Eldritch Earth: Five Hacks Deep

LORD–Defined: A man chosen by a King or Earl to be governor over 1 Hundred (5 mile x 5mile area with 100 Churl militia-farm families and about 1000 total population). Or, over a 1000-person ward or district of a city or large town (an Urban Hundred).

LORD–Privileges:

• An estate of 5-10 Hides (25gp profit per hide per month) or city property netting an equivalent in rent.
• Keep 250gp per month of royal tax from the Hundred.
• Treated as a Lord in the law courts.
• Attend the Witan to advise the King and to elect new kings.
• The right to build fortifications of stone to defend the Hundred

LORD–Duties:

• Hold a Hundred-Moot 4 times a year to settle disputes among the churls.
• Lead to militia of the Hundred in defense of the Hundred and its neighbours.
• Send 20 militia and 1 knight to serve the king or earl for 60 days if army is called.
• Responsible for the 550gp of royal tax that must be sent up to the earl and king.
• Administer the king's laws in his Hundred.
• Pay 30gp to his local parish church each month, and help with any major repairs to the church.

VASSAL–Defined: every man (churls, geburs and burgers all) in the kingdom must have a lord to whom he swears faithfulness, someone who is not a lord, is called a vassal. A vassal is not an employee, slave or property of his lord, but is expected to follow his orders during military actions and during court procedures and to pay his royal taxes to him. Lords and Vassals are expected to be loyal to one another, not to lie or cheat one another. A vassal who will not swear faithfulness to the Lord of his hundred is expected to sell or abandon his land at the end of the year and find another.

OATH OF FAITHFULNESS: each year, typically on January 1, the men of Nessex all swear an Oath of Faithfulness to a Lord, which is reckoned to last 1 year. This binds them to a lord as their war-time commander and their judge in matters of law. Breaking the oath by lies, defiance or crime on either side is considered an offence under law and is tried in the Earl's court, unless an Earl is involved, in which case it is tried by the King.

The least complicated way to become a lord is for the player to be appointed to a vacant lordship by an Earl or the King. There's no format for this, it must arise from player action through the course of political role-play. A more likely scenario is for the player to create and settle his own lordship.

To create a lordship, one must stake out a 5 by 5 mile area in unclaimed land. Then one must settle at least 500 people on it. If the territory is adjacent or easily accessible to the Kingdom, then applying to the King will like result in his accepting the founder as a new Lord and assigning him to the authority of the nearest Earl.

One might want to establish a completely independent lordship outside of the kingdom, which has its advantages (setting one's own tax rate and keeping all the cash, for example), but it has a significant downside in that it will be much harder to recruit loyal vassals to farm the land.

The Spring Arrivals at Kingston: each Spring a crowd of immigrants arrive in Kingston looking for a place to settle. These immigrants can be recruited in Kingston in the spring months (March-May). They come in 2 sorts–Prepared and Unprepared. The Prepared Vassals have tools, maybe some animals, and are ready to get settled and build a farm. Unprepared have nothing but the shirts on their backs.

A player desiring to gain vassals can make one recruitment effort per year of these immigrants. He spends 3 weeks in Kingston mixing with the arrivals making contacts and arrangements. At the end of the time he gains 10 Prepared people per point of Charisma Score and 20 Unprepared people willing to swear an oath of fealty to him and to come to his settlement.

Recruiting Vassals in Europe: A player can recruit as many Unprepared people as he wishes by sailing to Europe, spending a month recruiting, and paying for their food, passage and other expenses to cross the sea.

Poaching Vassals: a player can recruit vassals of another lord to come over to his land. Usually, these vassals count as Unprepared, being the landless laborer families of a Hundred looking to gain a Hide of their own. Attempting to do recruit vassals this way can only be done in a town (not Kingston) but can be attempted at any time of the year. The player must spend 2 weeks chatting up folks in a town and then rolling a CHA check, if successful, he gains 1+CHA bonus, x5 people interested in moving to the new settlement,and if he rolls “20” or better on the check, then the recruits will be Prepared. (i.e., if Frank has a CHA bonus of +2, he would gain (1+2)x5=15 people). However, there is a chance that this will be noticed and cause a reaction by the local lord. If the player passes both a CHA and an INT check during the drive, then his actions are not noticed by the local lord, if either fails, the lord will find out and will likely confront the poacher. Poached vassals can be recruited at any time, but they will not come to the settlement until January, when their oath of faithfulness can be changed.

• Step 1: stake out a 5 mile x 5mile area, clear it of hostile monsters and outlaws.
• Step 2: start building a hall or manor house, a parish church and a watch/bell tower, these are legal requirements.
• Step 3: settle at least 500 people on the land. These are divided into 100 churl families each with 1 Hide of land. Immigrant recruits arrive in June, Poached recruits arrive in January.
• Step 4: apply to the Earl or King for recognition.

Prepared Vassals:_Underlia look after themselves.