Turn 39 - Step By Step
The New Years celebrations are a rousing success, especially as you are reading the economic predictions for the year from your staff which look extremely positive across the board.
A series of major storms batter Castor and Griffsport, but nothing too outside the usual for a winter storm in the northern hemisphere of Griffin’s Roost. The damage is fairly minimal and repairs are well underway. At the same time a new undersea volcano is discovered to be a few years from breaching the surface off the northwest coast of Griffsport, well away from the shipping lanes but the views should be spectacular from the existing observatories on Mt Griffsport.
With all of the infrastructure now safely buried the annual migration of the deathapotamusaurus is more an object of tourist and scientific interest than any actual threat. A new startup company has built airships designed to cruise high enough off the ground to be safe from the big creatures while allowing passengers to view them as they rumble from their winter to summer ranges.
Considering that this is the time of year where deathapotamusaurus bulls fight for dominance and mates? The tourist potential is incredibly high, as the big nasty things look utterly spectacular in full frenzy.
Meanwhile ‘Diving For Bolides’ has become a reality TV show filmed on the actual small craft engaged in the dangerous business of wrangling ejecta from the incredibly tectonically active Griffin II. The most daring of them all actually skim the upper atmosphere for the gases present, which is extremely high risk as there are pockets of sulphuric acid which would cause severe damage to the skimmers. More than a few are lost to upwellings of gaseous acid.
At the same time in the Inner Asteroid Belt a new sport has taken off, rover racing on the few planetoids that are large enough to have a substantial gravity field without having any atmosphere. People race around little rovers at what look like ludicrous speed until you get some perspective and realize they’re actually barely breaking 40 kph. It just looks far faster in the low gravity judging by the massive jumps that they make.
Last year's winter olympics has excited interest in skiing, and a proper ski resort has opened on Nowy Gdansk near the planetary capital. You spend a few weeks there learning how to ski and falling down on your backside quite a bit. Eventually you manage the beginner slopes, although you much prefer your time in the lodge in the evenings sitting in front of the massive hearths and drinking excellent beer.
You mix business with pleasure while you are there, meeting with the local planetary leadership and touring several of the new industrial and commercial projects. In fact the planetary government is working with Imperial Griffin AerospaceWerks on a massive dual-use dropship construction yard that should be ready next year. That yard will have a massive set of parallel lines to permit them to build military and civilian dropships simultaneously and they are planning to offer the new
Devastation class from the new military lines. It appears that the locals have decided to go all in on dropship construction, judging by the number of civilian dropship yards you tour that are supplying the voracious appetites of civilian shipping lines for lift capacity.
You also tour the massive facility being built underneath the mountain range which will house the single greatest industrial complex in the entire Empire. Things are looking, well, like a massive underground construction site at the moment. However they tell you that they’ve found more caverns in other parts of the range where they are planning future expansions.
When you return to Griffin’s Roost proper you take a tour of a new facility being built on Phoenix which is intended to be a future high-output ASF facility. While there, you are shown the prototypes for the proposed ‘Griffon’ Assault ASF.
| [] | Name | Cost | Speed | Fuel | HP | A/D | Specials |
| [] | Imperial Griffin Mk II | 3977.4 | 8 | 5 | 208 | 33 | Armored 2, AMS 2, Missile 2 |
| [] | Really Antimissile Assault FIghter | 3817.84 | 8 | 5.5 | 164 | 32/31 | Armored 1, AMS 6 |
| [] | Mockingbird | 3203 | 6 | 5 | 164 | 31 | Armored 1, AMS 2 |
| [] | Antimissile Assault | 3756.64 | 8 | 5.5 | 172 | 32/33 | Armored 1, AMS 2 |
You are also shown the progress that is being made on the pipeline and water purification works, which again looks like a massive amount of construction work on a large scale construction site. It’s when you realize that
this construction site covers hundreds of miles of distance…
It’s impressive.
You are taken to see a project that the planetary government has undertaken at sea. A large underwater crater had been found to possess extremely valuable mineral deposits, so a massive undersea mining project was underway making use of a large transparent armored dome using the same materials used in the transparencies on BattleMechs. According to the planners this facility will allow ‘shirtsleeve’ mining of the sea bed. The ocean here is less than thirty meters deep at the deepest, so the top of the dome would be above water.
A number of businessmen have evidently decided to try and turn around Pollux's poor reputation as a place filled either with corruption, crime, or farmland that was probably involved in corruption or crime. A massive series of commercial, residential, and recreational projects are now lining the northern coast of Pollux, taking advantage of the glorious views and terrain.
Amazingly enough, by Pollux standards, things seem to be going very well indeed. By everywhere else's standards it’s a bit of a cockup, but by local standards it’s corruption free, moving ahead smoothly, and looking wonderful.
From what you’ve heard from Jane, the ‘honest businessmen’ are only skimming 1% and are actually adhering to proper safety standards, and are only taking ‘small’ kickbacks from contractors.
You shake your head. Pollux.
| [] | Crack Down | Corruption is corruption. -1% GDP Griffin’s Roost, +1 Approval |
| [] | Leave it Be | By Pollux Standards this is completely honest. -1 Economy Event |
