lol; not at anyone in particular, but at the witchhunt. Listen to Knute and Egan. Also draw a line from Jelbelgi through Rindyar and what do you see.....? Factor in Knudarr, Tibault, Derechios, and to a much lesser extent Keledran.
Figure it out yet
A major trade route? How would an independent merchant survive in Strat with no safe havens? The economy of strat led to the destruction of its independent merchant class, because safe havens were being taken.....and today how many true/pro merchants are left standing???
Now replace merchant w/bandit. Many bandit clans have consolidated and those left are now fighting for fiefs because they have no safe havens to run to.
Don't fool yourself about the other castles either, I myself spread several hundred troops among them months ago.
Then, back b4 the "Nebun/Vovka" wall
was built I started noticing large increases in troop count in mainly Jelbegi and Rindyar. I watched and finally blamed Rindyar on ATS because they were stacked in there like cordwood. There were a few of the HRE bandit guys in there also. I thought it was great, if I could safely make it inside the castle; I wouldn't be kicked out or overcharged. I also made a habit of placing any troops I recruited, while resting, inside the castle b4 leaving. I'm not saying I'm responsible for the large #'s, I'm not. I'm saying there were many conspirators, who didn't even know each other existed, adding to the troop count. How many of you know the amount of troops I've dropped off??? None, because I don't even know
now multiply that by anybody w/an interest in keeping those castles open (mainly Jelbegi, gateway to 22nd land...and Rindyar, end of the line,) and add to it the guys who were simply trying to get rid of troops they couldn't afford to feed.
I can't say for a fact the Mercs or Hosp didn't put any in, but if they did; they did it in conjunction w/many of us and very gradually. So then I would have to ask how 2 clans, the Mercs running for survival, had 4k troops to spare and the Hosp, who have been accused of being weak and in dire need of EU help to survive, found 14,000 troops to spare months ago when their need was the greatest. 14000 troops = 583 perfect days of recruiting...59 days for a clan of 10
tl/dr lol those troops have been there for months!!! And, I doubt Mercs or Hosp put any in.
ATS put all the troops there. We realized how it would work a few months ago, and started pumping troops into rinyar. We thought it would be funny to slaughter peasants wearing plate armor. But it took too long to build up the castle and everyone got bored of it, so we left.
I am suprised it took everyone so long to figure it out though.
edit: It's not actually a good strategy, if we just were to use those troops to attack rinyar the normal way we would have taken it much sooner. But strat is pretty dead in NA, and this seemed like a good way to have a battle everyone would have thought was fun.
