Ahh, very good Berserker Pride ! Finally generic characters can be involved in the story too. Will be a lot of fun !
Though I'd like to share some comments:
- I imagined the Snake Baron's, Slug Count's and Big Sister's towns completely separate, relatively far from each other (so the player can/must decide where to start his/her kingdom). Imagine them in a sort of triangle on the map, each lying in a different country (Snake Baron: Tudor, Slug Count: Midland, Big Sister: Parmenia). If the player conquers all three, he/she can access reasonable resources and manpower BUT the distance between the towns would make kingdom management a bit hard without conquering other lands lying between the three towns. On a different note, yeah, Theresa could be "controlled" by an Apostle, but I'd employ some other than the Big Sister: I have an idea for an Apotle called "Whisperer" who talks via telepathy and "implents" thoughts into others' minds, thus manipulating them without them knowing. So Theresa is under the Whisperer's control and raises a smaller army in order to hunt down Guts (or, more likely, go on a killing spree driven by her lust for revenge, fueled by the Whisperer), BUT Guts/the player disturbs the process and returns/goes there when the army isn't finished yet. Some mudering later, Guts/the player notices the Whisperer and realizes he's the one who messed up things. Kill him, and Theresa returns to normal. If playing with Guts, she forgives him but wants to keep the town. Guts can decide to allow Theresa to lead the town (in return gaining Honor, Renown, a sweet deal of money and the town will become an allied state) or conquer it anyway (resulting in even more murder as Theresa rallies the townsfolk for one last stand). If playing with generic male/female, Theresa immediately agrees to join the player's cause once the Whisperer is down, even joining as a Companion.
- regardin the troop trees, I think I'll create two more: one "all-around one" where units have dedicated purposes (making mixed armies a must rather than aiming for bands made of 1-3 troop types), with "special units" accessable depending on the character's background (Kushan origin -> Bakiraka female assassins; Pamerian origin -> dragoons or fusiliers; etc.). The second one will be an "Apostle" troop tree starting with lowly servants, slaves and the like up until presudo-apostles and/or lesser monsters.