Bay 12 Games Forum

I'm generally in favor of training volunteers, both for basic martial proficiency and accounting purposes. Volunteers/poorly paid interns sound like a resource worth investing in.

+1. As for our would be escort service, i'd like to give Lua the chance to take up the post now that we don't need her father's favor so much. If that doesn't work, i'm willing to +1 hesitantly approaching our sister.

Andrew, Scion of House Ravenblood. Representative to the Guild Combine.

Your Current Resources

You send a message keeping your Sister and Parents apprised of your current plans, as well as another secret correspondence with your Uncle Eugen which indicates that you may have found a lead in regards to his son's wherabouts, though also that you arn't quite sure wether it will pan out or not. In addition, you send him the valuable intel of those promises of support Adam has secured, something which may enable Eugen to sabotage those very offers, or at least prepare for them. Soon the ship has left, carrying your cousin and your correspondence away back home.

Over the next few days, you have a few more meetings with Orange Eye Jack, who helps you hammer out a workable contract. The engineers on your homeworld have a very limited understanding of cybernetics however, so developing specialist medical facilities revolving around the technology isn't quite workable without a multi-step process to getting there. Instead, the technologist guild proposes that they teach your Family's engineers and chirurgeons the basics of cybernetic construction and installation, providing research materials, tutorials and instructors until a level of basic competence regarding the technology has been secured by Halian experts. They certainly wouldn't be able to perform complex cybernetic organ transplants soon, but limb, bone and muscle replacements would likely become mainstays of your planet's medicine so long as your House cooperates. You imagine that such might also slowly create more liberal attitudes in regards to such technology on Halia, as people on your world begin to realize that true cybernetics are superior to other prostheses. The guild is willing to help your engineers and chirurgeons to design appropriate facilities, but building them would be up to your own planet.
Orange-Eye Jack isn't a true member of the guild, so once you begin asking whether the Technologists would be willing to send a representative to negotiate, he offers himself up.

It's not difficult to make your arrangements for your things to be packed up. You've more or less been preparing for the potential need to leave for over a month. There is the small matter of leaving someone behind to manage your affairs on the station however. So long as you're the official representative of House Ravenblood to the Guild Combine, its best if you keep eyes and ears here. You have a few ideas for who could represent you.

During a slow day you send Calrow a case of what you believe to be her favoured chewing-weed. Hopefully that will smooth things over on that front, but you don't expect her to hold any grudges.


Over a week later you receive news from home, and it is mixed. The procedure the Matriarch undertook was strictly speaking a success. The cancer has been removed from her body, with the affected tissue replaced, lungs included. She has however, been reacting badly to the implants. She'll survive for the near future, but unless her body adjusts to the change there could be further complications that may make her next few years more difficult. The important part however, is that she's alive, and just well enough to begin managing affairs from her recovery bed. The Seneschal thanks you graciously, and assures you that he will remember that you saved the Matriarch's life.

Meanwhile, if your direct family's account is anything to go by, it is no wonder that your grandmother has not sent you a reply herself, as she's likely not had time between recovery and her flurry of activity. She's mobilised a portion of both Ravenblood's standing army and sea-navy, which she is using to lock down Eugen's territory, and that of those lands currently playing host to Adam's "quest". She seemingly intends to establish martial law in those effected territories, assuming no one does anything gloriously stupid and fires on House armies. Meanwhile, rumour has it that she has also placed several prominent members of the family under house arrest, including her own spymaster. This has not been publicly acknowledged however, but it's left enough of an impression that some are openly wondering what would cause the Matriarch to effectively imprison her own daughter.

Eugen has sent you another message too, something which reminds you that you still have one of his own officers under your custody. He seems to express mixed feelings, including relief that the Matriarch has recovered, alongside frustration that she is stonewalling his investigation. You don't detect any hint of treasonous intent mingled with that frustration, but then, you suppose you won't be able to guess his behaviour until you determine just how much truth there is to the rumours of his madness. He also shares with you the suspicion that Adam has released something that he's losing control of, with the most Zealous members of his "quest" beginning to rile up Townsman Halians with talk of "heresy". As a self-professed "devout" man, Eugen is worried that some of the faithful may end up dead as a result of such rabble-rousing.

The lowest priority message is from CR-177. He lays out how your grandmother's procedure went step by step. Apparently the surgery itself was flawless, and it is her body which is having difficulty adjusting. He recommends further procedures after she recovers to capitalise on the small window of time she may have before she'll be too far gone for it to matter. She will likely live at least another year by his prognosis, probably more. He also happily reports that he has "enhanced" the three guards you sent with him, as per their own preferences for enhancement.

You have a little over a week to prepare for the next freighter bound for home. If you take it, the journey there will take another two. Any last minute decisions and preparations?

Mostly the standard, obvious stuff. No aquifer, presence of wood and shallow metals. Maybe flux stone if i'm feeling it.

I also tend to crank up the space so that i can make sure i'm in an overlapping biome. Having just the corner of my map in an evil biome of some kind is ideal.

When i first started reading this comic i didn't ever think that robots getting genitals would ever be part of it.

Andrew, Scion of House Ravenblood. Representative to the Guild Combine.

Your Current Resources

While you're going through your series of interviews, you schedule a meeting with Orange Eye Jack, to discuss potential future commissions. You've brought him a lot of business lately, so you're on his shortlist, meaning he needs very little notice to be ready for you, so it's easy to squeeze in between everything else.
Grinning, the middleman ushers you into his little office. It's cramped and somewhat messy, but you know that Orange-Eye makes up for his lack of organisational skills with an excellent memory. "So, word is that you're hunting out your options. Well i can't offer you much but-" He interrupts himself, perhaps having read the subtle changes in your expression. You wouldn't try to bluff the man if you could avoid it. "Oh. No. That's not why you're here. Right, you're wrestling with an encryption." That's part of why you like Jack, he's good at figuring out what you want, and seeing it done. You confirm with a nod while he settles in behind his desk, loosening his jacket and pouring himself a drink. "Right. Well the good news is that it won't cost you much for us to have a crack at it. Thing is, it's almost definitely not going to amount to anything. But we'll be able to compare it with similar algorithms on record, and at least home in on exactly where it might have come from within a month or so. Then if we get lucky, you'll have your key. If you want any real chance of success at this just using brute force methods, you're going to need to hire out some of our most advanced machinery." He gestures. "We're talking a thinking machine the size of a whole workshop, calculating continuously. You can't afford it, and even your family would probably have trouble sinking the cost."


You come away from that encounter a little discouraged, but you suppose it's not unexpected. Still, a long shot isn't *no* shot, and if you can confirm which family the key probably came from you'll have least gleaned a little information from those files, even if not their contents. Meanwhile, you have another point of interest on the list, potentially one with larger near future ramifications. It's not hard to find the House Archaios representative on the station. Like you, he is a noble with his own personal retinue and quarters on the station. Like you, his official position here is one of forging business ties with the Guild Combine. Unlike you, he is currently engaged in an espionage war with several of the guild heads operating on the station. To your knowledge Sir Gaius Archaios has no major holdings or wealth, but he does possess military experience, a seasoned personal guard with a smattering of bio-mechanical and genetic enhancements, and a web of spies. He may have the same position as you aboard the station, but he isn't quite your peer, being involved in a very different game.

It takes time for you to find an appointment with the man, as he has quite the busy schedule. You assume it isn't just business that keeps him busy however. Based on your personal experience sitting across the table from him, you get the impression that Administrator Adraxte shares his personal harem with the Archaios noble, just for example. Eventually however you are ushered into a rather opulent study, which you note with a brief touch of bitterness is a great deal more spacious than your own study. It's clearly far from the only privilege offered to a member of a greater house though, as the man sitting across from you looks not much more than a decade older than you, despite being in his sixties. You've heard that the most powerful in the Imperium have secrets that lengthen their youth, but your House has access to nothing of the sort. Still, he receives you politely, offering you food, refreshment, and idle conversation before the two of you begin to discuss more important matters.

During a lull in the conversation, Gaius peers at you over the top of a glass with dark green eyes. The Archaios arn't shy about gene tampering, doing so often out of simple vanity, and their eye colour is merely one of their famous traits. You make the first move to shift the conversation from the trivial to the political. "I received your message about Junia. She seemed rather cross in her portrait." You cast Gaius a hesitant glance, curious how he'll take the joke. Thankfully he chuckles.

"Yes. I thought it best captured my niece's demeanor, out of those i was sent." You are somewhat surprised to hear that he was the one who chose the portrait. You would have thought her parents would be the ones to organise the matter. "Some things are best to be forthright about. I and a few others in the Archaios are quite interested in fostering better relations with your own family, and an ill matched marriage would be no way to go about that." He smirks. "But perhaps you prefer them more demure? That could be arranged too. The Archaios make quite diverse children." Something about the way he talks about this has you a little off guard, but you press on.

"I may actually be interested in an Archaios marriage. I'm getting to the age, and it seems the right time. Things on Halia are growing rather tense, so if there's ever been an appropriate moment to ensure myself a strong position it would be now. Someone needs to step in to make sure that no Raven's blood is shed." His eyebrows perk in interest, and soon Gaius shifts away from playful banter, and on to trying to forge real political ties with you.

Sir Gaius has seemingly prepared detailed contracts ahead of time for this very conversation, and he surprises you with both his preparedness and the scope of some of his offers. Some of the offers he casually slides your way scare you a little. You get the impression that this man could make a powerful ally, or a terrifying enemy.

Noteworthy Propositions

The fact that Gaius apparently has the authority to make these kinds of offers leaves you shaken. Either the Archaios were prepared for this conversation to occur weeks or months in advance, or Gaius simply has more influence and power than you would have imagined from a "minor" Archaios Lord. Either way, it strikes you that these kinds of negotiations are very much the arena of this man, who coolly examines you across the table, curious how you might respond. This may be an important moment.

GM NOTE

Andrew, Scion of House Ravenblood. Representative to the Guild Combine.

Your Current Resources

You have a few minor moves to make before you begin any big plays, so you get to work. First you commission the technologist guild for a cryptocracking job, to see if they can make heads or tails of what might be in the files that Eugen allegedly intercepted. You receive an update in only a matter of hours. They've been run through an encryption protocol that their technicians are familiar with, used by a few of the major houses, including the Archaios. They can try to work on it, but success in sifting out anything useful is highly unlikely without a concentrated espionage effort to find the right key for this specific set of messages. Even if you did find the right key, it would still be incredibly difficult to work around safety protocols, unless the person who designed this particular iteration was entirely incompetent. Most House keys, such as your own Ravenblood family key, are physical objects that at the bare minimum themselves unlock with contact to a family's genetic material. Those keys then decode the desired encrypted information. Reverse engineering the "physical" key in order to find the "digital" key is no small effort, and one made more complicated considering families tightly track their own keys, often with homing beacons. As soon as one goes missing, it is good practice to commission an entirely new set. No matter what route you take in trying to sift through this information, it's likely to be a nightmare. It is no wonder that Eugen has failed to do so himself. Nothing is stopping you from trying however.

Once more you call Sino in to meet with you, and he arrives quite promptly. This time you offer fruit-scented water, which he accepts with an approving look. It doesn't take you long to get to business. "So cousin, Adam is asking for a great deal of money in order to fund his effort. I ought to know how this money is going to be spent, or i could not in good concience provide it." You couch the query in statements of your duty, which you hope will be enough to avoid any response resembling a sermon.
His response is actually quite polite and understanding. "An understandable concern. Quite frankly, they are needed to secure privateers, and to fully arm volunteer forces. We hope to avoid violence through the threat of force, and for that our forces need to be a credible threat. If Eugen's vassals can be convinced that an all out civil war would be disastrous, they may not back his claim, which ought to force him to retract it. His legion is fierce, and his holdings vigorous, but without support he simply won't have the forces to have a credible chance of victory.

You fill in for yourself what is being left unsaid. If Eugen's vassals and political allies fully back his claim, they will likely crush Adam's volunteer army, even with church backing bolstering his numbers. With sufficient monetary support, Adam could forge his rabble into a real army. Based on Eugen's own correspondence with you, he doesn't seem to be currently paying Adam any mind, focused on his vendetta against a seemingly even weaker opponent, the House Spymaster. You can't be sure wether that is out of blind singlemindedness, or because the Veteran simply does not think Adam is a threat. It may mean that he won't be prepared should Adam attack with a real force, or it might mean the opposite.

"I need to know wether you have a real chance of success. Or whether your venture will simply drag us into a disastrous war. Convince me." Your missionary cousin seems glad to do just that, and silently provides you with a list of names. Curious, you have a look, and discover it to be a list of promises from various minor lords on Halia. Promises of supply convoys, companies of artillery and infantry, and a few naval ships. Most notable of all, is the support of over a dozen Town-ships. The Town-ships themselves are hardly powerful military vessels, but each has a small fleet of gunboats for defence, and of course large populations to draw militia from. Adam's would-be army might be a rabble, but it is not quite a *small* rabble.
"These are many of the most pious defenders of the orthodox faith, all rallying to Sir Adam's banner. We hope that you will help us provide the swords to battle the persecutions of a mad heretic. Will that be all?" He seems gleeful, like he's already won you to the cause. You politely dismiss him so that you can think.


Truth be told, you are not a military man. You are however, a pragmatic one, so you begin hedging your bets. It's possible that your actions in the next few months may eventually end in you being unwelcome on your home world, a sad thought. Alternatively, it's possible that this civil war on the horizon might tear the foundations of your family apart, leaving it better for you to slink off. So, just in case, you begin to check your prospects.

The Shipping Guild is one of the first, obvious choices. Its powerful, wealthy, and always looking for talent to captain its ships and manage its trade routes. Tarla Numerica is the first you meet for a clandestine job interview. The efficient women tells you plainly that she would be glad to offer you a position in her employ as a trade bureaucrat. Not exciting work, but it's a position of some modest measure of influence over interplanetary trade in the region. She also offers you some potentially more exciting work, as a high level officer on board one of the Guild's many Freighters. She might also be able to squeeze you in as the captain of a more modest courier ship. Your personal retinue would be provided with security positions on board whatever ship you served aboard, something which would serve as another level of control for you aboard such vessels.

The Banking Guild would also be willing to offer you a position as a high ranking loan officer, work you are well suited to and experienced with. You could exert a lot of influence with access to such large sums of money.

The Mercenaries Guild offers you a contract as the head of your own company within their employ. In exchange for signing on with them with your Retinue, they would offer you a large stipend, and allow you to underwrite recruitment and equipment under business expenditures. If you developed a good enough reputation, they might even assist you in building your own mercenary legion.

The Guild Combine administration offers you a few different positions. First, they could assign you to station head Adraxte, who in turn would make you a sub-administrator, effectively the ruler of part of the station. Alternatively, assuming you get your family to agree to build a new station in your home system, they could make you co-administrator of that station, with a member of the shipping guild as the other co-administrator, to oversee construction. You would however, be expected to exploit your knowledge of Halia and its rulers though, for the benefit of the Guilds. Finally, the Guild Combine might be willing to make you a local ruler on a Combine controlled world. Not of the planet of course, but rather of a city state.

Finally, you seem to remember that many years ago, your Grandmother indicated that she may one day want you to take an Imperial Appointment, and therefore that you should try to avoid offending any Imperial diplomats or officials. Perhaps that is still on the table, if the next time you go to Halia she is still alive. You can at least gain some measure of comfort that you at least have many options for your future, if things go badly for you at home.
For now however, you ought to be concerned for your present. Do you plan on returning home aboard the next freighter bound for Halia? Or do you plan to wait for the next return vessel, so that you might first know beforehand wether your grandmother has survived her surgery? And either way, what do you plan on doing in the next couple weeks?

Okay, so... diplomacy might be a little complicated. I still think it's a better bet than magical shenanigans, but we might want to phrase this as a threat or negotiation if possible. Which is sort of opposed to our original plan of calming him down.

My best guess would be using righteous anger over him coming into our city to slaughter our civilians, boasting about our magical, military, and political might if necessary, and mentioning the incoming sandmen assistance via our marriage in a boasting way that still reminds him he has reinforcements coming because of us.

I'd rather save blackmail for a last resort, and trying to de-rage the whole room for the last resort after that one.

I'm willing to adjust to this. I was mostly thinking it might be a good idea to put up a bit of a front. Maybe we could give the impression that we are more or less making ourself the intermediary for the Warrens, and opening up negotiation on their behalf, as a representative of sorts?

- Lets not directly talk about the guy's son in the open, we do not want to come off like a mob boss.

Not in the open at least. Heh.

That's true. But it does give our rivals a sense that they've curbed our ambition with our consent, which i think lends our following actions some more legitimacy.