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Being petty jerks in Six Ages actually makes you the most powerful clan everEven our C-listers are hardcore

Even our C-listers are hardcore

I’m usually nice.Six Agesis about leading a village in a roughly bronze age fantasy world, in which culture is of paramount importance. Morality and belief and social expectations are complex and compared to those of our own society, very odd. What we’d call the right thing isn’t always the same thing that Riders, the game’s main culture, would consider right. Even so, I try to be decent. Merciful, and magnanimous, and amenable to reason. But what if there’s another way?

Events are the heart ofSix Ages. During each of its five seasons, you can carry out two actions, and be confronted with random events. These can be just about anything. Your horses keep falling into gopher holes and breaking their legs. Another clan wants you to act as a messenger to help broker peace with their rival. Someone has made up an insulting song about you. Each demands a response (inaction is often possible, and sometimes wise). Ranged along the bottom of the screen are your ‘ring’: the seven nobles who represent the clan, who enact your decisions as best they can, and will advise you on anything that comes up.

The clan gather to watch as our chieftain, Zuchi, rejects the child a second time in its short life and goes about her day. I’d hoped they would start chanting “Dunk! Dunk! Dunk! Dunk!”, but instead the crowd mostly grumbles until Zuchi reminds them that since their ancestors were also jerks who turned needy people away, that made it fine. They have a lot to learn.

Our first year is a calm one. There’s an earthquake, sealed up with an offering to the earth goddess, and a fancy warrior from the Flame Singer clan asks to marry one of our nobles. There’s also an internal dispute over a treasure. I have Zuchi tell everyone that the clan’s decision is “piss off”. This annoys the noble, the Flame Singers, and much of our own clan. But later in the year, when some desperate goat herders ask to join our clan, we go all in and the people join in as we mock their stupid, hungry faces. I think the people are starting to get the idea.

Come Fire Season (the height of summer, a common time for raiding since the farmers have nothing else to do) we need a target. Our law expert Aznom casually notes that the neighbouring Nar-Onon clan “has the most herds.” Little does Aznom know, he has just cursed Nar-Onon.

We repeatedly steal the Nar-Ononi cattle in raids - not full fights, but small parties sent to rustle precious cows. Six Ages features no money, and even trade goods are evaluated on their relative worth to a cow. Herds are wealth, they are food, they are stability and pride. The only thing that comes close to as important to Rider culture is horses.

Riders, Wheels and Rams share a hardy attitude in which outright war is very rare, but skirmishes and duels and deadly confrontations are just a thing that happens. Mostly. But one of the things that Six Ages captures perfectly is that individuals and societies alike can imbue common events with enormous significance. The smallest molehill can become everything. So, gradually, my plan to be an unguided scattergun of low-level dickheadery became a poisonous campaign against the Nar-Ononi people.

Four years later, our warfare screen looked like this:

They must belivid. A depleting cow spiral almost always means the terminal decline of a clan. Small herds are a sign of vulnerability, which attracts mockery, extortion, and more raids. It’s a cruel, cruel time and sure enough, after another year of it, the Nar-Onon somehow get hold of some shamanic magic and curse us with a plague.

The best way to deal with it is sacrificing to the gods. And oh hey, look at that, we have a load of cattle now.

In between this now-traditional bullying, we’re doing quite well. We have a very skilled explorer in Halakar, a big feller who would be on the ring if he wasn’t a worshipper of the god of travel and exploration. Thanks to him, and our crafters and silver-tongued traders, we have a thriving market and all the defensive fortifications possible. Almost nobody likes us, but we taunt and threaten anyone who comes close, and slightly kidnap some children who wandered onto our land so people are a little bit scared of us.

“Zuchi, long known for her lashing tongue, has grown all the more acerbic of late,” says a fresh event in the 18th year of the chief’s rule. The clan have come together to insist that our she be removed. Again, in a typical game I would likely boot her out, or distract everyone with a party. But when I click on Zuchi’s portrait to ask her advice, she tells the entire clan, her own clan, to go to hell.

Trolls arrive, peaceful ones looking to buy something to eat, like cows, horses, “or any spare people you don’t want any more”. I kind of like these guys. Jevon, our Raven worshipping trickster, suggests sending them to curse another clan. I ask the lawspeaker, Hanzin. “Attacking with darkness monsters violates unspoken rules”, he says. Violates unspoken rules, you say? SOLD.

We also violate a more spoken rule when we raid one of our allies, the Varn-Rashi. They came over and mocked us, and I sort of forgot we were friends and sent a hundred screaming riders over to fight them. “We are known for our rudeness”, says the lawspeaker later that year. It’s nice to feel appreciated.

Varvelings attack from the South, outnumbering us. The Varn-Rashi show up to join them, having presumably got sick of my lip. The sensible, modern thing to do when outnumbered 4 to 1 would be to buy the attackers off, or just leave and let them loot the place so nobody has to die. Instead, I tell the Varn-Rash to piss off and theyapologiseand leave. This demoralises the Varlevings somewhat, to the point that we win! Then, immediately afterwards, the Nar-Ononi show up with another army twice our size and we cane them too! I didn’t even know this was possible.

The next season, the Jade Colt, who I’d never noticed before, show up offering to raid a clan of our choice if we gave them cows and an alliance. Well now, let me think. Is there anyone around here we don’t like? Thus it is that the Colts smack the Varn-Rashi up, and “shouted our name as they galloped victorious from the battlefield.” I think we’ve got sidekicks!

Meanwhile, most of our diplomats are busy torturing a Varn-Rashi herder to death to entertain the tribe and/or some ravens.

Look, they started it. And besides, the Nar-Ononi have hardly any cows left; someone keeps taking all the good ones. We are informed that the Varn-Rashi “have sworn to destroy us”. BRING IT.

Trading is going well, otherwise, except that we need more trading partners and to gain more wealth. I ask the ring for advice about all the tribes we’ve yet to visit and receive a litany of “they hate us” in reply. Hmm.

“We are known as backstabbing weasels”, says the lawspeaker at Sacred Time. I might have gone too far this year.

To capitalise on their power, I decide that this year’s hot new battle strategy is to follow up our usual threats, boasts, and intimidation with a full berserker charge. Given that we bully and insult them every time, I am continually amazed that the Nar-Ononi keep agreeing to our parley offers. Perhaps they like it. Oh my god. They’re the bratty sub clan.

It’s the Nar-Ononi. They win a contest to get their own cows back. Naturally, we felt duty bound to spend the next few seasons stealing them all again.

Our friends the Jade Colts report troubling news. The Alkothi have arrived. The Alkothi are powerful demon worshippers universally feared among Riders and Wheels. They enslaved all our ancestors, and if anything could unite us all it’s them. They are hostile, scary, and very strong. Nobody is ashamed to admit fear of the Alkothi. They also happen to be our clan’s specific ancestral enemy. So we tell the Jade Colts we will lead a war party to attack them. They are stunned. “Fight the Alkothi head on? Is the Red Paper clan made up of madmen?” they ask.

What do you think, readers?

After a successful attack on the Alkothi, another surprise comes when, a year later, the Nar-Ononi grow a spine from somewhere and attempt to raid us. They fail, of course, and we kill about 20 of them, but before I can punish their insolence the Seven Stars, whoever they are, come asking for protection, offering an alliance and 20 cows. Sure, why not. They promise to give us five cows every time we attack their enemies, and five more if we win. Their main enemy?

The Nar-Onon clan.

I promise I am not making any of this up. It’s fire season, so we immediately raid the Nar-Ononi cattle, then start a full raid. Eleen calls for parley just to call them pov scum and laugh, then we berserker-stab about 50 of them and take all their stuff.

After all this, and his many skirmishes and adventures out in the wilds, our explorer Halakar has become a legendary warrior. We also have many talented leaders and magicians (and a famous farmer who dies of old age, “crowing with delight at having outlived all her enemies”. Even our C-listers are hardcore). It’s now, after nearly 30 glorious years of unrivalled arseholery, that our founder and chieftain Zuchi dies.

So where has she left us? We have built every possible fortification. We have one of the best markets in the valley. We have 934 cattle, an extraordinary 184 goods, so many treasures that I honestly stopped reading the descriptions and just threw them on the pile,fourongoing feuds, and are renowned throughout the land for defeating the dreaded Alkothi… and being the most irascible, horrible people who ever rode a horse. We’re fast becoming the plundering, treacherous, total dickhole clan that nobody can deny are boss as hell. USA! USA! USA!

Eleen steps up as our new war chief, and promises to raid our enemies into the dust. Sure enough, that very year, our resumption of constant attacks on the Nar-Ononi hits a peak. They deploy a magical machine I’ve never seen before, some kind of horseless chariot that beamed burning light, quite possibly the ark of the covenant. It is a superweapon from their gods. They must have been counting on that to turn the tables, but our diplomat Vurana calmly neutralises it. Ourdiplomatrode out and single-handedly shut down the magical laser tank of the gods.

I think we have honoured Zuchi’s memory. The Red Paper clan may have lost one arsehole, but we’ve gained hundreds more.