Quoted By:
>The civilisation gets +4172 Population.
>The civilisation gets -0.04 Militarism.
>The civilisation gets +15 Productivity.
>The civilisation gets +10 Prosperity.
>The civilisation gets -5 Equality and Security.
>The civilisation gets -10 Cohesion and Happiness.
The tree-dwellers seize the day. They cast down a rain of stones upon the invaders whenever any blood-drinkers come close to clambering up the tree, while their javelins and arrows are focused upon the Croglatovic marksmen. When the casualties become too severe for the attackers to sustain the assault, they pull back to form a perimeter in an attempt to starve the Scagravic into submission – only to find that the tree-dwellers followed them along the boughs of smaller trees and continued to harry them from above.
Already demoralised, most of the attack groups broke and fell back to the encampment, where the wounded and the captured were kept. Even those who managed to successfully conquer their assigned colonies were forced to retreat, or risk being caught out of position. The Scagravic didn't dare to follow the invaders too far – as soon as they were certain that their great trees were safe, they returned to them.
With over four hundred dead or missing, almost seven hundred wounded and the tree-dwellers still unconquered, the leaders of the invasion begin to point fingers at each other and assign blame for their collective failure to defeat the savages. Though a few wish to continue the campaign, most of them have lost the will to continue fighting. After several days spent recovering and preparing their human cargo for transportation, they leave behind the eastern forest and begin their return to civilisation.
They come back with almost forty-two hundred captives, over a thousand of whom are children. Those who are already able to work are made to serve as thralls, while those who are young enough to have malleable minds are assigned to the drobrac and the blood-drinkers, so that they might grow up to be mothers or soldiers, if they are good enough. The sudden influx of over three thousand slaves is an economical boon as the chiefdom finds itself with almost more miners, haulers and labourers than it knows what to do with.
Unfortunately, as was the case before, this sudden rise in the slave population is responsible for uprisings and revolts, as the Scagravic take out their desire for vengeance on their masters and seek to return to the forest, at any cost. The Vuvovic do their best to keep the chiefdom's thralls under control – surprisingly, their job is made easier by the remaining Scagravic who were not conquered. Those who remain dwell only in the deep forest, far away from the shore of the Croglatol. They no longer seek to raid Croglatovic territory, nor do they hinder traders and travellers who row past or walk through their borderlands.
