Quest Deep Periphery Quest (Battletech Sandbox Empire Builder)

[LordSunhawk]

Turn 15 - Lessons Learned and Fluff (of a serious variety)

You couldn’t really call this a defeat. The enemy had departed, and had been the only ones to suffer actual military losses that couldn’t be made good simply through a few days in the depot.

You couldn’t really call this a victory. The enemy had departed only because a swarm of deathopotamusaurus had trampled their landing zone, and not until they’d caused immense damage.

Huế mới was a total wreck, the fires had burned for hours after the Dracs had departed causing enormous damage to the infrastructure of the city. Relief shipments from Griffsport had departed within hours, but the situation was truly dire.

The Dracs hadn’t contented themselves with simply hurling infernos around, they’d taken the time to deliberately smash through the shinto shrine that had been built in the city for the small ethnic Japanese population, with the apparent leader’s Dragon deliberately kicking over the torii gates and smashing the honden.

On a more personal, and personally painful, level, the Ngô family compound had also been completely destroyed. Worse, bà’s gravesite had been torched by one of the Jenner’s inferno missiles striking it directly, although you are sure that there was no way the Dracs knew the significance of what they were doing.

General Potter looks extremely stressed when you meet with him.

“Our pilots did all that they could, it was the doctrine that let them down.” he says grimly. “We hadn’t realized just how effective massed dropships could be in supporting each other, moreover we had the wrong force mix to deal with the Dracs escorts.”

He takes a breath, looking steadily at you. “We were working with extremes, small fast interceptors that couldn’t punch their way out of a paper bag, and great big assault birds that couldn’t maneuver worth a damn. The Dracs had both, but also something in between that could exploit the shaping of the battlespace provided by the interceptors while still screening the assault craft.”

You nod grimly, distantly pleased that he pointedly hasn’t mentioned that General Wolf had several times recommended building intermediate fighters, and had had to fight to get the Roc approved at all.

“On the ground, the tactics we’d devised for the RRF were never really tested, because quite bluntly they were wrong. If the enemy had been able to deploy their armored force into battle the RRF would have done far better than they did against those mechs. Our people did their best, but the maximum speed slicing attacks simply don’t do enough damage fast enough, we need to mob the mechs and get them by the throat, not try and bleed them.” he continues in that hammered iron voice.

“The fortifications were ineffective, we had too few infantry spread too thin. We’ll be spending months digesting everything that went wrong and determining fixes, thank God for the grifftigers and, loathe as I am to say it, the deathopotamusaurus.” his lips twist a bit into what could, charitably, be called a brief smile. “With your permission I’d like to initiate after-action reviews for all the units immediately, rather than waiting for the regular budgetary period.”

[] Yes - will take up a military action this year and cost 500
[] No

A few days after the shelters have reopened Janet comes bustling in.

“We may have a problem, there are some crowds gathering near the shinto temple here in Griffsport and things are getting tense.” she says quickly.

You don’t even hesitate. You quickly pull on your uniform, grab Sekhmet, your husband, and your personal platoon, and go out to the shrine.

There is indeed a crowd of angry people, being harangued by some demagogues you recognize as being associated with the more… hostile portions of Parliament.

You smile grimly, then glance over at Sekhmet who nods and paces into the Temple grounds, turning and seating herself where she blocks the gates, preventing the crowd from getting closer… before she suddenly lets loose a bowel-loosening roar that echoes through the city.

And conveniently completely silences the crowd.

How are you going to approach this?

[] Passionate appeal for unity against the Dracs
[] Angry denunciation of Bullshit-o of Drac State Shinto contrasted with the local flavor of ordinary Shinto.
[] Calm speech stressing the differences between the Dracs, who are our enemies, and the local ethnic-Japanese, who are most certainly on OUR side.
[] Write-In

(QM note - it is acceptable to vote for more than one, if you manage any good turns of phrase that I wind up using in a write-in, you’ll get a free reroll of your choice)

 

[LordSunhawk]

Turn 15 - Advisors

You glare out at the cowed crowd, ignoring the cameras that are focusing on you as you stand there, hands on your hips like an angry mother staring down errant children.

“Our enemy is out there.” you almost growl, your voice projecting well enough to be heard regardless as you jab your finger up into the sky. “Our enemy is not… here.” you gesture behind yourself.

“Our enemy thinks that they have the inherent right to rule over us, simply because they think we are too weak, too cowardly, too servile…” your voice is laden with contempt. “To resist their ‘enlightened rule’.”

You continue glaring at the crowd. “And idiocy like this only serves to help them. In Huế mới the shinto shrine was leveled to the ground and set ablaze by these so-called ‘samurai’. And here you are, ready to carry on their work. By any rational standard, I would have to consider you part of their cult of bullshit, are you?”

The crowd looks quite ashamed of themselves at this point. Good.

“I will tell you this. No Drac has ever understood Honor. No Drac has ever understood Duty. No Drac has ever understood Service. They are nothing more than spoiled little children playing pretend.” you pace a bit. “They’ll be back, they’ve been given a bloody nose and their infantile fake honor has been ‘insulted’. And when they do, I intend to ensure that they get the spanking that their childish antics deserves.”

The crowd surprises itself with a laugh at that mental image, which you score as a strong first step.

“So, tell me, what are you going to do to spank the God Damned Dracs?” you ask rhetorically, earning a roar from the crowd that almost, almost matches Sekhmet’s.

You go on in a similar vein for a while, pumping up the crowd and directing their animosity towards the Dracs rather than their fellow citizens. In fact, by the time you are finished you’d even managed to convince the crowd to kick in for rebuilding the shrine over in Huế mới.

You feel quite proud of yourself for that.

When you get back to your office you find that your paperwork has seemingly multiplied again. Oh well, no good deed and all that.

However there is some good news. There had been a low level design competition for a replacement for the Falcon even before this conflict. The fruits of that effort are now on your desk waiting for your decision.

[]	Name	Cost	HP	Attack/Defense	Special
[]	Scorpion F1A	820	32	8	SWIFT, LIGHT
[]	Slayer F2A	856	36	10	SWIFT, LIGHT
[]	Viper Aero	704	28	7	SWIFT, LIGHT
[]	Light Laser Interceptor	708	28	7	SWIFT, LIGHT
[]	Falcon Heavy Interceptor	816	32	8	SWIFT, LIGHT
[]	Foxbat Aero	728	24	6	SWIFT, LIGHT

Looking over the details, you find that the contract specifies an initial production run with attendant transition training for the entire 1st Interceptor Wing. As a consequence they would be replacing the existing Falcons in the Wing, said birds being available in reserves or to be used to create a fresh formation.

((QM Note - As a reminder, upgrading a formation’s equipment costs the total cost of the new equipment - 100 per unit. Units in reserve are not counted for upkeep and can be reactivated to a fresh formation starting at quality Green for 100 per unit.))

Parliament is actually trying to be helpful, in their own way. There’s a bill moving through both chambers that would allocate funds for hardening infrastructure to help reduce the amount of damage from future attacks. It’s expensive, at least overall, but the costs would be spread out over several years.

[] Agree - +10 support in both Commons and Lords, +1 Influence for Commons and Lords, costs 2000 a year for 10 years. Reduces damage from scorched earth attacks by enemy forces by 25%.
[] Disagree - -10 support in both Commons and Lords

You head into the meetings with your advisors, grimly aware of just how difficult juggling all the priorities this year is going to be.

General Potter is the first to speak, inheriting that distinction from General Wolf.

“I have some good news from the action review.” he says in his gravelly voice that rumbles from somewhere deep in the planet's core. “The Rocs have been well-blooded and are showing a definite improvement in overall skill, while the Interceptor wing is seeing some minor incremental improvements. The nutcases in the Chasseurs have also been fully blooded, however the Foxhound and garrison forces were not heavily enough engaged for any general improvement in ability.”

He sets down that datapad. And picks up another. You’d so hoped you’d only hear good news.

“I think I am going to surprise you, Your Majesty.” he then continues in that basso profundo of his. “I am not going to immediately ask for more forces. We need them, do not mistake me, but we also need the right forces. And the right support structure. When the enemy took over the drop port in Huế mới, we lost our primary ASF operational base in that hemisphere. This crippled our ability to remain in the fight, especially with the short legs of the Falcon. We need dispersal fields in order to allow us to better utilize our airpower, and rather than panic buying new fighters, my staff and I believe we need those first.”

He sets down another datapad. “We also need mechs of our own, even light mechs would be useful. To do that, we need a factory. Mr Lee?”

He turns to Tyler, who grins back then rises to his feet. You wince slightly, when you first met him he’d be bouncing to his feet, now he looks… old.

“I’d love nothing more than to accommodate you, General, but we have more pressing needs. Next year, we’ll have the capacity, right now though, we desperately need to start providing immediate relief and rebuilding in Huế mới. To that end, we’ve worked out plans for reconstruction that should be implemented immediately. Otherwise, the economic damage from this attack will linger far longer than any of us would desire.”

Dr Young had sent her deputy to the meeting as she was ill. “The Foreign Ministry is ready to assist with anything that we can, but we really don’t have all that much to offer at this time.”

Professor Chapman chuckles slightly. “Just remember that those bastards never even bothered trying to talk. Makes diplomacy more difficult.” she turns her attention fully to you. “There’s really nothing new from me, the speech you gave at the shrine has picked up planetary attention and so far looks like it’s playing wonderfully, I’ve got my people in the press center doing appropriate press releases and interviews. We’re in good shape over here, Your Majesty.”

Dr Palmer looks the same as she always does, excited by the prospect of Science! (the exclamation point is important). “Your Majesty, I know the budget is tight this year, but we’ve got so many things we can do! If it’s not expanding the labs, we’ve got tons of basic research opportunities!” she pulls out a datapad and starts babbling at full speed. “We’ve got vital data on the performance of dropships, so I really think we need to do that! And look at this, with the orbital labs onboard our space station we’ve got a shot at starting to actually puzzle out the details on things like LB-X autocannons and Ultra autocannons, not to mention endosteel and ferrofibrough armor!.” she looks like a little kid in a candy shop, so much candy, so little time!

“We can knock out some lower-hanging fruit too, work out the fundamentals of gauss and energy small arms should be EASY, and would give us so many other wonderful fields of research!”

Yup, she’s bouncing in her seat. Scientists, gotta love ‘em.

Harry Owens, in contrast, looks grim. “We didn’t take any prisoners, however we did find… this.”

He takes out a padded and locked case, sets it on the table, and pops it open, revealing a somewhat singed but still intact data disk.

“We have no idea what’s on this, it could be important, it could be a music collection. We just don’t know. We’d like to find out.” he says simply.

Then he pauses, twitches his shoulders. “There was absolutely no sign of any communication between the expatriates we’ve taken in and the Dracs before, during, or after the attack.”

Janet bounces in to the meeting, late as usual, in front of a cavalcade of her kids and your youngest, drops a giant mug of steaming coffee in front of you, then bounces her way back out of the office, skipping the entire time with all the kids skipping in time with her. She’d already told you that morning that she’d have nothing to report, so there is that.

 

[LordSunhawk]

Turn 15 - Results

Spoiler: Event and Ratings Rolls

Economic Roll - N/A due to martial law
Health Roll - 7 degrees of success
Stability Change roll - N/A due to martial law

Stability Rolls

-Political - N/A
-Research - N/A
-Economic - N/A

Meta Event Roll - ** - SPECIAL
Dynasty Luck Roll - 17 - surviving datachip from destroyed Triumph

Crown Influence Roll - 5 - fail
Lords Influence Roll - 9 - no roll
Commons Influence Roll - 5 - SUCCESS… positive event - Accelerated rebuild of Huế mới

Spoiler: Action Rolls

[X] Agree - +10 support in both Commons and Lords, +1 Influence for Commons and Lords, costs 2000 a year for 10 years. Reduces damage from scorched earth attacks by enemy forces by 25%.

[X] Slayer F2A

Establish Blue-Water Coast Guard*
Roll already done last turn - SUCCESS

After Action Review*
1st Interceptor Wing - 1 success (banked, need 10 to become elite)
1st Strike Wing - 1 success - promoted to Crack
RRF 1st Regiment - 1 success - promoted to Crack
RRF 2nd Regiment - failure
Garrison - failure

ASF Dispersal Fields - Griffsport
Target - 75
Roll - 51
Result - SUCCESS

Advanced Tactical Training Annex - Pilot Training Center
Target - 75
Roll - 99, reroll thanks to CURTIS LEMAY, 39
Result - Success

Recruit 4 Flights Rocs (bring to full squadron), Upgrade interceptor wing to Slayer F2A
Target - 60
Roll - 32
Result - Success

Strengthen Central Bank*
Target - 40
Roll - 89, reroll thanks to ECONOMIST trait 17
Result - SUCCESS

Rebuild Huế mới Drop Port
Target - 85
Roll - 39
Result - SUCCESS

Expanded Academy Labs
Target - 65
Roll - 97, reroll thanks to SHADOWARXXY, 95, reroll thanks to Jarow, 5
Result - SUCCESS

Advanced Infantry Weapons - Gauss
Target - 110
Roll - 51
Result - Success

Decode recovered data drive
Target - 35
Roll - 98
Result - FAIL

Establish National Police Force*
Target - 60
Roll - 5
Result - SUCCESS

----

Unfortunately for the kids, but fortunately for what remains of your alleged parental sanity, the Pee-Wee Hovercraft Racing season was cancelled, so you wouldn’t have that ulcer causing headache to deal with now that your twins were eligible to compete.

It’s totally your loving husband's fault that they are so competitive and eager to race! You’d make him sleep on the couch for such a great transgression against keeping your babies safe and wrapped in cotton but then your feet would get cold. The sacrifices you make.

Sekhmet is looking extra smug these days, and Bastet seems to relish the additional playtime she gets with the older kids since they’re not able to go off zooming around in hovercraft that she’d crush if she looked at them funny.

Your thoughts stray back to the near riot at the Shinto temple, and seized by some inspiration you take out a tablet and write up some proposed legislation, which you send to Janet, Professor Chapman, and Dr Young for comment. In broad terms, it was for the government to finance programming intending to show the stark differences between the local ethnic Japanese population, the historical traditions of actual Bushido and Shinto, and contrast them to the abominations that are the Combines viewpoint of both.

[] Go for it, it’s a great idea and will certainly help with communal tensions
[] Might be premature, wait for further analysis
[] Write-in

You get a report from the parliamentary liaison (formerly one of your interns who’d impressed you with his diligence) about some of the latest shenanigans from Parliament… only to find that for once they not only were extremely helpful, but that they’d managed to do it without asking ‘mother may I’ first.

They had expedited the repairs to Huế mới by passing inventive tax breaks to companies involved in the reconstruction. They’d even managed to structure the whole thing to be revenue neutral, not favor any of their cronies, and generally lived up to the high expectation you’d publicly declared for them, rather than living down to the low expectations you really had.

You get a report about the final establishment of the blue water coast guard. You wish you’d had this earlier, because the SAR facilities would have been priceless in the immediate aftermath of the battle, but they’re on their collective feet and have already sent in their first actual budget request, for a few large cutters (why they can’t just call them ships is beyond you, when you asked you’d just gotten a vague statement about tradition from Captain Stinnett. So you’ll defer to the coasties and call them cutters). Ahhh, new government bureaucracies grow up so fast, one day they’re just a gleam in your eye, the next they are already wanting their budgets expanded.

You attend the official handover ceremony where the 1st Interceptor Wing officially stands up with their new Gyrfalcon interceptors. Willis has managed to get a few hours in one of them and tells you that they’re extremely responsive and have a superb combat computer that seems to help with energy and thermal management. You just think they look wonderfully capable and are glad to see them in service.

The old Falcons have been sent off to the new Pilot Training Center outside Huế mới where they were being used to train up the next generation of ASF pilots.

You also are on hand as the new Rocs are handed over, bringing the attack wing up to a full squadron in strength. Those big monsters had performed well, just there hadn’t been enough of them and the tactics hadn’t been right for what they were facing.

You get to tour the new dispersal facilities around Griffsport, another thing you should have thought about before the landing. You sigh a bit, hindsight is 20/20 and nobody can be perfect.

Try telling your emotions that at 3 in the morning when you wake up in a funk of self-doubt and pity over your failures.

The terminals and control facilities, hangars, and tank farm at the Huế mới Drop Port are rebuilt, you are glad so much of the harder to replace infrastructure is underground. Commerce between the continents is slowly edging back up to normalcy now.

You get to play with a few early prototypes of needler rifles and pistols. They are far too delicate still for issue to troops, and you can already tell that they’d be almost useless against anything with any armor whatsoever, but you can also tell that they would be utterly devastating against unarmored targets and since they have essentially no actual penetration extremely well-suited to boarding actions.

The new Academy labs open up with a great fanfare, and you spend the day wandering about admiring the setup. To be honest, most of the explanations sail right over your head, but you’ve gotten quite good at knowing when to nod knowingly and make appropriate mouth noises to appease excited geeks.

Decoding the recovered datadisk, however, isn’t going that well at all. They’ve not given up however, and hope to have something useful soon (™).

Janet is extremely excited that her pet project about establishing a royal police force is finally finished. They have little direct authority, but will mainly serve in the role of watchdogs over local police forces while being overseen directly by a special court of the judiciary, which is in turn drawn from and overseen by local law enforcement. It’s a neat setup, in that each element of it is in dynamic tension with the others. Moreover, it is specifically set up so that you can easily intervene if you feel that things have gotten out of hand. They also will provide specialized crime labs and specialists in more esoteric or rare corners of forensics and investigation.

It looks good to you, at least.

 

[LordSunhawk]

Turn 16 - Fluff

“You want me to do what?”

You grin a bit, leaning back in your chair, as you watch Dominique Forsyth boggle across from you.

“Yes, I know you are the opposition leader, Ms Forsyth, but we need to work together as a planet if we’re going to succeed against an entire Great House.” you manage to keep your amusement out of your voice.

“So yes, I would like you to take the lead on this. You minored in Comparative Theology at the U, so I know you are qualified for it. And please correct me if I am mistaken, but I’ve been unable to find any requirement that, as Queen, I must only tap my supporters for things like this.” Your smile broadens a bit as you lean forward.

“Well, put that way.” the slender young woman across from you says. “I accept the charge.”

“Excellent.” you smile, nodding. “I’ve already instructed Dr Young and Professor Chapman to make their people available to you for this purpose.”

You rise from behind the desk to conduct the still somewhat surprised young parliamentarian from your office.

You’d needed to put somebody in charge of running the outreach and education campaign to try and educate the citizens of the planet about the various faiths and prevent problems like the near riot at the Shinto shrine from happening again. A sort of ‘we’re all in this together’ approach, not singling out any single one faith for special attention.

And then you’d decided to kill two birds with one well-aimed stone. Dominique was still insisting that she was in opposition to you, on the principle of opposition rather than out of any genuine disagreement. You had already decided that she was more the proverbial 6 year old in the room pointing out the flaws in the plans that the big brains had. You could work with that.

But you wanted that proverbial 6 year old in your planning meetings picking apart your plans, not working with those who genuinely opposed you out of personal ambition or malice.

If only everything were so easy.

The Pee-Wee Racing League was back in action, and now all three of your little men were racing. It had been bad enough when it was just your eldest, but now the twins are gleefully crashing into each other on their hovercraft, seeming to be racing purely for fun rather than competition, and each time it causes your heart to skip a few beats.

Of course, there were also things that made you so proud you were fit to burst. Jeremy was such a good big brother to his sisters. He’d actually let them decorate his hovercraft racer and managed to not once wince or complain when it came away from their ministrations painted in bright pink glitter paint with unicorn decals all over it. He even tried to talk the scrutineers into allowing Sarah’s stuffed unicorn to remain perched on the bow ‘to keep biggest brother safe!’.

Considering that Sarah was right there pouting, the fact that Jeremy managed to say that it was an important and innovative safety system with a perfectly straight face... and then when the scrutineer insisted that it was against the rules you wanted to grab your little man and fuss all over him when he promptly turned to his little sister and offered to let her put one of her big unicorn stickers on his helmet instead.

He obviously got all of that from you. Willis helped. A little. But it’s his fault that the boys are racing in the first place so he doesn’t get credit. That’s your story and you are sticking to it.

But now you have three boys racing, one in the cutest hovercraft ever, the other two had so far escaped their little sisters attention with how busy they’d been decorating Jeremy’s… you suspect that he intended that as well, looking out for the twins.

Jeremy was as competitive as always, racing near the front in every race and winning a number of them. You’ve seen some of the other boys try and bully him over his racer, only for him to shrug and ignore them. And you’ve also seen the girls his age looking all googly eyed at him. You firmly tell yourself that siccing Janet’s investigators on the girls would be a total misuse of resources. Willis keeps you from doing anything about the would-be bullies, and you are glad for it when you realize that Jeremy is shutting them down quite effectively on his own by simply ignoring them and being the bigger little man. And when one of them tried to get physical, the appearance of Bastet, One (1), Growling seemed to fix the issue right up.

This quickly turned into Bastet, One (1), Purring as the girls and those boys who weren’t bullies crowded around to give the Grifftiger the requisite tribute of scritchies and pettings.

Quan and James didn’t seem to care where they finished in the races, just so long as they had a blast. They were competitive with each other, but they seemed willing to ignore the rest of the racers.

Willis had figured that one out, they were waiting until their big brother was in the Junior League and no longer competing with them to take the racing truly seriously, they were simply learning everything they could about their racers.

Smart kids.

Another thing they obviously got from your side of the family. You earned a proper tickling from Willis for that crack. OK, so he contributed some too. Fine.

Men.

You make a point, like you had with your other kids, of taking little Sarah to one of the recreational pools in the palace complex to teach her how to swim. The pool is open to locals who pass through security screening for free, and is a popular place for families to take their kids during the heat of the day.

You truly enjoy spending time with other parents, especially those not of the nobility or from wealth. It’s a valuable reality check to keep you grounded in the actual concerns of your people, not simply what you are told their concerns are.

Of course, oftentimes your discussions are more about your kids than anything else, and that is just perfect for you. You’d rather spend all of your time talking about your kids.

However sometimes… here you are in the shallow end, working with your youngest along with a few other parents who have their own little kids with them learning how to swim and looking incredibly cute with their water wings.

Then you hear a shout “Last one in is a Kuritan!” from a bunch of boys who come stampeding out of the changing rooms and thunder into the pool like a rampaging herd.

You can’t help it. You start laughing helplessly, quickly joined by all the other mothers.

What a way to think of the Kuritans, as equal to rotten eggs.

Back in the office later that same day you get a memo from Tyler requesting a meeting.

Since he normally just shows up, this actually worries you. And when he shows up for the meeting your concerns grow even more.

He looks gray, tired, worn. Much more so than before. “Your Majesty.” he says with unusual formality, then coughs and looks even older. “I’ve been ordered by my doctors to either retire now and take it easy, or I’ll be dead in a few months.” he manages a smile. “My deputy can handle things for now, but my wife has issued one of her rare ultimatums and I am not going to disobey. I’m sorry, Jacqueline…”

He doesn’t manage to get any further than that before there is a Hug Interrupt. From you. He may be a walking hormone, but he’s been a loyal retainer, and is the great grandfather of your children. Obnoxious man that he is, you still consider him family and love him for who he is.

“Go, take care of yourself, and I’ll bring the kids over to visit this weekend.” you say firmly, kissing him on the cheek.

A few days later you get a memo from his deputy, showing a list of candidates for the permanent position as Minister for the Interior.

[]	Name	Interior Actions	Other Actions	Bio & Specials
[]	Roosevelt Weaver	3	1 Political	Current deputy, senior man in the ministry at this time, well liked by Parliament
[]	Bridget Doyle	4	0	Currently runs industrial liaisons with the interior ministry, very junior, classmates with Dominique Forsyth
[]	Steven Pope	3	1 Military	Military Liaison within the interior ministry
[]	Rose Lawson	3	1 research	University liaison within the interior ministry

 

[LordSunhawk]

Turn 16 Advisors

You spend a few days moping about Tyler leaving. Who’d have ever thought that you’d actually miss the old lech? You still saw him regularly, but it just wasn’t the same without him popping into your office, making some totally inappropriate remark, then vanishing before you or the Sergeant Major could run him down for a well deserved defenestration.

You realized with a pang that part of why you miss that is that it had seriously reduced your stress levels to give you something to focus on that wasn’t really all that important. Whenever you start obsessing over something you find yourself waiting for the Tyler Interrupt, and that won’t happen anymore.

You sigh a bit, looking again over the list of materials you have on the various candidates to replace him. You’d met all of them, here and there, but… none were Tyler.

Another sigh, and you make your choice.

An hour later you have a painfully earnest young woman sitting across from you. You were never THAT young, and certainly never had the look of a puppy dog eager to get on with playing, but Bridget seems to project that sort of energy.

Makes you tired just watching her vibrate in place. Janet isn’t this energetic, even after a mochachino.

In a way it’s refreshing to have somebody so completely different from Tyler sitting in his chair, it helps keep you from comparing her to him.

Parliament is up to its usual tricks. This time in a way that makes you shake your head. There’s a bill on your desk, passed by the barest majority of your most ardent supporters, that would permit the Crown to preemptively silence dissent on ‘matters of grave public concern’, citing the mobs at the shinto temple as evidence of how this is badly needed.

You just want to bang your head on the desk.

[] Agree. You don’t like it, but being able to stamp down on opposition does have its benefits. +1 Crown Influence, -1 Commons and Lords Influence, -10 support in the Lords, -20 support in the Commons, opposition moves to alienated status.

[] Disagree. If people wish to dissent from your decisions, it is up to you to convince them of the rightness of your decision, not force compliance at gunpoint. You have no wish to become a tyrant. This will alienate some of your hardcore supporters, but really, what were they thinking? -10 support in Lords, -10 support in Commons, prevents certain events.

The nationwide religious outreach and education campaign is going quite well. You do get a list of amusing submissions of ‘religions’ which are all traced to the School of Periphery Studies. You never realized there were quite so many variations of ‘flying spaghetti monsters’ with ‘noodly appendages’. You are also pretty certain that the application from the Jedi Order is likely a joke, although that one doesn’t come from the School. A little digging shows it comes from a group of cosplayers in Griffsport who evidently have far too much time on their hands.

The one that provokes the biggest bout of laughter is a submission flagged for your attention by the director of the School of Periphery Studies with a note about how you’d find this one hilarious. An entire religion based around worshipping appliances, especially toasters, and chanting in horrible pig latin about somebody named Blake.

He’s right, especially after you watch the attached video of the ‘High Priest Of Blessed Blake’ exultantly disassembling a toaster and proclaiming each component to be a relic of their Most Holy.

There’s also a video of said High Priest attempting to disassemble the coffee machine, leading to a bitter brawl with nerf bats and swords as the defenders of the coffee pot declared the worshippers of the toaster to be heretics.

You share this one with Willis, who laughs almost as hard as you do.

Then it's budget season. Which is like Rabbit Season, but with 100% fewer Elmer Fudds.

Especially with no Tyler in the room. You’re feeling maudlin again.

General Potter leads off the briefing. “I have a very small number of requests for the crown this year, Your Majesty.” he rumbles from deep within the core of the planet. You swear, one of these days you’ll need a seismograph to record his voice, it just keeps getting deeper. “First of all, a pair of vehicle evaluations for two platforms from Nollak Industries to address the challenges of protecting our field formations from aerial assault. The Skysweeper AA Tank and the Avenger AA hovercraft. Both platforms look promising, but they both need testing. Second of all, 1st Armored’s artillery batteries were stood up straight off the factory floor and are painfully green, plus their scout battalion is almost as inexperienced. I’d like to order 1st Armored back to the training area. Finally I would like to start hardening our critical factories against enemy attack. We’ve already seen that the Kuritans love their atrocities, and it was only God’s good favor that prevented the Gyrfalcon factory from being leveled while it was under construction.”

Bridget is practically vibrating in place from where she’s sitting in Tyler’s old chair. “I’ve been looking over everything and there’s so much that we can be doing.” she says brightly.

You feel older just listening to her.

“First of all, we got the survey of Castor and Pollux which will wrap up soon, but we’ve already identified some great sites for ports. Unlike on Capricorn, we’re recommending distributing the port facilities amongst multiple locations right away. We have two extremely good deep water port sites on Castor, one on the north coast and one along what we’ve taken to calling the Throat. Both are deep water, fairly well sheltered from storms, and have excellent access to fresh water and nearby resources. Some of the others are of lower quality, but one of them is relatively near the complex that we found.”

She shuffles her notes, bouncing a bit.

You feel even older as your mom instincts threaten to kick in and tell the girl to calm down.

“We’ve even found the perfect place for the Castor drop port, and it’s only 200 kilometers or so away from the complex! Down on Pollux we have the second finest natural harbor on the planet, we definitely want to develop that region hard because the terrain is perfect for an industrial city. It would also be a perfect jumping off point for any exploitation of the titanium resource area.”

More note shuffling, more bouncing. Your fingers twitch.

“As for the dire penguins and that titanium deposit. We have a scout team ready to go with some arctic vehicles that are equipped for dire penguin repelling. We’d really like to get that mission started so we can start taking advantage of that titanium. We have industry reps begging us for access, so this should be profitable.”

She beams at you happily.

“Oh! And the Hovercraft Racing League sent my office a request for funding and approval to build a championship quality racing course and stadium! It would have both a long track, a slalom track, and an endurance track for the various forms of top level racing, and would also be available for the planetary championships for the lower leagues!”

Bounce. Bounce. Bounce.

She is FAR too perky!

Dr Young is her usual steady and dour self, and even she seems to be missing Tyler in some small way, probably like one would miss a toothache. “We’re ready to go with the public-relations anti-drug campaign, Your Majesty. Just give us the word.”

No bouncing, no ultra enthusiasm. Just think, when you were younger you thought she was boring.

Professor Chapman comes in with a very serious expression on her face. “We’ve been in discussions with Parliament and with experts. Your Majesty, it will be expensive at first to make full accommodations and adjust things to fit, but it is time to extend full citizenship to the Grifftigers. This was their planet first, and it is only right that they have a full voice in running the place.”

Then she grins a bit. “Plus I can’t wait to see the expression on some noble lords and ladies faces when Grifftiger peers get seated in the Lords, and the constipated looks on some of our esteemed Members of Parliament when they have to run against a ‘tiger.”

That makes you laugh as well, because you know precisely which individuals she is talking about when it comes to their likely reactions to having to be polite to gigantic felines that could negligently use them for chew toys.

Dr Palmer shows up for her meeting with you. Another familiar face who isn’t too perky…

Well, more perky than she usually is when she’s excited about new Science!.

“We’re almost done with the dropship program, Your Majesty.” she reports. “And I have teams chomping at the bit to get started on cracking spheroid dropships. I’d strongly recommend improving our automation technology as well. Plus the usual basic research. And… did I mention that we have teams ready to start cracking some of the low-hanging fruit of later Star Leaguer technology? Ultra and LB/X autocannons, endosteel, ferrofibrous… all are in reach!”

Harry Owens is still quite forgettable. “We’re still working counter intel, and we’re still hoping to crack that datachip. Other than that, Intel’s good, Your Majesty.”

Janet, on the other hand, is her normal cheerful self. “Ya know, if you decide to make those big cute kitties…” here she pauses to give Sekhmet a tributary scritching “full citizens, I call dibs on them for patrol forces! Royal Grifftiger Mounted Police!” she proclaims grandly, gesturing with her coffee mug. “And beach patrols. Did you know that Great Shark attacks at the beaches are down 10 percent ever since you started letting Sekhmet and Bastet play on the beach?”

You didn’t know that, and soon your conversation with Janet turns more into a discussion about your respective kids than anything business related.

Complete with pictures.

 

[LordSunhawk]

Turn 16 - Results

Spoiler: Event and Ratings Rolls

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

Stability Rolls

-Political - +5 to one roll (assigned to Castor Harbor project)
-Research - 2 projects +10 (assigned to Human Genome Project and Spheroid Dropships)
-Economic - +5% GDP

Meta Event Roll - 49 - No Event

Dynasty Luck Roll - 34 - 2 - 1000 windfall


Crown Influence Roll - 10 - no roll
Lords Influence Roll - 9 - no roll
Commons Influence Roll - 3 - Fail

Spoiler: Action Results

[X] Disagree. If people wish to dissent from your decisions, it is up to you to convince them of the rightness of your decision, not force compliance at gunpoint. You have no wish to become a tyrant. This will alienate some of your hardcore supporters, but really, what were they thinking? -10 support in Lords, -10 support in Commons, prevents certain events.


ASF Dispersal Fields - Capricorn
Target - 65
Roll - 43
Result - Success

Train complex entrance team
Target - 50
Roll - 24
Result - SUCCESS

Field Test Skysweeper AA Tank
Target - 95
Roll - 52
Result - SUCCESS

Field Test Avenger Anti-Air Hovertank
Target - 95
Roll - 17
Result - SUCCESS

Build a Battlemech Factory outside Griffsport
Target - 75
Roll - 67
Result - SUCCESS

Scout the Titanium w/Penguin Fighting Grip
Target - 75
Roll - 47
Result - SUCCESS

Build Championship Hovercraft Racing League stadium and course
Target - 85
Roll - 73
Result - SUCCESS

Extend full citizenship to Grifftigers
Target - 75
Roll - 71
Result - SUCCESS

Aerodyne Dropships (small)*
Target - 100
Roll - 60
Result - SUCCESS

Materials Research lvl 2
Target - 85
Roll - 81
Result - SUCCESS

Improved Automation lvl 3
Target - 80
Roll - 10
Result - SUCCESS

Advanced Infantry Weapons - Energy
Target - 110
Roll - 15
Result - SUCCESS

Decode recovered data drive*
Target - 35
Roll - 70
Result - FAIL

Training
1st Armored
Target - 80
Roll - 53
Result - SUCCESS

Griffin's Roost AeroTraining
Target - 50
Roll - 68
Result - FAIL

You promptly veto the ridiculous proposal from Parliament, sending a number of people who claimed to support you so much that they wanted you to be a dictator in all but name to be highly offended at the public humiliation. You frankly would rather not have such people's support.

Jeremy is in the championship hunt again, and you are both terrified for your little man and incredibly proud and excited. His younger brothers… aren’t in the championship hunt this year, not having won a single race, but they are both cheerfully serving as part of their big brothers crew.

You have such great kids.

You’ve been asked to name the new championship stadium, but you’ve not been able to come up with a single great idea. In the end, you announce the name of the Championship Arena to be…

[] Write-In

The racing in the initial heats is furious. As the popularity of the sport has grown, so too has the money attracted to the sport, even down to the Pee Wee leagues. You are seeing 10 year olds racing hovercraft emblazoned with sponsorship decals, and the quality of the hovercraft themselves has gone up immensely.

As has the cost.

Talking with other parents, many of them are worrying about being able to afford to keep their kids in the sport, especially if they want to be competitive. When the sport had started you could get all the gear you needed for around a hundred dollars, now the cheapest racer out there was ironically your son’s, and it cost well over a thousand dollars new, and the modifications and adjustments made in the palace workshops have easily tripled the cost of it.

This could be a problem, if costs continue to rise then the main reason you’ve been sponsoring the league in the first place could be in jeopardy.

[] Get together with the organizers to require spec chassis and engines, thus massively reducing costs.
[] Get with Bridget Doyle and put together a public subsidy program to provide grants to poor families whose kids want to participate in the sport
[] Get with your father-in-law and arrange for Lee Industries to sponsor the entire Pee-Wee League in order to drive costs to the racers families down as low as possible
[] Write-In

Your son’s racer, of course, isn’t sporting any sponsorship decals, unless you count the multiplying unicorn and glitter star decals that your daughters have been applying.

You think it’s rather over the top, but the girls love it, and you are incredibly proud of Jeremy for not only putting up with it but actively encouraging the girls in their efforts. He puts up with a lot of teasing from his friends over it, but doesn’t seem to mind all that much.

As the championship weekend goes on, your son consistently remains within the top three in each of his heats. Between races your husband is down in the pits with the boys tinkering with the racer while you watch over the girls as they play with other kids their ages in the play area set aside for the children.

The final race comes up.

And Jeremy dominates the race to the point where on the final lap he actually checks up so as to not lap anybody and make the race closer than it really was. The second place finisher is a full 8 seconds back, which on the extremely small circuit that comprises the Pee Wee track is almost an eternity.

You are actually a bit nervous for the post-race inspection, but the scrutineers clear it clean and then you allow yourself to go a bit nuts.

Next year Jeremy will be moving up to the Junior league. You try hard not to think about how much faster and more dangerous that league is compared to the kid-friendly Pee Wee league.

At least you’ll only have to worry about him and the twins…. Wait… JEREMY! NO!

Your son. The boy you are so incredibly proud of… has just given Thanh his racer as an early Christmas present! NOT YOUR DAUGHTER TOO!

This is all totally your loving husbands fault. You complain to the Sergeant-Major the entire way home as the kids celebrate with daddy.

And of course it is totally impossible for you to say no when Thanh gives you the Big Kitten Eyes and asks if she can really race like her big brothers next year.

There’s still hope that Sarah won’t be infected by this adrenaline addiction!

Yeah, right. She’s also Willis’ daughter.

You are doomed, she’s almost guaranteed to also want to race, even if right now she’s more interested in dolls.

Back in the office you receive a report from General Potter about the finalists for a very hotly contested design contest. You look over the final entrants and the initial evaluations done by the test and evaluation teams. All of them meet the specifications set out in the request for proposals.

[]	Name	Cost	Speed	Fuel	HP	Attack	Defense	Special
[]	Calico	1588	9	8	70	15	15	Armored
[]	Claw	1108	9	5	58	12	12	Armored, Armor Piercing
[]	Corgi	1380	11	8	62	13	13	Swift, Armored
[]	Dire Penguin Mk II	1108	9	5	66	14	14	Armored
[]	Kestrel	1408	9	6	66	14	14	Armored
[]	Kitten	1068	9	7.5	58	12	13	Armored
[]	Mustang Block 2	968	9	5.5	58	12	12	Armored
[]	Stymphalian	1540	8	5	86	18	18	Armored
[]	Thunderbird F4A	1508	8	6.5	66	14	14	Armored, Armor Piercing
[]	Thunderbird F5B	1572	8	7.5	70	15	15	Armored, Armor Piercing
[]	Warhawk F7A	1188	11	5	58	12	12	Swift, Armored, Armor Piercing

Once you make your choice a factory will have to be built in order to produce the winning design.

You also receive the reports on the results of the various training exercises going on. The specialized training for the complex entry team is underway and they are already reporting good results, although they are not finished yet. The cannon-cockers of the 1st Armored are enthusiastically putting rounds down range and have been showing progress, but they still are rather green.

Meanwhile the techs and training officers for the new AeroTraining Command are suffering from palm-to-face disease to an extent that you wonder briefly if the RRF Curse has transferred to the new unit. They send you an urgent request to appoint a new CO, as the one originally assigned had been medically retired after a high-speed collision between him on a motorcycle and a Griffin Gull on a coastal road.

You have two choices.

[] Josephina Brewer, +5 to training targets. Reputation as a friendly and capable instructor
[] Joe Hines, +5 to training targets. Known hardass with those under his command, but produces excellent results.

The new set of dispersal fields have been constructed on Capricorn, on sites that are picked out by the local Grifftigers as being safe from the less friendly wildlife of the continent.

You’d discovered a new species there, incidentally, a small bear-like creature that loved to climb and was even cuter than a Koala bear. Fears about it being hostile and aggressive rapidly faded when it was learned from the grifftigers that they only ate berries and, according to Sekhmet, their main defense against the ‘tigers was ‘being too cute to eat’.

The fact that the first people to meet them promptly got cuddled by one caused them to be nicknamed Cuddlebears. The zoological people are studying them carefully, but it is believed that within a year or two they might be cleared as being safe for human interaction.

Your daughters immediately lay siege to you for one. Sekhmet and Bastet traitorously join in, although you can tell that Sekhmet is just humoring her daughter. You wind up promising the girls that as soon as the zoo people say it’s safe you’ll get them cuddlebears of their own, but they’ll be required to take care of them.

The field tests for the Avenger and Skysweeper go extremely well, with each of them fully fulfilling Nollak Industries claims about their effectiveness in targeting airborne targets. You are somewhat disturbed by the seeming fanaticism with which the corporate motto of ‘If it flies it dies’ is repeated by everybody you meet from that company, and Willis is most certainly weirded out by the whole thing.

Your first Battlemech factory is online and operational, ready to accept orders for the Ambush light mech. General Potter recommends forming an initial training battalion for the ‘Mechs rather than immediately placing them in operational service, on the grounds that once the battalion is properly established as an adjunct to the Aerie it will ensure that future Mechwarriors start out at a high level of basic skill.

[] Agree - will form a Training Battalion unit
[] Disagree - will form an Operational unit

QM Note - Training units are always in ‘training’ mode with attendant higher upkeep costs, however once a training unit is at Veteran status, in conjunction with the associated advanced training center new unit quality will start at Veteran instead of Regular

You get the first reports back from the titanium deposits. The acoustic defense system is proving quite effective at driving off the dire penguins. Field tests of the acoustic ‘fence’ systems prove efficient, although it is strongly advised to still build regular physical barriers in the event of a power failure to one of the pylons.

The scouts are able to construct a small protected harbor of sufficient size to begin exploiting the deposits in the near future.

There is a great deal of grumbling and muttering from certain elements of Parliament over the extension of citizenship and hence full civil rights to grifftigers. Once again you are annoyed that so much of it seems to come from groups that nominally support the throne, causing you to grit your teeth and resist the urge to publicly tear into them for their hypocrisy. As it is a small number of Lords publicly denounce the plan, costing you some support in that House.

Sekhmet, on the other hand, is very happy and gleefully bestows the Lick Of Approval upon you. And when Ms Forsyth shows up for her monthly meeting to discuss issues from the opposition viewpoint she too is the proud recipient of a Lick Of Approval.

Of course, you have been around the big cat long enough to realize that she’s Up To Something™.

Said suspicion is confirmed when a few weeks later Sekhmet asks you to invite Dominique and her boyfriend to the official ceremony recognizing Grifftiger citizenship. There you get to meet with whom the ‘tigers call ‘The Eldest One’, whom you instantly recognize as the gigantic locomotive sized tiger you’d seen in that recording.

You feel rather callow when you learn that he was already nearly an adult when your ancestors first came to Griffin’s Roost, and that he’d actually watched as the ‘sky eggs’ had flown overhead en-route to landing at what were now the ruins of the old colony site.

He then bestows a very sandpapery Lick Of Approval to you and Willis, before chuffing in feline laughter at your expressions.

And, while you are there, you see a gamboling cub and his mother quite firmly adopting Dominique as ‘their’ human. The expression on Dominique's face is precious.

The aerospace engineering teams proudly present their first full dropship design, along with all the specifications for production equipment required to actually build it. To your annoyance, you sense the hand of your beloved husband in the name… Enterprise.

You sweetly turn the tables on him by declaring that it was obviously required that any ship named Enterprise must have the prefix USS on the front of it, and moreover any away team crews needed to be issued red uniform jackets.

You manage to keep a perfectly straight face as the engineering team is torn between laughing at you catching the joke and running with it, and horror on the same faces at realizing that you caught the joke and are running with it..

Further improved automation technology spreads like wildfire through the industrial sectors of the economy, increasing productivity significantly. Thanks to the combination of job retraining available through your education programs and the generous unemployment benefits and job placement assistance through the Interior Ministry, there is no net effect on unemployment.

The materials science teams finish their work as well and the data they developed has been sent to the teams doing low level work on ferro-fibrous and endosteel technologies.

Harry Owens reluctantly reports that they still haven’t managed to crack the datadisk, but they’re still working on it.

Finally, you get the opportunity to play with the prototypes for a hand-held laser rifle. You are warned that it overheats rapidly, so only fire single shots and wait at least 15 seconds between shots to avoid dangerous heat build up. These weapons show promise as a general purpose weapon capable rather than the far more specialist nature of the initial generation of needlers.

 

[LordSunhawk]

Turn 17 - Fluff and Tragedy

The year starts off with a bang.

Literally.

An extremely large bang.

Right at the stroke of midnight.

And a mushroom cloud where the Gyrfalcon factory used to be.

Radiation detectors have gone mad.

The raid sirens howl, although there have been absolutely no contacts of any sort.

In the light of morning the damage becomes obvious… total. The factory has been leveled.

Emergency services and law enforcement have secured the site, and the radiation levels are dropping extremely rapidly. Experts from the Griffin’s Reach University head down to Huế mới along with relief supplies.

The conclusion comes in several hours later, a laser-initiated pure fusion suitcase nuke had been detonated at the site.

You hadn’t gotten all the Dracs.

Until a few days later you did. 2nd Infantry Regiment (Motorized) corners a team of black infiltration suit clad commandos. The fighting is brutal, the commandos are good, inflicting disproportionate losses on the infantry hunting them.

For several hours there is a game of cat and mouse through an industrial park, the commandos being far too skilled to be easily taken and the extreme quality of their infiltration suits making them almost impossible targets for the infantry.

Until Captain Johnny ‘Zeke’ Rowe led his company in an utterly mad, utterly heroic, and utterly successful bayonet charge behind a barrage of grenades and went stab-happy all over their fake-Bushido bullshit asses.

The commandos may have been armed with vibro-katanas, and may have been supremely skilled in their use.

But there were no magic bushido hands that day.

Instead, instead there was an entire company of extremely pissed off soldiers wielding their rifles like spears and making brutal use of the greater reach that afforded them.

Call it magic griffin fists.

In the end you captured three laser-initiated pure fusion suitcase nukes, and a single living DEST commando. Captain Rowe had managed to knock him out before the bastard could use his suicide tooth, then had performed some field-expedient emergency dentistry with a pair of pliers to rip out all of the bastards teeth to make sure he didn’t have more than one.

You can’t find it in yourself to disapprove of this.

You have a few decisions to make, however.

First of all, you now have those suitcase nukes. General Potter advises you to stockpile them in case we need them in the future, while Dr Young advises that they be destroyed as there is an unacceptably high risk of them being misused. Dr Palmer meanwhile wants at least one of them for the University labs to study.

[] Secure them properly and stockpile them for the future (gain 3 suitcase nukes)
-[] If so, send one to the labs for R&D purposes (gain 2 suitcase nukes, new research option)
-[] Do not send any to the R&D labs.
[] Disassemble and destroy them (no suitcase nukes)
-[] Send one to the R&D labs before destruction (new research option)
-[] Do not send any to the R&D labs.

You get the initial reports from the clean-up teams assigned to evaluate the destroyed factory. According to them, the damage is near total but not complete and it may be cheaper to repair the facility rather than build a whole new one. It would cost 2400 and you’d not have any production capacity until next year at the earliest, but the materials stockpiled for the hardening project are still at hand, so you’d have a hardened factory at that time for no real extra expense.

[] Spend the 2400 and get that factory back online ASAP (cost of 2400)
[] Don’t spend it (will also lose the money invested in the factory hardening)

After that it seems almost… disrespectful, but the global championship race for the top league in the Hovercraft Racing League is still set to go, and the organizers have decided that it would be better to continue than cancel it.

You can see the logic, and the people certainly could use the distraction.

At the start of the opening ceremonies you unveil the new name chosen for the race complex… the Carrie Hampton Memorial Speedway.

Then you tear up when you read the next line. You’d not been warned about this.

The Pee Wee Championship Circuit is to be renamed the Ngô Hương Thanh Memorial Circuit.

You are reminded again just why you married Willis as he puts a comforting hand on your shoulder in support that helps you make it through the rest of the opening speech without completely breaking down.

You’d arranged for Captain Rowe and 3rd Company to be present for the opening of the Speedway, and after they march in review you personally award the Captain with the Griffin’s Cross for valor, and the entire company with the right to add the Royal Griffin to their company standard.

The Warhawk is finally declared the winner of the dogfighter competition and is designated the GSH-1 Goshawk, although there are concerns from the test pilots about heat management in extended dogfight situations. The speed, agility, and sheer firepower of the design win out over those worries, but notes are made to monitor performance.

You have a number of engineers expressing worries that all of the latest fighter designs are very poor at heat management, and that this may become a bigger issue if the trends continue.

You quietly have a word with General Potter to keep some of the ‘losing’ designs in testing in case the heat issues become insurmountable so that there is a backup available.

You also let him know that for any future ASF competitions that heat management will be a key criteria to prevent this concern from coming up again. He agrees with you on that score, although he does stress that the heat management issues are, well, manageable.

That incredibly deep voice of his makes it impossible to tell if he was being facetious or completely serious with that phrasing.

 

[LordSunhawk]

Turn 17 - Advisors

The reorganization of the Pee-Wee Racing League is quickly completed, with it being split into two divisions which will run alternating heats at competition events.

One, called SuperSpec, has league-provided chassis and engine combinations along with very tight limitations on modifications. The spec equipment comes from the small number of manufacturers who agreed to provide the equipment to the league in exchange for sponsorship decals on the fan shroud.

The other division is called ‘Unlimited’, and has the same rules and regulations as before. Like the SuperSpec division sponsorship decals are limited to the fan shroud, but racers are free to pursue any sponsorship deals they’d like (with League approval). Modification and customization are far looser, so long as the safety rules aren’t breached.

Thanh is obviously going to be in the Unlimited division, what with insisting on using Big Brothers racer. The twins, however, get together and then cheerfully announce that they’d rather compete in SuperSpec.

Given that they’d have to give up their customized hovercraft, you are a bit confused as to why they’d do that until a light bulb goes off in your head. They don’t want to be competing against their little sister.

Jeremy has moved up to the Junior League and you are in the strange position of having an avalanche of sponsorship requests come descending on your desk like a blizzard of paperwork. This is obviously Willis’ fault. It seems like every single corporation on the planet wants their logo on his racer.

You sort out those who want to sponsor him for his racing abilities from those who just want an association with the Crown as well as separating out inappropriate sponsorships (seriously, a whiskey company wants to sponsor a Junior League racer? REALLY?). But from there…

[] Let your son decide which of the sponsorships from the approved list to actually accept
[] You decide which sponsorship to accept
[] It is inappropriate for the Royal Family to accept any sponsorship

QM Note - This is a very important decision point, please think carefully about it and give your reasoning for voting the way you do.

You arrange for the suitcase nukes to be properly secured, with one of them being given over, under high security, to the university labs for reverse-engineering purposes.

Parliament has actually been behaving themselves for a change, with no actual shenanigans coming on that front for an entire year now. You check with Dominique to see if she’s got anything for you but find that she’s quite occupied with her two ‘tigers. Evidently the cub is rather… rambunctious.

You share ‘tiger cub stories for a few hours.

And you make a note that Dominique really needs to find a good husband and have kids, good sense like that needs to be encouraged.

Then you realize what you just did and stare at the note for a few minutes. Good lord, you are becoming like bà… you are too young to become like bà. It’s probably all Willis’ fault, giving you grey hairs by letting your kids race hovercraft. You conveniently pretend that you hadn’t approved of this.

Not that this stops you from thinking about matchmaking your ‘official opposition’, of course.

It’s a much more interesting topic than your alleged adrenaline junkie tendencies. You aren’t an ASF pilot, after all, you are a sensible infantrywoman, and not even mechanized. You marched everywhere on your own two feet.

That’s your story, and you are sticking to it. Ignore the VIP Chasseur-derived hovercraft you routinely drive yourself.

Then it's budget time. It’s like Miller time, but without bad beer.

General Potter is first, as always, his basso profundo voice rumbling like a volcano erupting. “We were fortunate in being able to expedite repairs of the Gyrfalcon factory, Your Majesty. Production is disrupted this year, but the spare parts lines are up and running and there will be no operational issues.”

He glances down at his notes. “For this year, with the Battlemech factory online, I would like to get our first lance of mechs in the hands of the training brigade. As Colonel Brewer is now in charge of the AeroTraining Wing, we have placed Colonel Hines in command of the Aerie Cadre. Now they just need equipment. The Ambush should be a decent training mech, although we will want to get a jump capable design optimized for training in the future.”

A turn of the page, the gravelly voice continues rumbling. “In conjunction with the cadre, I strongly recommend building out the Mechwarrior Training Center at the Annex.” a sip of water. “This will allow us to maximize the initial training of mechwarriors and technicians.”

He turns to another page, frowning. “I do not know if they ever covered it when you were in Basic, Your Majesty, but the reason we have never issued vibro-bayonets is that they simply do not provide enough utility over and above regular knives to be worth the added expense. We have some requests to change that, due to the recent unpleasantness.”

“It might also be advantageous to build out the Vehicle Training Center for the Annex, or the Infantry Training Center. That would be an expensive combination, however.” he concludes.

Bridget is as energetic and bouncy as ever. As ever, you are having to resist having all of your ‘mom’ instincts fire off whenever she enters the room.

You were never that bouncy as a girl, even when you were little. The videos of it are all fabrications by your enemies.

“We got a couple projects that should be ending this year, Your Majesty!” she starts, bouncing… “And we’ve got so many things we could be doing for the future. We have a location all picked out with the ‘tigers…” she beams over at Sekhmet, who responds with a rumbling purr. “For a new battlemech factory!”

You take a sip of coffee, you need the caffeine just to keep up.

“And then we’ve got all these port sites on Pollux that we can open up! And we can build the titanium mines now that we’ve got the anti-dire penguin fence lines and defenses up! And we can build a factory for that awesome new dropship the engineering types came up with! And we can implement stronger environmental regulations to protect habitats and such. The grifftigers really approve of that one, Your Majesty, we should do it! And we can do some more orbital resource surveys and find new places to expand because we have an entire continent we’ve barely looked at sure it may be cold and dry and surrounded by mountains but who knows maybe there’s something really good up there and we can then go there.”

She’s babbling… good God she’s babbling. She makes Janet seem like a staid librarian. And you are pretty certain she didn’t breath a single time in that entire last section.

Dr Young is looking at her far younger colleague indulgently, then turns to you. “Nothing new from last year, Your Majesty, we’re ready to start the anti-drug campaign whenever you want, but the PR campaign for the expanded cities is really not anything we can start until after we’re certain they are in place, and I’d recommend first extending governmental authority before going there.”

Professor Chapman nods in agreement. “Agreed, Your Majesty, once the ports are in place we can go about setting up governmental structures and such, but carts, horses, put together in the right order.” she smiles a bit, as she watches Bridget still bouncing in excitement.

Dr Porter is teleconferencing from her lab office. “Your Majesty, we have plenty of free researchers at this time. The only thing I’d strongly recommend we get started on is designing a spheroid dropship, but other than that. We have so many options, and I know budgets are tight but I’d like to see more basic research and us getting started on some of the new munitions.” she glances down at her notes. “And, Your Majesty, I have the biology and genetics departments practically begging for funds to recreate the human genome project, we have so many areas of medicine that we could pursue if we had good genetic data, but that section of the datacores is completely scrambled and unusable.”

Harry Owens is looking grim. “Your Majesty, we’ve gone from too few projects to too many. Right now I have multiple priorities and only so many qualified staffers. What I’d like to do is temporarily stop the surveillance on the expatriate community and shift them to hunting for any other possible DEST teams on the planet, while also intensively interrogating our lone prisoner in the most carefully controlled circumstances we can manage.”

Janet is a lifesaver. She has brought the espresso, the cappuccino, and the mocha.

“Your Majesty… four words. Royal. Grifftiger. Mounted. Police.” she says cheerfully then grins wickedly. “They’ll always get their man!”

Your palm meets your face in a loving yet forbidden romance.

 

[LordSunhawk]

Turn 17 Results

Spoiler: Event and Ratings Rolls

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

Stability Rolls

-Political - 0
-Research - 1 - reduce duration of 1 project, QM choice - Spheroid Dropships
-Economic - -1, -1% GDP

Meta Event Roll - 98, -15% GDP
Dynasty Luck Roll - 29 - What a GOOD boy you have!

Crown Influence Roll - 9
Lords Influence Roll - 6
Commons Influence Roll - 1 - SUCCESS - Check for positive.. CRITICAL SUCCESS

Spoiler: Action Results

[X] Let your son decide which of the sponsorships from the approved list to actually accept
-[X] make sure to go over his reasoning and the potential consequences with him before a final decision is made.
-[X] Have someone at Justice make sure he isn't getting screwed.

Harden Factory 1 to 1
Target - 65
Roll - 61
Result - SUCCESS

Train complex entrance team
Target - 50
Roll - 87
Result - FAIL

Equip Infantry with Vibro-Bayonets
Target - 95
Roll - 37
Result - SUCCESS

Recruit company of Avenger AAA Hovertank for RRF, 1 platoon Ambush Light Mech for Aerie Cadre
Target - 60
Roll - 25 and 59
Result - SUCCESS, SUCCESS

Comprehensive Survey of the twin continents of Castor/Pollux*
Target - 60
Roll - 100, reroll due to Economist perk, 4
Result - SUCCESS

Establish Harbor on Castor*
Target - 55
Roll - 100, ShadowArxxy reroll (from Omake) 82
Result - FAIL

Build the Titanium mines and port w/Penguin Fighting Grip
Target - 75
Roll - 99, ShadowArxxy reroll (from ASF contest), 84
Result - BARE FAILURE, automatic success next turn

Planetary Resource Survey
Target - 45
Roll - 80 - Converted to Success due to Commons Crit
Result - SUCCESS

Power Generation lvl 2
Target - 85
Roll - 96
Result - FAIL

Electronics lvl 2
Target - 70
Roll - 25
Result - SUCCESS

Reverse Engineer DEST Infiltration Suit
Target - 50
Roll - 62
Result - FAIL

Interrogate POWs
Target - 65
Roll - 92
Result - FAIL

Decode recovered data drive*
Target - 35
Roll - 17
Result - SUCCESS

Hunt for possible additional DEST teams
Target - 35
Roll - 20
Result - SUCCESS

Training
-1st Armored
Target - 80
Roll - 79
Result - SUCCESS

AeroTraining Force
Target - 55
Roll - 4
Result - SUCCESS

You decide to let your little man take advantage of a relatively harmless learning experience in regards to all the proposals for sponsorship. So you have him meet you in your office, then have him sit behind your desk in your chair.

It will be his someday, after all.

His eyes are wide as saucers, of course, you’d never let any of the kids sit in Mom’s chair… the day he stopped calling you ‘mommy’ is still a tad bittersweet as evidence that he’s starting to grow up.

At least your other kids still call you mommy.

You had already separated out the truly inappropriate proposals from the rest, and had vetted the remainder with Janet to make sure there was nothing dodgy about any of them.

“These are all the companies that want to sponsor you.” you tell your Jeremy. “Or at least the ones which have passed initial vetting. You are getting old enough to start making some of your own decisions.”

You smile proudly at that, and resist the urge to chuckle at the shell shocked expression on his face.

“Not on anything important, but someday your decisions will matter. Not just what you decide, but how you decide.” your face becomes perfectly serious. “So you have a decision to make, and I want you to consider it carefully.”

He nods, listening. He’s such a good boy.

“You need to decide what to do about sponsorships for your racer.” You step back, gesturing towards the stack of folders.

He gulps, then visibly steels himself to start reading through the folders while you look on, keeping a carefully neutral expression on your face while inside you are fit to burst with just how proud it makes you feel to see your beloved little boy looking so serious.

He takes his time, clearly thinking about each one, then looks up to you as he closes the last folder.

“Mom? Do I have to pick one of these?” he asks, tilting his head in query.

“No, are none of them to your taste?” you ask, arcing one eyebrow in question.

“It’s not that, mom. It’s just… these are all companies, big companies, and a lot of them are offering some great things for the sponsorship but… I’m the crown prince, doesn’t that mean I need to represent all of them, even those that aren’t sponsoring me?” he asks seriously.

It takes an enormous act of willpower to not swoop in and hug him, you restrict yourself to a nod. “It could be argued that they are sponsoring Jeremy Griffith, the racer, and not Crown Prince Jeremy Griffith.” you say, presenting the counterpoint.

“Yes, but, I’m the same person.” he says with a frown, then shakes his head. “I mean, I can be different people with family, but everybody else is going to see the Crown Prince and think that my wearing a logo is endorsing the product as Prince.”

He takes a deep breath while you continue to fight the urge to gleefully scoop him up for how mature he’s being.

“So how about this. I don’t want any of these…” he gestures towards the stack of folders. “But I heard that General Potter is wanting to increase recruitment. Maybe we could ask him to sponsor the racer, that way it’s the Royal Family supporting the military rather than any corporation?”

Your smile escapes your control and you come around the desk, opening up a drawer and setting a fresh folder with a blank sheet of paper in it in front of him.

“Why don’t you write that request up.” you prompt.

Bless him, but while he looks like any boy given dreaded paperwork (Blehhhh), he takes your pen and starts writing, asking you a few questions here and there about how to word things.

He suddenly looked up at you. “Mom, if I do this, Thanh and Sarah won’t be able to help decorate my racer, right?” he says, a bit out of the blue.

“No, dear. They probably wouldn’t.” you reply.

“Then I’ll make it a condition that they get to decorate the engine cover.” he says decisively.

SUCH a good big brother!

You wish that was all that was going on, but alas that isn’t the case.

There have been a number of injuries in training for the complex entry team that is training up, resulting in serious disruptions to the training schedule. You are quite familiar with the Demon Murphy, and all of them looked to you like just plain bad luck. The training is grueling and somewhat dangerous, so you are not at all surprised or truly upset at it all.

What does upset you is the news from the crews working on building out harbors on Castor. A wildcat strike by one of the unions in Griffsport somehow spilled over and delayed critical shipments to the work sites on Castor by so long that the schedule got seriously disrupted. Utter disaster was only prevented by Bridget laboring like Hercules to reset the schedule and get at least some work done.

That same strike also blocked a number of vital shipments to the Titanium resource area, and again Bridget did some excellent work in getting things back on track. At least there the delays were somewhat less consequential, and as a result you are expecting that project at least to complete in the first quarter of next year.

In other news of failure, you get word that an electrical fire in the building housing the Power Generation labs destroyed the experiments. The building maintenance contractor has been fined and replaced after it was discovered that their crews were violating safety guidelines for storing volatile cleaning supplies, resulting in them igniting in one of the electrical closets and totalling the floor that the lab was on. Structural damage, thankfully, was minimal enough as to not require rebuilding, but it is a vexing issue.

What is worse is that the same fire nearly destroyed the priceless samples of the DEST Infiltration Suits that were being reverse-engineered one floor up. As it was, the fire suppression system did its job and protected the recovered suits, but the damage had been done, causing the project to be significantly delayed and massively behind schedule.

And finally the captured DEST commando came within seconds of managing to get loose and kill himself after a momentary lapse of security. If he’d managed to grab something more lethal than a plastic spoon he’d probably have managed to do the deed and you’d be out one interrogation subject.

Thankfully, that was the entirety of the litany of woe this year.

It took until almost literally the last second, but the Planetary Resource Survey was completed five minutes before midnight on the last day of the year. With all of the scrambling and disruptions to Interior’s schedules this year, it’s a miracle that it got done at all.

And the results make you boggle. In the utterly frozen wasteland at the core of Phoenix, the northern continent, in a region of arctic desert so dry and desolate that it is estimated that it hasn’t seen so much as a drip of dew in over ten thousand years… there’s a gigantic deposit of germanium ore.

It will be absolute hell to exploit it, requiring mega-engineering at a level you aren’t even close to achieving. If it was anything less than Germanium, it would be pointless, the sheer expense of maintaining access, mining, refining, and transporting the ore will render it a massive blotch of pure red ink on any balance sheet. But it’s Germanium. You need it for Jumpships and Warships even if there is absolutely no economical way to extract it.

This is something for the future. It’s nice to know it is there, but… right now it’s a white elephant that would utterly bankrupt you.

The report from the continent survey of Castor and Pollux is a serious bright spot in the reports. The teams have discovered masses of strategic minerals all over the twin continents.

Moreover, they have extensive reports on the wildlife. After Capricorn and the Dire Penguins you braced for impact. But the report is remarkably tame. Nothing all that unusual. The apex predator was a flightless bird that was described as a toothed murderbird, you had to look the reference up, but they are only about the size of a large wolf and while they are pack hunters, they do not appear to be any more capable than a similarly sized pack of wolves.

The largest prey creature is very similar to the various ungulants that are familiar to most humans. The two teams report that some of them are quite tasty, tasting very much like beef, albeit a bit more stringy because they aren’t domesticated. There are also deer analogues in the forested areas, which apparently taste like venison, but a little more gamey.

The one bright spot from the University Labs this year is that while the Power Generation lab building was badly damaged, the Micro-Electronics Lab was unaffected and was able to complete their work on schedule. There are a number of prospective new systems on the horizon now thanks to their work.

You get word from the Intel people about a very frustrating breakthrough on the datadisk… it was the mission briefing for the DEST team. And there were two of them, with one assigned to make their way to Griffsport and gather intelligence. There were no images, no names beyond code designations.

This causes a brief panic.

Then there is a serious kerfuffle near the Parliament building as Dominique’s grifftiger companion ‘Minerva’ appeared to suddenly assault a number of people, swiping them into the closest walls with a single blow of one clawed paw, growling furiously and looking murderous.

People who turned out to have suicide teeth.

Several of them even managed to use them.

She’d smelled the poison on their breath, as well as the scent of the weapons they were concealing.

So now you had more prisoners, and had swept both DEST teams from the board.

Minerva was looking very smug, and Sekhmet was pouting that she hadn’t gotten to the terrorists first.

Tigers. Almost as bad as men.

Almost.

You still loved them.

You'd actually received your newly issued vibro-bayonet, replacing the standard steel bayonet you'd had since the beginning. It's a bit annoying to have to replace every one of your uniforms bayonet sheaths with new models to fit the bulkier blade, but after much grumbling you do so.

The training reports from 1st Armored are looking good, with the artillery boys starting to actually manage consistent rates of fire and accuracy coming up to almost acceptable levels. The AeroTraining Wing is also reporting progress, which you are glad to see.

 

[LordSunhawk]

Turn 18 - Fluff

After the events of last year, especially the massive strike down at the docks that seriously messed up every schedule that relied on mass transportation, you decide to direct the Ministry of the Interior to dig into what was going on.

It’s a mixed bag and fairly complicated.

Before Huế mới was established and the new harbor at Vịnh Cam Ranh built, over ninety percent of all sea-going transport was handled by one massive shipping firm. They did excellent work, were able to keep profitable, had solid labor relations. None of the corporate directors or leaders were involved in the Gem conspiracy at all.

With the massive increase in shipping, that company saw a massive increase in profits and had, in fact, been one of the major leaders of the economic boom that followed the expansion onto Capricorn.

However this came at a price. New companies started up in the same sector, and because they didn’t have massive amounts of legacy infrastructure they were able to take better advantage of the new automation technologies. Many of these firms had payrolls less than a quarter as large as the old firm, but were rapidly able to come very close to the same level of cargo handling capacity due to the new technology.

Meanwhile, the older firm simply couldn’t take down its own infrastructure in order to modernize it, and they were locked into long term labor contracts with their union. While the news competitors also dealt with the same unions, they had been able to negotiate more favorable terms from the onset.

This turned into a devil’s brew, as the sheer volume of demand made it unfeasible for the company to automate properly because they wouldn’t be able to meet customer demands for months at a stretch, while the union refused to accept the potential downsizing that such automation would require.

So profitability for the massive company started to tank, until it was barely breaking even and, in the last several years, had started to see long-term projections of growing losses unless something was done.

Meanwhile the smaller firms would send their customers off to the big one every time they wanted to upgrade their infrastructure, and because of the far more advantageous contracts they were able to manage their workforce more aggressively. So once the newly automated systems came online, they were able to win back their customers through aggressively discounted pricing.

So the executives at the larger company decided to bite the bullet, accept a few years of serious losses, and push through serious automation work. They did so, while negotiating with the union for an improved contract.

The new automation had just come online, and the union was still refusing to renegotiate and was insisting that staffing remain at the same levels and, crucially, that all of the workers remain in the exact same jobs without activating any of the automation.

Corporate refused, and instead hired independent contractors to run the newly automated docks and cargo handling facilities and froze out the union workers, on the grounds that their union had insisted that they wouldn’t work with the automated systems.

There’s a note from Bridget that this is actually technically illegal strikebreaking under the relevant labor laws, however it is a section of the law that hadn’t ever been actually tested in court.

And it was effective, the union gave in on the automation provision, which should have at least cooled things down. But evidently corporate was now feeling its oats and insisted also on restructuring the contracts to bring them in line with those their smaller competitors enjoyed, stripping away most of the bargaining power of the dockworkers.

Who promptly went on strike, even before the union had officially responded, and the official union response was to triple down on demanding increased pay and job security.

Corporate and the Union were now not even talking to each other, both were ignoring their obligation under labor laws to place their dispute in front of a neutral arbiter prior to any sort of labor actions, and both sides' positions had hardened into Battlemech-grade armor.

The Union was demanding the complete dissolution of the board, the removal of all the executives, and for the company to become 100% employee owned, with incredibly generous pay and benefits while stripping all pensions and clawing back all pay from the executives for ‘malfeasance’.

Corporate was demanding that the Union be disestablished, all union workers be terminated and blacklisted from working in the field for ‘sabotage and wrecking’, that the Union leaderships company-paid for pensions and benefits be stripped from them and used to finance the automation efforts, and that all pensions, benefits, and vacation time for the terminated union members be forfeited.

This is getting bad. Both sides are refusing to budge, and despite having such serious cash flow and profitability problems due to automation and labor differentials with the smaller firms, this company still accounts for over half of all shipping assets on the planet, and 2/3rds of all very-high volume shipping capacity.

You are going to have to act.

[] Side with Corporate. They are doing what is in the best long-term interest of the company, and having the planet's biggest shipping company go bankrupt would be even more disruptive than this strike has already been.

[] Side with the Unions. If the leadership of the company had been more proactive in the past this wouldn’t have been as big of an issue now, moreover it would have been more appropriate to bring the in-equitable disparities between contracts afforded to the competitors and themselves to court. They failed to do so, and can’t now punish the workers for their own incompetence.

[] Side with neither. Let them work it out, this will cause severe disruptions in the economy until it is taken care of either way, but surely both sides will eventually see reason and be able to again work together.

[] Write-in.

In happier news, Jeremy is proving to be an extremely skilled hovercraft racer in the lowest division of the Junior League, with several top five and a podium finish (he came in second). For a kid his age, competing against kids a year or two older than himself with more experience, this is positively stratospheric.

The twins are still gleefully crashing into each other in the SuperSpec division of the Pee-Wee league and seem to be racing more for fun than serious competition. You are proud of them, though, as they take the time in between races to help other racers with their equipment and are generally cheerful ambassadors of the sport.

Thanh… is a complete prodigy on the track. She’s already posting times well below those Jeremy posted at a similar age and experience, and it is already becoming very common to see her bright pink glitter-racer charging across the finish line well ahead of anybody else.

Unlike the twins, she is extremely competitive, and is constantly tinkering with her racer between heats. You even catch her down in the palace motorpool after school (and after she’s done her homework, she insists… you check and she did indeed finish it to an acceptable standard) working on it some more.

You are rather proud, however, of how she insists that all of her winnings be given to the prize fund for the SuperSpec division.

 

[LordSunhawk]

Turn 18 - Advisors

The entire affair with Griffin’s Run Shipping is starting to give you a serious headache. It had already looked convoluted and intricate enough from the initial barebones briefing, as you read more details it just becomes worse.

From the documents reviewed by your investigators, corporate was planning on converting their two smallest docks into full size automated facilities sized so as to require the same total number of workers, rather than justifying any downsizing. In addition it appears that the long-term plan was for aggressive growth in capacity, again rather than downsizing, in an attempt to drive down costs enough via sheer volume that they’d be able to return to profitability. There are even long-term plans to convert most of the docks into Dropship handling facilities for cargo dropships which land in the water and taxi to the dock.

Moreover, according to the message logs, a notification and request for a meeting to discuss these plans had in fact been sent to the senior union rep… who never responded and who insists that he never received it, in between strident demands that the executives be punished for trying to pull a fast one.

You initially decide to send enforcement teams from Justice to… escort… the principles to a neutral arbitration meeting as they should have done in the first place once the dispute began.

Said meetings prove to be utterly useless, or even worse than useless. The arbitrator, a highly experienced veteran of previous labor disputes is not able to even get a word in edgewise as the two sides simply yell at each other without seeming to be giving a single solitary good goddamn about what the other is saying in response.

So you decide to get involved more directly. You bring your favorite office chair (well, your kids favorite office chair, when you let them play with it in your study) which is so large that it quite effectively hides you from view when you turn it to face away from the table.

Underneath the massive conference table lurks Bastet, assigned the duty simply because Sekhmet is far too large.

So when the executives and the union reps enter, and immediately pause as they notice the absence of the usual arbitrator, you keep silent. Perhaps something will come out if they think they’re alone that your investigators hadn’t caught on to.

And boy does it ever… both sides immediately start ripping into each other, as expected… but not about anything to do with the company or the labor dispute. Instead, both sides seem to be in extremely high dudgeon about what sounds to you to be a family dispute.

As far as you can figure out, it looks like the CEO’s daughter is actually married to the son of the head Union rep. Moreover, as far as you can tell most of the combatants are actually related to each other. And something happened at a family get together that has set all of them at each other's throats.

You haven’t the foggiest idea what it was… and you are seeing red.

You lightly tap your foot on the floor, signalling Bastet, who promptly growls.

A spine-tingling, stomach-churning, throat-curdling growl that cuts through the argument like a hot knife through butter.

You wait a beat, before Bastet chuffs, still sounding incredibly menacing, before you slowly turn around and simply glare at everybody.

“You were warned to settle this matter before I got involved.” you say flatly, eyes flashing.

“I am now involved.”

Bastet practically flows out from underneath the table and sits up next to you, before pointedly beginning to lick her paws, each claw extending and being inspected minutely.

You slap the arm of the chair, but keep your voice level and icy.

“And now to find out that it appears this entire useless waste of time has been caused because you immature children got into a spat and are now all pouting in your corners waiting for Mommy to tell you to behave.”

You lean back in your chair, bringing your fingers together into a steeple in front of your face, glaring angrily.

“Behave. And tell me what in God’s name is serious enough to cause you imbeciles to nearly bring down the entire economy because you are in a snit.”

They at least have the good grace to look rather sheepish at this.

“Well, I’m waiting.” you snap, tapping your toe on the floor, still glaring through your fingers at them while Bastet growls again in counterpoint.

It turns out that it was an utterly ridiculous dispute over, of all things, who ate all the brownies at the last family picnic that somehow metastasized into them not talking to each other, deleting emails from each other, and a light bulb goes off in your head as you realize that the business email about the dock upgrades had been mistaken for a personal email and probably deletes.

In the end it takes you several hours of yelling, in terms that have Sergeant-Major Ngo nodding along with a bit of pride in her expression as you make full use of the rather colorful vocabulary you’d learned from her and the other NCOs.

By the time you are done, you have them sheepishly apologizing and promising to behave themselves, so you count that as a win. On your way out the door, you pass one final judgement.

“And no brownies for any of you until you finish fixing this mess!”

On your way to the armored hovercraft you had taken to the offices, the good sergeant-major makes a comment that utterly freezes your blood.

“You sounded just like bà, you know.” she says.

“I’m not old enough to be bà!” you promptly protest.

She has the audacity to laugh at you for this.

The next day you and Willis take the kids to the next of Jeremy’s Junior League races. The racing is quite close, and Jeremy takes home the win. But that isn’t the highlight of the afternoon.

No, that honor goes to Thanh and Sarah, who had gone with a few of their little friends ‘exploring’ a wooded copse near the track that lent the location a beautiful ambience. When they don’t return in time for the start of Jeremy’s heat you contact their security detail, who inform you that the girls had fallen into a large pool of mud and were being taken to be cleaned up once they were retrieved.

The transmission abruptly ends, then returns with an urgent request for backup.

Your sphincters clench, only to relax when the requests specified a ‘technical retrieval team’ as backup, and the trooper on the security detail relays to you that Thanh had found ‘something metallic’ in the mud pit that they’d not been able to identify.

On your way home from the race you get a call from the retrieval team… the metallic object was a rifle. Specifically a Mauser 960 Assault System. Despite being caked with mud from having been buried for over 200 years, it appears to be in nearly perfect condition.

You immediately order it to be sent over to the university research labs for examination.

A few days later your favorite time of year comes about. Not Christmas, not Easter, not even First Landing, but… BUDGET TIME!

Please, contain your enthusiasm with appropriate decorum.

General Potter speaks first, his voice rumbling like crashing rocks from somewhere in the abyss. “Your Majesty, I have several recommendations that will be highly useful for the future growth and capability of the Armed Forces. First of all, there should be a high priority on completing the Battlemech Training Battalion. We’ll only ever be able to man as many units as we have in the training battalion in a single budget cycle, so filling it out will have long term benefits. Secondly, we need to complete the Mechwarrior Training Center in order to make best use of the training battalion.”

“Finally, we should consider completing other Training Center’s so that we can boost the capability of our entire force. Once we have done so, we’ll be able to further expand the Aerie, potentially making it a proper degree-granting institution in addition to Griffin’s Roost University.”

Bridget is lookin as perky and bouncy as ever, as evidently the reverses and challenges of the last year haven’t dented her confidence one bit.

“Your Majesty! We’ve got some important things that we could do to improve the economy and the overall well being of the planet so I think we should do them since we’ll be finishing up the harbors and getting access to all that titanium so our economy can take the expense so I recommend that we improve our environmental laws which I know the grifftigers would really appreciate and then we also should think about making additional factories for both the Ambush and for our ASFs so as to not be as vulnerable to single knockout attacks also we might want to expand our current ASF factories too.”

She manages all of that without breathing a single time.

You deliberately ask her to repeat herself… slower. She does so, having to take considerable effort in the process, but at least you were able to understand all of that this time.

Dr Young barely cracks a smile at that. She’s now the oldest member of your advisory team, after all. “Your Majesty, there are two things that the Foreign and Cultural Affairs Ministry can do for you that we recommend. First is that we are prepared to start the anti-drug campaign that has been discussed in the past, and second it might be a good idea to make a personal appeal from the Throne to calm any issues between labor and management.”

Professor Chapman nods in agreement “There are several priorities on our end, first extending governmental facilities and control over the new ports, assuming that they are completed this year, and I would strongly recommend holding several town halls to address labor issues with the public before we make any further decisions in that regard.”

Doctor Palmer is smiling almost as much as Bridget. “Your Majesty, can we hire your daughters to prospect for LosTech in the ruins? Because that 960 is in perfect condition and can be very easily stripped down and reverse engineered! Sure they’re a bit heavy, but they are the peak of Star League small arms!”

She takes a deep breath. “But all of this will have to wait for the labs to be cleared of current projects, which hopefully should be this year.” She grimaces a bit at that admission.

Harry and Janet look at each other, then at you, and Harry starts. “Your Majesty, we have more prisoners now to interrogate, so I strongly recommend we focus all of our efforts on the intel side into that project.”

Janet nods. “On this end, we’ve got… options. First, with apologies to Dr Palmer, we could shut the labs down for the year while my investigative teams go over everything with a fine-toothed comb to search for any shenanigans, or we could initiate meetings with stakeholders about revisions and updates to labor laws.” she shrugs. “Your choice, girlfriend.”

 

[LordSunhawk]

Turn 18 - Results

Spoiler: Event and Ratings Rolls

Economic Roll - N/A
Health Roll - 0 degrees of success
Stability Change roll - 0 degrees of success

Stability Rolls

-Political - 0
-Research - 0
-Economic - 0

Meta Event Roll - 2 rolls, 1 97 resulted in loss of bonus GDP growth, 1 2 resulted in discovery of Mauser 960
Dynasty Luck Roll - 23 - Daughters managed to channel Rhiannon Bruce

Crown Influence Roll - 8 - FAIL
Lords Influence Roll - 10 - no roll
Commons Influence Roll - 2 - FAIL

Spoiler: Action Results

Train complex entrance team*
Cost - 5
Target - 50
Roll - 10
Result - SUCCESS

Build Fortifications lvl 2*
Cost - 2000
Target - 75
Roll - 98
Result - FAIL

Advanced Tactical Training Annex - Mechwarrior Training Center
Cost - 5000
Target - 75
Roll - 28
Result - SUCCESS

Advanced Tactical Training Annex - Vehicle Training Center
Cost - 5000
Target - 75
Roll - 49
Result - SUCCESS

Recruit 1 Lance Ambush Mech for training unit
Cost - 1124
Target - 60
Roll - 23
Result - SUCCESS

Establish Harbor on Castor*
Cost - 1000
Target - 55
Roll - 1
Result - CRITICAL SUCCESS

Establish Harbor on Pollux*
Cost - 1000
Target - 50
Roll - 89
Result - FAIL

Build the Titanium mines and port w/Penguin Fighting Grip*
Cost - 1000
Target - automatic success

Planetary Resource Survey
Cost - 100
Target - 45
Roll - 50
Result - BARE FAILURE (auto success next turn)

Strengthen Environmental Regulations Lvl 2
Cost - 5000
Target - 75
Roll - 66
Result - SUCCESS

Power Generation lvl 2*
Cost - 2000
Target - 85
Roll - 79
Result - SUCCESS

Orbital Infrastructure lvl 2*
Cost - 8000
Target - 70
Roll - 8
Result - SUCCESS

Reverse Engineer DEST Infiltration Suit*
Cost - 5000
Target - 50
Roll - 52
Result - BARE FAILURE (auto success next turn)

Improved Communications Lvl 2
Cost - 2000
Target - 75
Roll - 79
Result - BARE FAILURE (auto success next turn)

Interrogate POWs*
Cost - 50
Target - 65
Roll - 35
Result - SUCCESS

Training
RRF
Target - 80
Roll - 100
Result - CRITICAL FAILURE

1st Armored
Target - 80
Roll - 23
Result - SUCCESS

AeroTraining Wing
Target - 55
Roll - 41
Result - SUCCESS

1st Aerie Cadre
Target - 55
Roll - 57
Result - BARE FAILURE (auto success next turn)

You are relieved when you get the full report from the guard detachment about the mudhole where your daughters found the SLDF rifle. The mudpit was fairly small, very shallow, and generally empty apart from the rifle itself. It appears to have been caused by a very small seap from an underground water source.

Well, at least your daughters won’t have any trauma about playing near a long decomposed body. You get a chance to handle the rifle itself and you quite honestly cannot think of what the SLDF was possibly thinking, or perhaps smoking, to have issued it. It’s far too heavy, for one thing.

It is in the hands of the scientists now, who tell you that while it would be insanely difficult and expensive to fully reverse-engineer it, it would allow your research program to skip past multiple steps in the development of laser-based infantry small arms.

In more… motherly news. Jeremy seems to be having his first crush. As a mother you find it cute, as Queen you find it worrying. The girl in question is a commoner, the daughter of a construction manager who is one of Jeremy’s competitors in the Junior League, regularly racing neck in neck with Jeremy. You are quite certain that your little man doesn’t realize he’s crushing on the girl, and from what you can tell the girl seems equally oblivious. Which speaks rather well of her, in some ways.

They are extremely cute together, but also extremely competitive. Jeremy doesn’t give her a millimeter on the racetrack, but after races he’s always willing to help her with her racer, and somehow he winds up talking about her every time the topic of conversation turns to racing.

It’s cute. It’s probably innocent.

You still worry though.

[] Just watch for now, it’s a juvenile crush and doesn’t seem to be anything too serious yet considering their ages.
[] Have Janet discretely investigate the situation to make sure the girl isn’t a threat to your eldest.

You also think it may be time for a dreaded Talk with Jeremy…

[] Do it yourself
[] Use the superpower of leadership and delegate to Willis. It’s his fault anyways.

You get word that the complex entry team is fully trained in the specialized role that they’ll fulfil, however things are not nearly ready for them on Castor. Before they can be dispatched two things will need to happen, first infrastructure will need to be built out on the continent to support the expedition and second the forward camp will have to be established. But it’s nice to know that they’ll be ready to go when the time comes.

The two expansions to the Aerie also have been completed, with sophisticated simulators for both vehicle crews and battlemechs now in use to enhance training. To make maximum use of the vehicle training facilities you would need to assign some tanks to the 1st Aerie Cadre however.

The new Ambush mechs have been delivered to the Cadre, and the new pilots are shaking down with them. There was some schedule slippage resulting in training plans not quite being completed by the end of the year, but it is anticipated that things are back on track and the Cadre should complete initial training goals early next year.

The serious disruptions in shipping due to the chaos in the shipping industry has completely derailed the plans to upgrade fortifications globally to the new standard. The contractors are promising that they will keep on working on this project and hope to have it finished next year.

The first shipments of refined titanium from the new mining area in Gambier Bay have arrived, only slightly nibbled on by particularly bold dire penguins attacking the freighters despite being sprayed down. Industry is gobbling the new resource up and overall manufacturing activity is soaring as a consequence of the drop in costs.

The environmental lobby is extremely pleased with the new Habitat Protection Laws that have been passed this year. Some industry groups, especially in the luxury timber market, are far less pleased. One consequence of the new laws has also been a serious increase in prices for palm oil, as the new laws sharply limit the practice of replacing native forests with massive palm tree groves.

The shipping disruptions prevent any progress from being made on the establishment of ports on Pollux, but Castor is a totally different story. Things have progressed so well there that in addition to completing the port facilities the construction crews built out infrastructure for government business at the same time, allowing for a seamless institution of political control over the new region.

The planetary resource survey is running a bit slow, one of the survey satellites suffered a communications fault and had to be replaced which slowed data collection enough that results will only be available in Q1 of next year.

In their new facilities the Power Generation Team reports a breakthrough in their research, further improving power conditioning systems and improving the reliability and efficiency of long-distance transmission of power from generating stations to end users.

The Orbital Infrastructure team has likewise reported excellent progress, a new tracking and data relay satellite network is operational with ground stations spread around the equator. The team informs you that before any further improvements can be made the space station would need to be upgraded significantly.

Both the Improved Communications and DEST Infiltration suit teams report good progress and that they both expect results by Q2 of next year at the very latest.

The interrogation of the prisoners is coming along, none of them have managed to suicide or harm any of the guards or interrogators, but even under narco-interrogation none of them have spilled anything but taunts about how their trainers were more effective interrogators and that we’d inevitably fall to the might of the Dragon.

The AeroTraining Wing reports excellent progress, you’d gotten to see some demonstration flights and they are certainly looking capable. 1st Armored Division is also reporting that their artillery unit has reached full capability and has demonstrated superb competence at time on target barrages, shoot and scoot, and everything else that has been asked of them.

The Rapid Reaction Force… is in the hospital.

Almost all of it.

Not the Avenger AAA company, I hasten to add. They’re in administrative confinement while the courts-martial take place.

But the rest of the Force is in the hospital.

It was the very first training exercise.

An incredibly simple training exercise.

‘Unit will form up in parade formation and cross the drill grounds at low speed’

That simple… that easy.

Until 10 seconds into the evolution the entire Avenger AAA companies turrets started slewing around and spitting live shells into the rest of the formation under automatic control.

The crews were able to shut down the system before anybody was killed, but every single other hovercraft in the RRF had crashed.

The initial review had been completed, although the formal courts-martial were still going to have to sit to formalize the findings it appeared quite definitive.

It was a cluster fuck of the highest magnitude, a cavalcade of seemingly unrelated glitches and issues which came together in a black swan moment of incredible coincidence.

And not a single person involved had violated a single posted procedure.

To start with. The brand-new Captain in command of the platoon was so junior that his uniform still squeaks if he turns around too quickly. He had been the honor graduate from the Aerie and had been immediately promoted to company command due to the lack of qualified officers. His ‘senior’ NCO was equally junior and inexperienced and had never been assigned to a brand new unit type.

And said Captain was dyslexic, and relied on iron discipline and strict attention to procedure to function as well as he did.

Unfortunately, procedure dictated that the manuals and checklists to use in a combat vehicle were to be the hardcopy ones provided to the unit rather than the digital versions that could be accessed via the unit intranet. Use of private data communication devices was against procedure and so this Captain avoided using them.

But the Government Printing Office only printed the base manuals, not the various ‘special case’ addenda and appendices that were also produced. If a unit required printed versions of the addenda and appendices they could request them and they would be printed on demand. But there was no specific point in any published procedure to do so.

An experienced CO or NCO would have done so reflexively, or would use the digital ones.

The base manual was explicitly for combat operations, not training, so it included everything needed for proper operation of the equipment in live combat situations.

Strike One.

The Avenger AAA vehicle used the exact same Weapon Selection & Operation panel as every other armored fighting vehicle in service, with minor variations to account for the mission. Variations which were limited to different labels on identical switchology.

Relevant to this incident was something that operational crews had complained about a few times, but which had not changed for multiple good reasons.

There were three primary function switches that each had two positions. First was ‘Automatic Tracking’ and ‘Manual Tracking’. If the switch was in the ‘up’ position the combat computer was in Automatic Tracking Mode, down and the manual overrides became active.

Second, on the Avenger, was ‘Ground Target’ and ‘Air Target’. If the switch was in the ‘up’ position the combat computer was configured for air engagements, down and it was set for ground engagements.

Third, there were ‘Automatic’ and ‘Manual’ fire modes. Again, up was ‘Automatic’ while down was ‘Manual’. In Automatic mode the fire control system would automatically fire the weapons when ready against selected targets. Manual the gunner would have to manually pull the trigger.

Then there was the IFF Mode panel. This could be set in various modes but according to the manual it should be set to ‘Mode V’ with ‘Auto-Engage on Reject’.

The manual was for combat operations, not training.

For training, IFF was supposed to be set to Mode III with Auto-Engage Off. But this was only in the training addendum to the basic manual.

So, following the strict procedures laid out in the manual, the company was configured for ‘Automatic Tracking’, ‘Air Targets’, ‘Automatic’ fire mode, and Mode V IFF with Auto-Engage on Reject.

Strike Two.

As mentioned, this exact panel is found in every single ground vehicle in service and is extremely ubiquitous. There are variations for special purpose systems, and the Avenger is one of those systems. Specifically to the targets panel, on most vehicles it could be set to ‘Secondary’ and ‘Primary’, with secondary usually being defined as anti-infantry or light vehicle work and Primary with more ‘serious’ targets. In every other vehicle, anti-air use is a sub-option to the ‘secondary’ mode. In the Avenger anti-air is the primary mode.

The same manufacturing equipment was used to produce every single one of these panels, with the labels being slapped on afterwards at final assembly.

And nobody had informed the subcontractor responsible for these panels of the actual weapon configuration. This was traced to a simple issue, no one office had the responsibility to make that notification and every single office thought the other ones had done so. It had been done right in the prototypes, but those had been hand-wired.

These weren’t.

So setting the switch position to ‘up’, which should have been ‘air targets’, instead became ‘ground targets’ due to the wiring changes.

Strike Three. The RRF was out.

The fire control systems of the Avengers AAA were, as far as the crews could reasonably have known, set correctly to ‘Automatic Tracking’, ‘Air Targets’, ‘Automatic’ fire mode, and Mode V IFF with Auto-Engage on Reject.

They were actually set to ‘Automatic Tracking’, ‘Ground Targets’, ‘Automatic’ fire mode, and Mode V IFF with Auto-Engage on Reject.

And every other vehicle on the field was squawking Mode III IFF. Thus the IFF system would fail to authenticate and thus Reject… and triggered auto-engagement.

You send a blistering memo to General Potter stressing the need to correct the underlying failures that led to this colossal foul-up, and to also make sure that the poor kid who’d followed every procedure properly didn’t get railroaded for the results of doing what he was supposed to do.

Then you spend a few hours with Sekhmet decompressing. Cuddling a giant tiger is very cathartic.

 

[LordSunhawk]

Turn 19 - Fluff

The year starts out with… a bang.

You hate yourself for the mental pun.

But bright and early on January 1st you are awakened with news of a serious VTOL accident on Capricorn with several CH-1’s crashing into the jungle following severe system failures. Luckily it had been a repositioning flight rather than an operational flight so no infantry were on board but still you have lost 6 pilots.

Within a day an order is given grounding all CH-1s, and by the end of the week it becomes glaringly obvious that the elderly helicopters are in no shape to continue operations. The production line for them had last produced anything in your grandfather’s time, and the ones you’d had in service had been resurrected from boneyards following the initial Drac attack.

Fortunately there already was a replacement design ready to go and it only takes a few strokes of your pen to authorize the replacement of the ancient CH-1s with brand new CH-2s. The new birds are a significant upgrade to the older model, not only more reliable but also tougher and with better close-in armament to help clear LZs.

There is a proposal on the table to fold the Castor/Pollux Scout Team into the Mine Defense Force. It would somewhat simplify command and control, as the scout team no longer really has a purpose.

[] Yes
[] No
[] Write-In

There has also been several proposals submitted to replace the Type 1 APC. While a decent battle taxi, the Type 1 is functionally unarmed and serves purely as a means of getting infantry to the battlefield, not being able to support them once they arrive.

Due to the payouts from the Luxury Airship Service you’ll be able to afford to purchase a significant amount of mechanized infantry mounted in any of these designs. General Potter recommends assigning one regiment to 1st Armored and one to 1st Aerie Cadre to provide a training force both for vehicles and eventually to infantry.

[]	Name	Cost	HP	Attack Defense	Special	Total Cost 2 Regiments
[]	Weasel IFV	184	24	6/5	APC 1	12,690
[]	Pyre IFV	344	24	6/6	APC 1	21,330
[]	It Has A Name	236	20	5/5	APC 1	15,498
[]	Combat Transport M3	280	24	7/6	APC 1	17,874
[]	BMP-4	384	20	5/5	APC 1	23,490

You have a total of 15,000 available immediately from Airship Service revenue for this purchase. Any amount over will be deducted from the military budget, any amount under will be added to the general fund.

QM NOTE - All of the designs have a record sheet available in the Design Bureau section of the Discord. Weasel and Combat Transport M3 each received a +1 base offense rating and +4 base health due to design luck rolls. Design will be designated the Weasel IFV regardless of who wins.

Assign forces as requested by General Potter?

[] Yes
[] No
-[] Write-In

You fully intend to put your foot down and make your husband give Jeremy The Talk™ but.. The day you intend to do just that you encounter a somewhat wild-eyed and still furiously blushing young man looking shell-shocked, and a husband who has THAT look.

Damn fighter pilot.

At the next HRL Junior League meet you can tell that Alita Stearns (the crush in question) has evidently been given the Talk as well by her parental unit, as Jeremy and Alita are adoringly skittish around each other. Puppy love, it’s so cute!

You do get to meet Alita’s mother, who appears to be a very down-to-earth woman who it turns out actually runs her own small construction firm specializing in commercial buildings.

And, of course, the two of you start sharing baby pictures, which prompts loud cries of dismay from both teenagers, which in turn simply inspires you both to smile at your respective offspring, deepening their distress.

Bastet seems to find this utterly hilarious, judging by how she immediately begins bestowing extra-slobbery Licks of Approval on both teens, while Sekhmet is chuffing in laughter at the shenanigans.

Happily it seems that whatever their relationship is is quite capable of surviving parental embarrassment and The Talk™. This might not be a simple crush after all, and it appears that Alita might well reciprocate your son’s feelings to some extent.

He’s a good boy, and Willis tells you he was very firm in stressing just how many people would seek to take advantage of Jeremy due to his rank.

[] It might be a good idea to bring Janet in discretely, let’s not take any risks.
[] They’re so cute together, let’s not risk spoiling it.

The twins move up to the Junior League, joining their older brother, albeit in a lower division, and suddenly they seem to be taking racing far more seriously. And it becomes even more obvious that all of their messing around in the Pee Wee League had a purpose… it allowed them to become absolutely and totally familiar with the handling intricacies of hovercraft in nearly every control state. And they put that knowledge to excellent use right off the bat. They’ve entered two races, they came in 1-2 in each of them, with the twins splitting the victories.

Thanh is in contention for the championship this year, and is proving just as much a prodigy as Jeremy ever was, indeed she seems to be even more skilled than your eldest. Jeremy, predictably, seems completely happy with his sisters abilities and is always her loudest supporter at her races. And he keeps on bringing Alita along who also cheers Thanh on. Such good kids.

Sarah, to your everlasting relief, shows absolutely no signs of being interested in actually racing. She seems far happier helping decorate her big sisters racer, or Biggest Brothers racer, than interested in actually racing herself.

At least one of your kids takes after you and isn’t an adrenaline junkie. You pretend that you don’t own your own personal Chasseur that you race about in.

 

[LordSunhawk]

Turn 19 Advisors

You grimace as you look over the papers. A recession, a damn recession. The shipping industry was still badly disrupted and this was having a severe effect on the economy. Sure, the immediate crisis had been dealt with, but you needed to consider acting to reduce future occurrences.

Unfortunately this is going to have a significant effect long term irregardless of whatever steps you take. Multiple bad years in a row and the economic upheaval resulting from the popping of several bubbles is causing the overall economic stability to fray a bit. Nothing too serious, but you will have to be more cautious at times when making decisions. If you manage a number of good years in a row this may well reverse itself, but you can’t be certain of that.

Janet, at least, has some good news for you. Alita appears to be exactly what your initial impression of the girl was, a good kid from a solid if not wealthy family. She’s actually in Jeremy’s school, although not in his class, and regularly competes with him for top honors academically. The mother, as you were already aware, owns a commercial construction firm, her father works for the post office.

Janet had snuck a peak at his employee file and she informs you that he’d turned down a number of promotion opportunities in order to keep his family in the same place so that his wife could continue to run and grow her business. You both agree that this speaks well of the man that he’s willing to stay in a fairly low status job just so his wife can shine.

So you decide to simply let things proceed as they will. If this relationship proves to have legs, then Alita would be a fine daughter-in-law, and if not she has the look of a fine young citizen of Griffin’s Roost.

Win-Win.

Obviously your little man gets his wonderful taste in such things from you. Although you were willing to concede that Willis also had excellent taste. OK, maybe it was a team thing, but you are quite proud of Jeremy.

Ultimately you decide that spending a bit extra on the new IFV in order to maximize offensive and defensive capability was worthwhile. You aren’t the keenest on how the turret looks, but overall the vehicle you select more than meets the requirements.

You finance the purchase and equipping of two mechanized infantry regiments out of the funds from the airship routes, with the excess coming from the reserve funds. Both units have stood up and are beginning training.

The Castor/Pollux Scouting Force has been folded into the Mine Security Force. The simplified logistics will have benefits long term, but for now it simply eases the officer shortages you’ve started experiencing which possibly led to the debacle with the RRF.

Speaking about that, the courts-martial had sat and found that ultimately the fault could be best laid down at the systemic level rather than on any one individual. You signed off on a long list of procedural improvements but ultimately you’ll probably need to organize a systematic review of all procurement and operational processes in order to find and disarm any more such ‘bombs’ waiting to go off. It would be extremely expensive, as it would require significant effort from a fairly large team, plus would require industry buy-in at points in order to change procurement methods.

Factions in Parliament, of course, had to stick their nose into things. A bill has passed with bare majorities in both houses which would impose an additional 5% surtax on ‘luxuries’ and a 10% surtax on ‘sinful services.’ with the money to be used for anti-drug, anti-prostitution and anti-alcohol campaigns, with the ultimate endgame being total bans on all three.

[] Agree - +10 support in Lords and Commons, -20 Stability, -50 Stability Change, Tax Rate changes to 15% with all associated growth penalties. Gives modifier ‘Pending Prohibition’, +5 Health
[] Disagree - -10 support in Lords and Commons, gives modifier ‘Prohibition Rejected’

Some geologists at the university publish a paper warning that it is possible that at some point the long thought extinct volcanic caldera at the center of the sub-continent that Griffsport is located on may reawaken, citing seismic studies showing a growing ‘hot spot’ in the mantle underneath the volcano and reanalysis of geologic data showing that this particular volcano has very long periods of inactivity between eruptions.

This paper is hotly disputed at this point, as there is very little evidence either way, however geological studies are now underway and in a few years may have more information. Estimates are that the soonest an eruption could happen would be in hundreds if not thousands of years pretty much push this to very low priority.

And thus begins your favorite time of year. Not tax time, you hate tax time, but budget wrangling time! The sport of Governments everywhere! Fighting over who gets what money, yay!

This year you make Jeremy sit in on the meetings with you, despite how boring you expect them to be. He needs to start learning.

General Potter is a crafty old officer, though, and takes shameless advantage over you being slightly distracted in order to ‘Pull Something’™. You find yourself braced to attention as the old coot pins new rank pins on your shoulders. You can’t tell what he promoted you to, but Sergeant-Major Ngo is snickering, so you know it’s bad. Jeremy is also stifling giggles, and by the way the old general gives him a high-five you realize that the two of them set you up.

Obviously this is because of your loving husband.

It takes you a bit, but you manage to figure out that the old man has pinned colonel’s insignias on your shoulders, damn him.

Of course, he then just has to get serious before you can adequately express your displeasure by having him given the Tyler treatment.

That sobers you for a moment, Tyler is still alive in retirement, but his health is visibly fading quickly.

“Your Majesty.” comes the rumbling voice. “We have several direct priorities within the military, and several things that will be covered in Ms Doyle’s presentation. Thanks to the purchase of those IFVs we are in solid shape at the moment in terms of ground forces. What we now need is to complete the Annex so we can maximize our training capabilities. In addition, with the results of that recent unpleasantness with the RRF we really should take the time to do a top down review of everything, clear out any deadwood and make sure that policies, procedures, and training are all working together smoothly. I do not recommend any serious expansion of our forces at this time, beyond a further lance of mechs for the Cadre.”

He takes a sip of his water. “Now that the Cadre has a full strength mechanized regiment available, I believe it would be appropriate to make them responsible for general garrison work on Capricorn, with the existing garrison shifted to Castor. 1st Armored would remain in Griffsport and the RRF would be available to shift to cover any of the continents.”

Bridget pipes up cheerfully “We can do two big things first we can expand the space station which will be really expensive but we’ll badly need it if we’re going to continue research and it will give us many more options for space activities we also should build some more factories like one for goshawks and another for the new dropships and maybe get the research crews to work on spheroid dropships so that we can have them to because they make for excellent cargo haulers both for civil and military use and that could become really important because troops and tanks are just really special cargo when you think about it we also could start really exploiting Castor and building cities at resource nodes plus starting to build infrastructure and if the fortification work that the General is working on finishes soon that will extend automatically to the new settlements and that would really help people feel safe which is very important for productivity.”

One… long… sentence. You are certain she never even paused to breath. It’s exhausting.

Luckily you have a cup of Janet’s coffee to help reduce the blood levels in your caffeine system.

Dr Young smiles at that, patting Bridget’s hand, then addresses you. “We stand ready to start advertising for colonists to Castor, your Majesty, beyond that, the anti-drug campaign is available as well.”

Professor Chapman is over on Castor at the moment overseeing final touches on the new government buildings. “We don’t have all that much on this end, Your Majesty, beyond being ready to start building out government structures over on Pollux when the port finally finishes.”

Dr Palmer is her usual ebullient self. “Your Majesty, we still have so many things to research! Spheroid Dropships is a big one, also reverse engineering that suitcase nuke, and don’t get me started on Ferro-Fibrous Armor and Endo-Steel! Oh, and the cannons too!”

Harry Owens just sends you a note from where he is overseeing the interrogations “Intelligence has nothing to recommend at this time.”

Janet, bless her, has plenty of coffee for you and hot chocolate for Jeremy. “Well, I got a few options for you” she says cheerfully. “Biggie is extending law and order to Castor and later Pollux, something we really need to do unless we want crime to blow up into a big problem.”

 

[LordSunhawk]

Turn 19 - Results

Spoiler: Event and Ratings Rolls

Economic Roll - 0 degrees of success
Health Roll - 7 degrees of success
Stability Change roll - 2 degrees of success

Stability Rolls

-Political - add 10 to 1 difficulty (post on Pollux)
-Research - add 5 to 1 (Human Genome Project)
-Economic - -4% GDP

Meta Event Roll - 56 - no event
Dynasty Luck Roll - SECRET

Crown Influence Roll - 8 - FAIL
Lords Influence Roll - 10 - no roll
Commons Influence Roll - 2 - FAIL

Spoiler: Action Results

[X] Disagree - -10 support in Lords and Commons, gives modifier ‘Prohibition Rejected’

Build Fortifications lvl 2*
Cost - 2000
Target - 75
Roll - 14
Result - SUCCESS

Advanced Tactical Training Annex - Infantry Training Center
Cost - 5000
Target - 75
Roll - 10
Result - SUCCESS

Advanced Tactical Training Annex - Dropship Crew Training Center [75]
Cost - 5000
Target - 75
Roll - 51
Result - SUCCESS

Recruit Ambush Light Mech Lance for Aerie Cadre, Gyrfalcon flight for Aeroforce
Cost - 1950 (1124+856)
Target - 60/60
Roll - 56/38
Result - SUCCESS/SUCCESS

Establish Harbor on Pollux*
Cost - 1000
Target - 60
Roll - 71
Result - FAIL

Planetary Resource Survey*
Cost - 100
Target AUTOMATIC

Build Dropship Factory Griffsport
Cost - 10000
Target - 95
Roll - 91
Result - SUCCESS

Advertise for colonists to Castor
Cost - 1000
Target - 60
Roll - 31
Result - SUCCESS (converted to FAIL due to event)

Appeal for calm in light of labor-management disputes
Cost - 10000
Target - 85
Roll - 80
Result - SUCCESS

Hold town hall forums on labor relations
Cost - 10000
Target - 85
Roll - 87
Result - Bare Failure (automatic next turn)

Improve Infrastructure
Cost - 1100
Target - 27
Roll - 22
Result - +1 Infrastructure

Reverse Engineer DEST Infiltration Suit*
Cost - 5000
Target - AUTOMATIC

Improved Communications Lvl 2*
Cost - 2000
Target - AUTOMATIC

Interrogate POWs
Cost - 50
Target - 65
Roll - 64
Result - SUCCESS

Meet with Business Leaders and Union Leaders to discuss labor laws
Cost - 10000
Target - 75
Roll - 14
Result - SUCCESS

Training
1st Armored Division
Target - 80
Roll - 15
Result - SUCCESS

1st Aerie Cadre
Target - 65
Roll - 15
Result - SUCCESS

AeroTraining Wing
Target - 65
Roll - 47
Result - SUCCESS

You still can’t believe that Parliament thought you’d ever go along with that latest bit of idiocy vis-a-vis prohibition and ‘taxing’ anything that a small clique considered ‘immoral’. It’s like none of them ever bothered to pay attention in history class. You make a note to have Professor Chapman in for a meeting about dealing with Parliamentary Stupidity.

In more interesting news, to you at least, Jeremy and Alita are still looking insufferably cute together, speaking as a mother. Although their competitive streaks haven’t faded considering the string of 1-2 finishes in the Junior League races, with the pair regularly trading victories.

You’ve already quietly stepped on a few proposals from various companies to take over sponsorship for Jeremy’s racer, he’s happy with representing the military. You’ve also had a few words with professional teams about just why Bastet had picked up their ‘recruiters’ and dragged them off by their collars. You do NOT appreciate them sending their teenage daughters in skimpy bathing suits to try and lure your boy into signing on.

You had referred that issue to Janet, and a proper investigation was underway. So far it looks like just a few rather over-enthusiastic family ‘pro’ racing teams are involved and there appears to be no real laws broken, just good taste.

Alita has far better taste, since the only swimsuits you’ve seen her wearing were ones you wouldn’t mind your daughters wearing if they were her age. Another checkmark in the good category, as far as you are concerned.

The brouhaha over at Griffin’s Run Shipping seems to have shaken itself out, with quite a few very red faces and people looking quite ashamed of themselves. So you are pretty confident that things should get back to normal soon.

Or at least you were confident.

A critical shipment to the new docks at Pollux failed to arrive, it departed on time, no distress calls were heard, but it never arrived. A search is launched and a few hours later wreckage is found, the ship had gone down so quickly that it apparently never managed to get off a distress call.

After several days a cause was determined, the ship had struck a previously uncharted seamount at full speed, which had ripped the bottom wide open sending the vessel into the depths like a diving submarine. There were no survivors.

Within hours of the news getting out there is a reaction. Sailors and shippers are refusing to leave port, pretty much shutting down commerce. This section of ocean was supposed to have been charted and nobody is willing to trust that there aren’t more hidden obstacles that nobody knows about.

You look into the situation and grimace, you had indeed formed the Coast Guard, but then never allocated any funds for it to procure any ships, and so they’d been unable to begin actually doing their jobs. Properly charting the waters along potential Sea Lines of Communication was explicitly one of their jobs, and so the scouting teams had never really done much of anything in that regard.

So now all shipping is frozen, and the economy is poised to take a massive hit.

According to their representatives, the sailors and shippers refuse to risk any of these routes until the Coast Guard is in actual operation and the charts have been validated.

General Potter is just that, a General, with no actual naval experience. He offers to resign due to his failure to push for the purchase of the Coast Guard Flotilla.

[] Accept - Need to select a new Military Advisor next turn.
[] Decline

QM Note - temporary modifier of Shipping Freeze is in effect. Any actions that would raise GDP automatically fails until this is removed. In addition, maximum GDP growth is 0% until such time as this is removed. Moreover, for each turn this remains unresolved the Crown will lose 1 influence starting next turn. Each subsequent turn without progress towards resolution will see the GDP penalty increase (1 turn without resolution progress, -1% GDP, 2 turns, -10% GDP, 3 turns, -20% GDP etc). Resolution conditions are the purchase of the Coast Guard Flotilla and 1 turn spent charting the SLOCs. Modifier will then automatically be removed.

You carefully review everything. The Coast Guard head you’d selected had been sending increasingly strongly worded memos through her chain of command about the lack of resources, but her superiors in the Defense establishment had absolutely no special competency with nautical affairs and so disregarded those memos. They’d never even made it to General Potter’s desk, let alone to yours. However, by the same token you had been fully aware from the initial plans given you at the time of Coast Guard establishment that this would have been a critical step before establishing new ports.

Granted there had been plenty of distractions since then which had drawn away attention, but it was still a serious mistake that was having detrimental effects now.

You gritted your teeth a bit. But no use crying over spilt milk.

At the very least some of your other plans were going quite well.

Most of the Rapid Reaction Force was finally out of the hospital or repair depot, so next year they’d be able to begin again at trying to train successfully for a change. If they weren’t so wickedly effective in actual battle you’d be worried about them.

1st Armored had gotten their artillery up to full competence with them gleefully blasting massive time on target barrages pretty much at will. It’s… terrifying, really.

The Advanced Tactical Training Annex has been completed and you are, quite bluntly, jealous that you didn’t have access to these training facilities when you were a cadet. Shiny, state-of-the-art, and extremely well thought out. In conjunction with the training cadres that had been established new units will now be at advanced states of readiness straight out of the gate.

The fortification expansion had been successfully completed. You’d gotten the chance to tour one of the complexes and are quite suitably impressed. The next time the Kuritans tried to invade they’d have a number of very nasty surprises indeed.

There is now a full company of mechs in the Cadre, and an additional flight of Gyrfalcons in the AeroForce. In combination with the new training facilities the new units are looking extremely crisp and professional.

As a result of now having a full company of mechs in the Cadre, it should now be possible for new designs to be developed.

The Planetary Resource Survey had made an interesting potential discovery, oil slicks are visible at places near a set of islands nicknamed the ‘Five Fingers’ (E3 in the map). You’d have to send survey teams to confirm, but such things are usually indicative of oil ‘seeps’ in the sea bed in the area, which would indicate a significant petrochemical find.

The new dropship factory has been completed in Griffsport. There were some fears that the shipping disruptions would delay completion, but in the end construction was completed and the massive facility was completed on schedule.

There have been incremental improvements to overall infrastructure throughout Griffsport and Capricorn which have led to a general improvement in conditions for citizens. New hospitals have been opened, roads and bridges have been brought up to the latest standards, and new mass transit and cargo distribution systems are in place within the cities.

The efforts to seek a long-term solution to labor-management relations issues are ongoing and have seen a very solid start. Ironically the town halls you’d had organized are a victim of their own success, with them proving so popular that additional sessions are scheduled as so many people appear to want to be heard. You’ve been hearing many excellent suggestions on how to create a truly equitable balance between the concerns of the workforce and the needs of management, and you are quite hopeful that a proper solution will be found.

If it isn’t it’ll not be because there aren’t enough ideas, that’s for certain.

Your scientists have been able to completely reverse-engineer the DEST Infiltration Suit, although the version they created has a bit less of the deliberate ‘ninja’ vibe to it (seriously, some of the detail work was so unneeded according to the engineers). It will soon be possible, in combination with future upgrades to the Aerie, to field special operations teams of your own.

Communications systems have been improved, with a set of new comm protocols reducing bandwidth overhead by 15% with higher security on both ends. You don’t understand any of the technical details, but your comms specialists are extremely excited about it so you take their word for how important this is.

You get word that the interrogation of the actual DEST commandos is proceeding with no hiccups of any sort, security is holding, none of them have managed to kill themselves are harm any of the guards, but unfortunately they appear to be highly resistant to every form of interrogation you’ve tried. Work is ongoing, however, and results are hoped for ‘soon’.

 

[LordSunhawk]

Turn 20 Fluff

The hits keep coming in. The economy is in recession, industrial output is dropping, there is growing unrest and turmoil. Everything that had been going so incredibly well had seemingly hit a wall.

You were spending long hours in the office grappling with these issues. In many ways you are surprised it took this long for things to derail, the economy had been growing like a dropship accelerating to orbit, and while for a dropship that was the expected behavior, economies tend not to do that.

In a sense this is a needed correction, a popping of an unsustainable bubble, but you are quite bitterly aware that some of your own decisions contributed to just how bad the recession actually is.

You do reject General Potter’s offer to resign, scapegoats might be ‘easy’ and cathartic in the short term, but in the long term it was a horrid precedent to set.

Instead you add instructions to the working group already revising training and organizational questions for the military to look into also restructuring high command in order to prevent single point source failures in the future.

There is some good news amongst all the turmoil. The mines on Capricorn ran into a previously unsuspected iridium deposit that has proven to be commercially valuable. It gave the economy a small shot in the arm that is helping your budget numbers for the year, but in and of itself it does little to nothing to alleviate the structural issues plaguing the economy.

Your kids have picked up the grim mood, but bless them they are responding like champions. Jeremy is spending more time with his younger siblings outside of school in an obvious effort to reduce your own workload.

In lighter moments you attend a number of your kids races in the Pee-Wee and Junior Leagues. Jeremy is in solid contention for the championship in the middle division of the Junior League, the twins are utterly dominating the lowest division with the usual contest in any given race being between the two of them, and Quan is the uncontested mistress of the Pee Wee Unlimited League.

She has yet to lose a race, she has yet to even spin out once except in practice runs when she does it deliberately. In the exact same hardware Jeremy would use for a 51.28 second lap time she consistently turns in sub 50 second times, and other teams with ludicrously more expensive hardware still lose to her.

You’ve already had recruiters from the top Junior League and Pro Teams calling you asking your permission to recruit your daughter as a development racer for the pro leagues.

You spoke about it with Quan, and are torn between immense pride and a desire to throttle your husband. She doesn’t want to be a professional hovercraft racer, she wants to be a fighter pilot like daddy.

Then you want to hug your husband when Quan grumps that daddy won’t let her start learning how to fly until she’s at least 13 and only if you agree to allow it.

Jeremy doesn’t seem to mind at all that his records in the Pee-Wee League are falling left and right to his sister. When you asked him about it all he said was he always knew that Quan would ‘do right by the old sled’.

Of course, he’s also spending much of his spare time with Alita, and the two are so cute together as they tinker on each other's hovercraft. You have caught (and photographed for posterity) them engaging in such lewd behaviors as hand-holding and sitting next to each other on a bench with (gasp gasp) their shoulders almost touching.

Willis, the man, doesn’t seem to quite get why you are so moved to tears at the sight of your little man growing up.

You are very glad for the regulations you’d put in place for the commercial aerospace industry when there are a few close-calls that could have been outright disasters if it hadn’t been for the strict enforcement of safety standards you’d had written into the regulations.

The most significant had been when a passenger shuttle in Griffsport spectacularly screwed up by the numbers and almost landed on an active taxiway, clearing waiting commercial traffic by mere meters.

If it hadn’t been for the automated collision detection and avoidance equipment mandated for commercial aerospace flight you’d have had a massive fireball consuming four fully loaded passenger shuttles. The system picked up the incredibly unsafe condition and forced a go-around.

As it was, you merely had a pilot-in-command who’d been grounded, prosecuted, convicted, and jailed for being chemically incapacitated in the cockpit due to a cocktail of drugs in his system, and an aerospace transport company facing massive fines for violating multiple workplace safety regulations. Not to mention the enormous class-action lawsuit filed by passengers on the flight.

You’d considered pushing through legislation to tighten up regulation further on the aerospace companies, but Parliament beat you to it with a rather well thought out bill that was more comprehensive than what you had planned.

Parliament's plan would place firm caps on non-ticket ‘fees’ for things like luggage, food, and other amenities while also reducing excise taxes on tickets. Moreover it created an incentive plan whereby aerospace transport firms could earn tax rebates for meeting certain goals in terms of staffing hours, maintenance levels, on-time performance, safety metrics, and customer satisfaction metrics. Finally it would create a new agency under the Ministry of the Interior to more tightly regulate flight routes and spaceport operations which would have the authority to shut down and break up companies that failed to meet certain standards in a range of safety and performance metrics.

[] Support the plan. A good idea is a good idea, no matter where it came from (that it came from your supporters in Parliament is a definite plus in this regard). Prevent certain events from happening, raise Commons and Lords support by 5, raise Commons, Lords influence by 1, add 5000 to Interior upkeep to fund the massively expanded inspection and licensing regime, however consumer confidence in the industry increases Economy Rating by 5.

[] Reject the plan. Parliament is made up of fools only barely avoiding relegation to the Department of Periphery Studies. Come up with something of your own. Reduces support in Commons and Lords by 10, reduces Commons and Lords influence by 1, increases Crown influence by 1.

And then the alarms wail.

You find yourself being bustled aboard one of the subs along with your family while the entire AeroForce soars into the sky.

The force composition strikes you as… odd… and then horrifying. A single aerodyne dropship tentatively identified as identical to one of the ASF launching dropships from the original raid that Dagny had stated was a Leopard-CV. And only 4 ASFs, all ‘Sabres’ according to the identification chart provided by the Magistracy agent who was working for you.

But their flight profiles were completely wrong.

They were clearly coming in from a pirate point of some sort, but were making absolutely no attempt to decelerate even into orbital insertion, instead they were continuing to accelerate.

The horror comes when their courses are plotted out… intersecting on Griffsport itself. It’s a kinetic impact strike, not a mere ‘raid’ or reconnaissance. This is a pure terror attack.

With the enormous velocities that the enemy had already built up your defending birds only have an incredibly brief window to intercept. And they perform wonderfully.

The Gyrfalcon’s chop the Sabres out of the sky with merciless precision, while the Rocs hunt their natural prey in the incoming dropship. A coordinated series of AC/20 strikes later and the Leopard-CV is a loosely associated set of wreckage and debris.

Unfortunately, it all is still coming on incredibly fast, and while most of it burns up on reentry enough survives to cause significant issues on the ground. Luckily, 90% of the debris hits the newly completed Dropship factory line, the rest peppers the Battlemech factory.

QM Note - No Dropship or Mech production possible this turn, however no repair costs will be assessed due to the nature of the damage (it’s pretty much an extended ‘sweepers man your brooms’ situation.

 

[LordSunhawk]

Turn 20 Parliamentary Hijinks!

In the aftermath of the attempted kinetic orbital strike on your capital you are in a grim mood.

It’s not because of the damage. The debris that had survived reentry had lost most of its energy in the process and beyond destroying nearly every vehicle in the parkings lots of the two factories hadn’t done much damage to the factories themselves.

The problem there was that there were reasonable fears of whether or not the Kuritan forces had been carrying any chemical or biological agents on board. Dagny had briefed your staff on several instances during the ‘Succession Wars’ where Kurita or Liao forces had done precisely that.

So the workers for both facilities were in quarantine and hazardous materials crews were turning the entire site into the best sanitized area since sanitation was invented (if you believed the evening news).

No, what had you in a grim mood was the escalating series of attacks on citizens of Japanese descent in the aftermath of yet another attack. You had certain intelligence that a number of members of Parliament were quietly involved in organizing these ‘protests’ of ‘concerned citizens’ about ‘fifth columns’, but had no actionable proof as yet.

Luckily polling was showing that only a tiny fraction of the public actually believed any of the rhetoric being spouted by the protestors. Indeed, it looked like the number of people who actually believed any of that drivel was likely smaller than the number of people involved in the protests in the first place, and did have proof that many of the protestors were hired off the streets.

Damn this economy, those people should have been able to get productive jobs, not have to spend hours hoisting signs they didn’t believe in just to earn enough money to buy dinner.

But again, you had no proof, and without… wait…

You looked over at Sekhmet, looked back at the list of parliamentarians who were believed to be involved, then you and the tiger shared a very evil smile.

Grifftigers had superb senses and were just as intelligent as any human. And that combination… chemical traces lingered, and even the finest liars and prevaricators still gave off subtle signals when they were prevaricating. Signals of scents and twitches that a human eye and nose would easily miss and which were impossible even for a chemical sniffer to analyze fast enough for use… but a grifftiger COULD detect, process, and analyze such things ‘on the fly’.

People who didn’t understand things like pheromones and hyper scent had widely spread rumors about Grifftigers being able to read minds to detect criminals, not realizing that even the most hardened criminal tensed up and released minute amounts of sweat and scent without even realizing it when engaged in the ‘thrill’ of crime.

And… this would be perfect.

A few hours later you walked into Parliament. After your public assent to the Aerospace Regulation Modernization Act of 2940 you had quite a bit of credit amongst the Members, both in the Lords and Commons, so there was barely any fuss at all when you called for a joint session to address the Houses of Parliament.

Tongues were set to wagging when you walked in with Sekhmet on one side, Janet on the other, and trailed by the ‘official’ opposition leader. You’d briefed Dominique on your plans and the poor dear had been both excited about the possibility of purging corrupt elements from the Parliament and peeved that she’d have to act like part of the establishment to pull it off.

You swept your eyes across the room, allowing a broad smile of welcome and good cheer to nearly split your face.

You already plan to be dramatic but beyond that…

[] Be imperius, a Queen addressing her Subjects with maximum formality.
[] Be casual. You may be Queen, but you’ve always cultivated an image of friendly approachability to even the most common of your citizens.
[] Be humorous. Nothing sets people off their game than subverting expectations!

QM Note - I’m trying something new this turn, to stretch my writing as it were. Vote will be open until tomorrow or there are 8 votes, whichever comes first.

 

[LordSunhawk]

Turn 20 - Nobody Expects the Grifftiger Inquisition or The Queen’s Got A Little List (and they never will be missed) plus a side of Advisors Advising Advice

You had decided to eschew the normal formal gown that you’d worn to most previous events in Parliament. This wasn’t for ‘formality’ or being social, this was more… serious.

So you wore the (very) slightly modified full dress uniform you were entitled to as Queen. The severely cut midnight black with scarlet piping and flashing gold trim suited your mood. The only difference between your uniform and that of the full company of the Queen's Own who followed was that on your epaulets you bore jeweled golden crowns denoting you being Queen. A uniform that hadn’t been worn since your grandfather’s reign… when it generally denoted that somebody was about to lose their head.

You could sense the unease that your entrance had generated, even amongst your most loyal supporters. There was a serious stir as your soldiers took up positions flanking every exit, a stir that sharpened as the fact that they were all carrying rifles which, while polished and gleaming, were clearly service weapons with attached bayonets. Not the short and somewhat stubby vibro-bayonets, but old-pattern gleaming steel bayonets that caused a bit more visceral fear of having sharp pointy things poked into sensitive spots.

Then there’s a sharper stir as the significance of what the insignia on Sekhmet’s gleaming gold-embossed harness actually was sinks in… a position that hadn’t even existed in your Father’s reign, but one which your Grandfather had made extensive use of. Lord High Inquisitor.

You started speaking almost before you reached your throne. “You will be silent and take your seats.” you said crisply, then turned and favored the room with a cold gaze. “Lords, Ladies, Members of Parliament.” you continue, after a brief pause to allow the gathered notables to seat themselves.

“When We summoned this Parliament We charged you with serving the best interests of Griffin’s Roost’s citizens. We took your oaths of office in good faith, your promises to serve Us and Our citizens with honor, fidelity and justice.”

You let your gaze sweep across the chamber.

“We are saddened that so many of you have decided that your oaths of office instead were to serve your own ambitions and bank accounts with…” you snear. “False honor, utter infidelity, and complete injustice.”

“We do not speak of disagreements with Our policies. The Throne is not above critique, and We welcome honest criticism given with noble motive. We would far rather have an honest critic than a false friend.” you continue, favoring certain members with a brief smile before your faces smooths back down to formal rigidity.

You clasp your hands behind your back, and at that signal Janet steps up and sets a folder on the lectern before you.

You don’t even bother to look down at it.

“Bribery. Corruption. Sale of votes to the highest bidder. Abuse of office. Insider trading. These are things We shall not tolerate.” you say harshly. “We have already crushed one conspiracy against Our people and Our crown. We had hoped to never have to do so again. Yet some among you think that We shall be blinded by pretend loyalty to your own designs.”

Sekhmet rumbled beside you, licking her chops and then giving a lazy feline smile.

“We were faced with a choice. We could have sent Our police to arrest the corrupt for their crimes and cast them from Our Parliament in disgrace and dishonor, and some would argue that it would be right and just to do so. For those who have abused Our trust have also abused the good citizens of Our realm, and for that treason.” you pause for just a moment as a susurration of sound goes through the otherwise silent chamber. “The perpetrators would face trial, conviction, and death by hanging.”

“We could do nothing, and trust in the good sense of Our citizens to cast out those guilty parties subject to election. But this would do nothing about those Life Peers and Hereditary Lords and Ladies who are likewise corrupt.”

“Or We could be merciful, and do what We have chosen to do. You each shall reaffirm your oaths of fealty to Our Throne and to Our people. Those who cannot hold to that high charge of honor, fidelity, and justice may instead choose to quit this chamber, thus resigning your positions in Our service. For those guilty of felonies against Our justice, such an act would mitigate charges of Treason.” your smile at this point would have sent a Great Shark scurrying away in terror at meeting a superior predator.

“If you, being guilty of dishonoring your oath to Us, falsely swear once more to Us, you shall be taken from this chamber directly to the fields of execution, there to be hung by the neck until dead.”

“Choose wisely, My Lords and Ladies, Members of Parliament.” you say coldly, sweeping your gaze. “No honest man or woman amongst you need fear Our justice.” you leave unsaid, of course, what the dishonest amongst them would need to fear…

You turn and take your seat upon the throne, folding your hands primly on your lap, and nod to the Sergeant at Arms.

As the first members came forward to renew their oaths of office and fealty, you kept a carefully neutral expression on your face as you noted a dozen or so individuals scurrying for the door. The soldiers let them depart without hindrance… right into the waiting arms of law enforcement officials from the Ministry of Justice. You were rather pleased that every single one of them were on your little list of naughty boys and girls. Evidently your reassurance that you welcomed honest opposition had quieted the fears of members well enough in that regard.

You manage to quell a little smirk as one of the worst offenders on your little list, an arrogant little popinjay of a Hereditary Lord named Simon Bunting, doesn’t take the opportunity for mercy. Instead, the odious little toad keeps his usual smarmy ingratiating expression on his face when he is summoned before the throne to renew his oath.

“I, Simon Bunting, do solemnly swear to serve the Crown and Citizens of Griffin’s Reach.” he begins the formal oath, seemingly totally comfortable with it. The formal phrase trip easily from his tongue.

Beside you Sekhmet rumbles as the little toady finishes, then pads forward, leaning down and sniffing him. Her tail lashes and a rumbling growl starts somewhere deep inside of the massive grifftiger that seems to shake the air.

You raise one hand to rest on Sekhmet’s flank, seemingly to quell her. “You had your opportunity for mercy, My Lord.” you say flatly. “Only a complete imbecile would believe that your activities had escaped Our notice. You swore falsely before. You swear falsely now.”

He pales visibly and opens his mouth to protest, but you slash your hand to one side. “Silence. You had your opportunity to face the Justice of the Queen in the Court of Law. You chose… poorly.”

Two of your guards approach at your nod, one leveling his rifle at the now freely perspiring noble, the glittering lethality of the bayonet a clear threat while the expression on the guards face was an open invitation for the corrupt noble to resist and give the corporal the excuse he needed to gut Bunting like a fish.

“You will be taken from this chamber, My Lord, to face My justice upon the fields of execution. Sergeant, do your duty.”

And with that he was hauled away, leaving behind a foul stench as the arrogant man had evidently soiled his trousers, leaving a rather fetid puddle and trail of foul liquid behind him.

Luckily you’d planned for this, following some of your grandfather’s notes on the proper means of doing something like this, and the cleaning staff was immediately at hand with proper supplies to deal with the mess.

To your amusement the rest of your little list rather swiftly departed the chamber at this point.

The rest of the oath-taking ceremony proceeds without any drama whatsoever, beyond Sekhmet bestowing a rather large number of Licks of Approval on various nobles, ruffling their formal garb and leaving them looking rather bemused.

Of those members who’d departed the chamber rather than renew their oaths (and risk execution under the principle that while the Queen had the power of High Justice, she could only directly order the execution of those sworn personally to her service, all others required a full trial) all were soon convicted on various charges of corruption and malfeasance. As you had promised, none were charged with treason, even if such a charge would have been applicable to their conduct.

You are quite pleased by the public reaction, but then comes THAT time of year. It’s… ADVISOR TIME.

You again have Jeremy with you when you attend the meetings, it's a good experience for your little man. Of course, he asks if Alita can join him, and you decide to allow that as well. She’s a good kid, after all, almost good enough for your son.

You suddenly feel old for a moment, then dismiss the feeling.

General Potter is looking rather worn, but his voice is still powerful. “We won’t be able to expand the battlemech forces this year, however we do have a few immediate decisions for you to approve. First up is a new tracked missile carrier. Nollak Industries is providing the targeting systems for all of them, so they would serve as both indirect fire platforms and anti-air platforms.”

[]	Name	Cost	HP	Attack	Defense	Special
[]	Knight LRM Carrier	562	24	8	8	Anti-Air, Fragile, Tracked
[]	Longbow LRM Carrier	534	20	7	7	Anti-Air, Fragile, Tracked
[]	Multiple Launch Missile System M1	570.4	20	7	7	Anti-Air, Fragile, Tracked
[]	Ravager M5	522.8	32	9	9	Anti-Air, Tracked
[]	Rook LRM Carrier	490.4	28	8	8	Anti-Air, Tracked

He notes down your decision.

“Next we have proposals for a new SRM carrier for urban combat.” he tells you, passing you a small stack of proposals.

[]	Name	Cost	HP	Attack	Defense	Special
[]	Roach M6	606.4	40	10	10	Tracked
[]	Parthian SRM Carrier	494.8	32	8	8	Tracked
[]	Multiple Launch Assault System M1	574.8	46	10.5	10.5	Armored, Wheeled
[]	Bishop SRM Carrier	580.8	40	10	10	Tracked

He notes down your decision.

“And finally we have proposals for a new hovercraft missile carrier for the RRF from Tank-X” he says as he passes you the final set of proposals.

[]	Name	Cost	HP	Attack	Defense	Special
[]	Caricole Cavalry Hovercraft	598	32	8	8	Swift
[]	Knight Multi-Missile Carrier	597.2	32	10	10	Swift
[]	Madman M777	459.2	32	8	8	Swift
[]	Multiple Launch Missile System M2	590	32	8	8	Swift

He notes down your decision.

“We have a number of other priorities. With both the dropship and battlemech factory temporarily out of commission we won’t be able to start any droppers nor strengthen our mech forces. That being said, we recommend purchasing a battalion set of the new SRM carriers to bolster the defenses of Griffsport directly. Urban terrain is the best for such a vehicle, after all.”

He goes through his notes. “Now this is critical, we need to fully fund the coast guard and get the cutters into service. I’ve been going over all the memos in question and while I don’t understand all the terms used as I’m a simple tanker, from what I’ve been able to learn this initial squadron of 4 large cutters will be sufficient in the short term, but they’ll be seeking additional units long term to fill out their forces.” he slides the datapad with the specifications for the new cutters for you to review.

“Finally we can expand the Aerie to a full up Military University on par with institutions from the Star League era like the Nagelring. Both military education and research, plus graduate level training. Doing so would be expensive, but would have seriously positive benefits for our military readiness and future strength.”

Bridget is just as bouncy as ever. You brace yourself for the upcoming torrent. “I don’t really have much for you Your Majesty beyond expanding the space station so as to benefit from increased research and development opportunities as well as some small increases in commercial utilization in orbit because we are researching things that can only be made in space so we’ll need to eventually build factories up there and this will make researching cheaper and better and allow us to produce what we research.”

That’s probably the least she’s ever said in one meeting.

Dr Young is in the hospital for a minor operation and her deputy is sitting in her place. “Your Majesty, we don’t really have anything for you this year.” the young man takes a deep breath. “And Dr Young instructed me to inform you that she intends to retire in the near future and that she would be forwarding you a list of proposed replacements.”

Professor Chapman is all business. “Your Majesty, like Dr Young I’ll be retiring next year, and will get you a list of successors.” she says briskly. We’ll be completing the Town Halls soon, but after that I will be preparing for my retirement.”

Harry Owens is still at the PoW camp overseeing interrogations. He sends you a short note that things are proceeding so far as planned and that he has no real suggestions for additional projects at this time.

Janet is bouncy as ever. “We’re almost there with the new Royal Grifftiger Mounted Police, we’ve got our recruits in training and the tigers are so much fun to work with! And you already know what great babysitters they are.” she grins and gives Sekhmet a little pet, causing the big tiger to churrr in pleasure. “Otherwise, we really need to set up judicial systems in the new colony areas before things degrade to the Wild West of myth and legend.”

 

[LordSunhawk]

Turn 20 - Results

Spoiler: Event Rolls

GDP Growth - due to event no roll, fixed at -3%
POP Growth - 7%

There is a new system replacing the Stability mechanic. See the Polity tab for more information.

Approval - 7 Degrees of success. Capped at +5, result is a temporary +4% to Tax Rate
Approval Change - 5 degrees of success

Political Roll - 2 degrees of failure - -2 Approval Change
Research Roll - 3 degrees of success - R&D time change from upgrading space station take immediate effect
Economic Roll - no roll due to event

No Parliament rolls due to event

Spoiler: Action Results

Fox Terrier Missile Hovertank
Verdun Wheeled UDV
Arbalest Missile Carrier

Procurement and Operational Procedure Review and Rationalization
Target - 75
Roll - 55
Result - SUCCESS

Purchase Coast Guard Flotilla [75]
Target - 75
Roll - 3
Result - SUCCESS

Expand Space Station 1 [75]
Target - 75
Roll - 60
Result - SUCCESS

Build factories for Starhound Exploration Shuttle [95]
Target - 95
Roll - 46
Result - SUCCESS

Hold town hall forums on labor relations* Target - automatic success

LOSTECH - Industrial Exoskeletons lvl 3* [75]
Target - 75
Roll - 10
Result - SUCCESS

Endosteel Structure
Target - 55
Roll - 49
Result - SUCCESS

Spheroid Dropship - Small
Target - 80
Roll - 25
Result - SUCCESS

Interrogate POWs [65]
Target - 65
Roll - 26
Result - SUCCESS

Setup judicial system in new settlement area
Target - 70
Roll - 80
Result - Bare FAILURE, auto success next turn

Training
RRF
Target - 80
Roll - 81
Result - Bare Failure (auto success next turn)

Recruitment [$6657]
Flight of Gyrfalcon Interceptors [60]
Target - 60
Roll - 16
Result - SUCCESS

1 Platoon Avenger AAA for RRF [60]
Target - 60
Roll - 2
Result - SUCCESS

1 Battalion (9 platoons) Verdun Wheeled UDV
Target - 60
Roll - 1
Result - CRITICAL SUCCESS
Critical Result - 1 Battalion of Regular Quality Fox Terrier Missile Hovertanks for the RRF

Change Factory Production: Factory 2 (Roc) -> Goshawk [$500]

-----

It’s the most stressful time of year again… no, not budget time… championship races time. This year four of your kids are competing in various championship races and you fear for the structural integrity of your nails.

Thanh’s race in the Pee Wee League comes first, and in some ways is the least stressful for you. She is such a skilled and dominant racer that you have confidence she’ll be fine, at least until your traitorous mind reminds you of what overconfidence can cause. Then your sphincters all clench up tighter than a bullfrog’s ass.

She still wins clean, and you find yourself jumping up and down in pure excitement along with the other moms cheering on their own kids.

The twins once again come in one two, in a photo finish no less, with Quan slightly edging out his brother by a thousandth of a second. They both seem quite happy with the result, although you later hear Quan muttering about how he was certain they’d only measured to the hundredth and they’d need to practice more to get the perfect tie next time.

You shake your head. Your twins are… well, boys.

But they are your boys, and during the medal ceremony Quan drags first his brother than the boy who came in third up to the top step with him the moment the medals were presented. It’s a bit crowded up there, but the three kids seem quite pleased as punch to be up there waving, and you can tell that all the other parents are just as impressed with your little men as you are.

Jeremy and Alita actually manage to pull off what your twins were trying for. The timers are only good to the thousandth, and the two of them manage to come across the line tied all the way to the thousandth of a second.

Of course, when the presenter announces that Jeremy shakes his head and yells out that Alita won, because “Ladies always go first, and Bastet would thwap me with her tail if I forgot my manners!” to the general laughter of the crowd… and a kiss from who is rapidly becoming his steady girlfriend.

Thankfully it’s on the cheek, or you’d be having to have words with the young lady. Even if Sekhmet and Bastet both seem to approve of her, the traitorous felines that they are.

They still both win gold, and you couldn’t be prouder of both of them.

OK, maybe a slight peck on the edge, the very edge mind you, of the lips would be acceptable. Maybe. If you didn’t see it.

You realize that you are sounding like your own mother inside your head at this point, and resolve to go and spend more time with Janet for proper girl talk before you feel old.

You aren’t old.

And you have Royal Executioners to deal with anybody who says that you are, so there.

You’ve been following reports with dread fascination about the training progress for the Rapid Reaction Force but shockingly it seems that everything is going well… until the final exercise has to be called off when unexploded ordnance from the Kuritan raid on Capricorn is discovered underneath the reviewing stand forcing a hasty evacuation of the area while UXO teams deal with the situation.

You shake your head as the exercise winds up being delayed until after the new year. Typical.

You resist the urge to send a letter to the CO of the RRF praising them on coming the closest ever to successfully completing a training evolution on schedule. Barely, but you manage to resist.

The Procurement and Operational Review is completed, and they included a full section on reorganizing the upper echelons of the military to ensure better communications. From now on you’ll receive joint briefings during budget season from the heads of Ground Forces, Aerospace Forces, and the Navy, along with a summary from General Potter as the Chairman of the AFGR General Staff.

Colonel Swanson, the CO of the Garrison, wears a second hat as head of Ground Forces, while Colonel Reyes holds down both the Aerowing and Aerospace Forces commands. Captain Stinnet from the Coast Guard is the current representative of the Admiralty, although in the future once you have ‘Black Water’ formations of dropships and, in the distant future, Warships, the Navy would be represented by one of their commanders.

You are present at the yard for the commissioning ceremonies for all four of the new Cutters. They present handsome profiles in the morning light, and before the day is done they are out to sea.

Next year they’ll need to be assigned to charting the shipping lanes, but once that is complete commerce should start up again.

In other military news, a fresh flight of Gyrfalcons has been constructed and the Roc factory has been retooled to produce Goshawk ASFs. In addition a Starhound recon shuttle factory has been built outside Hue Moi.

You are present for the handover of a full battalion of fresh new Fox Terrier Missile Hovertanks to the Rapid Reaction Force. That at least goes quite well with no spectacular screw-ups. You are almost disappointed. The new hovercraft are extremely impressive, according to the technicians you spoke with, the missile launchers are mounted in actual pods, making swapping them out ridiculously easy. The tank itself has a surprisingly low profile and is surprisingly stable at high speed, especially for a hovercraft.

Speaking of the RRF and new vehicles, they’ve also added a fourth platoon of Avengers, and according to your sources the Company commander checked over the wiring panels multiple times to make sure that they were right this time. Once bitten, twice shy. That kid would go far if he didn’t let the spectacular foul-up of his first command keep him down.

Similarly, a battalion of Verdun Wheeled UDVs are now deployed in Griffsport proper. Wheeled vehicles are far easier on the pavement than tracked ones, and the heavy SRM load of the new vehicles makes them devastating at ambushes.

The orbital station has been expanded. It is now capable of housing two flights of ASFs if needed, and you are considering assigning some to that posting permanently.

The expansion has other effects, the research teams working on endosteel and spheroid dropships are able to make massive breakthroughs in their work, completing their projects well ahead of schedule.

The engineers are quite proud of their Harris class transport dropship, capable of carrying a full company of Mech’s and a full flight of ASFs.

You’ll need to build an orbital foundry before you can cast endosteel skeletons for Mechs, but you already have the plans for what you need to build.

The latest set of industrial exoskeletons are now available to industry. These are unique so far in that they do not rely on power cables and external generators for power, but rather have built in micro fuel cells that provide enough juice to run them for extended periods.

The incredibly popular town halls finally conclude, and you now have before you a very concrete set of proposals to help prevent many of the conflicts that are inevitable between Labor and Management without being excessively partial to either side.

Labor is concerned about automation destroying jobs and ensuring that workers are not only compensated fairly for their work but also receive adequate working conditions. Management is concerned about labor costs driving product costs so high that consumers will be unwilling to purchase products, thus driving them out of business.

Of course, there are those on the labor side of the equation who want to be paid high wages just for breathing and have no intention of actually doing any productive work, while there are plenty of management types who would love to not pay their workers a dime but rather horde all the revenue from sales into their own pockets.

Neither side are wholly saints. Neither side are wholly sinners.

And lucky you, you get to balance this devil’s brew.

Whoever said it was good to be Queen lied to you.

You can see multiple ways to deal with this situation, but almost all of them would favor either labor or management or vice versa, and you have no desire to do either. So you decide to simply cut the gordian knot.

It would be expensive, it will weaken the economy both in the short and long term, but it will also stabilize the economy and prevent economic bubbles from forming while also mitigating against the worst instincts of both employers and employees.

A Royal fund, overseen by individuals appointed by the Crown and serving at the Crown’s pleasure. The fund would be used for smoothing out the see-saw relationship between labor and management by introducing a third point of balance that neither other party could truly control. The money in the fund would be drawn from a mandatory levy on all salaries and pre-tax gross profits, with absolutely no shelters, exemptions, exclusions, or reductions possible in the levy.

It would be used to intervene in the business cycle, protecting both Labor and Management in turn as the need arose.

You think it would probably be wise to get input from people more expert than yourself on this, because this could be an overly expensive overreaction to a labor dispute that was really a family squabble that got out of hand.

The reports from the interrogation of the DEST prisoners is hopeful. They’ve not managed to break any of them yet but they are quite confident that at this point it is only a matter of time to break down the resistances of the captives.

Setting up a new judicial system on Castor and prepping it for Pollux seemed to be going well… when the new courthouse on Castor was suddenly occupied by tenured professors from the Periphery Studies Department declaring that they won’t depart until Grifftigers are granted full human rights and citizenship.

All attempts to explain to them that the tigers are in fact full citizens and even now have several of the big cats seated in Parliament are met with chants of ‘Let The Grifftigers Go’ and what apparently are ancient civil rights era songs rewritten for the purpose, that the ‘protesters’ are singing horridly off-key.

The local grifftigers have asked for hearing protection.

You sent them the same sort of hearing protection that Sekhmet enjoyed during the Palace renovations.

You could have done without all the slobber from the Licks of Approval you got for that.

 

[LordSunhawk]

Turn 21 - Fluff and New Advisors

You have discovered a new horror of parenting.

Learner’s Permits.

Jeremy is finally old enough to officially learn how to drive somewhere other than the hovercraft track, and he naturally is very eager for this.

Obviously Willis can’t teach him, because your loving husband is a fighter pilot and fighter pilots are all adrenaline junkies who drive far too fast. So you crack your knuckles and buckle up, buttercup. Your boy will learn how to drive from you, and considering you’ve never gotten a single traffic ticket in your life (since becoming Queen) and thus have a perfect driving record (please disregard the stack of speeding violations when you were a teenager) you are confident that you will make a perfectly safe driver out of your son!

Lessons go quite well, actually. His experience on the track is obvious in how well he manages to handle the car you personally picked out to be his first vehicle to learn in. After the first few minutes you even completely forget about being nervous that your little man is behind the wheel.

You are so happy about his progress that you happily sign the paperwork to allow him to take his driver’s test early.

Which he promptly flunks, because he was driving too fast.

Obviously Willis has been giving your boy under the table instruction!

So you make sure you are in the car for his second go, and the examiner fails him again for driving too fast, when you are quite certain he was driving at a perfectly safe and sensible speed.

You bring this up and discover something. The only reason you didn’t have stacks of speeding tickets was because all such tickets were ultimately issued in the name of the Queen, which is you, and it is not possible for a lesser official to act in the name of the Queen against the Queen. You technically don’t even have a driver’s license, because driver’s licenses were issued under the authority of the Queen and as Queen you don’t need one because the licensing bureau cannot issue the Queen a license under the Queen’s authority. It makes your head hurt.

While you pout about this manifest injustice to your perfect driving skills, Willis (the traitor!) takes over teaching Jeremy how to drive and, shockingly, he passes this time.

You sulk for a solid hour about this.

Sekhmet finds it utterly hilarious though. So does Janet. So does Bastet. So do your kids. So does every single other person in the Palace.

Traitors.

So you do the only sensible thing, you slip into your kids play room, grab a big foam toy sword, and proceed to chase after all the snickering traitors to beat them for their treachery!

Much fun is had that day as the impromptu melee spreads throughout the Palace grounds, embroiling all the visitors to the complex, most members of Parliament, and a good chunk of the local community in an impromptu foam sword free for all.

You needed this. So did everybody else, as you can almost see the tensions and troubles of the past few years fading away as people cut loose and had fun in a harmless manner.

You do get SOME work done, of course. Both Dr Young and Professor Chapman forward you their lists of recommended candidates for their replacements as they go into retirement.


For the new Minister for Foreign Affairs

[]	Name	Diplomacy	Intelligence	Justice	Special
[]	Louise Hallis	3	0	0	-1000 Upkeep
[]	Isoroku Nikishina	3	0	0	Add 1 free Cultural Action each turn
[]	April Thomlinson	3	1	0
[]	Regina Callahan	3	0	1

You take the time to meet each of them to get an impression of their personalities and how well you might mesh with them.

Dr Louise Hallis seems like you’d be dealing with Dr Young 2.0, she has nearly the same serious personality and reminds you irresistibly of an irritated librarian.

Isoroku Nikishina is currently the cultural affairs department head and conceals a rapier wit beneath a stoic exterior. During your interview he somehow shifted the topic to music and kept it there for some time, and you later learn that he is a professional musician himself when not engaged in government work.

Dr April Thomlinson strikes you as dangerously sharp. She doesn’t seem to miss much if anything from a single glance about the office.

Dr Regina Callahan has only just finished her PhD dissertation on the confluence of foreign relations and justice studies.and seems to be quite enthusiastic about the subject in your discussions.

For the Political advisor position you also have four choices.

[]	Name	Political	Interior	Political Rating	Special
[]	Dustin Xi	3	1	5	-1000 Upkeep
[]	Christina Ebon	3	2	-5
[]	Charlotte Mann	3	1	10
[]	Jake Mroczkiewitz	3	1	5	+20 Crown Influence Targets and has an awesome Polish name

Dustin Xi has long been Professor Chapman’s top assistant and chief of staff, and while he is perfectly willing to step up to the top job he doesn’t strike you as at all eager to do so and would be perfectly content to remain in the background.

Christina Ebon strikes you as incredibly aggressive. She has a background in business and seems to have an almost feral attitude towards overcoming business obstacles and objections. She’d be hard to work with, but extremely effective. Just… keep her the hell away from the press.

Dr Charlotte Mann is almost the antithesis to Christina, she’s calm, collected, and has a very soothing presence. She has a knack for communication, which is natural considering that she teaches Political Science and Communications at the University.

Jake of the Impossible to Pronounce Last Name (he patiently corrects your initial mangling of it, there are far too many letters in odd combinations!) has you in tears of laughter within minutes of your interview starting. When he isn’t poking fun of his own Polish heritage he’s very cogently breaking down the political rivalries within Parliament. He’d be a definite asset in terms of managing other politicians, that’s for sure.

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QM NOTE 2 - ShadowArxxy is banned from the foam katana armory for repeatedly bopping the QM.