Quest Deep Periphery Quest (Battletech Sandbox Empire Builder)

[LordSunhawk]

Location: Griffin's Roost. 2 months journey Rimward and Anti-Spinward of McEvedy’s Folly.


The fires had mostly been extinguished, although tendrils of smoke still curled lazily into the tauntingly blue sky of what should have been a truly lovely day in Griffsport, the capital city of the planet Griffin's Roost. The crackle of gunfire as the last remnants of the defeated raid were dealt with, the howl of emergency sirens, and incongruously the typical morning chorus of tropical birds mingled together.


You had awakened in the rooms once occupied by your parents, wishing desperately that the last several days had never happened. That you hadn’t been thrust into a role you had never really trained for.


That you weren’t suddenly Queen. That your parents weren’t dead, that your brothers and sisters weren’t dead, that your little nephew who bounced on your knee and called you Auntie Jack wasn’t dead. That the emergency bunker they’d been in hadn’t taken a direct hit from a crashing dropship and obliterated.


You had done well in school as a child, your parents insisting on sending their children to the same schools as the regular citizens rather than insisting on special treatment. And after you’d graduated you’d -


-[] Joined the Military
--[] as an ASF pilot
--[] as a tank commander
--[] as an infantry officer
--[] as a logistics officer
--[] as an intelligence officer
--[] as an MP
-[] Pursued an advanced degree
--[] Economics
--[] Political Science
--[] Journalism
--[] Law
--[] Medical School
--[] Science
---[] Physics
---[] Chemistry
---[] Archaeology
---[] Astronomy
---[] Computer Science
--[] Engineering
---[] Mechanical Engineering
---[] Chemical Engineering
---[] Electrical Engineering
---[] Computer Engineering
---[] Civil Enginering

You’d been proud of your accomplishments! You’d felt qualified, you’d earned your success, not had it given to you on a silver platter. And now… now you had to rule, you had to rebuild a shattered government, bind up the wounds of an angry and injured planet, and lead them into the future.

You grit your teeth and forced yourself to face the day. To face the future. You had no choice, it was all on your shoulders. Everything your parents had done to consolidate their rule over a divided and fractious planet, everything your grandfather had done to crush the last remnants of warlordism and banditry, everything your great-grandfather had done defending civilization from the madness of apocalyptic cults that sought to bring about annihilation for all. It all came down to you. Would you stand? Or would you fall…

At least you’d have advisors to assist, you knew that at least. Most of the administration was more or less intact, even if the capital building and the bunker concealed beneath it that housed the senior leadership of the state was destroyed. So you had your pick of advisors, some perhaps a little too eager to serve, some willing to serve out of a sense of patriotic obligation, some just as grimly determined as the rest of your people to see this out, and win.

-[] Military
--[] Frederick Wolf
--[] Carrie Hampton
--[] Leah Goodwin
--[] Don Stanley
--[] Mack Hogan
--[] Wilson Russel
-[] Interior
--[] Tyler Lee
--[] Deborah Ryan
--[] Jeannie Butler
--[] Nick Richardson
--[] Harry Norton
--[] Robin Wheeler
-[] Diplomatic
--[] Miranda Young
--[] Rafael Brady
--[] Terry Harper
--[] Molly Ball
--[] Danielle Becker
--[] Dwayne Guerroro
-[] Political
--[] Keith Aguilar
--[] Kelli Prat
--[] Eleanor Chapman
--[] Josh Baldwin
--[] Silvia Murray
--[] Jean Newman
-[] Research
--[] Grace Palmer
--[] Donald Pearson
--[] Cynthia Moss
--[] Sue Morton
--[] Antonio Mcdaniel
--[] Hugh Horton
-[] Intelligence
--[] Juanita Bailey
--[] John Rodgers
--[] Sarah Moreno
--[] Craig Castillo
--[] Nicolas Ortega
--[] Suzanne Sims
-[] Justice
--[] Bradford Santos
--[] Janet Chambers
--[] Suzanne Robertson
--[] Charles Austin
--[] Pedro Ray
--[] Delia Greene

You realize that you also should plan on giving a planetary address, to calm the fears of the people and raise their spirits. For all the losses, the unknown enemies who’d attacked out of the blackness of space had failed, they’d been defeated… and your… yours now… subjects deserved to know about what you intended.

-[] Write in a description of the speech

Quest details, rules, and everything else related to the quest are located HERE.

Voting will be open until Monday, June 15th noon Arizona time.

 

[LordSunhawk]

Economic Roll - 48 = 1 degree of success

Health Roll - 15 = 4 degrees of success

Stability Change roll - 51 = 1 degree of success


Stability Roll = 13 = 5 positive event chances

--Political Rating Rolls = 8, 82, 88, 99, 98

---- Political Event Roll (bare failure) = 4

------ Surge of Support, +10 Stability Next Turn Only

No research or economic rolls available


Meta Event Roll - 60 = no event

Dynasty Luck Roll - 3


----


The first day.


The first day of the rest of your life.


And you were beyond exhausted.


You hadn’t been this exhausted since the Crusher, and that was an entire week of sleep deprivation, wilderness survival, and constant crushing exercises.


Apparently meetings could be just as exhausting as slogging through chest-deep swamp water and mud. Who knew?


Well, now you knew. And that knowledge haunted you as you fell into your bed. This was your life now. You’d been a butterbar, a freshly minted larval infantry officer with your very first command. Thankfully you’d followed your dad’s advice and listened to your platoon sergeant, and thus had managed to land yourself in the upper 10 percent of all butterbars by simply not screwing up as badly as most. Sergeant Ngô Thị Cúc had taken you under her wing, and by simple virtue of taking away your maps and convincing you to keep your brilliant plans to yourself had ensured you had great success as a junior officer.


You weren’t a junior officer anymore.


You’d lucked out a bit at first, General Wolf had been willing to come out of retirement to advise you on military affairs, while Dr Palmer had been out on a dig but had hastily returned when you asked her to join your council of advisors.


But then the tedium and difficulties began. Tyler Lee may have been a genius businessman, but he was even more abrasive than Wolf and he made you very glad you’d chosen to wear your uniform rather than the dress the surviving maids left out for you. He was fifty years your senior, for God’s sake, yet you were certain he’d tried to look down your top at least once. On the other hand he’d already opened up his rolodex and begun placing calls to his fellows in the business community and they had assured him, and by extension you, of their support in this time of crisis.


So you’d been hopeful, until Dr Young had walked in, promptly slapped Tyler across the face, and stormed out again. It had taken you over an hour to convince the woman to still work with you, and she point-blank refused to be in the same room as the industrial tycoon… and strongly advised you to do the same.


For some reason General Wolf had just laughed and slapped a few bills in the industrialists hand, the two old codgers both refusing to tell you what THAT was about. At least until the old professor you’d enlisted as your political advisor had taken you aside and briefed you on the… history… between Dr Young and the two old men. Evidently the good doctor had known Tyler when they’d both attended university together, they’d dated, and their break-up had been, in Professor Chapman’s words, unfriendly to the extreme with accusations of infidelity flying both ways, followed by claims of sexual harassment on Young’s part and assault on Tyler’s part. According to Chapman, both sets of claims had gone to trial and both had been dismissed by the respective juries.


Juanita Bailey and Janet Chambers made a bit of an odd couple in the room, the oldest and the youngest of your advisors respectively. The ethereally thin Bailey had barely reacted to the fracas, beyond a slight pursing of the lips. You have already realized that she was a very quiet person who rarely spoke unless she had something important to say. Her report on the situation had been bracing, the realization of just how little was actually known about the attackers disturbing, and her matter-of-fact discussion of the interrogation of the surviving prisoners was almost chilling in its clinical detachment.


Chambers, on the other hand, was your age. In fact, you’d gone to school with her and had been roommates during your freshman year. Like you, she’d started university far younger than normal, and like you she’d graduated near the top of her class, in her case pre-law and justice studies while you were an econ major. Then she’d gone to law school and had only barely graduated when the attack happened. However, as a mere law student she’d already argued several cases in your father’s High Justice Court and had an extremely solid reputation.


You’d spent a few hours that afternoon with her, just talking and catching up. It was nice to have an old friend in the mix and she’d already pointed out a number of ideas that should be useful in the future.


So you fell asleep feeling… like you’d at least accomplished a little something, made a step or two in vaguely the right direction.


When you woke up in the morning and went into the sitting room, however, you had to pause to fight down a strange sense of unreality. Sergeant Ngô was sitting by your desk, just as she’d done most mornings down at the base to go over the day's briefings and schedule when you were a simple Second Lieutenant in command of a single platoon of foot soldiers. Private Ruiz was barely visible through the door, standing guard like he’d done every morning for the past six months.


The sarge looked up and… was that a smirk? You were sure that was a smirk. Sergeant Ngô never smirked. “Well, LT, since nobody has bothered to tell us we have a new CO, you are still it.” she said in a perfect deadpan voice. “Charlie Platoon is all present and accounted for, ma’am.” she rose to her feet at that. “Reporting for continued duty, if you’ll have us.”


You can’t, quite, keep the surprise off of your face.


[] Yes - gain a bodyguard platoon at no charge, Sergeant Ngô will occasionally have advice for you on various matters from the perspective of an experienced NCO. You’ve worked with her for months, you know her very well, and are absolutely certain of both her loyalty, her honesty and integrity, but also her insight. However you will be -1 infantry platoon for deployment purposes.


[] No - send the platoon back to the general pool. No positives, no negatives (but you will have wasted a very good dynasty luck roll!)


QM Note - Having Sergeant Ngô and her platoon around will mitigate a number of negative events that could happen with bad luck or meta event rolls, and is the only means of doing such currently available.

 

[LordSunhawk]

QM Note - Looks like Sergeant Ngô is quite popular!

It had been a hectic few weeks. The fires were all finally out and all but the most stubborn rescue teams had returned home. It was time to look ahead.

Your initial speech had been well received, seemingly striking the right notes amongst an angry and frightened populace. But now you had to put your plans in action.

General Wolf informs you that with the damage to the Academy and the training infrastructure from the attack that standing up new units right now would be pointless, as you lack the facilities to train them, not to mention the officers and NCOs to lead them. Many enlistments and commitments will be coming due over the next few years and he cannot guarantee how many soldiers will re-up rather than return home. He strongly advises rebuilding the Academy as a good start to making good your losses and preparing for the future. He’d like to secure the crash sites if there are any funds left over, which would tie up almost all of your infantry units.

Military Projects

Your Interior advisor is just as… sleazy as ever. You caught him checking out Sergeant Ngô for God’s sake. Is the old man a walking hormone? But he’s all business in the meeting. He lays out the finances for the planet and the current economic situation in succinct terms that even your favorite economics professors would have been challenged to match. And the prospectus is grim. Many businesses have either already failed or are teetering on the brink. The damage to essential infrastructure is causing ripple effects throughout the economy. He informs you that while he’d love to strengthen the Central Bank and boost infrastructure spending, the best use of the cash reserves would be to accelerate the rebuilding effort.

Interior Projects

Your Diplomatic advisor gives you a short report about the repairs to her offices, and actually advises against any significant projects in this area in the short term. In many ways her office had been for years a holdover from the days of your grandfather when there were multiple power blocks on the planet, after all, and while you will need their institutional knowledge in the future once you begin contacting other people, for now they are in a holding pattern

Diplomatic Projects

Your meetings with Professor Chapman are some of the longest. Right now you are the government. You have advisors, you have minions, you have a watchful sergeant, but everything is on your shoulders. Before the attack things had been different.

You remember your civics lessons. Your grandfather had established a bicameral parliamentary system with a unitary strong executive. In layman’s terms, there had been an upper and lower house, the lower house being directly elected by the population for short terms of service, the upper house being a mix of hereditary, life, and elected seats in about equal proportions. A sufficient majority of both houses could, in theory, overrule the executive. A theory that had never been tested in your father’s day since he’d managed to regularly play the various parliamentary factions against each other.

Professor Chapman recommends that you start laying the foundation for reestablishing this system from the ashes of the attack. It would not simply take much of the stress off of your back but would also reassure the population of a return to normalcy. It was what people were used to, and while right now anger and pain from the attack was overriding unease about dictatorship that would change, and far faster than you’d probably like.

She’d also like to at some point rebuild the press center, but that’s a future project.

Political Projects

Doctor Palmer only had time to meet with you briefly. The University Labs were a total shambles, she had grad students running around like chickens with their heads cut off, and the faculty there were, in her words, difficult. She begs you to fund rebuilding the labs as an absolute priority. She also informs you that you’ll have choices with certain projects as to whether or not you want government or private research facilities to work on them. Government labs give you complete control over the end product, while the output of private research would be available to corporate interests to sell.

Research Projects

Juanita Bailey has grim news, after initial interrogation of the prisoners they’d set up a telescope to look at a specific part of the sky… and had spotted the flare of departing jumpships. Whoever was behind this attack, and the prisoners were being tight-lipped so far about who that was, would soon learn of the failure. She wants to conduct sweeps for any other enemy combatants who may be trying to hide out, and your permission for more… intensive… interrogation of the prisoners you do have.

Intelligence Projects

Janet is almost irritatingly perky when she bounces in for her scheduled meeting. Fortunately for her she had brought with her a large steaming mug of the Black Bean of Life which she provided to you with appropriate haste. You were a zombie before your second cup, and this monster of a mug had at least three. Thus showing how a morning person like her had managed to survive being roomies with you.

According to her, unlike everybody else who’d come to see you, everything in her neck of the woods was not only fine but she’d already begun thinking about the implications of finding that maybe that mythical Star League from the stories wasn’t so mythical. She wants to go digging into the archives, get some working teams together, and start hammering out the legal implications for the future in terms of the laws of war.

Justice Projects

QM Note -

PLEASE remember the proper format for plans is

[] Plan Name

-[] Military

--[] Project 1

--[] Project 2

-[] Interior

--[] Project 1

--[] Project 2

Etc. Please remember that voting is simply

[] Plan Name

There is no need to repeat the entire plan in your vote.

Pay careful attention to costs, they are per turn. There is no need to have a project for each category. Also remember that there are timers on the initial buffs that are starting this turn. The number in parenthesis next to the modifier is how long until the modifier goes away. So plan accordingly.

 

[LordSunhawk]

Turn 1 Results and Dynasty

Economic Roll - 3 degrees of success
Health Roll - 0 degrees of success
Stability Change roll - 5 degrees of success

Stability Rolls

-Political - 1 Positive Event
--Roll - 8 - 1 degree of success
--Result - Roll=1-1=0 Event - Major Rally of Supporters, +1 Success on all rolls next turn

-Research - 1 Positive Event
--Roll - 100 - critical failure
--Result - no event

-Economic - No event, rolling for completeness
--Roll - 100 - critical failure
--Result = no event

Meta Event Roll - 2 - Roll once on Table 2 - result - Unlock Lostech Project - Roll - 35
Dynasty Luck Roll - 16 - Cash windfall of 1000

Rebuild Military Academy
-Skill Target 75
-Roll = 10 SUCCESS

Secure Wreckage from Raid
-Skill Target 75
-Roll = 40 SUCCESS

Foreign Affairs Planning
-Skill Target 50
-Roll = 65 FAILURE must restart project

Search for Enemy Survivors
-Skill Target 65
-Roll = 6 SUCCESS

Interrogate POWs
-Skill Target 55
-Roll = 10 SUCCESS

Review Laws of War
-Skill Target 75
-Roll = 75 SUCCESS

-----

At least you no longer felt like a little girl playing pretend when you chaired meetings. It had been almost a year. A year of hard work, of shouting matches, of gritted teeth and endless meetings.

Of course, there were lighter events. Sergeant Ngô was firmly of the opinion that despite you now being Queen that didn’t excuse you from having ‘fun’ with the platoon; you were still, despite everything, on paper a Lt and their commander. And, surprisingly, it was fun, it was an escape valve. Leading your platoon on patrols once a week got you out of the clutches of the bureaucrats and gave you a worm’s eye view of the rebuilding.

And the people absolutely loved it. You aren’t some remote autocrat to them, and they know you are working to rebuild the institutions they were used to. You are right there, in the same sort of uniform that most of them at one point in their life had worn.

It gave some of your advisors fits that they had to sometimes track you down in order to get your signature on something. For Dr Young, at least, this informality was almost painful. The expression on her face when she had to brief you on something minor while you were perched on the bumper of a jeep with a thermos of coffee and some field rations? Priceless. Of course, what with the subject of these meetings being planning for future contacts, and with how… uncomfortable the foreign office types were, you couldn’t really blame them for the lack of progress in that regard.

You are present for the reopening ceremony for the Academy. You only really spent time there during your training rotations, and had never seen the admin area before since you’d never been assigned to that. Looking around, you are thinking that it might be a good idea to come up with a better name than ‘the Academy’ for it, especially if your plans to go after the pirates requires you to expand it greatly. After all, the fragmented history files mention places called ‘Sandhurst’ and ‘Nagelring’, having your military academy called something unimaginative might be… demeaning?

[] Write-in for future Academy names

While securing the dropship wreckage your teams discover something unexpected. In one of the wrecks are found a number of industrial exoskeletons of some sort, apparently used to handle heavy loads. Your researchers are very excited about this. There had been vague mentions of such things in the records and data cores, but this was the first time they’d found anything of the sort.

Interrogation of the POWs indicate that they are disgraced mercenaries turned pirate who had been searching for a new base to use to prey on something called the Hanseatic League. The prisoners have been proving to be very resistant to questioning but slowly information is being discovered. This particular group originated in the Draconis Combine many years earlier and had been slowly spiraling downward into greater and greater depravity ever since.

Sweeps of the wilderness around the battlefields and crash sites finds a few dozen more prisoners but also a dozen or so women dressed in the ragged remains of lingerie with collars around their necks, apparently this particular pirate band kept slaves in the old ‘comfort woman’ mode. They are in poor shape, but with proper medical care and time with rape trauma specialists they improve markedly. Gentle questioning reveals that most are from the Magistracy of Canopus with a few from the Free Worlds League and the Capellan Confederation.

This presents you with an opportunity, and once they’ve recovered enough you make sure to bring in the media and use the women as a way of rekindling the anger towards the raiders. ‘This could have been you, your wives, your daughters, your mothers, your sisters…’ is the general theme, with interviews by sympathetic counselors aired over and over again.

The reaction is… beyond what you had hoped. People dig in to the reconstruction effort with an earnest will.

The guards at the POW camps are rather annoyed at having to prevent mass lynchings, but you can’t have everything. You did take your turn with your platoon on guard duty and had some long discussions with concerned citizens outside the wire. They know your thoughts on the matter.

And besides, seeing Janet on television cheerfully discussing exactly how many of the commonly accepted laws of war these bastards had broken and just how many justifications for the death penalty for them there were was entertaining. You knew your old roommate had a vicious streak, but to see her cheerfully discussing the pros and cons of firing squads versus nooses with the most popular evening TV host had you in tears of laughter. You had been very tempted to call in to advocate for Madame Guillotine, but a look from Sergeant Ngô kept you from doing it… only to fall off your chair laughing when SHE did it for you.

You DID have to keep neutral on this after all!

But then there were more uncomfortable things. You were 22, almost 23, the sole surviving member of your family, of your dynasty. You knew you’d have to do something about this… but… how?

[] Look for prospective husbands from amongst the future nobility

[] Look for prospective husbands from amongst the commoners

[] Look for prospective husbands from any social classes

[] Look for prospective husbands from within the military

[] Ask your advisors for, well, advice on the matter

[] Wait until things are more settled

 

[LordSunhawk]

Turn 2 Available Actions and Advisor Recommendations

After a rather amusing (to you) occurrence resulting in the firing of a leading contender for this year's Upper Class Twit Of The Year champion and the promotion of a far more sensible intern to take the twits place, you announce that henceforth the Academy will be referred to as The Aerie. You are quite proud to have limited yourself to only a half dozen or so bad bird puns in the course of the speech.

For once General Wolf and Dr Young seem totally united on something. From now on, no more bird puns in official speeches. The killjoys.

The advice you get from your advisors on the succession range from the somewhat whimsical (Janet offering to take you out clubbing with her to troll the waters, swearing that her fourth boyfriend from such a tactic will totally work out, unlike the first three who didn’t seem to know what the word ‘commitment’ meant) to the boringly practical (Professor Chapman sitting you down for a two hour discussion on historical precedents, political theory, and the pros and cons of various approaches in the absence of a settled precedent).

You spend most of those days pointedly avoiding Tyler Lee, at one point loudly commenting to Sergeant Ngô about just how many windows there are in the repaired palace to throw the old lech out of if he sticks his nose in.

And then he sticks his nose in.

“You know, I’ve got a grandson about your age. Good kid, hotshot junior test pilot over at Aves Aerospace.” he rather casually comments, leaning against the doorway to your office. “Granted, my son-in-law runs the place, but he’s still good people, almost good enough for my oldest daughter.”

You have to shake yourself… the walking hormone is married? You realize too late that you said that out loud when the old lech laughs.

“53 years, kid, keeps me young.” he smirks at your expression. “Somebody had to win the grand prize, after all.” and he has the nerve to buff his nails on his suit jacket lapel.

You are still trying to get your head around the fact that some woman put up with him for over a half century as he saunters, positively saunters, out the door.

Before you can have him pitched out the nearest window.

The old bastard.

-----

General Wolf is pleased with the repairs to the Academy overall.

“I know that our military is in poor shape, but right now it’s more important that we fully dig ourselves out of the budgetary hole we’re in with all the repairs. At most we should buy some more tank platoons or perhaps an LRM carrier platoon or two, but that’s very low priority compared to getting our finances into order. One thing I would strongly advise is to start researching fortifications in order to make defending our planet easier.”

Military Projects

Tyler Lee, still un-defenestrated weeks after he stuck his nose in the entire marriage thing (you’ll get him eventually!), goes over a number of options with you and the rest of your advisors. With the rebuilding on track and the replacement of conventional power plants with new fusion plants underway he brings up the possibility of focusing attention on various sectors of the economy.

“Down the road promoting heavy industry and the tech sector will be very important, but for now we really can’t afford it. We could promote the financial sector, and the bankers would love us for it. But nobody else will and it may cause far more trouble than it is worth. This will sound odd coming from an unrepentant business tycoon like me, but once the budget can handle it I would strongly advise that we implement stronger environmental regulations. We can’t afford the hit to our economy right now, but the benefits when we can are more than worth it and it will let us leave a more positive legacy for future generations. With technology that’s coming down the road we’ll be able to shift much of our industry into orbit, after all, so once that happens we can get the best of both worlds. For now, though, let’s not start anything new and just finish up what we’ve got coming down the pike.”

He pauses, then slides a folder over to you. “There is one low-cost thing we can do, a general improvement to infrastructure is well within our means and would have small but important knock on effects to both our economy and our populations quality of life.”

Interior Projects

((Note a reminder, you can use any non-committed actions from any category to perform generic rating actions like improving infrastructure))

There’s been a lot of chaos within the Foreign Ministry, but Doctor Young assures you she is on top of the situation. While the contingency planning hasn’t progressed it is still an option, and in addition the Cultural Affairs section of the ministry sends you a memo proposing the commissioning of a monument to those who gave their lives in defense of the planet in the raid.

Diplomacy Projects

You and Professor Chapman spend most of your meeting discussing the ongoing reorganization of the government back to the lines in place under your father. Campaigning is already beginning in various areas, and the Professor has been fielding requests from prominent families for consideration for noble status ever since the Lords were announced. She has a small binder of the more amusing submissions which have the two of you chuckling for a few hours.

Everything is on track, with new construction for the capital buildings well underway along with dispersed bunkers to hopefully prevent what had happened to the previous government from happening again. The recent great enthusiasm for you personally is having an effect, people are working long hours wanting everything to succeed and the effects are starting to be felt.

((Every action either in progress or started this turn will have 1 free success added to its resolution roll. This means that a bare failure on the roll will be treated as a bare success, 1 degree of failure will be treated as a bare failure, and 2 degrees of failure will be required for an actual failure. Projects with this effect active will be marked with an asterix))

Political Projects

Dr Palmer video conferences in from her field office with piles of paperwork visible on the rickety desk she’s seated behind. She’s been camped out near one of the main crash sites for months overseeing the cataloguing of material for future research.

“The labs are coming along very well.” she reports. “They should be finished on time and on budget, then we’ll really be able to get started on some real research again.”

She shuffles some papers. “Until that is finished I’d really recommend not starting any serious research projects. The difficulty in working without good labs is going to hamstring any serious work and ultimately cost far more money than we can afford.”

Research Projects

Juanita Bailey comes in, looking even more grim-faced than usual, and sits down heavily. “Those people are scum. Complete scum. You’ve gotten the reports about those women we rescued?”

When you nod she grimaces. “We’ve been getting more intel out of them than out of the prisoners. It’s bad. The Star League has fallen, the entire Sphere is in a constant state of war with all of the powers nuking each other back into the stone age.”

There is silence in the office as this sinks in.

“We won’t be able to hide this for too long, so you’ll want to start thinking about how to handle this. In more local news, when your father was on the throne he’d regularly have us investigate the various politicians within Parliament, you might want to get a head start on that by looking into those who are already jockeying for positions as we get things restarted.”

“Oh, and as big of a bunch of scum as they are, my people are certain that the prisoners still have things to spill, our questioning has started bearing fruit but we can, with your permission, jack up the pressure.” an evil smile crosses her aged face. “I’ve ordered some workmen to erect a scaffold in full view of the POW camp and we’ve started testing the mechanism for the trap. That should motivate them to be very cooperative, yes?”

Intelligence Projects

Janet is her usual ebullient self when she bounces in at an indecently early hour with a giant steaming cup of coffee as a bribe for good behavior (and not getting thumped).

“I’ve got a great idea!” she announces, flopping back on your couch while you work on reducing the blood content of your caffeine system. “And I ran the numbers on it too! Remember when we spent a semester volunteering downtown at that women’s shelter?”

You nod, slowly coming awake.

“Well that got me to thinking, remember that legal aid clinic they had there? They did a ton of good, helping poor folk deal with issues. Got quite a few off the streets after all, and that’s always a good thing. We already have a public defenders office and it’s pretty well staffed, why don’t we expand it a bit both in size and scope to provide free legal services to the poor and indigent. If we prime the pump, we’ve got mechanisms in place for the existing legal aid clinics to merge in both with their manpower and their funding, so it would be almost cost neutral.”

She grins a bit. “So think of it, kay? Oh, and I really think we should do some background checks for the various candidates for office. Just doing a quick scan through the names and did you know that two of the ones vying for Lordships are convicted sex offenders, and one of the candidates for the Common’s has a laundry list of fraud convictions? Won’t cost much either, but boy will it save on embarrassment.”

“In addition once Mrs Bailey is done playing with the prisoners, let us know and we’ll start the trials of those scum buckets. Pirates are hostis generis humani, after all, so we don’t really need a trial technically but it might give their victims some closure and show that we at least care about the rule of law.”

Justice Projects

 

[LordSunhawk]

Vote is CLOSED

[X] Economic Steps wins

Write up incoming

 

[LordSunhawk]

Turn 2 Results

Spoiler: Event, Rating, and Luck Rolls

Economic Roll - 6 degrees of success +1 = 12% GDP Growth
Health Roll - 7 Degrees of success +1 = 8% GDP Growth
Stability Change roll - +3

Stability Rolls

-Political - 5 degrees of success - 5 positive event rolls
--Modifier Roll - 92, 100, 26, 86, 91
--Roll - 1 possible event at +0. Roll for event = 4
--Result - +10 Stability next turn

-Research - 4 degrees of success, 4 positive event rolls
--Modifier Roll - 99, 78, 88, 68
--Result - No possible events

-Economic - N/A due to status
--Roll -
--Result =

Meta Event Roll - 8 - all ratings rolled at +15 this turn (factored above)
Dynasty Luck Roll - 15 - +2000 cash windfall

Spoiler: Projects

Purchase Tracked Missile Carrier Platoon
-Skill Target = 70
-Roll = 27 SUCCESS

Foreign Affairs Planning
-Skill Target = 60
-Roll = 35 SUCCESS

Build Memorial to Victims of Pirate Raid
-Skill Target = 85
-Roll = 36 SUCCESS

Investigate potential MPs
-Skill Target = 65
-Roll = 67 BARE FAILURE, will auto succeed next turn

Expand Public Defender's Office
-Skill Target = 85
-Roll = 27 SUCCESS

Improve Infrastructure
-Skill Target = 70
-Roll = 9 6 degrees of SUCCESS

----------

Spoiler: What. A. Year

Another year down and progress is occurring on all fronts. You always wanted to say that. A phrase up there with ‘maybe a bayonet charge is what’s needed, chaps’.

You sip your coffee as you read the end of the fiscal year reports and can barely restrain the urge to pump your fist in victory. A number of Crown properties had unexpected financial windfalls this year and you’d pumped the funds into the treasury, earning you more than one impressed look from people in the know about it.

The stars seemed to be aligned for you, you reflect. From far stronger than expected economic growth as rebuilding continues unabated to a distinct lack of bad news.

You discretely knock on the wood of your desk, not wanting to tempt fate with that thought.

General West had reported that the new tracked missile carriers had passed their trials, the first crews had been trained, and you had a full platoon in service. Not much, but it gives you something other than lucky laser shots to take down enemy aerospace assets along with the long range indirect fire you are certain your troops will appreciate.

You had spent plenty of time with your platoon this year as well and your advisors were slowly becoming used to the thought that if they hunted you down for an impromptu meeting they might have to go out in the field and give you their reports while ankle deep in mud or on guard duty somewhere. You felt it kept them humble.

While shivering around a fire on an arctic training evolution, Corporal van Lustbader had regaled the platoon with the history of the assault rifles you all used. Evidently they were a truly ancient design, dating back not only before the Star League, but also to before humans had set foot on Luna for the first time. It had changed names a few times, had a few upgrades here and there, but the Standard Assault Rifle you were carrying had a direct design lineage straight to the M-16 rifle of even before the Terran Alliance.

You’re not sure, but you think it might be time to consider an upgrade? Maybe once the labs were up for it you could unleash some eager young engineers and budding gunsmiths to the project.

The STILL un-defenestrated Tyler Lee is still smirking at you, and at seemingly every meeting brings up yet another of his THIRTY FIVE grandchildren you really ought to meet. He’s taking far too much pleasure out of this. So is Sergeant Ngô, the traitor. She has taken to mentioning some of her still unmarried brothers and offering to enlist her grandmother’s matchmaking services.

But still you should do something.

[] Grab Janet and go out clubbing together. She’s single again, BTW, boyfriend number 4 crashed and burned.
[] Agree to meet some of Tyler’s grandkids. What could possibly go wrong?
[] Agree to meet Sergeant Ngô’s family. How hard could it be?
[] Ask your advisors for more advice. Completely foolproof plan! Punt! Procrastinate! You can do it!


Dr Young has managed to get the deadwood out of the Foreign Ministry and the organizational planning is complete, along with a series of plans and protocols for likely situations. With no real data to work from this is all purely academic work, brushing off plans and ideas that previous generations of diplomats had come up with.

The design of the memorial to the victims of the attack is even more stunning in person than you’d expected from the design briefs. A circular park surrounded by a six foot tall dense hedge that, in the climate of the capital, is covered in flowers nearly year round. .There is a lush lawn on the inside of the hedge, and radiating out from a circular fountain in the center are five transparent slabs of armor-grade glass with the names of every single victim of the attack suspended within it on laser-etched strips of silver.

The only blip in the total success of the year comes in the form of a memo from Juanita, the sheer number of candidates for the Commons at this point has delayed the investigation enough that it will take a few months longer. Not a major deal, with Parliament not meeting for another few years yet, but still a tiny fly in the ointment.

Janet is her ever far too rambunctious self. If it weren’t for the fact that she brews better coffee than even the best of your cooks you’d strangle her. But she cheerfully informs you of the enormous success of the expanded public defender’s office and legal aid efforts. You’re happy about this. Really. After you get a second cup of liquid life. Then you’ll be awake to deal with this shit.

This shit being Tyler showing up unannounced again carrying cigars, proudly announcing that he’s about to be a great-grandfather in several months. Followed by him hitting on Sergeant Ngô again, then bouncing out the door before Enraged, Sergeant, One. Calling over his shoulder a report on how exceptionally well the infrastructure expansion project has been going.

 

[LordSunhawk]

Turn 3 Available Actions and Advisor Advice (plus some romance on the side)

((QM Note - looks like the lech’s grandkids won out over asian tiger grandma by one vote. In thanks for you forcing me to write romance when you could have been kind and punted… you will be punished by seeing both?))

Willis Alexander Lee looks much like you’d expect Tyler looked in his mid-20’s. Tall, handsome, with a winning smile… a handsome young man. Who doesn’t act at all like his grandfather. Where Tyler is all flash and energy, Willis is simply quietly competent. Indeed, it takes most of an hour before anything at all happens in the meeting beyond a serious professional giving you a detailed and surprisingly interesting briefing on several prototypes under development as a next generation aerospace fighter to replace the Falcon.

And that is when Tyler breezes in and promptly starts making inappropriate comments like he’s wont to do, and immediately getting shut down by his own grandson before you have a chance to do more than start to twitch.

“Gramma gave me permission to tell… that… story if you didn’t behave yourself, Gramps.” he simply said, causing the old lech to pale a bit and beat a hastier retreat than you’d ever managed with glares, dire threats, or references to windows.

And then Willis proved to be just as insufferable as his grandfather by refusing to tell you the story since the old man had ultimately behaved! How DARE he keep such juicy gossip away from you!

And he immediately returns to discussing g-limits, cockpit ergonomics, and variant escape systems like the Tyler Lee Interrupt had never happened.

MEN!

You still schedule a second briefing with him a week later.

You complain to Sergeant Ngô for hours after the meeting, causing her to laughingly remind you that the offer to meet with her grandmother is still open.

The next meeting is nearly the same. It should have been dreadfully boring, but somehow he manages to make it all extremely interesting.

And that afternoon finds you at the capital airfield wearing a flight suit and being helped into a Falcon trainer after you, for some reason you can’t explain even to yourself, accepted the offer of a check ride in the trainer so he could demonstrate some of what he’d been talking about.

Professional curiosity only, of course. As a ruler you should understand what all of your military people do so that you can best use their skills and equipment in the future. That’s your story and you are sticking to it.

You complain to the good sergeant afterwards that Willis STILL refuses to spill the beans on this story.

And you schedule another meeting.

In the meantime you finally get to meet Sergeant Ngô’s family and that goes exceptionally well. Within an hour you were sitting at a large table with all of the sergeants siblings with somewhat exotic porcelain spoons and chopsticks consuming Phở and engaging in small talk. You’d already been sternly ordered by the eldest lady present to call her bà, which had caused the sergeant to actually look a bit embarrassed for a moment.

You leave with strict orders to return once a week for a proper home-cooked meal and to ‘bring that young man with you next time!’.

You complain to the sergeant about that the entire trip back to the palace.

The next week you obediently appear at the Ngô family home with Willis in tow.

He’s better with chopsticks than you.

You complain to Sergeant Ngô about that all the way home.

Your advisors are oh-so-carefully not mentioning your regular meetings with him, even Tyler is being unusually professional. The bastard. Willis still hadn’t told you that story and you needed the blackmail material to keep the walking hormone under control! That’s your story and you are sticking to it!

Janet at least commiserates with you over the situation, usually over either her excellent coffee in the early morning briefings that she enjoys or over beers in the evening. Of course, you then find a stack of bridal fashion magazines neatly stacked in your Inbox.

Sergeant Ngô gets to hear you complaining about that too.

Then Willis gets called away by his bosses for something he can’t talk about, and the meetings stop for over a month. You still talk by phone a few times and you can tell he really wants to tell you what he’s up to but he’s been ordered by his bosses not to.

Then you find out what it is when a massive 200 ton boxy abomination of an aerospace craft rolls out of an assembly hangar. An hour later it’s in orbit, and Griffin’s Roost finally has the ability to quickly and cheaply transport cargo to orbit and back. And Willis was the pilot-in-command.

You shamelessly take advantage of being the ruler of the planet to be at the field when the craft lands, elbow your way past the journalists covering the opening of the hatch, and intercept Willis as he’s getting out.

You are told that you spent almost ten solid minutes kissing the insufferable man. Even with video evidence you are certain it was no more than a few seconds and very dignified.

It wasn’t.

You complain to Sergeant Ngô about that too, before asking if she’d be willing to be one of your bridesmaids at the wedding if he ever actually asks.

Despite all the drama (and the wonderful phở of the Ngô’s) you still have a great deal of work to do. Things are going smoothly enough that you are starting to really believe you’ll be able to pull this off.

General Wolf is extremely pleased with the new tracked missile launchers. It’s not much, but it returns some indirect fire capacity to the small army that could prove vital. With the reopening of the labs a few years off he recommends against any new research initiatives for now, but that if the budget can support it to consider rebuilding the armored forces and ASF squadrons. If he had a free hand, he tells you, he’d want at least 2 more flights of Falcons operational this year along with 2 more platoons of Hoplite tanks.

Tyler only sends you an email with his itemized recommendations, which earns a snort of laughter from you. Then the old pervert pops his head in, grins at you, and disappears before you can do more than start to glare. The recommendations are mostly to stick with what is going on right now, but also noting that there are a number of small companies that would love to do business with the government providing new military equipment. It is a great surprise (note the sarcasm!) that you discover that this ‘Tank-X’ is partially owned by yet another of his grandkids. On the other hand, looking at the test footage of their ‘Chasseur’, or as a painfully young pimply faced engineer earnestly tells the camera ‘HOVERTANK!’ (you can hear the exclamation point), makes you really want one, because that looks fun to race around at speed ‘yes’.

Dr Young informs you that the foreign ministry is quiet for now, there are some ideas percolating around for cultural events but right now they are simply waiting to see if anything comes up. Like, say, a royal wedding.

Professor Chapman cheerfully informs you that the rebuilding of the government is going extremely well and might finish a bit ahead of schedule, and certainly below budget. She’d like to conduct some PR campaigns for the crown ahead of the first elections, in hopes of promoting candidates to the Commons and the elected portion of the Lords who more closely align to your policies and plans. She also mentions the prospect of a royal wedding, and then proceeds to completely discombobulate you with a cheerful earful of advice for how to get her young man to realize that you are genuinely interested and that a ring would be rather nice.

You think you’re going to try some of that with Willis. After complaining to Sergeant Ngô about it first.

Dr Palmer thankfully doesn’t bring up anything to do with weddings, romance, or boys in general. She gushes over the progress with the labs and all of the wonderful research that can be done once they are finished. She also spends a few hours enthusiastically explaining about how it would be possible in the future to upgrade and improve the labs to make research even easier.

When it comes time for your intelligence briefing and planning session you are surprised when Juanita Bailey slaps a small folder on the desk marked for your eyes only. Opening it you find a small dossier on Willis which causes you to promptly slam it closed. The cover image being from a swim meet showing him wearing speedos and goggles and nothing else… you favor your intelligence chief with a fulminating glare worthy of Tyler Lee himself, but you don’t hand the folder back. For… research purposes.

Once you get over your blushes and are able to get to the actual meeting, you find that the intel division would like another crack at interrogating the POWs. She’s certain that there’s more she can extract from them before leaving them to the tender mercies of Janet and the headsman.

Janet bounces in far too early, saved once again by her mastery of the coffee bean, and spends the meeting cheerfully gossiping about Willis, boys, her latest crash and burn on the dating scene (boyfriend number 5 AND 6) and, oh, could you PRETTY PLEASE authorize the background checks for both nobility and MPs? With a cup of espresso on top?

 

[LordSunhawk]

Turn 3 Results and Wedding Bells

Spoiler: Rating and Event Rolls

Economic Roll - 5 degrees of success = 10% GDP Growth
Health Roll - 1 degree of success = 1% Pop growth rate
Stability Change roll - 2 degrees of success

Stability Rolls
-Political - 7
--Modifier Roll - 99,21,93,48,65,1,32
--Roll - N/A, 2, N/A, 4, 7, -2(1), 3
--Result - 3 rolls at +10, Stability +10, free success all rolls this turn

-Research - 8
--Modifier Roll - 17,24,92,25,43,36,10,90
--Roll - 2,3,N/A,5,5,4,2,N/A
--Result - Combined results, 2 free projects of QMs choice autosucceed immediately. Gave aerodyne and spheroid small craft

-Economic - 4
--Modifier Roll - 100,6,27,99
--Roll - N/A,2,6,N/A
--Result = +4% GDP

Meta Event Roll - 86 rerolled to 6 due to Jarow’s reroll = +15 all ratings this turn (factored above)

Dynasty Luck Roll - 24 - Mwarrwiage, we're hwere twodway fwor mwarrwiage

Spoiler: Project Rolls

Build 1 Flight of Falcon ASF
Target = 60+10+10
Roll = 84
Result = SUCCESS

Construct Planetary Surveillance Network Level 1
Target = 65+10
Roll = 9
Result = SUCCESS

Build Press Center
Target = 65+10+10
Roll = 78
Result = SUCCESS

LOSTECH - Industrial Exoskeletons lvl 1*
Target = 50+10
Roll = 23
Result = SUCCESS

Investigate potential MPs
Target = Autosuccess
Roll = N/A
Result = SUCCESS

Interrogate POWs
Target = 55+10
Roll = 56
Result = SUCCESS

Investigate potential Nobles
Target = 55+10+10
Roll = 85
Result = bare FAILURE autosuccess next turn

Background Screening for MP candidates
Target = 75+10
Roll = 65
Result = SUCCESS

Background Screening for Noble candidates
Target = 75+10
Roll = 71
Result = SUCCESS

-----

You are at your desk going over some paperwork when Janet pops in and informs you in an unusually serious tone that there’s a ‘situation’ that requires your attention. Then she won’t tell you in the office and drags you off to a secure meeting room where the rest of your advisors are sitting, all but Juanita looking confused (although Dr Young is alternating that with poisonous glares at Tyler Lee).

“We have a massive problem.” she starts, looking over to Juanita who starts handing out folders to everybody. “We dodged a bullet in some ways, but this is going to be massive and how we handle this will have serious consequences.”

You open the folder and freeze. The cover sheet is a criminal referral that is awaiting a signature.

For Bradford Santos.

A media darling, one of the most popular men on the planet, with a reputation for philanthropy, charity and good works amongst the poor that have risen him to such a high level that he had been a leading candidate for a senior noble title and a seat in the Lords.

And one of your most vocal supporters.

A criminal referral for multiple counts of bribery, blackmail, racketeering, rape, sex trafficing, grooming of minors, sexual assault on multiple minors, sex trafficing minors, kidnapping, false imprisonment, assault, and first-degree murder, not to mention several dozen counts of High Treason..

Juanita starts speaking once everybody has had a chance to read the cover sheet. “We’ve only just begun investigating the prospective nobles for the Lords. One of our agents who was interviewing associates of Mr Santos disappeared, a few days later her body was found in a lime quarry having been shot execution style with ligature marks on her wrists.”

Janet picks up the narrative. “Capital PD started investigating but there was something odd about things. Several officers seemed extremely reticent to investigate and things were crawling. I sent some of my people in to take over the investigation and Chief Winston raised a storm of protest, which struck me as extremely odd. Evidence from the site where the body was found had been ‘lost’, the body itself was cremated against the express wishes of the family and completely against procedure. So we started sweating the coroner and he cracked. The disposal had been ordered by the Chief.”

Another folder is passed around. “We discovered evidence that much of the senior leadership of the Capital PD were compromised. Tyler’s people were able to obtain bank records on the QT showing patterns of bribery over decades amongst the senior bureaucratic leadership of the city government. We correlated that and discovered that some of Mr Santos’ associates, including the one we knew Juanita’s agent was meeting when she disappeared, were the source of many of these bribes.”

Juanita picked the thread up again. “Using counter-intel authorizations we were able to officially seize the bank records and require the bank officials to be silent about it. One VP tried to place a call to one of the implicated bureaucrats however we intercepted it and that worthy is currently awaiting the Queen’s justice.” a twitch of a smile “We stashed him in one of the POW camps.”

Janet then continues the briefing. “With that evidence secured we picked up a few of the bureaucrats, including Chief Winston. However something again struck us as odd. They seemed oddly relieved that the only thing we had on them was the bribery. So I started… fishing. We took Chief Winston out to a safe house in the countryside and started sweating him hard, while we dug into his background, finances, activities, everything. Regardless of what we decide today I want a commendation from the crown for Agent Herman Webb for not strangling Winston when the bastard finally cracked and started talking.”

She takes a deep breath. “What we discovered is huge… a network embedded into the political and economic elites of the planet. A network that has been preying on the poor of the planet to provide sick entertainment for over a century while acting to consolidate power in their hands. We’ve been unraveling things, and that folder is only the tip of the iceberg. Mr Santos is known in the network as the Diamond King, and appears to be the current leader of it having inherited the position from his father. The long-term goal of the network is the overthrow of your dynasty in order for them to take over completely and establish an oligarchy with their families in absolute control.”

Juanita takes up the thread “Your father’s intelligence and justice ministries were completely subverted, it was only the destruction from the raid that killed enough of their people in those areas that we were able to start figuring out what was going on.”

There is silence in the chamber, then Tyler speaks up. “One of my sons-in-law is implicated in this.” he says steadily, his usual insouciant attitude completely absent. “I’d noticed that Jennifer had taken to wearing long-sleeves, but dismissed it as a fashion decision since they lived further north where it got colder. Now…” his lips thin. “If the bastard is involved in this, and reading the file I’m almost certain he is, my only request is that I get to be the one to pull the handle when we hang his worthless ass.”

“If we do. Taking down this entire network will cause massive disruptions.” Janet starts uncomfortably.

“Hang that.” Tyler snaps. “There should be no if about it. People who do the things these files indicate these ratfuckers do forfeit any consideration of being human, let alone being part of society.” he slams one hand on the table. “Fiat justitia ruat caelum” he bellows.

Janet nods “I agree, Tyler, but it’s not our decision.”

They all look at you.

[] Let justice be done no matter the cost. This will reduce GDP growth by 5% for 5 turns, reduce stability by 20 for 5 turns, and stability change by 5 for 5 turns while immediately increasing Crown influence by 3. However at the conclusion of that period it will raise base GDP growth to 5% permanently and increase Economic Rating by 10. Gain modifier ‘the Just’ to permanent effects.

[] It’s too big a risk. Reduce Crown Influence by 1, add modifier ‘Conspiracy’ to permanent effects. Future actions to address the Gem conspiracy will require an action and expenditure of resources.

[] Secretly purge the guilty. Unleash your intel and justice agents on the members of the conspiracy and leave no survivors, making the deaths seem to be by misadventure or accidents. Gain modifier ‘Secret Police’ to permanent effects.

QM Note - Think carefully about your decisions here. The 3 modifiers have significant hidden effects that will be permanent.

On a much happier note, several days after the discovery of this conspiracy of traitors and general scumbags, Willis arrives at his weekly meeting with you looking unusually nervous. It takes him a few false starts, but surprisingly he asks you to accompany him to the airfield where he seems to settle down a bit, giving you a tour of the new aerodyne SSTO shuttle. While in the crew compartment he turns and suddenly looks nervous again for a moment before visibly steeling himself.

And then dropping to one knee, taking out a small box containing an absolutely gorgeous ring, and proposing…

There are disadvantages to being Queen, you can’t have a simple wedding… but you are able to put your foot down on the social experts who want to drag this out until next year…

-Write out the wedding?
--[] Yes
--[] No

One of the more unusual gifts comes from the state-owned armor factory that produces the Hoplite tank, an entire platoon of their next generation Phalanx tank is produced and paid for by the employees of the factory and turned over to the military.

In other news, a new flight of Falcon ASFs joined your aerospace corps to general acclaim, the swift interceptor having proven itself in helping fight off the pirate attack. At the same time the introduction of light industrial exoskeletons allows a general reduction in maintenance expenses as it becomes far easier to service and repair the various fighters in service.

A basic planetary surveillance network has been launched into orbit, comprising several dozen satellites equipped with high resolution cameras and powerful radars. In any future enemy attack you will have superior knowledge of enemy deployments and activities enabling more flexible tactics.

In addition the Royal Press Center has been opened to much acclaim from the media, who are glad to have a centralized point of contact for the crown. Some, of course, grumble about it, but considering that most of those grumbling are already hostile to the crown, well… you can live with their discontent.

In addition the Mechanical Engineering Department at Griffin’s Roost University has sponsored a design contest for an armored fighting vehicle designed to face the sort of light mechs the pirates had. The following three entrees passed the initial design review and are being voted upon by the wider community. There are no guarantees that any of them will ever see service, but the possibility does exist.

[]Gun Motor Carriage M1
[]Impaler Tank
[]Pisa Light Tank LRM

((QM Note - The winner of the design contest will get to specify one roll next turn that will receive a +10 target bonus))

 

[LordSunhawk]

Interlude - Wedding Bells and Traitor’s Knells

You wanted a quick simple wedding.

Willis wanted a quick simple wedding.

This wasn’t going to be a quick simple wedding.

As the preparations continued you occasionally wondered why you didn’t take Tyler up on his idea of racing off to Avan’s Glen and getting married in one of the drive through wedding chapels there by somebody pretending to be somebody called ‘Elvis’. You had no idea who this ‘Elvis’ was, but evidently he was big on weddings or something, and wore a lot of sequins, and had really poofy hair.

At the time you nearly succeeded in throwing the old lech out a window, as for once Sergeant Ngô was fully on side with the idea and almost managed to catch him before he managed to escape. Again. The two of you complained to each other about it.

Of course, the pending nuptials didn’t take up nearly as much time as you’d always thought they would. Because you had many other important things to deal with.

The media was in both a frenzy and a quandary. TWO incredibly juicy stories breaking at the exact same time. A Royal Wedding! Guaranteed front page! Wait… over half of the wealthiest and most influential people on the planet, including the publishers of most of the newspapers and the owner of the largest news channel on the planet being arrested for treason? Front page! Wait… more wedding news… argh, which do we put on the front page?

Santos was loudly proclaiming his utter innocence and acting extremely hurt that the throne was accusing him, one of the Queen’s biggest supporters, of such outlandish crimes, no doubt at the prompting of his enemies amongst the ‘exploitative leeches who sadly surround the throne’. His claims of innocence might even have worked except even as he was loudly shouting about it teams of journalists were trailing behind the teams from Justice who were tearing apart Santos’ mansion, revealing the dungeons hidden underneath still occupied by pre-pubescent boys and girls kept there for the monster's sick amusement.

And then Janet’s people found the records. And you had the odd situation of having to hold one of your oldest friends as she had a complete breakdown at the sheer monstrous nature of it all.

You came very close to short-circuiting the trials right then and there and having all of the conspirators, starting with Santos, fed feet first through a dull wood chipper.

The markets had tanked. Many of the major banks and financial institutions of the planet were heavily implicated in the conspiracy. From financing the activities of the conspirators to facilitating bribes and such. Many senior executives were facing the noose and were babbling everything they knew in the hopes of saving their own necks.

You had no intention of letting that work. Even those who fully turned state’s evidence you intended to completely ruin and deal with permanently. You might not execute them, but you had teams building an ultra-secure prison in the arctic to stash the few you would spare from the gallows.

As for the banks themselves, you had options. Tyler recommended seizing all of the assets of the institutions implicated, barring any employees of the institutions in question who had significant fiduciary relationships with the guilty from ever working in the financial sector again, and setting up government owned banks with the intention of transitioning ownership to the private sector over time through timed privatization and stock sales.

Doctor Young felt that you should seize all the banks assets and fully nationalize them, with all banking under central government control and no private financial institutions allowed and with all current employees jailed and stripped of all personal assets on the basis that they should have known what was going on and thus were all guilty. She had initially declared that anybody related to the guilty should be considered guilty as well, but you’d stomped on that idea hard for… obvious reasons.

It helped when Janet sweetly pointed out that Doctor Young’s own sister's husband was related to Santos through his sister’s husband and asked when Doctor Young would be reporting to prison.

Professor Chapman recommends a more hands-off approach, seizing the illicit assets and jailing the guilty but allowing the markets to settle the question of which banks survived the crisis. Tyler is on board with that in principle, and says that ordinarily that would be his advice as well, but he’s concerned that the rot is so widespread in those institutions that letting the markets handle things might cause more harm than good.

[] Plan:Tyler
[] Plan:Miranda
[] Plan:Eleanor
[] Write-In

Juanita pops into your office one morning while you were totally not necking with your fiance on your couch. The old woman just looks at you as you both blush and hastily straighten up your clothes, but doesn’t comment.

“We have developed more intel from the captured pirates. Their leader was a disgraced Tai-sa from the Draconis Combine who went renegade rather than commit seppuku, taking a number of his men with him and turning mercenary. One of the prisoners is in fact their second-in-command and we’ve had him under heavy narco-interrogation ever since we learned his status. We’re still working on him, but we’ve developed more information about their mechs and such, as well as the name of the JumpShip they used, a Tramp-class vessel called the Glory.”

-----

There are a number of wedding traditions on Griffin’s Roost. There are a number of traditions in your family. Sadly most of them aren’t possible. Your parents are dead, so they can’t take you out for the traditional family ‘bachelorette tavern crawl’. Sergeant Ngô won’t even let you have an old-fashioned hen party on the grounds that the situation was far too unsettled for such silliness. Instead of wearing your mother’s dress you need to buy a new one, as the heirloom gown was destroyed in the destruction of the palace. You can’t even simply go to the bridal shop to find a dress, instead a vetted and cleared seamstress is allowed to take your measurements under the eagle eye of a suspicious Vietnamese sergeant and sent off to make a custom dress.

The only relief from Sergeant Ngô’s newfound paranoia comes during your weekly dinners at her family's place, and even that is still happening due to Word of Bà that, evidently, outranks all of you. It’s a welcome respite. Even the most persistent journalists are clearly intimidated by the death glares of elderly Vietnamese women. Before being fed Phở and lectured on proper respect and behavior.

For some reason the Palace press corps is gradually becoming far more polite.

You did get one moment of hilarity when the seamstress hired to make the wedding dress showed up with a creamy confection in silk and lace, and promptly got overruled by Word of Bà. You’d never seen a designer more flustered than when sternly lectured on how inappropriate such a dress was, before the old grandmother snapped her finger with all the aplomb and command presence of General Wolf in a field exercise, summoning one of her elder daughters to fetch a more appropriate dress.

You are quite sternly informed that while it would not be appropriate for you to undertake a fully traditional Vietnamese wedding, on the grounds that you are not Vietnamese, bà was determined that you would wear something much nicer than ‘that frilly nonsense’.

It was stunning, far more so than the ‘traditional’ white gown. A cloth-of-gold underdress that was completely plain apart from the glorious golden color, with a long áo nhật bình in dramatic scarlet with golden embroidery. A stunning golden imperial dragon coiled around the ankle-length long split tunic looking fierce and dignified at the same time. A golden khăn vấn with contrasting scarlet embroidery was to be worn with the gown. And unlike the painfully high heels intended for the ‘western’ gown, this dress was worn with a pair of extremely comfortable embroidered slippers.

Willis was initially amused at hearing about this, only to find himself the next target of the Gaze Of Bà. No tuxedo for him! No sir, bà had something far more appropriate!

He looked somewhat flustered when he discovered that bà intended for him to wear an áo gấm that was blue and gold to contrast with your scarlet and gold.

Of course, your favorite part of the entire thing was when Tyler made an utterly inappropriate remark and promptly got subjected to the Gaze Of Bà in all of its draconic intensity.

The palace staff was torn between bemusement and outrage as Sergeant Ngô’s family took complete charge over the bridal party. But Hurricane Bà was in full effect, and was not taking any prisoners.

General Wolf idly wondered if he could commission her into the military to whip new officer candidates into shape. And got glared at for a moment before the old woman actually looked a bit sheepish, admitting that she’d been a non-com in her long ago youth. Evidently whipping officers into shape was a Ngô family tradition, and Sergeant Ngô was merely the current active member of the family business.

This explained SO much, in your opinion.

-----

The trials were finally starting. You spent your days observing the courtroom from a separated gallery where you could easily view the conduct of everybody involved. You spent a lot of time looking impartially imperious while Sergeant Ngô stood by your side looking lethal. You would have the duty of confirming the sentences of each of the prisoners, and you were absolutely determined to do your duty by personally observing each trial, looking each one in the eye as they tried to defend the indefensible.

The barrister’s who were appearing on the defence's behalf had been carefully vetted beforehand to ensure that they were not tainted by treason, however they had all been personally assured by yourself and Janet that their efforts on their clients behalf would not ever be held against them, personally or professionally. Indeed, you’d taken the step of publicly thanking them for their willingness to provide legal representation even for the most unpopular people on the planet, on the grounds that even the devil himself deserved an advocate before the bar of justice.

It wouldn’t save any of the defendants, though. The evidence was damning, and the courts were not in any way inclined towards mercy. You certainly weren’t. Most of those who turned Queen’s Evidence would still be condemned to death, they would merely be given the option to face a firing squad rather than the traitor’s noose. Those who had turned Queen’s Evidence and weren’t themselves directly guilty of capital crimes would be stripped of their assets and properties and condemned to imprisonment in the new facility you’d built. Imprisonment until you or your heirs decided to relent and free them. Which as far as you were considered wouldn’t be on this side of the last judgement.

The trials were extremely quick. Most lasted less than an hour. The evidence was just too solid, and nobody was at all interested in letting them stretch things out with pointless motions and grandstanding.

But they all still got a trial. Which was more than their victims ever got. There were times where you were tempted to cancel the trials and just got on with the executions. But you kept to it. Public opinion was firmly on your side despite the chaos, despite the disruptions. People were as outraged as you were as the details of what these monsters had done came out. Every day brought fresh horrors to light. Murders, tortures, abuses. Every. Single. Day.

The fields of execution were directly adjacent to the courthouse chosen for the trials, and each one was public. Immediately following the confirmation of sentence the condemned were taken out of the courthouse, not even given the chance to see family or have a last meal, on the grounds that traitors shouldn’t be accorded such privileges. They were instead immediately taken to the field where the condemned were either led to the posts in front of the soft sand berm where the rotating firing squads awaited them, or over to the gallows to be ‘hanged by the neck until dead’. There had been an argument to use short drops but in the end you’d opted for the more ‘humane’ standard drop. It was quicker, at least.

You couldn’t wait for it to be over.

-----

Weekends, at least, you could be with your fiance and friends, relaxing as much as you could. Most of the wedding prep took place then, at least those parts that required your participation. Sergeant Ngô was coaching you in how to wear the traditional dress and not look foolish doing so. It was harder than you expected considering how simple it looked, but there was a difference between wearing it and wearing it well.

Willis was keeping you far away from all the honeymoon planning, although he’d let slip that he’d also kept his grandfather equally far away from it so you were confident it wouldn’t be too embarrassing. You hoped.

You had decided to wait to hold the wedding until after the trials were over, on the grounds that it would be inappropriate and jarring to have such a joyous affair take place in the middle of that horror show.

-----

The finale of the trials was finally at hand. The trial of Bradford Santos himself. He was the last one, the only one of the conspirators who hadn’t either been executed or transported to secure imprisonment.

And the bastard seemed to think he could talk his way out of this. He grandstanded in court, making a passionate appeal, completely ignoring the mountains of evidence against him. He has the gall to turn his time on the dock into a call for revolution against the ‘treacherous fools surrounding our queen’ and calling for the poor to rise up against their ‘oppressors’. You have the pleasure of seeing the expression on his face when the public gallery in the courthouse instead erupts into scornful laughter and demands to have him muzzled.

He doesn’t seem to believe that any of this is real, up until the moment that the judge announces the sentence of death by hanging. And you simply confirm the sentence with a nod, not even bothering to give a speech of any sort, not giving him the satisfaction of there being any drama whatsoever to your confirming his death. He immediately starts thrashing against his bonds, screaming invective and abuse as he is manhandled out of the courtroom.

He is taken to the field of execution and appears utterly shocked at the site of the gallows, redoubling his struggles as he is hauled up the steps. The cameras focus on him as he is hauled over and the bag is forced over his head even as he thrashes and screams in fury. The rope halter is placed around his neck, the knot placed just so even as he struggles.

He isn’t even allowed any special treatment here, the trap is sprung by the same executioner who had sprung it for every single one of his underlings.

It is finished. The Gem conspiracy dies with the Diamond King.

-----

Your wedding day dawns bright and clear. You think you might have been more nervous when you had found yourself Queen, but you can’t be sure. You certainly are far more excited.

Bà was there, standing in for your own mother, even as you somehow sense mom looking down on you from the great beyond. The bridal party is fairly small, with Janet as your Maid of Honor. You had even forced Sergeant Ngô to put aside her uniform to be one of your bridesmaids.

The Cathedral had come through the attack fully intact, and you waited in the bride’s chambers as the rest of the bridal party headed in for their part in the procession, leaving you alone facing the ornate doors. You held the deceptively simple bouquet with white knuckles.

Then the door opened. The bridal march sounded.

Time seemed to stop, you never even realized you’d taken a step… then another. Afterwards you never could say for certain what happened. One step, another. Left. Right. Marching yet… not. Gliding almost. You felt as if you were outside your own body. You could swear your father was at your side, you can almost feel his hand on your arm. There is nothing there but your ghosts.

Each step seems oppressive, heavy. Yet each step seems to be lighter than the last. An indescribable weight seemed to be lifting off of your shoulders. Seeing your husband-to-be waiting for you, resplendent in the exotic garb bà had insisted he wear seemed to make your heart flutter even more than usual. And he looked utterly gobsmacked. You’d never caught that expression on his face before.

You treasured that expression.

You somehow reached the altar right as the march ended. You’d never managed that good of timing in the rehearsals. You did today.

You never really heard anything of the ceremony, you had eyes only for Willis. Any other time you’d be hitting yourself for so completely losing situational awareness. Not right now.

You somehow got through the vows without a single stumble. You somehow exchanged rings without a single hiccup.

And anybody who claims that the traditional kiss took ten minutes is obviously a liar. It took a mere instant. The recordings are all special effects.

-----

That evening you finally find out your husband's honeymoon plans. Somehow you aren’t surprised that it involved a short suborbital hop in the new shuttle. The destination being a brand new, extremely well hidden and very secret hunting lodge that he’d had built for the occasion is more of a surprise.

But you don’t mind that at all. Sergeant Ngô and your platoon are on perimeter duty. All is well.

All is well.

 

[LordSunhawk]

Turn 4 Available Actions and Advisor Advice

You hate morning sickness.

You aren’t that fond of mornings in general, but morning sickness makes facing the day even more of a trial.

You complain about this to your husband (it’s HIS FAULT) and Sergeant Ngô every single morning, usually while one or the other is helping you keep your hair out of the way while you lose last night's meal.

If the doctor’s tell you ONE MORE TIME that this is normal you are strongly tempted to send them to the execution grounds.

Everybody is so damn cheerful about the fact that you are pregnant. And, to be fair, once you’ve gotten past the morning sickness itself and had the ONE (damn pregnancy!) cup of coffee you are allowed each day you are nearly as cheerful about it.

You deny it, of course, but you squealed with excitement when you got the news and have been mostly faking how grumpy you are over the whole thing.

You still miss your coffee. Even Janet keeping her promise to make your one, lonely cup of coffee each day a true masterpiece of the coffee maestro’s art doesn’t make up for the fact that you have far too much blood in your caffeine system.

But coffee is bad for the baby, and bà put her foot down. Evidently your baby has also been virtually adopted before birth and bà always wants more grandbabies.

On the plus side, even though Tyler is insufferably smug, you now have a surefire way to keep the old lech under control. You have yet to learn the details, but humming the Blue Danube Waltz while grinning at him and mentioning clogs seems to do the trick nicely.

You’ve now met Tyler’s wife. She’s an absolutely wonderful woman, a professional actress, and an even more incorrigible prankster than her husband. All of those paparazzi photos of Tyler with scores of models and younger women over the years? Every single one has been of her in various disguises. Every. Single. One.

You don’t know whether to be extremely impressed or extremely frightened by this. You settle for both.

You spend quite a bit of quality time complaining to your loving husband (it’s HIS fault that you are now related to this family, after all) and Sergeant Ngô about this.

When you had gotten home after your honeymoon you’d discovered that Hurricane Bà had swept through the palace in your absence, targeting your wardrobe. Gone were all the sensible beige and pastel outfits you’d liked to wear. Instead all of your clothing, apart from your uniforms, were bold and bright colors. Bà simply declared that you were a married woman now and no longer had need for childish clothing, and that was simply that.

You weren’t sure how this worked. You are the Queen, you are pretty certain that means you get to choose what to wear, but for some reason your wishes in this matter are of absolutely zero consequence.

You, of course, complain about this to your husband (because it’s HIS FAULT you are no longer single) and the ever patient Sergeant Ngô.

The media loves it, of course, you are giving them all sorts of headlines, ‘Her Majesty spotted drinking water, implications for the wine industry? News at 11!’.

They should be worried about the coffee industry, although your husband drinks enough of it anyways. At least he is kind and considerate enough to not drink the Black Bean of Life in front of you.

You love your husband, even if it’s all his fault.

The economy has been badly rocked, even the excellent growth in the aerospace sector is massively offset by the near collapse of the banking and investment sector. Seizing control of the major banks and financial institutions in the wake of the scandals and conspiracy has revealed even greater depths of financial chicanery. Tax evasion, insider trading, embezzlement. The records are all there and the number of extremely wealthy people finding themselves before the bar of the Queen's Justice is nearly endless.

You order audits of those banks that hadn’t been involved in the conspiracy, and to your relief you find that they are mostly clean. They tend to be far smaller institutions rather than the big commercial banks that were in the conspiracy up to their well-manicured eyebrows. Your auditors find little things here and there, the minor foibles that occur in any system and generally can be put down to human error. A typo here, a misplaced digit there, the total fines from every single irregularity in the banking system outside the big players who are now nationalized would barely pay for your coffee budget before you got pregnant.

Or so your loving husband had the bad grace to joke about. You complain to him (it’s HIS FAULT you can’t enjoy coffee right now, although on more mature reflection the other benefits outweigh this…) and Sergeant Ngô about this.

It seems to take forever, but nine months is nine months, and wonder of wonders your baby decides to come out on schedule. The doctor’s are a bit surprised, since usually firstborns are far less predictable.

You spend the hours in labor alternately cursing your husband, crushing his hand, and screaming. But eventually it all becomes more than worth it. The moment the nurses settle a beautiful baby boy in your arms for the first time… all the waddling around like a blimp with legs, all the morning sickness, the lack of caffeine, the awkwardness, the pain of the delivery, all of it faded away to insignificance.

You had a son. Jeremy Desmond Griffith. Jeremy after your father, Desmond after your husbands father.

You have an heir.

The papers, of course, have a field day. You can hear fireworks going off and the street parties even from where you are lying in the recovery ward of the palace clinic.

You don’t care about any of that. You have a son. That’s all you care about right now.

Of course, the governance of the planet doesn’t much care about what you want, there’s still decisions to be made and work to do.

General Wolf is very worried about the information that is being gleaned from the prisoners. They say they are ‘pirates’ but according to him their equipment is just too… uniform… for that to ring fully true to him. The four mechs that had been destroyed were all the same model, all the tanks were the same model, all the infantry had the same rifles. That speaks to him of an organized force, not a renegade band.

“I know that we are in a tight spot financially, but we really need to expand our military strength. Our best bet would continue to be keeping the enemy from even successfully landing, so I would advise expanding our aerospace corps. Next to that, our armored forces took very heavy losses in the last incursion. For now, I would advise completing the rebuild to at least battalion strength, focusing on the new Phalanx tanks over the older Hoplites.”

He nods over at Doctor Palmer. “Once the labs are online, I would also recommend completing tests on several of the Tank-X prototypes that they’ve sent us for evaluation, and beginning preparations for series production. Specifically the Chasseur, the Wulfen, and the Foxhound. We also have a tender out for a low-cost tank to bulk out our forces, but no decision has yet been made in that regard.”

Tyler is the next up. “I agree with General Wolf as to the importance of strengthening our defenses, however I would urge you to not neglect the economy here.” he smirks a bit. “We’re in a rough patch, but we’ll be far stronger on the other end. To that end, I recommend expanding our orbital surveillance network and conducting photo surveys. We are currently running into the limits of some of our mineral extraction efforts and finding new deposits may be just the thing we need to boost our economy long term.”

Doctor Young had sent you a short memo stating only that the foreign ministry was still in a holding pattern. She has some ideas, but they are a year or two away from being useful.

Professor Chapman brings out a large binder of graphs and charts, and asks that Tyler and Janet both be present for this. “The damage wrought by the Gem conspiracy was very widespread, not simply to government institutions but also to the poor and middle classes. Despite the great corruption at the top, many of the businesses that they ran provided badly needed employment to various communities, which are now struggling back to their feet. I strongly recommend doing everything in our power to help them. Some assistance now would not only shorten the amount of time it would normally take for the economy to recover, but also build up reserves of good will.”

Tyler agrees. “It’s a good idea, especially since it will be seen as the Crown mitigating the consequences of the actions of the guilty upon the innocent. Handle it right and we could see significant economic growth. I fully back this.”

Janet is also fully on board with this and adds her enthusiastic endorsement. Of course, nearly everything she does is enthusiastic so take that as you would.

Grace is still overseeing work on the new labs and is very happy about progress. “We’re almost done! And then we can expand so we can do even more research! We should have those new guns for General Wolf on schedule and maybe a bit below budget, but what I’d really like to do is a full orbital survey. We have the original colony maps, but I’d like to see how well those correspond to reality. We don’t even need the labs for this, just flight time with the shuttles!”

Juanita mainly wants more resources for POW questioning, she thinks that her people are getting closer to fully breaking the ‘pirates’, and if General Wolf’s concerns are true, then finding out is even more critical than before.

In between enthusiastic babysitting for you and gleefully telling you about her latest boyfriend (Number 11 now! This one has GOT to be the one!), Janet lets you know that Justice is in a good place at the moment and doesn’t need any new resources.

 

[LordSunhawk]

Turn 4 Results

Spoiler: Event and Rating Rolls and Results

Economic Roll - 5 degrees of success = 5% GDP Growth
Health Roll - 5 degree of success = 5% Pop growth rate
Stability Change roll - 2 degrees of success

Stability Rolls

-Political - 0
--Modifier Roll -
--Roll -
--Result -

-Research - 3
--Modifier Roll - 38, 59, 42
--Roll - 6,9,8
--Result - no events

-Economic - -1, reroll for Economist trait, 0
--Modifier Roll -
--Roll -
--Result =

Meta Event Roll - 100 - reroll due to Jarow’s reroll - 5 - $3000 windfall

Dynasty Luck Roll - 25 - Congratulations, it’s a Boy!

Spoiler: Action Results

Build 1 Platoon of Phalanx tanks
Target = 60
Roll = 46
Result = SUCCESS

Construct Planetary Surveillance Network Level 2
Target = 65
Roll = 65
Result = SUCCESS

Compensation Fund for Victims of GEM Conspiracy
Target = 75
Roll = 1
Result = CRITICAL SUCCESS

Infantry Small Arms lvl 1
Target = 85
Roll = 14
Result = SUCCESS

Orbital Survey
Target = 65
Roll = 60
Result = SUCCESS
-- Further roll - 1 - MAJOR RESOURCE AREA FOUND (complication, overseas)

Interrogate POWs
Target = 55
Roll = 58
Result = Bare FAILURE, will automatically succeed next turn

Spy Satellites
Target = 65
Roll = 54
Result = SUCCESS

-----


On Friday evening you have your press secretary announce the Compensation Fund for Victims of the GEM Conspiracy. Monday morning, the markets reopen at 9 AM. At 9:30 AM the markets had already regained everything lost throughout the market panic and recession caused by the conspiracy. Even clarifications on the scope of the compensation plans did absolutely nothing to slow the trading. By noon the markets were nearing all time highs.


You did not expect this. Nobody expected this. By the end of the week it is obvious that what should have been a terrible year for the economy was instead going to be a great economic revitalization. The corrupt deadwood and rot from the conspirators was rapidly being replaced with healthy economic activity.


Looks like good things do happen every once in a while.


The background investigations into the remaining candidates for noble rank in the new Lords has been simplified massively, as over a third of the candidates are either guests of Your Majesty’s Pleasure in the new arctic prison or, more commonly, contributing to the growth of grass and weeds in the traitor’s field that their cremated remains had been dumped in.


Juanita calls to inform you that the spy satellites are up, and if they discover anything you’ll be informed.


Dr Palmer is incredibly excited. The original survey maps that survived had been intended for a research colony with no industry whatsoever, no there had been no real effort to discover anything beyond a suitable landing site with good access to water and fertile soil. The initial orbital survey had found something interesting. An ancient series of impact craters right near the equator, the largest turned into a nearly perfect harbor. She is certain that there must at least be extensive iron and rare earth deposits present based on the general geology of the area.


The only drawback is that this is nowhere near the currently settled continent and is right on the equator to boot. Average winter temperatures are around 30 degrees Celsius, with summers averaging around 45 degrees. And extremely high humidity. Plus the area is completely unexplored, untamed, and incredibly wild.


A quick survey trip confirms the presence of rare minerals, including a massive deposit of Germanium.


Your advisors lay out precisely what will need to happen in order to take advantage of this discovery.


First, a pair of deep water ports will need to be constructed, one on your home continent and one in the largest of the craters. Second the crater port will need to be properly secured against wildlife and any security threats. Third, the sea lanes of communication between the two ports will need to be secured. Next a railway will need to be driven to the area richest in resources, and finally a mining settlement will need to be constructed. Not to mention setting up administration and such.


Thanks to the technology you already possess this will be easier than it sounds.


But it’s still a huge job.


Meanwhile, you are dealing with some of the normal issues a new parent has to deal with. Lack of sleep, 2 AM feedings, and changing diapers. You refuse to turn your baby over to a full-time nanny or wet nurse for this, this is your son, and you are determined to be a proper mother. Sergeant Ngô and her family have been a godsend. Bà and the rest of the family have more or less encamped in the palace, to the continued bemusement of the staff, and bà takes charge more than once to give you and Willis time to yourselves or to get work done.


Granted your chief-of-staff gets irritated at times, but he puts up with it well enough. You love having flexible people around you.


A second platoon of Phalanx tanks are purchased and put into service, expanding your tank force to an entire company in size. Meanwhile, despite a few minutes of sphincter clenching terror when it seemed like the shuttle was about to crash on lift off due to engine problems, the upgrades to the planetary surveillance network are in place and feeding back data.


You are presented with the first issued Griffin-Pattern Caseless Assault Rifle, a bullpup weapon with a full set of accessory rails and 6.8mm caseless ammunition. There is an accompanying squad automatic based on the same platform firing the same ammunition and you are giving serial 000 of that one too. You spend an enjoyable weekend at the palace’s firing range with your platoon familiarizing yourselves with the new toys and having an absolute blast. The armorers tell you that further improvement to the weapons will require choices between going down a ballistic or an energy path.


QM NOTE - Please see the quest sheets for details on the extended project rules.

 

[LordSunhawk]

Turn 5 Advisors Advice and Information

It’s been 5 long, hard years. It has had incredible highs, it has had horrible lows. You’ve lost a family, and gained a family.

It is time for the next step on the journey.

Not the new settlements being planned, but something more immediate.

Parliament is ready to reopen, normalcy is starting to return.

And you aren’t allowed to throw annoying politicians out windows, as Tyler oh so helpfully reminded you FIVE MINUTES before you were supposed to go out and officially begin the election season.

You don’t even have to complain to Sergeant Ngô, just a slight eyebrow, and your loyal noncom nods.

You’d tried to get away with wearing your uniform for this, but in the end you wound up wearing a deceptively comfortable formal dress complete with your never-sufficiently damned crown. You’d tried to convince the staff to let you wear something sensible, or at least to extend the military's ‘no covers indoors’ policy to crowns, but had been thwarted at every turn. Evidently everybody *else* enjoyed seeing you suffer, the sadistic monsters.

You have a sudden rather wicked thought, just as you step up to the podium. Perhaps you could arrange a redesign of the senior officer uniforms to make them as gaudy and impractical as possible…

So it is with a smile that you start your speech, setting the entire mood of the address in a different direction than you’d originally intended. By the third line you’d completely departed from the script, still hitting all of the agreed upon points but freestyling the delivery. Professor Chapman was shaking her head in bemusement, Sergeant Ngô was keeping a perfectly straight face when you glanced her way, although her eyes were dancing just a little, and Tyler looked like he was in the process of suffering a mischief while trying to keep from laughing.

The press is utterly confused, they’d been given an advance copy and now they were looking from it to the podium with expressions that remind you irresistibly of stunned cattle. So you riffed an ‘apology’ for departing from the prepared remarks that had the ordinary audience laughing with you and invited the press to join in, which many of them do.

You wind up the speech with a stirring appeal to patriotism, and an earnest request that the voters please send you MPs that don’t deserve to be test subjects for studies into the flight properties of politicians falling from windows.

You think it went extremely well.

Your advisors lay out a comprehensive plan for the exploitation of the new resource area for your approval.

“We have many things to do, and it would be very easy to get carried away.” General Wolf explains as he fires up Ye Olde Powerpoint 2900 with a dreaded quad chart on it. “On the military side of things, this year we should look into commissioning new-build Triton’s to ensure security for commercial traffic to and from the new port facilities we need to build. We can lay the groundwork for the garrison forces, but shouldn’t actually attempt to raise them until the new facilities are actually being built.”

Tyler smoothly picks up the thread “The only other thing we should do this year are the improvements to the port facilities at Port Reach. Simply getting the harbor fully dredged and the wharfs extended should be sufficient, as well as issuing contracts and permits for commercial shippers to start expanding warehousing and yard facilities. We are already seeing an uptick in hiring at the various yards in preparation for the expansion, so let’s ride that. Other than that, we should wait until next year for the next steps.”

Janet nods “It’s pointless expanding the bureaucracy this year for this, we still have nowhere for them to go and we all know that if we hire more people than we need they just wind up costing us payroll and doing nothing useful. So we should hold off on extending justice and political offices until the new port is actually built.”

Dr Young nods. “We also shouldn’t start advertising for miners and settlers until at least the port is built. So I recommend holding off on that as well for now.”

Dr Palmer then pipes up “With the labs being finished this year we’ll be able to embark on all sorts of projects. Considering the economic circumstances, I’d strongly recommend improving the industrial exoskeletons this year. The upgrades being considered will be the last we can do without improving other areas, so let’s snatch some of that low-hanging fruit. Next year we’ll really want to get started on things like improving automation and orbital infrastructure, but that’s for then. Also, NEXT year, if you want to do something with enormous impact invest in improving the primary and secondary education system, that will give us a far larger pool of talent to draw from for our R&D projects as well as mitigating the effects of automation on the population.”

General Wolf takes back the podium. “Despite the expansion project, I still think we need to aggressively expand our forces. I urge you to consider either another company set of 3 platoons of Phalanx tanks, or a full squadron of six flights of Falcon ASFs. I’d prefer the latter. With the projected economic expansion we can handle the expense.”

 

[LordSunhawk]

Turn 5 Results

Spoiler: Event Rolls, Rating Rolls, and Influence Rolls

Economic Roll - 5 degrees of success = 17%
Health Roll - 4 degree of success = 4% Pop growth rate
Stability Change roll - 5 degrees of success

Stability Rolls

-Political - 0
--Result -

-Research - 4
--Result - no events rolled

-Economic - 3
--Result = +2% GDP

Meta Event Roll - 54 - no event
Dynasty Luck Roll - 11 - secondary roll - 3

Crown Influence Roll - 3 - SUCCESS - 1000 windfall
Lords Influence Roll - 1 - FAILURE
Commons Influence Roll - 4 - no roll

Spoiler: Action Results

Build 4 flights of Falcon ASF
Target = 60
Roll = 67
Result = Bare FAILURE - Auto succeeds next turn - due to CRITICAL SUCCESS on Exoskeletons going to spill this over to a success

Upgrade Existing Port
Target = 85
Roll = 49
Result = SUCCESS

Improved Industrial Exoskeletons lvl 2
Target = 60
Roll = 1
Result = CRITICAL SUCCESS

Interrogate POWs
Result = auto succeeds this turn

Public Assistance for Rebuilding
Target = 105
Roll = 32
Result = SUCCESS

Upgrade Power Infrastructure
Target = 100
Roll = 27
Result = SUCCESS

Reorganize Government (Constitutional Monarchy)
Target = 105
Roll = 1
Result = CRITICAL SUCCESS

Rebuild Labs
Target = 115
Roll = 24
Result = SUCCESS

-----

Barely a week had passed since the planning sessions when a visibly agitated Juanita Bailey almost fell into the seat across your desk looking like she’d seen a ghost.

“We have a bigger ‘pirate’ problem than we thought.” she says without preamble, then pulls a flask out of her pocket to take a drink, before holding it out for you. “In that they aren’t. Pirates.”

She takes a deep breath. “They never went rogue, we finally broke their second-in-command and he’s talking. It’s called Operation: Bakkusutabu. The ISF ‘disappeared’ a number of DCMS units and sent them on a long mission to establish a base in this region, with the intention of eventually striking the Federated Suns from ‘behind’.”

You accept that drink at this point. “The unit themselves were drawn from the Amphigean Light Assault Group, supposedly deserters and traitors but fully under the control of the ISF for this mission.”

She looks at you. “They’ll be back at some point, with more forces. We need to be ready.”

[] Write-in

INTERLUDE - New Sekigahara - INTERLUDE

The planet had once been a rather nice world despite the storms that periodically raged. Still intact Star League era terraforming gear had kept the damage to a minimum… until the satellites had been destroyed by the invading DCMS forces causing massive death and destruction. Damage multiplied exponentially as the forces of House Kurita gripped the throat of the small colony in a steel fist. Any defiance against the Dragon resulted in mass executions, even the failure to properly bow and abase oneself before the lowliest of the DCMS troops present resulting in entire families being beheaded for ‘insolence’.

Despite this, resistance continued. Hardly a day went by without the tough-minded Poles who’d called this planet Nowa Warszawa detonating bombs or ambushing patrols. They may be outnumbered, outgunned, out of luck… but they were never out of *pluck*. The Dragon was finding this planet very hard to digest.

-----

The last scars of the pirate attack are finally gone from the capital and gleaming towers of alloy, concrete, and glass glisten in the semi-tropical sun. The city is even more beautiful now than it had been when you were little, and the sight fills you with pardonable pride. The population is equally happy with the result and there are massive street parties and parades taking place in every neighborhood.

You do your best to attend as many of them as you can, your husband at your side and your son in your arms. The people absolutely love it.

Meanwhile the first meeting of the new Parliament goes incredibly well. Politicians favorable to your plans and goals overwhelmingly win at the polls, to the point where the few who disagree with you have been heard to good-naturedly grumble that this is truly a Parliament of Love.

The new labs are also open, and the researchers fall over themselves babbling about all the wonderful projects that they can now carry out and practically beg you for the opportunity to do research for the crown. It's quite touching in a way.

The last gas turbine power plant is taken off line one morning, replaced with a gleaming fusion plant. For the first time since the Catastrophe the planet is fully fusion powered.

Thanks to some inspired effort by the aerospace workers at the main defense factory, 16 Falcon ASFs were completed and just before the end of the year the Aerie is able to provide not only pilots but support crews for all of them. The completed squadron does a beautiful fly-by of the capital in celebration to the enthusiastic cheers of the residents.

Meanwhile, bà has been hard at work… behind your back. Sergeant Ngô shows up in your office rather diffidently requesting that you accompany her to the main meeting room, where you find not merely bà but elders from most if not all of the local Vietnamese-descended population waiting for you with a proposal.

They have gotten together and raised the funds to purchase the pair of Triton’s you need to secure the sea lanes to the new resource and expansion area, in exchange they want two things. First that the new city be called Huế mới, or New Huế, and that the natural harbor that the port would be located in be called Vịnh Cam Ranh in tribute to the finest deepwater port on Earth (according to bà at least).

You agree, as it is quite a sensible request (and spares you the need to come up with a name yourself. It would have probably been another bird pun, now that you think about it).

Work on dredging out and expanding the harbor of Port Reach proceeds smoothly, helped immensely by the new industrial exoskeletons. The improvements to their systems make everything far smoother and industrial concerns are snapping them up as fast as they can be produced.

You are present for the dedication ceremonies for the new wharfs along with the commissioning of the new submarines. Representatives of the new House of Lords and Commons are both along to add their presence to the situation and spend most of the events working with your people to coordinate messaging and present a unified front. All of your advisors have been promoted to the Lords (even a loudly protesting Tyler who pronounces you a traitor to the family for making him have to be responsible in public. The fact that he chooses a stylized tank with a jester’s cap hanging on the barrel as his personal sigil… you spend quite a bit of time complaining to your loving husband about this. It’s his fault after all that you are now related to that loonie).

You do later discover that there are many interesting places inside submarines for certain activities with said loving husband. Since the baby is back at the palace under the care of bà you take the opportunity for a little practice at ‘little sibling making’ made all the more amusing because you are doing it in the otherwise empty control room for the submarine.

On the plotting table.

It’s totally Willis’ fault that you have absolutely no self-control when he nibbles right… there…

Totally.

If only you didn’t have the threat of House Kurita in your backyard hanging over you this would be perfect.

 

[LordSunhawk]

Turn 6 Advisors and Actions

The mood is more grim than the year before. The announcement about the threat from the Draconis Combine had produced a grim resolve along with resolutions of support from both houses of parliament.

There are a few flashes of good news

First of all, evidently that plotting table on the submarine has special fertility powers. You are pregnant again, and the doctors tell you that this time you are bearing twins.

You complain about this to Sergeant Ngô, bà and anybody else who will listen, but for some reason nobody is at all that sympathetic. The good sergeant has finally found herself a husband of her own and is pregnant at the same time, bà is just happy to have more grandbabies, and your husband is insufferably smug over something that is clearly totally his fault.

In shocking news, Janet has been with the same boyfriend for over a year with no sign of the regularly scheduled epic break up. For a change Janet is complaining to you about how her boyfriend seems to completely miss every signal she gives that she’d really like to sleep with him, and instead insists instead on being totally romantic and taking her to all sorts of beautiful places for truly lovely dates. Personally you think this frustration is good for your friend and is probably why this relationship is actually lasting for a change, but you have learned enough discretion and wisdom to keep your mouth shut on the subject and just nod along making sympathetic noises.

Bà. of course, is incredibly smug about this, as Janet is dating one of bà’s many grandchildren. Sergeant Ngô’s brother, in fact.

Janet doesn’t stand a snowball's chance in hell.

Sergeant Ngô is running the betting pool, according to her her brother is incredibly dense when it comes to women… you have a major bet going on next year.

The researchers at the university labs are incredibly enthusiastic, so much so that they’ve apparently been working on their own dime and announce the release of a major breakthrough in computer-controlled manufacturing systems that are being snapped up by manufacturers across the planet. This is resulting in some labor disruptions, however, as the improved automation reduced workforces around the planet.

They also turned over plans and specifications for fortification techniques to harden important sites against attack. These were networks of bunkers, firing positions, artillery positions and command and control sites linked together into a fortification system.

General Wolf has three specific requests from the military, in keeping with your instructions for preparation for any incoming threats and in regards to the ongoing project to expand into the new resource area.

“First of all, in conjunction with the construction of the new port and settlement at Vịnh Cam Ranh,” he begins, managing a credible pronunciation, “we should pull the trigger on standing up the security force in the area. Second, I strongly recommend that our researchers finalize testing so we can begin procurement of the following weapon systems. The Foxhound hovertank, the Roc heavy ASF, and the Chasseur hovertank. A single 4 ship flight of Roc’s can savage incoming dropships, while the Foxhound and Chasseur would be lethal against the sort of threats we have already seen from the Dracs. Finally we are ready to start implementing the recommendations for creating a standing militia, you simply need to give the word to authorize us to begin.”

Tyler pipes up. “There are two things on my end, first of all we should get the new port up and running to progress along the planned project trajectory. We are already seeing great results from phase 1 and we need to carry that momentum forward. Secondly we need to implement a stronger unemployment insurance system to help those displaced by industrial automation find new work without losing everything. We’ve only just managed to get everything back on track and these new technology advances are threatening unrest and instability we can ill afford.”

Dr Young gives a sour look at Tyler then turns her attention to you. “We are ready to start promoting the new expansion area, in conjunction with the new construction and increased security this will allow us to have the people we need in place for later phases of the project.”

Professor Chapman nods “And it is also time to extend government offices into the new area as construction begins. It’s expensive, but vital.”

Dr Palmer looks up from her notepad “I agree with General Wolf in terms of getting those military projects up and running, in the main. I’d make one change to both his and Tyler’s recommendations, however. Instead of finalizing the Chasseur or expanding the unemployment insurance system may I strongly recommend improving the overall undergraduate education system. This would permit rapid retraining of workers to counter the job losses in automation while also improving research outcomes.”

Juanita had simply sent you a memo from the prisoner camps where she is overseeing interrogations. “We still need more resources for intensive POW interrogation, the budget line item is on your desk for the drugs we are using, please ensure we have sufficient supplies.”

Janet nods, a bit less enthusiastically than normal, probably thanks to her being a bit off her game due to the novelty of having an actual steady boyfriend who won’t jump into bed with her immediately. “We’re ready to expand the justice system into the new settlements as well, this is the best time to do it, as we’ll have it in place to handle the frontier town atmosphere.” She takes a breath. “That’s something I should warn you about, boom towns like this can have unexpected effects, both for good or for bad, having the law firmly in place can prevent the bad.”

 

[LordSunhawk]

TURN 6 Results

Spoiler: Turn 6 Event and Ratings rolls

Economic Roll - 2 degrees of success = 7%
Health Roll - 7 degree of success = 7% Pop growth rate
Stability Change roll - 7 degrees of success

Stability Rolls
-Political - 2 rolls
--Result - add +10 to all difficulty targets this turn

-Research - 6 rolls
--Result - 2 free technologies (multiple crits on events) - fortifications and automation lvl 1

-Economic - 1 roll
--Result = +5% GDP

Meta Event Roll - 12 - all ratings +10
Dynasty Luck Roll - 31 - Identical twin boys

Crown Influence Roll - 10
Lords Influence Roll - 10
Commons Influence Roll - 5

Spoiler: Turn 6 Action Results

Secure Port and Settlement
Target = 95
Roll = 35
Result = SUCCESS

Build New Port (Vịnh Cam Ranh)
Target = 95
Roll = 75
Result = SUCCESS

Expand Unemployment Benefits
Target = 85
Roll = 79
Result = SUCCESS

Recruit Miners and Settlers
Target = 95
Roll = 14
Result = SUCCESS

Extend Government Administration to new settlement area
Target = 95
Roll = 58
Result = SUCCESS

Improved Education Lvl 1
Target = 70
Roll = 25
Result = SUCCESS

Roc Heavy ASF
Target = 95
Roll = 35
Result = SUCCESS

Chasseur Hovertank
Target = 95
Roll = 50
Result = SUCCESS

Interrogate POWs
Target = 65
Roll = 59
Result = SUCCESS

Setup Judicial System in new settlement area
Target = 95
Roll = 95
Result = SUCCESS

-----

Things get very busy, very quickly. It seems that no sooner do you wake up in the morning than you are plunged into an endless round of meetings, barely snatching time to take care of your son in between progress reports and such.

Thankfully he’s been weaned to regular baby food a bit early, so you aren’t having to breastfeed him, not that you minded much to be honest. But as it is he is still spending far more time with others watching him than you’d really like. Although considering that you’d really like to spend all of your time with him…

Your current pregnancy advances along familiar lines, only… worse. Your morning sickness isn’t as bad, thankfully, but it rarely is for second pregnancies. Instead your cravings have become almost ludicrous and are setting those around you into wild goose chases for bizarre food combinations to satisfy them.

You’d normally complain about this with Sergeant Ngô and spend time pointing out the myriad ways this was your loving husbands fault, but you all are far too busy for such.

You are so busy that when the time finally comes for you to give birth it’s a welcome respite, despite the pain. Sure it takes longer and is far worse in every way with twins, but you somehow manage not to crush Willis’ hand into paste and at the end, exhausted, drained, deliriously happy, you have two bundles of absolute joy in your arms.

You arranged for Janet to have a camera when you told everybody the names you’d selected, and you manage to catch a look of startled happiness on bà’s face when you announce that the elder of the twins was to be named Quan Ezekiel, and the younger James Frederick. Janet manages to catch Sergeant Ngô in shot when Quan’s name is announced, as he is named after the good sergeant's father and bà’s son.

Sergeant Ngô gives birth about a week later to her firstborn.

Things like this make everything worthwhile, in your opinion. It’s not about power, or politics, or anything else. It’s about making sure that these little bundles of love have a future to grow up in and, in the fullness of time, give you grandbabies. You are really starting to understand bà and her obsession with grandbabies much more. It’s an affirmation that what you’ve done has been ultimately worth it, that all the difficulties and challenges mattered.

But all the work has a purpose, and that purpose is coming more and more into view as frantic effort starts producing results.

The new port area is fully surveyed and officially named Vịnh Cam Ranh with the city being built from the ground up around it being officially named Huế mới, or as just about everybody calls it who isn’t of Vietnamese descent New Hue City. Sergeant Ngô complains regularly about how nobody seems able to properly pronounce Hue.

Making certain that government and justice facilities were already present as the city built up is paying dividends. You are able to ensure that the city grows according to pre-planned lines and not haphazardly. The streets are in a proper grid, with only the coastal and ring roads being anything but arrow-straight. The infrastructure needed for the port itself is swiftly built and the initial work on the high capacity railway to the mining area has begun.

Even before the mines come online there is already commerce starting, as bolder people strike out into the wilderness surrounding the new city to establish farms and prospect for resources. Exotic lumber has quickly become a major market in the new city.

After an initial panic as the unemployment numbers came in it quickly became apparent that your shotgun solution of boosting both unemployment benefits and investing in worker retraining plus improved educational facilities is already drawing fruit. Unemployment numbers have actually dropped below where they were when the new automation was introduced as commerce booms.

Your labs are benefitting from the influx of skilled workers as final testing is completed on a pair of weapon systems. The Roc has your husband extremely excited, he managed to wrangle some stick time in the prototype and reports that while it is slow and sluggish compared to the Falcon, it handles better than he expected and the sheer firepower is awe-inspiring.

The Chasseur, meanwhile, is pure fun. You and Sergeant Ngô manage to spend an afternoon blasting about the testing grounds in a pair of the test articles and you swear neither of you ever stopped grinning for days afterwards. The virtual-360 displays in the cockpit, the helmet mounted sight, all of that are just details compared to the raw visceral fun of hitting 190+ kph while weaving around like demented motorcyclists.

Beyond that, you make the time to be present at the graduation and pre-deployment review for the new garrison forces heading to Huế mới. It still feels a bit odd to take the salute of an entire regiment of infantry, but satisfying at the same time.

Juanita comes into your office for the first time all year, as she’d been personally overseeing the interrogation of the prisoners.

“OK, I have good news, bad news, and take it as you want news.” she says without preamble, shuffling a set of folders out of her briefcase and setting them on your desk.

“We aren’t facing quite as much as we’d feared initially. The Kuritans have a battalion drawn from the Amphigean Light Assault Group, so accounting for the 4 mechs we’ve already destroyed no more than 32 more. All of their mechs are of the same design as the 4 we’ve already taken down, so we know we can destroy them with enough firepower. They also currently, at least as of 6 years ago, only have access to a single Tramp-class jumpship, so at worst we’d be facing 3 dropships worth of forces at a time. This could change at any time, so that is not something to count on.”

She pauses, turning the page. “They do have several regiments worth of infantry and armored vehicles, they outnumber us by quite a bit but are limited in how much force they can bring to bear at one time. According to the prisoners they’ve already conquered a nearby planet and are working on pacifying it, which may explain why we’ve seen nothing if they’ve gotten bogged down there. The force that attacked us was a recon group searching nearby systems for anything ‘interesting’ and evidently they thought we’d be easy pickings.”

She pauses once more, looking up. “As for the rest of the claims, that the Coordinator is the recognized First Lord and such, well… with your permission I have somebody I’d like you to meet.”

You nod, intrigued, as Juanita rises to her feet and goes to the door, bringing in a wisp of a woman who looks like a particularly strong breeze would send flying.

“Your Majesty,” she begins, unusually formal for her, “this is Dagny Sigurdottir, of the Magistracy of Canopus.”

Dagny gives a surprisingly graceful curtsey to you. “Your Majesty.”

“Ms Sigurdottir was one of the young women held by the Dracs that were liberated by our forces. After Your announcement about the Kuritan threat she approached my office. Ms Sigurdottir wasn’t among the ‘comfort women’ by chance, she’d deliberately allowed herself to be taken by them.”

Juanita takes a breath and smiles slightly. “Your Majesty, she is in the same line of work as I am, as an agent for the Magistracy Intelligence Ministry. She was tracking the disappearances of several Canopian traveling entertainment groups in Kurita space. With Your permission?”

You nod, your eyes on the revealed intelligence agent.

“Whatever You’ve been told, Your Majesty.” Dagny says calmly. “Kurita is not acknowledged by anybody who isn’t already a Drac as anything more than a particularly brutal dictator, especially after Kentares. There is no Star League, and while all of the House Lords claim that they are the rightful First Lord, none of them have any hope in hell of actually holding the title. The Inner Sphere has been in a nearly constant state of war since the fall of the Star League and have utterly blown themselves into wreckage and ruin.”

She meets your eyes steadily. “So, Your Majesty, I have been providing Your people with briefings about what I know about the Inner Sphere. And…” her lips curl into a ghost of a smile. “While I hope I may be forgiven for hoping that You will choose to ally Yourself with the Magistracy at some future time, I am still willing to do anything I can to help You in resisting those rapacious beasts who pretend to be human when it suits them.”

The hatred in that last sentence is audible.

“I am a fully trained Mechwarrior, Your Majesty, as well as an intelligence agent. I give you my word, so long as You do not attack my home, I am willing to serve You in any way You require.”

As she says that, she braces to attention with a precision any soldier would envy, and awaits your response.

[] Accept her into your service
[] Decline the offer
[] Write-in

 

[LordSunhawk]

Turn 7 Advisors and Actions

When the year starts you are looking at your balance sheets with a bit of trepidation. Last year, while extremely productive, had been equally expensive and had wrought wreck and ruin to the finances. You weren’t in the red by any means, and next year looked like it would show the benefits of your hard work fully. But you still were going to have to tighten your belt to get through the year and keep everything on track.

Or so you thought. Less than a week later a very excited Tyler bounced into your office, his usual exuberant self hardly bothered by the fact that he had your oldest son riding on his shoulders happily gurgling ‘grappa horsy!’

He bounced in, tossed a folder on your desk, made a whinnying noise, and bounced right back out again to the delighted cries of your son and the exasperated eyerolls of everybody else.

The worst part of him being the ‘fun grandpa’ he was showing himself to be was that you couldn’t throw him out the window for it and you were certain that he would somehow contaminate your boys with his ways. You complain to Sergeant Ngô and bà about it regularly, although you can’t seem to manage much heat. So you decide to blame Willis for being related to that madman, it’s obviously all his fault for being such a good husband that he is forcing you to endure the madness that is the Lee family.

That’s your story and you are sticking to it.

You open up the folder, and it takes you a good twenty minutes to get your breathing under control. Evidently there had been a massive petrochemical strike right off shore from Vịnh Cam Ranh. The estimated auction value for the licenses to exploit it makes your eyes water and you find yourself tempted to strangle the old man while kissing him enthusiastically. Budget issues? WHAT budget issues?

You call in the rest of your advisors to share the good news, and you have the pleasure of seeing many worry lines fade and vanish.

You are strongly considering grossly abusing your position as Queen to requisition the testbed Chasseurs in order to celebrate when a great idea hits you… hovercraft racing league! You jot it down to remember it and go on to your next appointments during the day.

Dagny has been a wonder to work with, you accepted her oath even with the caveats. You have no intention of invading anybody, especially not some periphery power far away from you. So now you have somebody you can mostly trust to help out with mech tactics and piloting, and tactics against same. General Wolf has been meeting with her non-stop for days now.

The time comes for your advisors to actually, well, give you some advice. It’s a yearly ritual at this point, so you reluctantly accept that you need to spend time in stuffy meeting rooms rather than playing with your kids or chasing your husband around the bedroom (when you manage to get away from the kids).

General Wolf is glad to see the new designs ready for production. “If I had infinite money at this point I’d say buy as many Rocs as possible, but I don’t. What I would like to see is two things. That we build up a fast reaction force in order to be hopefully able to counter the enemies advantage in fast ground units, and that we get started on fortifications. The former is a higher priority than the latter. I’d also like you to consider financing production of the Cutlass and Foxhound, but that is of even lower priority.”

Tyler can’t stop grinning, being his usual insouciant self. “Well, we’re in the home stretch. So I am willing to bet you know what I think we should do this year in my area.” he smirks, earning himself glares from everybody else that bounce off of him like spitballs off the hull of one of the new Tritons. “Let’s get that railroad built!” And he has the gall to start whistling the John Henry song! Some people!

One thrown eraser and one laughing Interior Minister later, Dr Young manages to stop scowling at Tyler and turns her attention back to you. “If General Wolf is willing to spare Ms Sigurdottir for a few days I’d like to have my people interview her to build up our knowledge base about the Inner Sphere today. Other than that, the Foreign Ministry is good.”

Professor Chapman looks thoughtful. “Now that we are spread out more, transportation and communication are becoming more difficult. I’d like to propose that one way of dealing with this is to deregulate the air transport industry to enable private firms to start offering passenger and cargo services. We would derive some significant income from licensing fees which would only help our future endeavors.”

Janet pipes up “We’d want to put in a regulatory framework as well from the start, better get that done than have shuttles falling out of the sky left and right or crashing into each other.”

Dr Palmer looks frazzled, but in the way that any real scientist looks when they’re dealing with Interesting Things. “We have so many options, I don’t even know where to begin! I’d like to keep on working on the education system, get it up to old Star League standards if we can. And we are getting closer to League standards in automation technology, let’s keep at that. Otherwise, we are ready to research whatever you want us to find out!” Ahhh, geek enthusiasm, it’s so much fun… although you do remember hearing your father’s admonition to always keep the ruins of the initial landing site in mind as a warning about overenthusiastic geeks.

Juanita is looking like the cat who caught the canary, stole the cream, broke the vase, and managed to blame it all on the dog. “At this point, with a few exceptions amongst the technical personnel, I think we’ve gotten everything useful out of the prisoners. We can either keep them in custody, or start the war crimes trials. I will warn you, most of the technical personnel will get off from any such trial, few if any of them have committed any actual crimes since things like access to the comfort women and such were limited to the ‘samurai’.”

Janet nods “Just give the word and we’ll get that started. Other than that and the regulatory framework for opening up aerospace to the private sector, Justice doesn’t have anything this year.”

 

[LordSunhawk]

Turn 7 Results

Spoiler: Event and Ratings rolls

Economic Roll - 8 degrees of success = 8%
Health Roll - 7 degree of success = 7% Pop growth rate
Stability Change roll - 1 degrees of success

Stability Rolls

-Political - 6 rolls
--Result - +20 to all difficulty targets this turn

-Research - 3 rolls
--Result - no effect

-Economic - 1 roll
--Result = no effect

Meta Event Roll - 1 - 7000 windfall, +10% GDP growth
Dynasty Luck Roll - 44 - no event


Crown Influence Roll - 5 - FAIL

Lords Influence Roll - 8

Commons Influence Roll - 2 - SUCCESS - +2 Influence

Spoiler: Action Rolls

Establish Militia
Target - 95
Roll - 36
SUCCESS

Form Rapid Reaction Force
Target - 85
Roll - 68
SUCCESS

3) Build Railway to Resource Area
Target - 105
Roll - 66
SUCCESS

Construct Planetary Surveillance Network lvl 3
Target - 85
Roll - 14
SUCCESS

Planetary Resource Survey
Target - 65
Roll - 58
SUCCESS

"Debrief Dagny Sigurdottir about conditions in the Inner Sphere"
Target - 115
Roll - 69
SUCCESS

Permit private ownership of aerospace small craft (spheroid and aerodyne)
Target - 85
Roll - 36
SUCCESS

Improved Education lvl 2
Target - 85
Roll - 22
SUCCESS

Improved Automation lvl 2
Target - 90
Roll - 52
SUCCESS

Develop legal framework for private small craft ownership
Target - 95
Roll - 35
SUCCESS

---


You are getting quite used to seeing Tyler in full grandfather mode, so it is no surprise at all to see him with your eldest son again on his shoulders, although this time he’s carrying your twins in each arm and looking about as happy as can be as a somewhat frazzled aide trails after him with a briefcase.

“Your Most August Majesty!” he grandly proclaims, to the giggles of your son. “I am the bearer of good tidings!”

You are struggling to keep from laughing or scowling at his antics. This is just so… Tyler. Your husband chooses this moment to sweep in to reclaim the kids so you can actually get on with your meeting.

“More seriously, I do indeed have good news.” Tyler wipes off some childish drool and dribble with all the aplomb of somebody who’s done such post-kid cleaning a million times before. “The railroad project has gone extremely well despite the worst that nature could throw at us. I tell you, those infantry assigned to the garrison down there are earning their pay.”

He pulls a stack of images out of the briefcase. “Witness what the men are calling the Damntiger. Because DAMN is that one hell of a tiger!”

The image is somewhat disturbing, a pitch black tiger-like felinoid with glowing blue stripes and a truly malevolent look to it, caught crouching as it prepared to strike. The next image is of the same beast laid out after the guards shot it. Almost 10 feet long, very heavily built, and according to the numbers appended to the image massing over a ton of sinew, muscle, teeth, and fury.

Spoiler: Now THAT'S a Damn Scary Tiger

“Those stripes are some sort of bioluminescence according to the scientists. Most of the predators in those jungles have that sort of glow to them, probably because of how pitch black it can get in the undergrowth. These are apparently the alpha predators of the jungle and, frighteningly, the ones we’ve caught have all been juveniles according to the science types. Larger ones have been spotted but they seem to be staying away from the rail line.”

He then grins again. “We have caught a few cubs alive, which are supposedly ‘disturbingly cute for how deadly aggressive the ones we’ve fought have been’. Some of the science types would like to study them, would cost us a bit but might prove useful. Would be nice to know why the big ones leave us alone at least.”

[] Authorize study, will cost 100 a turn for the next 5 turns.
[] We can’t afford it.

“And to add to the good news.” now his grin becomes positively predatory, almost matching the damntiger. “Look what our satellite survey has found!”

He slaps a set of high-resolution imagery on the desk, along with a geologists report.

You look through it, in the Antarctic continent of the planet, one of the few places on this semi-tropical world that actually regularly sees snow and ice, there are a series of rock formations with spectrographic data appended from the multi-spectral images.

“What am I seeing here…” you ask, looking over at the grinning lech.

“Titanium deposits, massive ones. That’s the largest ilmenite deposit we’ve yet found. The only downside is that it is extremely cold down there, so we won’t be able to exploit it immediately mainly because we’ll need to improve our mining equipment. And, well, somehow convince people to go live in that deep freezer. The summertime high is barely above freezing.”

“We’ve also got the surveillance network up and running, we’ve been able to sell some of the imagery to the local farmers to help them with planning so we’re seeing a boost in food production, however if we want to improve the network any further we’ll need to work on our orbital infrastructure first.”

You get reports from General Wolf about the progress on the fortifications. Construction has started and is expected to finish this year.

You also take the time for the official standing up of the new Rapid Reaction Force. A full battalion of Chasseur hovertanks. You again feel odd taking the salute of officers technically senior to your second lieutenant status, but as Queen you rank them all.

You are strongly tempted to buy a few of those fun little hovertanks for your own personal use, but your loving husband points out something that puts that idea into the deep freezer. In far too short a time your kids will be teenagers… and do you really want to let teenagers anywhere near those things?

Maturity sucks sometimes.

You also get reports that preparations for the militia have been completed, hidden armories have been established and plans are in place for their activation in the event of an invasion that your regular forces are unable to defeat.

Doctor Young reports that her discussions with Dagny have been extremely productive. Several days later you get an extensive briefing dossier on the current state of the Inner Sphere and it makes for some grim reading. Evidently the idiots are working very hard at destroying themselves and heading head first into the stone age.

You spend several hours just cuddling with your family after reading this, and watching mindless children’s shows in the process. If you never hear that song again in your life it will be too soon.

The first reports are now in about the privatization of air-transport and things are looking extremely promising. Licensing and certification fees are performing to expectations and the first regularly scheduled flights from the capital to Huế mới have already started.

The reports from the labs are also encouraging, with newer, more efficient automation technologies being distributed to industry resulting in a surge of improvement as efficiencies rise even further. Moreover, even with the cutbacks resulting from this you are seeing employment go up as the education system is further optimized. Further improvements in either area will be far more expensive.

 

[LordSunhawk]

Turn 8 Advisor Advice

You sign off on having the specialists from the zoo here in the capital study the damntigers. The cost isn’t that high after all.

Within a few days there is a new trending video on the planetary datanets. Evidently, damntiger kittens are incredibly cute and cuddly. Your eldest wants one. You, however, being an older and wiser parental unit, and having seen the imagery of what an adult damntiger looks like, have been able to easily resist childish blandishments.

In other wildlife news, the reptilian Griffin Gulls endemic to the coastlines around the capital are even more common and a bit larger around the new port facilities, and evidently far more aggressive when it comes to seeking food. The garrison forces put in an emergency order for shotguns to counter the winged menaces.

General Wolf compares them to the legendary Canada Goose in terms of aggression and pure evil. Then he has to spend a few hours explaining the legend from Earth.

You aren’t too sure about that, it seems that the Griffin Gulls are less obnoxious than what he describes, but you haven’t really dealt with them much.

You get a chance to sit down with Dagny and discuss her observations of the Dracs as well as her experiences as a MechWarrior, tactfully not asking about intelligence or… other… matters.

She gives you a solid briefing on the Jenner in use by the forces you are facing, its strengths, weaknesses, and ideas on how to best combat it. The meal winds up lasting far longer than you’d expected as your husband, Dagny, and yourself find yourselves bouncing ideas off of each other for how to best handle groups of these light fast mechs.

One thing that comes of this is that your Chasseur hovertanks might be an excellent counter in the hands of skilled troops. After observing the Rapid Reaction Force in action, you and Dagny both agree that they really will need to up their game.

Meanwhile you have meetings with the walking hormone about the titanium deposits down in the antarctic. Before you can even hope to exploit them you’d need to improve certain things, specifically improve the materials that would be used in the mining and extraction rigs as well as construct some icebreakers to clear the sea lanes to any prospective port.

Icebreakers are one thing that nobody on the planet had ever designed or built, so Tyler proposes opening up a design competition for one.

It doesn’t take long and there are a pair of submissions for the contest.

[] Whistle-class Icebreaker
[] Independence-class Icebreaker

Both will cost the same, and while the Independence has slightly higher utility with the crane the Whistle is a bit more heavily armed. You will need two ships to start, with future expansion possibly needed depending on maritime traffic through the arctic regions. So you can either buy 2 of one design, or 1 of each.

You note that you will have the option to turn the ships over to civilian crews for a 50% discount on maintenance, however the vessels would count as Student-quality for combat purposes.

Once you have the icebreakers in service you will be able to better ascertain what will be needed to ultimately exploit the Titanium find.

On the most certainly plus side, this is the year when you can complete the mining project and get those new mines in full operation. Looking at your balance sheets… it’s looking pretty good. Several of the investments made during the rebuilding process are starting to pay off handsomely, resulting in additional economic growth this year over and above expectations.

You also get surprising news from the small expedition sent into the ruins of the original colony site. Apparently on the very first day they decided to shelter for the night in a ruined building that just happened to contain damaged examples of Star League water purification and filtration gear that would be required to help terraform a planet less conducive to human life than Griffin’s Roost. It’s nothing you need right now, but is something that would come in handy if you wind up colonizing new worlds.

Your meetings with your advisors are mercifully short. The twins are teething and a right handful.

General Wolf proposes putting the Rapid Reaction Force through extensive exercises and training to increase their skills. ((QM note - this will cost the maintenance cost of the units involved, so for the RRF this will cost 36)). He would also like to put the Falcon pilots through similar training. The higher their skill, after all, the more likely that they will be victorious in the next battle.

Tyler Lee is excited about finishing the mines, and recommends that you consider constructing proper drop ports in both the Capital and Huế mới to further boost commercial opportunities. It would be expensive, but in the long term would have significant effects on the economy. He notes that as space infrastructure expands the presence of the drop ports will be very beneficial.

Dr Young sends you a memo again advocating for the racing league, but is otherwise squirreled away with her people pouring over the data from Dagny.

Professor Chapman doesn’t have much for you either. According to her, while the Commons were able to boost their popularity lately, they did so by explicitly backing Crown policies with the parties most in support of you being the vast majority. So she recommends holding off on anything to do with checking parliamentary influence. Your own profile is high enough to shield you from most issues, while still not being so high as to put a target on your back as a potential tyrant.

Dr Palmer recommends working on some Materials research in preparation for the next big push towards that titanium deposit, but she also recommends building either Cutlass or Monitor patrol craft to start clearing a river route to the mines.

Juanita reminds you that the POWs are just a dead weight at this point, you’ve extracted all the intel you’ll likely get from them.

Janet, meanwhile, still dealing with the novelty of having a long-term steady boyfriend who won’t simply jump into bed with her (and who STILL hasn’t popped the question), agrees and recommends commencing with the war crimes

EDIT - Here are the available actions, BTW

 

[LordSunhawk]

Turn 8 Results

Spoiler: Event and Ratings Rolls

Economic Roll - 6 degrees of success = 6%
Health Roll - 1 degree of success = 1% Pop growth rate
Stability Change roll - 6 degrees of success

Stability Rolls

-Political
--Result - No event

-Research -
--Result - All Research Projects active at start of turn autocomplete and autosucceed

-Economic -
--Result - +5% GDP

Meta Event Roll - 45 - No event
Dynasty Luck Roll - 22 - Investments pay off, +5% to GDP this turn

Crown Influence Roll - 8 - FAIL
Lords Influence Roll - 3 - FAIL
Commons Influence Roll - 8

Spoiler: Action Rolls

Build Fortifications lvl 1*
Target - 75
Roll - 18
SUCCESS

Initiate Training Exercise Chasseur Hovertank
Target - 50
Roll - 68
FAIL

Initiate Training Exercise Falcon ASF
Target - 50
Roll - 18
SUCCESS

Financial Sector Reform (Interior)*
Target - 95
Roll - 89
SUCCESS

4) Construct Mines
Target - 85
Roll - 78
SUCCESS

Foxhound Hovertank
Target - 95
Roll - 55
SUCCESS

Cutlass Patrol Boat
Target - 95
Roll - 27
SUCCESS

Materials Research lvl 1
Target - 80
Roll - 92
FAIL

Financial Sector Reform (Justice)*
Target - 95
Roll - 43
SUCCESS

Conduct War Crimes Trials
Target - 75
Roll - 32
SUCCESS

-----

You go over the reports of the shake-down cruise for the new icebreakers out of the brand spanking new New Kaiser Yards in Huế mới - after a few years of constant reminders from Sergeant Ngô and bà you are finally able to consistently pronounce the Vietnamese name. They seem like good little ships, although evidently the crews are not all that keen on marksmanship beyond ‘ouchy side points thataway’. You remind yourself that if you really need to you can assign proper gunners to them, but leave it at that for now. The two ships are currently being tested near the edges of the Antarctic ice pack, by this time next year they should be available for cruising down to the site of the Titanium deposits.

The reports from the field exercises come in and they are a mixed bag. Evidently your Falcon pilots just needed a little motivation and extra training time to hone their skills, by the second day of the exercises they were already showing marked improvement and by the end of the scheduled time General Wolf is comfortable marking them as a Veteran unit. The attached video of some of the more hair-raising manoeuvres has your husband whooping in delight and jealous he couldn’t be flying them, and you a little white-knuckled and hoping none of your kids catches the flying bug from Willis. With how much little Jeremy loves playing airplane with daddy you are not too confident in that regard.

You wish the reports from the Rapid Reaction Force were as favorable. Well, once you stop laughing at the ‘greatest hits’ compilation General Wolf helpfully includes in the packet. If you were training a force of slapstick comedians you’d consider what you are seeing a great and rousing success. But your hopes that this was simply a blooper reel are dashed when you find out it was the highlights and best performances of the exercises…. They clearly need a lot more practice before they’d be anything you’d feel comfortable deploying in the field. You are sure that the technicians assigned to the RRF have had many very choice things to say to the pilots, probably including many four letter words and scathing scatalogical descriptions about the pilots probable ancestry. EVERY single one of the hovercraft involved crashed spectacularly at least once, including the truly epic 36 hovercraft pileup.

You are just grateful that none of these turkeys managed to kill themselves.

Well, at least the family loved it, and when you showed bà the video she laughed harder than you’d ever seen her laugh before commenting that she was just glad that none of her grandchildren were involved in that debacle.

And when Jeremy solemnly told you that the silly people needed to stop crashing and do it right it was everything you could do not to break down giggling and restrict yourself to agreeing with your son and ruffling his hair before sending him back to playing with his blocks.

Of course, 30 seconds later Tyler swooped in, picked up your son, and ran out the door after goosing you, leading to you chasing after him threatening such dire retributions (edited for young ears) as taking away his dessert and banning him from pie.

Somehow this chase got caught on video and wound up on the evening news. And from the commentary apparently people loved seeing their Queen with her hair down, so to speak. You are certain that Tyler arranged this, but can’t prove it.

Several days later you see your first damntiger in person while on the VIP train up to the new mining area to officially open it. It’s one of the adults and even from a distance it is terrifyingly huge. Your guide tells you that so far nobody has been attacked by any of the adults, and attacks from the subadults had subsided significantly after the zoologists had reported that it appeared that the glowing stripes were some sort of identifier. Crews working on the railway and mines had taken to wearing glowing strips on their clothing and those who did so were left completely alone by the giant predators.

There was one absolutely terrifying video of a full adult damntiger walking through a campsite, completely ignoring the guards and people there, only to pause to sniff at the locomotive idling at the trackhead. The damn thing was almost as big as the locomotive. But afterwards it became apparent that for all of its sheer size and power, the massive beast hadn’t disturbed anything at all in the camp, having somehow managed to avoid so much as knocking over a spotlight stand.

There is concern over what the diet of the massive adults was. The subadults had been seen hunting the various herbivores that called the jungle home, but nobody had yet seen what the full adults ate.

The new mines are finally open for business, and the sheer productivity from them is staggering. Seeing the projections on paper is one thing, experiencing it in person is something else entirely. And the really valuable deposits aren’t even being touched yet as they are reserved for the future when and if you start building jumpcores.

General Wolf takes you on a tour of the fortifications surrounding the capital, Huế mới, and the mining area. The density of the network is impressive, with Thumper artillery pieces sited in carefully positioned fire bases giving them interlocking fields of fire. Small bunkers topped with anti-aircraft turrets are scattered about as well in a carefully planned pattern. All in all, it is a very impressive effort. Nowhere near the legendary Castle Brians of myth and fairy tale, perhaps, but a good solid set of defensive works.

Janet and Tyler happily inform you of the completion and implementation of the first wave of financial reforms in the wake of the Gem Rebellion. Many of the smaller banks that had been seized following the trials were now being privatized under the new regulatory regime. There is still planning being done on options for the larger banks. Tyler promises you a briefing on the matter by next year.

On a more grim note, the war crimes trials are set to begin. For the majority of the prisoners, the infantry and such, the trials went quickly. Yes, most of them were guilty of what they were charged with, but none of the charges were capital offenses. On average, for the normal grunts they would spend the rest of their lives in prison camps doing hard labor. A number of the technicians were acquitted, as Janet had warned you would probably happen. They may have been support personnel, but they pretty much all had been conscripts who had been given zero choice in the matter and would have been messily killed if they’d shown any defiance or resistance. You’ll have to decide what to do with them…

[] Offer them citizenship free and clear, so long as they swear loyalty, they’d already suffered enough as slaves of Kurita.
[] Offer them citizenship in exchange for service to the Kingdom. While they’d been unwilling pawns in the attack, they’d still helped cause damage. Service would allow them to pay back some of the harm done.
[] Keep them in the current POW camps, they aren’t your citizens, you have no responsibility towards them, let them grow crops and support themselves, but if they leave the confines of the camp your guards have their orders.

Professor Chapman sends you a memo as the trials begin recommending sharing the credit for the trials and such with Parliament. Your popularity and personal authority is already high enough that raising it further may cause worries of dictatorship to find fertile ground. Sharing the credit would slightly raise the influence of both the Lords and the Commons, but would also calm any fears of unilateral rule on your part.

[] Share the credit (Lord and Commons +1 Influence)
[] Keep all the credit (+1 Influence to the Crown)

It is when the Mechwarriors, tankers, and officers of the raiding force come up on trial that things become… interesting. Every single one of them is guilty as charged, every single one of them have committed rapes, murders, abuses… and are utterly unrepentant about it all. The MechWarriors and officers especially are arrogant and dismissive of your authority to judge them, with many of them threatening that any actions taken against them would be seen as treason against the rightful First Lord.

When they are convicted anyways and sentenced to death, they have the gall to demand the right to commit seppuku.

[] Permit it, they’ve already lost, let them die with some dignity
[] Firing squads are the best they can hope for. They have no honor, but they are soldiers, not traitors or pirates.
[] The gallows are waiting. String them up as the scum they are.

You take a break from judicial affairs to attend the official unveiling of the pre-production prototypes of the Foxhound and Cutlass. Both are impressive in their own ways. The Foxhound is nearly as fast as the Chasseur, while massively better armored and armed, and are clearly superior to your existing tracked tanks. The Cutlass is an extremely promising harbor and river patrol hydrofoil that would permit you to start exploring the riverine systems of the continent where Huế mới is located.