Up until the last minute, we had maintained we wanted to trade unriya village + gold or troops+gear for samarra castle, but would require Tydeus to retreat to show good faith that he was going to take the trade. Otherwise there was nothing to stop him from reneging on the deal, since he already had the castle.
Yes, nothing to stop us from "renegading" other than that, if nothing else, Hospitaller would most certainly decide to go to war with us had we done so. It's quite easy to see who will win a war between Hospitaller and hero_party, even if we could out-gear you and maintain a 2:1 ratio of kills to deaths, our best case scenario, which is highly unlikely, you'd still win through attrition if nothing else. Clearly, there was far more for us to risk than you as I specifically stated to you in irc. You on the other hand, had very little to lose by simply not returning anything to us and still declaring war. In fact, we'd find ourselves in the same position we are now, except with you having the castle and not us and with hero_party's defeat assured(though entirely unwilling to surrender) even moreso.
I told you we would still be open to negotiations, even the possibility(however unlikely) of transferring the fief back to you, but it would have to wait until after the battle. We came to you the night before with negotiations where it ended with Hospitaller saying they would get back with us that night, which they never did, even after I stayed up an extra 5 hours.
If it's war, we welcome the experience for our main characters. We just wish that, rather than being outnumbered by having to fight Hospitaller, Chevaliers, Astralis, Malta, KUTT and whoever else, we'd only have to be outnumbered fighting Chevaliers, Astralis and Malta. It would certainly be a much more entertaining war, for everyone.
