Board Thread:General Mod Discussion/@comment-27462565-20161205065856/@comment-30079501-20161230170824

Dragonovith wrote: There's something slightly off with Dorwinion. I mean, they are enemies of Angmar, Dol Guldur, Mordor, Gundabad, Isengard and the Half-trolls, but yet they expect peace with the Easterlings?

What prevents the Easterlings from simply putting their banner on Dorwinion and say: "This land belong to us now, you grapelovers, and from now on you'll pay tribute to us!"

With the War of the Ring being waged, I see no reason for the Khaganate not to try some kind of hostile takeover, so I believe that their relations could receive two small tweaks to better represent the idea of the situation between these two factions, that currently makes part of this mod's lore:

-- Dorwinion pays a tribute to the Khaganate to avoid being attacked by them. This could be mentioned by NPCs saying things like: "Our gold and our wine buy a fragile peace between us and the Khaganate, but I fear it may not last for long", "The men and those pointy-eared people of Dorwinion are weak, I say! They fight the mighty of the Easterling fist with treasure and grape. Our leaders are happy for now, but their will is unpredictable.". I think that dialogues like this show how tense the situation is, a simply border skirmish between the two sides could cause a war! I hope the diplomats of Dorwinion have the "Grey Eminence" trait.

-- If tribute buys the peace of Dorwinion, no Orc invasion should happen there (maybe only from Gundabad, they're purely chaotic anyway), because the Khaganate would probably send emissaries to Dol Guldur and Mordor, asking them not to raid Dorwinion. "Yo Sauron, ma bro. Don't mess with the Dorwinrim, man, they're cool, ya know? They gimme booze and cash - Signed: Mighty leader of the Khaganate". That doesn't mean the players and Dorwinion won't be enemies of those factions, of course not, but they should stop raiding and invading Dorwinion, after all, they are literally collaborating with the bad guys!

For Mordor, Dorwinion would be considered a client-state of the Khaganate. Instead of raiding, they could simply tell the Khagan to ask for more tribute, and if they don't pay, they would have to send armies to beat Dorwinion into submission. Don't forget that sustaining and equipping armies is am expensive effort, and the people of Dorwinion would fight to defend their homeland, and we all know how a hard someone cornered fights. The difference between Angmar, DG, et. al., and the Easterlings is that the former are all orcs/trolls, whereas the Easterlings are men. However, while they do seem to engage in trade with the Easterlings, the Dorwinrim are also aware of the threat they pose, hence the Vintner Guard. ("The Vintner Guard keep us safe from those barbarians in the East.")

Ofc, the chances of the Vintner Guard holding off an Easterling invasion seem slim (altho the c-bow men are tough customers). But it's not like Dorwinion trades only with the Easterlings. They trade with many good factions, including Dale, WR, and the Dwarves. So if the Easterlings attempted a takeover of Dorwinion during the War of the Ring, it's unlikely that certain facs (especially Dale) are just going to sit back and let it happen. They don't like the Easterlings to begin with, and they certainly wouldn't want to lose their trading partner like that.

Furthermore, as Legoarmy touched on, the Easterlings had other things to be doing with their troops. They sent troops to the Battle of the Pelennor Fields, and they also launched an unaided attack on Dale/Erebor, which they almost won. Realistically, the Easterlings were probably content to trade with Dorwinion, and send their troops where Sauron directed, rather than risk sending more troops to another invasion.