Wager of Banners Demo

Your village is one of several on a small island. None of the others intend to stay small. You inherit a tavern and nothing else. Everything after it has to be paid for out of what the village already makes, so you start with ale and you trade upward from there. Every morning your deck deals you a hand and you work out which card belongs at which door. The same card is worth different things in different villages: a flat two coins in a thin town, six in a thick one where you have built its neighbours or filled the place with tradesmen it likes.

Your villagers turn up with names of their own, a trade they lean toward, and a quirk that pays out in some situations and never in others. Fenn of the Long Table is worth two extra ale a night behind the bar and will not survive a serious argument. Raise your war banner and the whole island knows where to point. A raid comes down to a duel: two champions, best of three rounds, both swinging at the same time.

The defender has the ground and knows it, and whoever you send works no post that night, so a raid costs you a day before anyone throws a punch. Nobody dies here. Beaten fighters are taken, and they do not come back — they work for whoever took them, permanently.…