Maybe Othero is her aforementioned partner? He's historically been an aggressive player, but he jumped on me pretty quickly when she tried to pull her bluff.
Not so much cagey as curious as to her reasoning. I'm vanilla townie, and unless she's got some kinda role that feeds her false info, she's blatently lying.
Maybe stables in your personal manse should automatically keep your beasts from dying, without having to pay upkeep. Anyone else's beasts are still charged as normal.
I'm not the best designer in the game, but I'll design custom skins for people if they're interested. Just pm me here, and I'll shoot you some basic ideas, and we can work from there. Working for tips.
I haven't actually checked on this yet, but it sounds amazing. Will it have support for things like "Bring in X bards", "Do this quest", "influence this village"?