![[calradia banner 2 3.png]] > [!MESH] > BodyProperties version="4" age="32.11" weight="0.4182" build="0.8823" key="0008200A4E0011852FF5523F7B5094BEE2FEEA1F1F0A170F08B0011F9D9AFA0302CD66240CF0EE000000000000000000000000000000000000000000018C3000" /> ![[2024-05-09_13.20.26.png]] ![[radagos.png|150]] # Radagos ## Self-proclaimed Greedy Bandit # Backstory & History [[Asaios]] on [[Radagos]] (See page [[14]]) > They dragged me back to their camp and left me for a while, then eventually their leader, a savage-looking fellow named [[Radagos]], came up to me to introduce himself. He was chatty, almost as though he was a sort of marriage matchmaker approaching an anxious client. He said it was time to discuss my ransom. Think of this discussion, he said, as if you were playing that game of dice they play in soldiers' camps, where you roll and roll and roll as high as you can without ever rolling over 21. Name a person who might pay your ransom and come up with a sum of denars. If the number is too high, your ransomer will not be able to pay it, and you will die. If that number is too low, then as soon as you become a burden to us, you will die. But if you value your life cleverly, you will live! > [...] > I told him that my "aunt" [[Istiana]] owed me 500 denars, which was probably much more than my father could raise on short notice. > [...] > I asked how he would send such a message. He told me that there was a vast network of letters crossing [[Calradia-Conti.]] from one hand to the other, and for every bird flying overhead from western shore to northern wood to eastern lake, there was a letter passing underneath. If you knew what you were doing, you could send whatever you wanted - as long as it wasn't worth more than a poor man's reputation. Why, he could chop off my finger, wrap it in linen, look up a peddler who he trusted and give him 10 denars and the finger, then the peddler on his journeys would find a charcoal burner he knew and give him eight denars and the finger, and the charcoal burner would pay a shepherd six denars, and so on down the road until at last [[Istiana]], wherever she was, would unwrap the linen and receive a bit of extra motivation to pay my ransom. As for sending and receiving money, he could do that too with a little extra trouble. > [...] > I asked [[Radagos]] how I could be sure that he would release me if [[Istiana]] paid. He told me there were two kinds of bandits, bloodthirsty ones and greedy ones. Bloodthirsty bandits die very quickly, if not at the hands of their victims' vengeful families then at the hands of their own men, for it's a chancy thing to follow a man whose word cannot be trusted. I should be lucky in that I was in the hands of a greedy bandit, he said. Indeed Emperors and Archons should welcome greedy bandits to their domain, for they keep away the bloodthirsty ones and impart order to the business of extortion and abduction, the second oldest profession. He said that he suspected that honorable, greedy bandits created the first kingdoms, having learned it is better to shear and milk sheep then to slaughter them. --- # Game Files / Developer Diaries none