Turn 74 - Fideles Inveniamur
It’s official. The NRI has just announced officially the claiming of Nova Jupitereum as the fourth system of the NRI. And the first Proconsul of the system is none other than the putative High Priest of ‘your’ cult, who is looking rather amused at the entire thing. Just to make your suffering complete, he announces that the first major project of the new colony will be to build a ‘proper’ temple to ‘you’, with him gleefully unveiling a scale model of the central statue. Which is a heroic nude of, well, you. With your manhood covered by a convenient palm frond that makes it look like you might have a third leg.
You do not see why everybody else is finding this so funny. OK, if it were somebody else you’d find it funny too. But it’s not funny at all. And you’d really appreciate it if your kids would stop waving palm fronds at you. Alita finds it all very funny and is NOT HELPING by her pointed refusal to comment on the ‘accuracy of scale’ as it is a ‘private matter’.
Then some bright spark down in the Palace gift shop sends an inquiry as to whether or not it would be appropriate to sell scaled down models. You are about to go appropriately medieval on said marketing genius when your wife utterly betrays you by laughing, snagging the datapad you were about to hurl in frustration, and silencing you by the most effective method known in the sidereal universe. When you come back up for air you are in a much better mood, but still deny the proposal on the grounds of ‘not wishing to promote any religion in the gift shop’.
This backfires spectacularly, because somehow the Department of Periphery Studies has found out about this and the distinguished tenured professors of the department have decided to host a revival meeting promoting your religion. And again, everybody else finds this utterly and truly hilarious, without any consideration for just how embarrassing this all is.
OK, so people like how it humanizes you, making a remote Imperial figure something more relatable as you are showing that it’s perfectly acceptable to make so much fun of you without anything happening. But still!
You also receive some actual bad news, not of the ‘personally embarrassing’ variety. Jake is in the hospital after suffering a severe stroke. He’s expected to recover thanks to the superb quality of medical care that you have access to, but he has officially resigned his post as your political advisor. In the interim his deputy, Vinh Thuy Lien, will be taking over his duties until a permanent replacement is selected.
There is a list of candidates for your consideration. Lien herself is on the list as Jake’s long time deputy. She’s highly qualified, having a solid academic and practical background. She’s one of the few people you know outside the IGMP and the Imperial Family who’s been adopted by a grifftiger from childhood. You’ve met Hoa, her grifftiger, who’s almost as big as Bastet and is the mother to a brood of griffkittens of her own. She’s also worked extensively on the various civil service reform efforts that have been undertaken over the years and has a solid working relationship across all of the various ministries.
Michael Washington is a long time political consultant who worked with the department as an outside advisor for elections and polling. Professionally he runs his own consulting business which is among the most highly sought after firms in the field, but has historically refused to work for candidates opposing the Crown.
Gwalbert Wojtalewicz is the current head of the Nowa Warszawa system government but previously was a consultant on Nowy Gdansk affairs for the political department. His father was one of the original Home Army members imprisoned on Nowy Gdansk by the Dracs. His term ends at the end of this year and he’s already announced that he is stepping down for new blood after 12 years in office. He has a reputation for being able to bring people together from across the political spectrum and convincing them to work together for the common good.
Gabriel Livingston is a bit of a dark horse candidate for the position, but comes highly recommended regardless. He’s an academic and consultant who has a history of actually opposing the Crown, but doing so in thoughtful and insightful ways rather than the sorts of dirty tricks you are used to from opponents. He has a reputation for complete personal integrity and would never be confused for a yes-man, especially in regards to Imperial political power.
Nadine von Meyer is the final candidate on the list. She’s currently a professor of political science at Griffin’s Roost University, has formerly served in the Chamber of Delegates herself, rising to Majority Leader the last time the Chamber strongly supported the Crown, has an impeccable personal reputation for probity, although she is also known for her rather sarcastic wit and cutting sense of humor as she doesn’t suffer fools lightly.
And now it’s budget time, yay!
General Stewart leads off as usual. “Your Majesty, I will keep this brief. We would like to continue the production build up in order to swiftly replace any potential losses from the upcoming campaign as well as continue to build up our forces. In addition, we would like to prepare for any possible occupation of Okusawa by building up available garrison forces to enable us to flood the zone ahead of any possible resistance movement once the Dragon is slain.” With that she steps back.
“OK, boss,” General Jenkins is up first, representing the Army and is his usual self, which is extremely relaxing considering. “You heard the underboss and yes, we want to buy more garrison regiments pretty please with strawberries on top since I know you hate cherries.” Laughter ripples around the room, then he goes in for the kill shot, leading to you shaking your fist ineffectually at him while finally succumbing to the humor of the whole mess with your ‘cult’ “or palm fronds, for some reason you’ve got a hate on for palm fronds. Anyways, fifteen garrison regiments please, thank you, and your welcome. Then for front line forces, the Calliope Military Academy has repeated their request for a training unit for LAM forces, so we’re requesting one of those and a Raider Regiment as well, to continue building up our Rapid Reaction Forces. Then for regular mechs, six regiments of Light Horse to prance around being light horse and two Armored Cavalry regiments to keep the light horsies from prancing too hard. Oh, and some training mechs for the small fry to practice being excessively enthusiastic in. Then for big stompy robots with squishy humans inside we’d like five Assault Regiments for the biggest, stompiest robots around, although they’ll still have squishies inside.” He tosses up the summary on the display.
General Romanov is next. “Your Majesty, we have 1 Oasis II and 20 Independence class carriers that we’ll need to man since the one that was delayed from last year has already had her airgroup assigned. Therefore we are requesting 4 Fighter Wings for the recharge station and 20 CAP wings for the carriers. We’ll have the ability to build two additional wings with our current factories, therefore we are requesting a pair of Patrol Wings for general deployment.”
Thanh is up next, smirking at you but for a wonder not making Deified Jeremy jokes at your expense. “We have a great deal of slips available.” She begins. “And are anticipating potential losses based on our exercises to date. We’re devoutly hoping not to need any replacements, but you and I both know how likely that is. So, I’ll just put up the summary rather than waste time trying to explain.”
Bridget is up next, bouncing in her seat. “Your Majesty, we have a big enough budget that we can finally justify big system wide infrastructure projects as a normal thing and not a special thing! Right now we can only really afford to do it in the peripheral worlds, due to the sheer scale of things. We also stand ready to build anything that needs building, expand anything that needs expanding, and while all DoME teams are busy we can plan for future stuff if you want and Calliope IV is maybe a year or two from reaching core status so keep that in mind kay?”
That has to be the shortest speech you can recall her ever giving, and she talked so fast that it seemed shorter still.
Isoroku is up next. “Your Majesty, apart from ordinary diplomatic matters we do have one special appropriation we would like you to consider. Specifically, the number of available jumpships in the commercial sector has reached the point where we are starting to see a bonafide international tourist market forming. We would like to get ahead of that and start a dedicated tourism bureau to market tourist destinations within the Empire. This would have the greatest effect, currently, on the TTP although Calliope IV would also benefit to a degree.”
Lien is sitting in for her boss as your Political advisor pro-tempore. She is a startlingly petite asian woman who, if you didn’t know any better, you’d assume was a teenager sitting in her mother’s chair. “Your Majesty, in addition to continuing our work in getting the Chamber to adopt a more helpful attitude towards the crown, the political office is proposing a public health awareness campaign, especially in poorer and more industrialized areas, with an eye to promoting healthier lifestyles. Several system medical associations have been requesting this from us for some time and, all things considered, it seems appropriate to undertake it now.”
Dr Bryant is off world attending a conference on Calliope IV. She has left a memo for you. She is recommending the immediate undertaking of R&D work on improving standard core jumpships to permit construction of standard core vessels up to 400,000 tons in mass.
General Messerschmidt is present. “Your Majesty, I don’t have anything new for you. I have teams ready to accompany the invasion force next year, of course, but just before this meeting I did get some reports. There’s been an attempted assassination of the designated proconsul to Nova Jupitereum by a Pugnus Deorum sleeper agent in his staff. The proconsul was able to hold off the attacker but I fear that there might be some… personal embarrassment from this, Your Majesty.”
You groan.
“It seems that, ultimately, the attacker was stopped when the scale model statue that we’ve all been joking about fell on him in the midst of the struggle. Needless to say, the cult is rather… enthusiastic about this development.”
Thanh immediately starts howling with laughter, along with General Jenkins, the traitor. You can tell from General Messerschmidt’s expression that there’s more. “Out with it…” you grate, trying to give your sister and who you thought was a friend a quelling glare that bounces off of them like a superball off of, well, anything.
“Apparently he was impaled by the palm frond, Your Majesty.” his lips twitch into a ghost of a smile on his Teutonic features.
Your face and your palm engage in a forbidden romance as the hilarity levels skyrocket.
“And it will be on the news tonight, Your Majesty, complete with HD footage from the security cameras which caught the entire thing.” Niels is remorseless with the bad news.
Your forehead, the desk, making repeated acquaintances while the laughter swells at your reaction.
When things calm down a little Martina finally is able to speak, although even her lips are twitching still. “Your Majesty, the only real project from your Justice Ministry is to fully ascertain the legal status of New Eden, considering that all refugees have been evacuated from there and have indicated that they have no wish to return. For obvious reasons we have no actual precedent for this, so we would strongly advise that we carefully review our options before making any long-term decisions on the system.”
It’s official. The NRI has just announced officially the claiming of Nova Jupitereum as the fourth system of the NRI. And the first Proconsul of the system is none other than the putative High Priest of ‘your’ cult, who is looking rather amused at the entire thing. Just to make your suffering complete, he announces that the first major project of the new colony will be to build a ‘proper’ temple to ‘you’, with him gleefully unveiling a scale model of the central statue. Which is a heroic nude of, well, you. With your manhood covered by a convenient palm frond that makes it look like you might have a third leg.
You do not see why everybody else is finding this so funny. OK, if it were somebody else you’d find it funny too. But it’s not funny at all. And you’d really appreciate it if your kids would stop waving palm fronds at you. Alita finds it all very funny and is NOT HELPING by her pointed refusal to comment on the ‘accuracy of scale’ as it is a ‘private matter’.
Then some bright spark down in the Palace gift shop sends an inquiry as to whether or not it would be appropriate to sell scaled down models. You are about to go appropriately medieval on said marketing genius when your wife utterly betrays you by laughing, snagging the datapad you were about to hurl in frustration, and silencing you by the most effective method known in the sidereal universe. When you come back up for air you are in a much better mood, but still deny the proposal on the grounds of ‘not wishing to promote any religion in the gift shop’.
This backfires spectacularly, because somehow the Department of Periphery Studies has found out about this and the distinguished tenured professors of the department have decided to host a revival meeting promoting your religion. And again, everybody else finds this utterly and truly hilarious, without any consideration for just how embarrassing this all is.
OK, so people like how it humanizes you, making a remote Imperial figure something more relatable as you are showing that it’s perfectly acceptable to make so much fun of you without anything happening. But still!
You also receive some actual bad news, not of the ‘personally embarrassing’ variety. Jake is in the hospital after suffering a severe stroke. He’s expected to recover thanks to the superb quality of medical care that you have access to, but he has officially resigned his post as your political advisor. In the interim his deputy, Vinh Thuy Lien, will be taking over his duties until a permanent replacement is selected.
There is a list of candidates for your consideration. Lien herself is on the list as Jake’s long time deputy. She’s highly qualified, having a solid academic and practical background. She’s one of the few people you know outside the IGMP and the Imperial Family who’s been adopted by a grifftiger from childhood. You’ve met Hoa, her grifftiger, who’s almost as big as Bastet and is the mother to a brood of griffkittens of her own. She’s also worked extensively on the various civil service reform efforts that have been undertaken over the years and has a solid working relationship across all of the various ministries.
Michael Washington is a long time political consultant who worked with the department as an outside advisor for elections and polling. Professionally he runs his own consulting business which is among the most highly sought after firms in the field, but has historically refused to work for candidates opposing the Crown.
Gwalbert Wojtalewicz is the current head of the Nowa Warszawa system government but previously was a consultant on Nowy Gdansk affairs for the political department. His father was one of the original Home Army members imprisoned on Nowy Gdansk by the Dracs. His term ends at the end of this year and he’s already announced that he is stepping down for new blood after 12 years in office. He has a reputation for being able to bring people together from across the political spectrum and convincing them to work together for the common good.
Gabriel Livingston is a bit of a dark horse candidate for the position, but comes highly recommended regardless. He’s an academic and consultant who has a history of actually opposing the Crown, but doing so in thoughtful and insightful ways rather than the sorts of dirty tricks you are used to from opponents. He has a reputation for complete personal integrity and would never be confused for a yes-man, especially in regards to Imperial political power.
Nadine von Meyer is the final candidate on the list. She’s currently a professor of political science at Griffin’s Roost University, has formerly served in the Chamber of Delegates herself, rising to Majority Leader the last time the Chamber strongly supported the Crown, has an impeccable personal reputation for probity, although she is also known for her rather sarcastic wit and cutting sense of humor as she doesn’t suffer fools lightly.
| [] | Vinh Thuy Lien |
| [] | Michael Washington |
| [] | Gwalbert Wojtalewicz |
| [] | Gabriel Livingston |
| [] | Nadine von Meyer |
And now it’s budget time, yay!
General Stewart leads off as usual. “Your Majesty, I will keep this brief. We would like to continue the production build up in order to swiftly replace any potential losses from the upcoming campaign as well as continue to build up our forces. In addition, we would like to prepare for any possible occupation of Okusawa by building up available garrison forces to enable us to flood the zone ahead of any possible resistance movement once the Dragon is slain.” With that she steps back.
“OK, boss,” General Jenkins is up first, representing the Army and is his usual self, which is extremely relaxing considering. “You heard the underboss and yes, we want to buy more garrison regiments pretty please with strawberries on top since I know you hate cherries.” Laughter ripples around the room, then he goes in for the kill shot, leading to you shaking your fist ineffectually at him while finally succumbing to the humor of the whole mess with your ‘cult’ “or palm fronds, for some reason you’ve got a hate on for palm fronds. Anyways, fifteen garrison regiments please, thank you, and your welcome. Then for front line forces, the Calliope Military Academy has repeated their request for a training unit for LAM forces, so we’re requesting one of those and a Raider Regiment as well, to continue building up our Rapid Reaction Forces. Then for regular mechs, six regiments of Light Horse to prance around being light horse and two Armored Cavalry regiments to keep the light horsies from prancing too hard. Oh, and some training mechs for the small fry to practice being excessively enthusiastic in. Then for big stompy robots with squishy humans inside we’d like five Assault Regiments for the biggest, stompiest robots around, although they’ll still have squishies inside.” He tosses up the summary on the display.
- Mech Forces
- 6 Light Horse Regiments
- 2 Armored Cavalry Regiments
- 2 Light Training Regiments
- 5 Assault Regiments
- LAM Forces
- 1 LAM Training Regiment
- 1 Raider Regiment
- Conventional Forces
- 15 Garrison Regiments
General Romanov is next. “Your Majesty, we have 1 Oasis II and 20 Independence class carriers that we’ll need to man since the one that was delayed from last year has already had her airgroup assigned. Therefore we are requesting 4 Fighter Wings for the recharge station and 20 CAP wings for the carriers. We’ll have the ability to build two additional wings with our current factories, therefore we are requesting a pair of Patrol Wings for general deployment.”
- 4 Fighter Wings
- 20 CAP Wings
- 2 Patrol Wings
Thanh is up next, smirking at you but for a wonder not making Deified Jeremy jokes at your expense. “We have a great deal of slips available.” She begins. “And are anticipating potential losses based on our exercises to date. We’re devoutly hoping not to need any replacements, but you and I both know how likely that is. So, I’ll just put up the summary rather than waste time trying to explain.”
- Regular Dropships
- 57 available slips
- 7 Bainbridge
- 25 Lancer
- 25 Long Beach
- 57 available slips
- Large Dropships
- 34 available slips
- 20 Independence
- 14 Majestic
- 34 available slips
- Jumpships
- 6 available slips
- 6 Brig
- 6 available slips
- Warship
- 14 available slips
- 3 Dart
- 6 Dagger
- 4 Fletcher
- 1 Wolverine
- 14 available slips
Bridget is up next, bouncing in her seat. “Your Majesty, we have a big enough budget that we can finally justify big system wide infrastructure projects as a normal thing and not a special thing! Right now we can only really afford to do it in the peripheral worlds, due to the sheer scale of things. We also stand ready to build anything that needs building, expand anything that needs expanding, and while all DoME teams are busy we can plan for future stuff if you want and Calliope IV is maybe a year or two from reaching core status so keep that in mind kay?”
That has to be the shortest speech you can recall her ever giving, and she talked so fast that it seemed shorter still.
Isoroku is up next. “Your Majesty, apart from ordinary diplomatic matters we do have one special appropriation we would like you to consider. Specifically, the number of available jumpships in the commercial sector has reached the point where we are starting to see a bonafide international tourist market forming. We would like to get ahead of that and start a dedicated tourism bureau to market tourist destinations within the Empire. This would have the greatest effect, currently, on the TTP although Calliope IV would also benefit to a degree.”
Lien is sitting in for her boss as your Political advisor pro-tempore. She is a startlingly petite asian woman who, if you didn’t know any better, you’d assume was a teenager sitting in her mother’s chair. “Your Majesty, in addition to continuing our work in getting the Chamber to adopt a more helpful attitude towards the crown, the political office is proposing a public health awareness campaign, especially in poorer and more industrialized areas, with an eye to promoting healthier lifestyles. Several system medical associations have been requesting this from us for some time and, all things considered, it seems appropriate to undertake it now.”
Dr Bryant is off world attending a conference on Calliope IV. She has left a memo for you. She is recommending the immediate undertaking of R&D work on improving standard core jumpships to permit construction of standard core vessels up to 400,000 tons in mass.
General Messerschmidt is present. “Your Majesty, I don’t have anything new for you. I have teams ready to accompany the invasion force next year, of course, but just before this meeting I did get some reports. There’s been an attempted assassination of the designated proconsul to Nova Jupitereum by a Pugnus Deorum sleeper agent in his staff. The proconsul was able to hold off the attacker but I fear that there might be some… personal embarrassment from this, Your Majesty.”
You groan.
“It seems that, ultimately, the attacker was stopped when the scale model statue that we’ve all been joking about fell on him in the midst of the struggle. Needless to say, the cult is rather… enthusiastic about this development.”
Thanh immediately starts howling with laughter, along with General Jenkins, the traitor. You can tell from General Messerschmidt’s expression that there’s more. “Out with it…” you grate, trying to give your sister and who you thought was a friend a quelling glare that bounces off of them like a superball off of, well, anything.
“Apparently he was impaled by the palm frond, Your Majesty.” his lips twitch into a ghost of a smile on his Teutonic features.
Your face and your palm engage in a forbidden romance as the hilarity levels skyrocket.
“And it will be on the news tonight, Your Majesty, complete with HD footage from the security cameras which caught the entire thing.” Niels is remorseless with the bad news.
Your forehead, the desk, making repeated acquaintances while the laughter swells at your reaction.
When things calm down a little Martina finally is able to speak, although even her lips are twitching still. “Your Majesty, the only real project from your Justice Ministry is to fully ascertain the legal status of New Eden, considering that all refugees have been evacuated from there and have indicated that they have no wish to return. For obvious reasons we have no actual precedent for this, so we would strongly advise that we carefully review our options before making any long-term decisions on the system.”