Empire.

In your youth, you had very little idle time, as your father.... arranged for you to serve a minor Barclay noble.

Growing up you were sent to live in the court of a minor barony of Barclay. You learned humility waiting upon the lords and ladies of the household. From their hobbies you quickly learned the the conflicts of adult life and competition.

Then after what seemed an eternity, your life changed. You were given the opportunity to become... A bard

You became a woman, and the whole world seemed to have changed around you. You set out with nothing more then your instrument and your voice. It was a poor existence, and you spent many hungry nights when people failed to appreciate your music, but you managed to get by on music alone. As the years went by you became adept at playing to drunken crowds and even better at talking anyone out of whatever you wanted.

But as fate would have it everything in your world changed and you had to leave Barclay. You struck out for Pendor because... Personal revenge

Only you know what caused you to give up your old life and became an adventurer. Still your choice to leave was not difficult, with rage burning so brightly in your heart. You want vengeance. You want justice. You know what was done to you cannot be undone, but you demand repayment for those wrongs in blood.

This is just a taste of how wordy this mod can be. I'll try and condense it down as much as possible.



We can now pick our banner since we are considered a noble. Whatever we pick will be above us on the world map, above our fiefs, some armors and shields take the look of your banner, and our units will have the banner's icon above their heads. You can actually edit the banners, if any goon wants to make their own banner edit banners_a.dds in the PoP>textures folder and I'll use it. For now we are using the black one with what looks like a two red snakes eating each other.



The game gives us an option of allowing us to exit without saving or being realistic and not allowing us to exit without saving. This also causes the game to autosave when we run into fights and enter cities. I turned this off cause fuck that.

Anyways this is the character screen. I name our heroine Lela Goonsire cause I'm completely terrible with names and Lela certainly isn't just Leal rearranged. Feel free to vote for a name for her.



So I put 3 attribute points in dexterity and one in strength. Put 3 in ironflesh, 1 in power strike, 2 in shields, and 1 in inventory management. Then I poured all the weapons skill in crossbows. So to explain:

Strength gives you +1 HP per point, every multiple of 3 allows you to increase the cap of the skills ironflesh, powerstrike, power draw and power throw.

Dexterity increases your attack speed, each point put into it gives you an extra 5 weapon points, and each multiple of 3 increases the cap for weapon master, shield, riding, athletics, horse archery and looting.

Intelligence gives you an extra skill point (I will be abusing this) and each multiple of 3 increases the cap for trainer, tracking, tactics, path finding, spotting, inventory management, wound treatment, surgery, first aid and engineering.

Charisma increases your party size by 1 and each multiple of 3 increases the cap for persuasion, trade, prisoner management and leadership.

For the skills I leveled up, ironflesh increases your health, powerstrike increases damage done by melee attacks, I put points in shields since it makes them more durable and it also makes an invisible wall around your shield arm that can block attacks without you needing to actively defend. Then inventory management gives me an extra 6 slots of inventory space.

As for why I went crossbows, PoP hates archers unless its way endgame and I don't find it worth the effort since I'm basically required to ride around on a horse with a lance anyways.



This is our heroine, I didn't put much effort. She'll be wearing a helmet soon anyways.



Nothing really important, we take the caravan to Ravenstern as their bandits are less "FUCK YOU PLAYER" then the other factions. Also we cannot arrive at Empire lands as we start off hostile to them.



Finally a fight! After all those words its nice to see some action!



Our fist opponent is some random outlaw with a bow. Alright no problem, lemme just equip my weapon...

*scrolls mousewheel*

....

*scrolls mousewheel*

Why aren't I equipping my weapon?



Why don't I have any weapons on my back?!

*mousewheels up*

..... Oh what the fuck I have no weapons



My fists aren't doing anything! I must use the special technique a women should use against men...



Kicking him in the dick didn't work



Oh god he got sick of me pushing him around and he pulled out his weapon.



I lost the tutorial fight. This has seriously never happened to me before. Welp, LP over guys.



I dunno whats sad, the fact I saw this screen or that they thought of this and made it just in case



This is the man that saved us. Now had we remembered to bring a weapon to this fight he would show up after we killed that bandit and ask us to go to his place.



He asks us to help save his brother from some Mystmountain Raiders that he used to trade with.



Now we can blow him off, but he gives us some money for our troubles so we accept it. He tells us to go get some extra men before attempting to save his brother.



He then tells us after finding the men we can find him in the tavern.



We are then booted to the map screen for some reason. Lets head right back into the town and go into the tavern. Also when you first move you get a message from the mod team saying the mod is for advanced players and whatnot. I think it'd be more apt if they just had an ASCII middle finger. Anyways before we head into town lets check out our inventory.



We have 2 swords, a shield and a crossbow as well as bolts (and a dress that'll be promptly sold). However I can't actually use any of those weapons minus the shield cause I don't have the strength for it. Thats... odd. I swore before you'd always spawn with a dagger at least. Alright into the city proper.



So while in a city we get a few options. We can go to the castle and talk to the lords and ladies in there, we can walk around the streets and talk to the citizens and see shops or the guildmaster. Luckily PoP has the addition that allows us to talk to the guildmaster from this screen instead of having to find him in the city. And trust me, sometimes those guildmasters are damn good hiders. We can visit the arena to do some sparring, we can visit the tavern which will have various NPCs in them, and we can go to the market place. We can also wait there where we will stay at an inn and heal up faster and in safety. Lets head to the market



This is the market screen, we drag stuff to the left side of the screen to sell and drag stuff to the right to buy. Each market has its own amount of cash, however you don't have to sell the proper item to each store. For example you can sell armor at the weapon shop or weapons at the goods shop. We sell that dress and buy a winged mace, its cheap and we can actually lift it with our jelly arms. Now lets head into the tavern



And here is the tavern, and we actually got a good amount of NPCs in here. Lets talk to the lady in blue, shall we?



This is Leslie, she is a companion. Companions are basically soldiers that you can recruit that level up like you do, you can select what to increase when they level up and you can choose their equipment. And as a bonus they will never die, they just get knocked out. Usually you need to pay money to recruit companions, from 500 up to 8000, but Leslie is one of the few free companions.

Her story is basically she's a trader, she and her brother got jumped by a band of Jatu (Oh we'll get to know them soon enough...), her brother and everyone else in the caravan were killed and she was basically a sex slave for the Jatu. Then some adventurers came around and killed the Jatu and she was freed and here she is.



Yeah this game has a few things about sex. In the "Oh I'm trying to be mature rape happens right guys?" kinda way. It gets worse then this. Anyways she starts at level 1, meaning you can level her up however you want. She starts with 5 trading which gives us a 25% bonus for trading. However she is going to be the first half of the intelligence bitch dou. No fighting skills for her or the other person, just pumping points into intelligence cause any party skills your companions have will effect the party. So while I'm getting all the personal and fighting skills, they can keep our party patched up and give us movement bonuses. Now for another party in the tavern



You can hire mercenaries from taverns. They're often more expensive in upkeep then standard troops, but you get the bonus of not having to train them up and you can get some powerful units from mercenaries. These guys are really not that great, but they're much better then you going to a village and recruiting 6 "soldiers" who will actually just be peasants with farming equipment.

We talk to the merchant and he tells us to go out and find the band of raiders that took his brother.



Conveniently a group spawns right outside of the town and they get a blue party color. Clicking on a party will make you walk to them and follow them if they are moving around.



Hah! And did you bring silver in hopes of ransoming on of our captives?



I remember in elementary school watching some movie about a kid living in his father's cottage and his father was trying to get back to his son. He comes across someone who may of seen his son and the guy says "Oh, did you bring some silver?". The father racks his gun and says "No, I got lead though." I thought it was badass back then...



Now before a battle starts you can charge the enemy which you take part in the battle, order your troops to attack you which has the game autocalculate the outcome (and its also heavily weighed against you.. joy) or leave. If you didn't initiate the combat you can't leave, you can only surrender.



I charge out alone, my units wont really do much or die and I really need them. The main issue here is the guy with the two handed axe and is wearing actual armor.



The mace gets some good use, notice it says "Knocked out" on the bottom left. If you "kill" a unit with a blunt weapon you knock them out, which means after the battle you can take them prisoner. Luckily the battle wasn't as bad as what usually happens (the guy in armor fucking up everyone) and I won by myself. Here is my poor attempt of getting a victory pose



At least the two troops surrounding me are cheering



After each battle you get a report. It shows who was killed or "wounded" aka being knocked out. Useful if a unit dies and you need to know who to replace. And if your units are KO'd but you win, they are out of commission for a bit but they'll be useable. Much better then them dying.



I'll spare your life, but in exchange I want information. Tell me where you're hiding the brother of the merchant and give me your word that you'll stop troubling the people here and you can go free.

Oh bless you lady. We've done him no harm, we've been keeping him in our camp near Orin. I'll describe the area so there is no mistaking it...



This screen, if we knock people out we can "capture" them which will put them in our prisoner box in the bottom right. We can only have as many prisoners depending on our prisoner management skill.



And this is the loot screen, depending on how difficult the fight was and your looting skill determines what drops. We'll be taking everything and selling it all minus the bread. So on our way to the bandit camp lets talk to Leslie



We can check her equipment to change it, see her skills which will allow us to level her up if she got enough experience, we can separate, and we can ask her about other stuff like repeating her story to us or telling her about our dreams to become queen. Managing equipment.. eh, I do it all myself so I don't bother. Speaking of!



The companion inventory screen is like the trading one. We can drag and drop stuff from our inventory onto her. We trade out her dress for one of the uniforms in my inventory which provides more protection. And we give her a cudgel to replace the dagger cause she cannot block with a dagger. But she wont be fighting anyways.



When you approach camps you get this screen. You can leave to prepare yourself (quicksave) or charge in. If you get knocked out the camp disappears, you don't want that to happen.

We charge forth into the fight, I command my troops to follow me since they default to charge and run around like morons splitting up and getting picked off. First enemy I see is...



. I don't even get why I was getting huge speed penalties, I was running up to him and whacking him, backing off before running up again. He on the other hand stood still and broke my shield on the first hit then two shot me

I went in for round 2 and this guy did not spawn at all, which is weird. PoP I think you're going soft, before you'd spawn like 4 of these guys. Regardless victory is mine.



A better shot of people cheering. Also that guy in the left without a circle above his head? Thats the merchants brother coming up to us. We tell him to head home and NOT fuck around with bandits for a change.



After clearing a bandit camp they drop a lot of good stuff. Looting is the only modifier here since you can only take so many units into a camp and you don't get reinforcements. We take it all to sell, of course.



We head back and the merchant pays us for a job well done. Whats funny though is that in vanilla there is supposed to be another quest where you help the merchant chase out some bandits from town but that doesn't happen in PoP, it just ends here. I don't know why it isn't there, it can't be because it'd be too hard cause since when did PoP care about something being too difficult? Anyways



So whats next in mind? Future updates will be shorter then this, just a lot of stuff and being thrown about in the beginning.