The problems with tricks like that is eventually someone will find the truth. Also, the stuff is so exotic and strange, even if it is useless, nobles will still buy them at a good price to prove they are better then other nobles.
All it needs to do is buy time; the equivalent of saying "nice doggie" until you can find a stick or a rock. All our "get in deeper and start really using the thing" plans require time. These tricks would get us that. Doesn't have to last forever, just long enough.
Would probably be best to build a small fort outside the cave to keep people from getting in. Best secret when no one can see it
Sounds like a plan that all works together. We "announce" that there's dangerous stuff in the lower levels (something something sealed evil in a can, horrible world-ending monster thing...), we magnanimously offer to build a fort to protect the rest of the world from it, get that assigned to us as our "sworn duty" by the kingdom; given how well we handled the last catastrophic threat, there isn't a ton of wiggle room for greedy nobles to get a sniff. The kingdom establishes that anybody not-us going in there is committing a crime against the throne...
We say big scary thing and people will want it for themselves. We say we're doing dangerous research and don't want to damage our building, then it's risky stuff that might not be worth going after
Right, right, yes. The whole "large reactor leak, very large, very dangerous" ploy. That said, this is why I'm talking through and working over it so we have a plan by the time it actually gets there.
My other idea is to recruit a lot more intelligence agents with statues
Statues? I'm all for loading up on intel agents (we need to replenish our losses), but what's the "statues" thing?
The living statues, those thing I don't worry about the loyalty of, maybe summons too if we ever get enough of them
...in a world where magic exists, the loyalty of magical constructs is mechanical. Someone capable with the mechanical elements could flip a magical construct, possibly even easier than a regular person.
We can just add that to the list of things we need to do. We tried to learn about the statues before and failed, but never tried again. We have many more magic people so we should have better luck this time.
North still has a major battle. If we really push and throw what we can at it, we have every chance we might be able to finish this turn.
Or we colud get a big loss, last battle we good some epic roll of dice, i think we need advisors first!
I know action economy is of value. Believe me, at our first available opportunity I want us to be swinging for as many "increase available actions per turn" as possible. I also know that we haven't had regular turns in a long time because battle (wealth has been the limiting factor SO HARD in this quest and while our battle wins might help with that we also need to maintain a suitable income stream to be able to actually _do_ things with those actions)
The problem is that every income action tend to have a constant expense to eats a good chunk of the profits(like real life). We need to find something to make that is worth a lot and hard to get in this place, maybe perfume or make a large movie room
Theatre halls. We have hundreds of years of earth culture they have never seen. Big open space, set up luxury boxes for nobles and charge through the nose for them...
Maybe serve some modern style food, after we figure out how to replenish our seasoning supplies
Salt and pepper would still be hard to get here. They are inland and peppercorn is probably not the easiest thing to grow in a temperate climate
Use magic to make spices by somehow splice them with those thorn thrower plant thing.
Pepper bomb throwers for non lethal capture?
We can go creative with it but mainly making a cash crop is a good idea no?
