Samantha's School of K-nighthood/Chapter 7: Taxes and Money

Okay boys and girls...this is where you learn all about how to get money.

When you start off in a realm, you'll most likely be an unaligned noble. This means that you don't currently have a personal estate and you aren't aligned to a specific region. At best, you might have some peripheral alignment to a region if you are the first member of your family to strike out on your own. This won't do when it comes to keeping your purse filled with the very pretty disks that everybody always wants.

When you first start making your own way, you'll get gold from your family. You'll get more on your third day and then even more on your 7th day. After that...they cut those purse strings off. Now you need to get money on your own. this means you have to swear an Oath of Allegiance to a region lord. This means, that in exchange for your support of their region, you'll get a portion of the region's gold income. For the most part, you'll probably have to make an offer to the lord. A lot of times, lords can't make offers to you without being...uummmm.....impolite. How big of a percentage depends upon the region. I'd suggest trying to get at least 40 gold a week. Once your oath is accepted, you'll have a personal estate in whatever region is now your home. Your estate can be set to two different purposes and has three different sizes.

Maintaining Production and Tax Collection: This means your estate, stewards, serfs and servants help the region produce its raw materials and gold. Should production ever get damaged due to monster outbreaks, undead, open combat, etc, etc, etc...you're the guys who rebuild it.

Maintaining Authority: This means you and your guys are out there rousting the rabble, shaking down the hooligans and otherwise doing things to keep the smelly, unwashed masses in line. This allows you to help keep the region control in line.

The size of your estate determines how much you can contribute to the region. There are three sizes; small (5), medium (7) and large (8). Technically, there is a 4th size, which is the region lord size (12), but you only get that if...well...you are a region lord. You can set your estates or enlarge them only when you are in the region itself. If you want to enlarge your estate from a small to medium, or from medium to large size, it will take 25 gold each time. Each region has a minimum amount of estates that it takes to maintain production and authority. Smaller regions can usually get by with only one or two k-nights and their regions. Cities need many more. Cities can always support more k-nights than rural regions.