The composition of parliament had seen a huge shake up in the past few months as the after shocks of the leaked parliamentary notes on military planning, the rise of the temperance movement to prominence, and the Liberal Party undergoing a major shakeup caused numerous sitting lords in the Upper House to shift their alliances to the Conservative Party. From the looks of things, the Liberals were going to reorganize into a much more populist grouping, much to the concern of outside observers.
Which outside observers would that be?
International groups looking to the Gylmaryn for the next distressing trend that will spark revolution(again) or domestic parties saying this will ruin everything(again)?
The question of the franchise still loomed, a growing specter that had been repeatedly set aside due to the needs of war and strife, and major businessmen and lords riding the workers to power was a major concern if the franchise of the Lower House could not be dealt with.
To absolutely nobody's surprise, the losing parties of the populism surge immediately start plotting to reduce the franchise. The Liberals don't care once they get their feet back under them. The Royalists would very much prefer an exclusive parliament to nobles. The Conservatives look askance at it(this is highly untraditional!) but want to grab the ball and do their main focus thing first.
So basically we need to give the Urban Workers some teeth here or watch them roll back the franchise.
Internationally, the Ochro-Etalians had found their efforts stymied by skilled negotiators from the Behryvar and Styrmyr and the general disinterest of the other great powers to actually intervene due to having their own issues, with the Sketch being the only semi-active Great Power at the table, and their agenda was in keeping the continent as disunited as possible without actually having to send in troops. As it was, while the Behryvar and Styrmyr weren't exactly friends, they were definitely driven deeper into each other's camps by the Dual Crown showing general disinterest, while also moving away from the orbit of the Dual Crown. All in all, while not exactly a pleasant result as two significant Syffryn powers on the Dual Crown's most vulnerable borders were now much colder towards them, at least the OEE were not strengthened, and neither the Hespranxer nor the Kielmyr were in any way annoyed by the Dual Crown's doings.
Good enough. Funny how the Sketch's interests at this point is also in our interest. Just...nobody gave enough of a shit for the conference to do anything.
Which means a disunited continent, which also means that we got a wee bit more time to Rail Everything before the next detonation(if everyone started aligning to one side or another, it'd be moving towards a Great War on the other hand)
Also internationally, the mission to the HEKC was hitting major snags as the HEKC was applying increasing pressure to clean up their house. It seemed that the Black Sheep situation had majorly spooked them in some way and the potential lead up to the Maharatha had them paranoid about interference. While they were definitely moving industrially and diplomatically to bypass your implicit blockade of the Maharatha by the control of their ports, potentially turning the country back into a massive opium producer right at the time when the Hung had no ability to stop the influx of the drug into their ports, the exact plans remained concealed. As it was, the only thing for the Dual Crown agents to do was to have their networks go quiet. While this would negatively impact current operations, it would allow for much deeper embedding of assets.
HEKC espionage mission ends with no achievable targets located: +1 Espionage, -3 temp Espionage
So, they're going to be taking a swing at the Maharantha situation to restore Opium supply in order to take more profit from the Hung. I'm expecting some coordinated 'native uprising' to dislodge our Indian Subcontinent ports soon. If so their objective would likely be a Maharanthan uplift, so that they can take the ports locally without drawing on the Sketch's nonexistent land armies.
Granted, we never really expected to keep those ports even this long.
Fortunately they don't seem to be aware of the ralway inching over the mountains and jungles as we speak.
Of course, the biggest international news was the war with the Western Black Sheep. With the decision to more or less halt further advances and focus on consolidation while sending additional resources, troops, and officers to the Eastern Black Sheep, something incredibly interesting happened.
The decisions earlier in the year suddenly seemed like a badly implemented master stroke. While the cost in men was far, far too high to call reasonable, the rolling through of additional rail lines and pushes towards key strategic locations followed by simply holding ground while aiding the East turned the whole affair into a hammer and anvil process. With clearer orders and full rail lines running up to the borders, the Gylmaryn were now an immovable wall to resist the implacable advance of the skilled generals, massive levies and select elite units in the east.
We DID actually plan to do this. Once again, Nokly takes all the credit and none of the blame!
In particular, Dual Crown specialist units armed with needle rifles had proven remarkably adept at taking mountain fortifications in night raids. The fast, accurate weapons allowed for small units to infiltrate, outside notice, and then storm key positions. Many Western Black Sheep soldiers had surrendered in the confusion, the storm of fire making them think they were fighting formations many times the size that were actually there while already inside their fortifications. Altogether, the outward appearance was that the Dual Crown had established itself as a wall that would ensure that the Eastern Black Sheep would be able to do the actual fighting more or less on their own, which would help considerably with the after war period, as it would demonstrate that the Eastern Black Sheep were in fact a military power in their own right, and did not "need" the Dual Crown to beat the Western Black Sheep. For the more martial Western Black Sheep culture, this would likely help keep feelings of "we could have won if the Dual Crown hadn't interfered" to a minimum.
Already there were some quiet communications from certain Western Black Sheep officials about a peace agreement. The terms being discussed so far were actually pretty good, but also had a few problems. Namely that most of the ringleaders were going to get away, and that would be unlikely to sit well with the Black Emperor. The men with the most to lose were talking about things like exile to the Khemetri or even the Mapanca rather than face their former-liege's wrath. More than that, the peace deal was going to be costly for the victors, because one of the conditions for the end of the civil war was that the Eastern Black Sheep would actually address the issues of the Western provinces. That meant laying rails and telegraph lines, and while the provinces would pay for it in the long run, in the immediate sense that meant that the Dual Crown would be paying to improve the infrastructure of the territory they had just been fighting over.
A peace deal has been offered
[] [War] 0 PW - Keep fighting (Two military choices next phase)
[] [War] 0 PW - Keep negotiating (-2 Temp Trust, one military choice next phase, seek better terms)
[] [War] 1 PW - Accept current terms (-2 IC, Kus rail company doubled in power, -1 Trust, Black Sheep irritated, war ends)
This is basically a perfect conclusion to the war to begin with.
Just need to salve some wounded pride, but we got all our wargoals and a renegotiation can only get WORSE because it'd let the EBS continue ignoring their problems(and the ringleaders are frankly unimportant compared to the root cause).
Narratively, yes, absolutely. Mechanically I'm somewhat unsure, but I'll concede the point.
They've intervened militarily there quite a lot. Via the traditional Sketch means of "oh hey, some random pirates hit your convoy" and "gee, the locals sure pay a lot for modern guns"
Last time it worked pretty much because nobody saw an overland invasion coming and bypassing the whole Sketch strategy.
And once we had the ports the Sketch couldn't take them for the same reason we can't take the Sketch ports in Hung.
...yes and no. For one, because it is mostly flood plains (not swamps or jungle) that should be a secondary concern - But our military doctrine is perfect for this kind of operation, even if our newest tech might be a little iffy - regardless, the black sheep have experience and troops in the area to support us, this is a joint military action after all, not some Gylmaryn adventure.
Unfortunately our domestic audience AND theirs are not interested in that particular motion. The Black Sheep had gotten too big for them to administrate, so even their Emperor doesn't want new clay for a while because he can barely keep his old clay
