Turn 60 - A Sacrifice Is Offered
You receive reports from the civil war torn NRI. The ‘leader’ of the Pugnus Deorum has declared himself to be Rex Deorum and taken the name Divus Augustus, or ‘the Divine Augustus’. He has ordered that temples to his worship be built ‘per Imperium’, or throughout his Empire, and that all who fail to offer sacrifices and tithes to his name are to be crucified.
The last sputtering remnants of the Pugnus Deorum on Tarentum have been annihilated. The planetary Proconsuls have been acclaimed as the rightful Consuls of the NRI by the loyalist Legions. Fighting continues on Ravenna, with your forces engaged in orbital strikes on rebel forces in support of loyalist units. You have full control over the Zenith jump points of both Nova Roma and Ravenna, and complete control of Tarentum. Rebel forces have sufficient dropships clustered at the Nadir of both Nova Roma and Ravenna that your forward commanders have declined to contest the Nadir points, while preserving orbital superiority over both Nova Roma and Ravenna.
The military proposes Operation Dragonbreath, a massive strike on Ravenna to relieve the loyalist forces, thus isolating the Pugnus Deorum to Nova Roma itself. 2nd Armored Division and 2nd Infantry Division would be earmarked for the strike, with support from veteral loyalist legions from Tarentum.
| [] | Approve Operation Dragonbreath |
| [] | Deny Operation Dragonbreath |
Back home, the Imperial Grifftiger Mounted Police have broken up a major crime ring on Nowy Gdansk that had been engaged in smuggling, money laundering, unlicensed prostitution, protection rackets, and the like. About 30 people have been arrested on a variety of charges and the cases are moving through the justice system.
What makes this a bit unusual is that there was a bit of a multi-agency pile up in the middle of the actual bust, with undercover agents from the IGMP and the Special Branch nearly coming to blows before following the identification procedures and defusing the potential blue on blue scenario. Both forces had been fully briefed on the presence of undercover operatives from the other, with proper identification procedures in place, but in the chaos of the actual bust there was almost an incident in a dark warehouse. A quasi-legal rave had been going on in a lightly partitioned off section of the building, and the incredibly loud music had caused the Special Branch operative to be unable to make out the challenge from the IGMP agent, but fortunately both agencies had planned ahead and included a visual challenge/response sequence as well which prevented tragedy.
You wind up giving both agencies a nice pat on the back for this one.
And then it was budget time, your most favoritest time of year, hurray!
General Stewart starts things off, although Jeremy is there as well for Ground Forces.
“Your Majesty, we continue to need more production capacity, especially for our ground forces. Our responsibilities have significantly broadened and we need to provide proper garrisons to three new planets yesterday, if not sooner. We strongly recommend building additional mech factories anywhere we can fit them, as well as additional endo-steel, double heat sink, and ferro-fibrous production. In addition, we now are able to produce Ferro-Carbide armor, which is currently only useful on
HMS Morristown and the new recharge station design.”
Jeremy then takes the podium, grinning slightly. “Your Majesty, I’m going to keep this simple. Wants Mechs, tanks, and infantry, gives it to us?” a laugh echoes around the conference room as he brings up a display. “First, desired mech procurement.”
| Standard Mech Regiment | 2 | 4th Brigade, 2nd Armored |
| Armored Cavalry Regiment | 1 | 4th Brigade, 2nd Armored |
| Light Horse Regiment | 3 | 5th Brigade, 1st Infantry |
| Assault Regiment | 2 | 5th Brigade, 3rd Armored |
“And for vehicles…” he brings up the next display.
| Armored Regiment | 1 | 3rd Brigade, 2nd Infantry |
| Mechanized Regiment | 3 | 1st Brigade 3rd Armored and 3rd Brigade, 2nd Infantry |
| SpecOps Regiment | 1 | 1st Brigade, 3rd Armored |
| CAS Regiment | 8 | 4th Brigade, 2nd Infantry, 2nd and 3rd Colonial Division |
| Colonial Infantry Regiment | 12 | 2nd and 3rd Colonial Division |
| Colonial Cavalry Regiment | 6 | 2nd and 3rd Colonial Division |
| Colonial Mechanized Regiment | 6 | 2nd and 3rd Colonial Division |
“If we must cut costs, Your Majesty, I recommend cutting the Armored, Mechanized, SpecOps and 1 of the CAS regiments, 3rd Armored and 2nd Infantry can wait, but we need basic garrison forces for Calliope IV and the TTP as soon as possible, and Colonial Divisions are the least resource intensive means for us to do just that.”
General Reyes then steps up, and activates her Powerpoint like a Pro, which is appropriate, since it’s Powerpoint Pro 2990, which Powerpoint Pros use, and General Reyes is certainly a Powerpoint Pro.
“Your Majesty, thankfully none of the ship’s commissioning this year require air wings, however we do need to build ASF forces on our new possessions, especially the TTP. To that end, we recommend the procurement of a pair of Planetary Garrison Wings for the TTP.”
She said very little… in five slides of Powerpoint. Truly a Powerpoint Pro of legend!
You manage to wake yourself up in time for Admiral Benjamin to slide behind the lectern like a boss, his poor aides trailing him, this time dressed up in the most over the top Dress Mess uniform you’ve ever seen, that looks like something you’d expect to see in parodies of ancient Earth tin-pot dictatorships.
“Your Majesty, great news!” He begins, his usual highly energetic self, as one aide takes out a tiny trumpet and plays a tootling fanfare that has Bastet and Sekhmet pinning their ears back. “We have a bunch of building slips available, and want to build things that will let General Reyes include more pages in her next presentation!”
| Regular Dropships (22) | |
| Bataan AKIL | 12 |
| Harper’s Ferry AKVL | 1 |
| Victory AKM | 9 |
| Large Dropships (18) | |
| Majestic | 6 |
| Newport | 3 |
| Newport-C | 3 |
| Shannon | 4 |
| Independence | 2 |
“For regular dropships we are going to be focusing for a few years on transports and logistics platforms, as our light dropship units are in fairly solid shape. For our large dropships we are balancing expanding our combat power and boosting our transport capabilities.” he explains, then departs the podium to another fanfare from his aide.
General Stewart takes the podium once more “Your Majesty, right now we are having to focus on filling out units and continuing to expand our striking and defensive capabilities. Now is not the time to take the foot off of the gas when it comes to strategic material production expansion, additional factory development, and force production.”
And then it’s the Perky One Herself! Bridget is practically vibrating in her chair. “Your Majesty! We can finally build HPG stations! And we really should build them, because they are very critical to boosting our overall economy. The more planets we link into our communication grid, and the more robust said grid is, the greater the economic benefit. This doesn’t even begin to go into the benefits to military coordination, early warning, diplomatic communication, and everything else having a reliable FTL communications network gives us. We also now have the ability to focus development on Nowa Warszawa, Calliope IV, and the TTP, which will allow us to develop those planets and systems more rapidly.”
She sits back down, still vibrating.
Isoroku is up next, his zen calm a welcome relief from the high energy Interior Minister. “Your Majesty, this year we are holding the Pan Griffon Games, which are going rather well even if they are rather sparsely attended than in years past. Hopefully this will boost the performance of our teams in the next full Olympiad! Next time around, athletes from Nowa Warszawa, Calliope IV, and the TTP will be invited to attend, broadening our competitive pool. In addition, the New Rasalhague Republic has invited us to expand our diplomatic presence in their polity by opening satellite consulates on all of their worlds. We recommend that we take advantage of this opportunity.”
Jake then takes the podium as Isoroku sits down. “Well, Your Majesty, we’ve got a lot of work in the Politics end, which will yield some impressive results down the road. First of all, we need to properly integrate the TTP and Calliope IV. While the TTP will remain internally autonomous, we do need to build an administrative structure for Imperial oversight and assistance. In addition, we need to extend our education system into our new possessions, thus boosting our pool of well-educated citizens and opening up opportunities for additional R&D centers throughout the Empire.”
Mary nods to Jake as he takes his seat and she brings up her custom presentation software. “Your Majesty, as Jake said, once we bring the various educational systems up to par with our own, we’ll be able to open new R&D centers, boosting our research capability significantly. In addition, we are tentatively ready to begin researching the design and construction of proper ‘Castle Brian’ fortifications. Our recommendations for research are as follows.
- Military Research
- Improved XL Fusion Engine
- More compact fusion engines will reduce the vulnerability of our mechs to side torso penetration
- Improved SRM
- While we make little use overall of the SRM, this is a relatively inexpensive project that may be of value for future battle armor designs
- Improved Large Pulse Laser
- Would benefit several of our AAA vehicles as well as Dropship point defenses
- Non Military Research
- Improved Automation 6
- The economic boost alone makes this extremely valuable
- Integrated CASE
- Is primarily useful for Mechs, especially in conjunction with the more compact fusion cores
- Land-Air Mech
- These would theoretically make excellent recon and special forces assets
- MASC
- Would make our light mechs situationally faster
Harry is actually off world, overseeing the new POW camps on Nowa Warszawa. His assistant however has a number of recommendations from Intelligence. “Your Majesty, with our new acquisitions it is vital that we expand our COINTEL capabilities to Calliope IV and the TTP. This will help prevent any remaining enemy assets from causing us trouble in the future.”
Janet, finally, is looking tired, harassed, and like she’s having the time of her life. “Your Majesty, we’re growing fast, and with that our legal system needs to expand and prepare. We need to expand directly on Calliope IV, while we really need to begin a full review of the TTP’s law codes in order to ensure compliance with the treaty. Siriwan has been very amenable to our requests for information, but is hardly a lawyer as she has absolutely no ‘legal’ background. Although…” your best friend smirks at you “I do believe your granddaughter is taking pre-law classes, which may soon fill that gap.”
