It's better for enchanting certain things, like necromancy magic.
A Sword Without a Hilt: A Song of Ice and Fire/D&D 3.5 Crossover
- Thread starter DragonParadox
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It's better for enchanting certain things, like necromancy magic.
- Location
- Germany
This is the equivalent of doing a fire-sale on your own business. They would reap nice profits for a very limited amount of time and burn down their own livelihood in the process. I'm just... I mean... it's kinda on the nose for the short-sighted idiocy of 21st century capitalism, but still.
Unless, again, we switch of our brains and let them become a giant monopolist on all matters of economy under the sea, and then proceed to be neo-liberal morons and pretend that this is fine and that it would be bad for The Economy to bust up that monopoly.
Goldfish
Friendly Spider-Fish Abomination
- Location
- Formerly of the Far Realm
Now we know where Qyburn sources all of his suture materials from.
- Location
- florida
I wonder if they are banking on us not being willing or able to regulate the seas that much...
I mean in the long run they are inevitably going to get out competed on raw silk by prime material sources, they just have more room to grow the stuff. The thing is the guild does have certain specialized forms of silk that require magic in weaving and even growing, those are trade secrets, so it's not like they would lose all their business when the dust clears they just have to change their business model co focus more on the magic side of things. This is something they have been planing ever since the terminus was announced.
Crake
I AM THE STORM THAT IS APPROACHING
- Location
- USA
So basically the assumption lies on the idea that silk is rare enough a commodity on the Material now, but we can produce it even easier than the Silkweavers in Vialesk can due to having more space to do so.
What they are proposing is basically reaping short-term profits, large amounts of profits, contingent on the idea that they have basically decided silk production is a market they must get almost entirely away from to any meaningful scale. They have the capital and the assets to set up large-scale production quickly, out-compete everyone else for the short period of time they expect to need to, then downsize everything as they diversify the profits into other industries.
It's kind of cut-throat.
What they are proposing is basically reaping short-term profits, large amounts of profits, contingent on the idea that they have basically decided silk production is a market they must get almost entirely away from to any meaningful scale. They have the capital and the assets to set up large-scale production quickly, out-compete everyone else for the short period of time they expect to need to, then downsize everything as they diversify the profits into other industries.
It's kind of cut-throat.
- Location
- Germany
Then they would not be asking and instead just claim some stretch of seabed and dare us to do something about it.
Alright. I notice when you are dead set on something working in a very particular way, because you have not mentioned special silks at all before now and kept talking about them stabilizing the price of their own, very much normal sea-silk by holding a monopoly. So, whatever. It's bad by GM fiat if we let them do it. Got it.
[X] Tell them that there have been plans made to develop the under-sea industry of the Imperium by attracting workers from the PoW and that you will contact them with the details for a joint venture to expand their production to Planetos once the details have been set up. (ACSEC subsidiary controlling the large-scale underwater industry of which you will sell no more then 40% of the stock to outside investors.)
There. Monopoly problems averted.
- Location
- France
This makes more sense... But it seems to rely entirely upon the assumption that we'll be bursting the bubble. I guess it's reasonable enough if you know little about us. But they could have tried to get onto the ground floor of our upcoming giant price-fixing-through-controlled-supply monopoly!
- Location
- France
A question : how bad is it if the price of these things crashes?
Unlike gold, this has a minimum value of a sort because it's directly used to produce quality essential goods (very comfortable clothes, sheets, etc). Does it have production costs that can't be reduced much?
Because I was thinking of going for a large scale market, selling it at peasant prices. Would that require completely underpaying the workers? Could we get away with it by not paying the current premium the industry pays for the land to grow the stuff on?
Could we grow some near the coastline using far cheaper human workers? There were pearl industries IRL that just relied on locals who were good at holding their breaths, after all.
Sorry for the stupid questions DP, but I really do want to check this before we set up a crazier plan.
Unlike gold, this has a minimum value of a sort because it's directly used to produce quality essential goods (very comfortable clothes, sheets, etc). Does it have production costs that can't be reduced much?
Because I was thinking of going for a large scale market, selling it at peasant prices. Would that require completely underpaying the workers? Could we get away with it by not paying the current premium the industry pays for the land to grow the stuff on?
Could we grow some near the coastline using far cheaper human workers? There were pearl industries IRL that just relied on locals who were good at holding their breaths, after all.
Sorry for the stupid questions DP, but I really do want to check this before we set up a crazier plan.
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Pretty much yeah
The thing to keep in min about the Plane of Water is that it is not really an undersea sort of place. It's more like if outer space was filled with water.
It's more a case of me not thinking through all the implications. I had 5 characters per faction written up with motivation for Vialesk and that is a lot to juggle even with notes on everything and I simply did not consider all the economics so I'm kind of patching things up as I go along. I'll edit all this in the update tomorrow.
Sorry for needing all the course corrections guys.
- Location
- Germany
If all else fails, we can dump production cost by flesh-forging better mollusks.
We can also use flesh-forged creatures, soulforged undead or constructs as workers. Especially the undead are cheap as hell and massively multiply the labor pool.
Which is stuff we can do everywhere and only don't do it because it would send troublesome shocks through our economy. But it's an option if we need to put the silk-weavers into their place.
- Location
- France
To be fair, we've established that these people are competent and that they're in it for the money. If their moneymaking plan doesn't make sense, then it's easiest to discreetly change the moneymaking plan before it appears on-screen. Especially seeing as the problem here isn't a deliberate hint at in-universe realities, but simply stems from you putting more thought into this than DP (and probably being better at this stuff).
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Crake
I AM THE STORM THAT IS APPROACHING
- Location
- USA
The niche hobbies of the posters here makes this quest a collaborative effort. Granted, I will point out some of us here have far more tolerance to 'loosely researched BS' compared to 'requires academic dissertation to begin satisfying that particular itch of mine'. With not much inbetween.
- Location
- Germany
Frankly, I'm not a fan at all of you patching up the world instead of the plans of people. You did the same by suddenly mentioning completely out of the blue that the Greens are super loyal and gauging how much support there could be drummed up was completely non-viable, despite there being, you know, the military as one of four powerful factions in the government.
It makes actually engaging and planning with all of this a massive source of frustration since we basically have to work against straight up GM fiat that will arbitrarily block of certain paths.
Definitely being better at this stuff.
Edits done, sorry again for the hiccup guys.
- Location
- United States
It's good that you're actually taking notes now, but I think part of the problem is that you're focusing your effort on the wrong places. Yes, the Plane of Water is interesting, but just because something is interesting doesn't mean we should be spending too much time there. The intrigue in here felt a bit pointless and more like a chore to be over and done with because the bigger focus is back at home with four major operations brewing (Slaver's Bay, Qohor & Norvos, Court of Stars, & Ymeri vs Rh'llor). Visiting Vialesk is mostly just for shopping these days since they made it clear they're not willing to ally with us militarily.
I guess what I'm trying to say is it's good that you're making an effort to pin down villain motivations, but not everything needs to be a problem to be solved. Sometimes it's better to just let things coast by in less important places so that the actual important stuff can get more attention. This is reminding me a bit of the argument the thread had over every visit to a city ending up with some hostile random encounter.
I think you mean the Golds being loyal? That was in my notes from the start, they are the conservative faction and the soft isolationists, they need to be stable.
Crake
I AM THE STORM THAT IS APPROACHING
- Location
- USA
No, he means the Admiral of the Fleet being so loyal that he could never see a coup as being a viable option, but that wasn't pre-established in the quest as far as we knew, it was only made explicit after we expressed a desire to make overtures to the Greens to rearrange the political arena through coercive methods (not actually launching a coup, but saber rattling to exert pressure).
You limited options instead of giving us people to interact with, manipulate or entice.
- Location
- Germany
No, the Greens.
This was the plan:
Which resulted in this off-hand exchange the next update:
Which reads as "this was not a valid idea and I'm killing it right here and now" to me.
Which I could stomach, but then we got the magic silk popping up right now.
At which point it's getting frustrating to make plans, since you might just strangle them in discussion or the next update.
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Ah, that. Keep in mind who was telling you that (and what you found about him later) and the reason he might have to keep you guys dependent on his faction.
I'm finding it a little hard to judge what is and is not desirable complexity here, but I get the point
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egoo
Totally Not Creating Problems Where None Existed
- Location
- Russia
I cannot second Duesal enough over this whole intrigue being... mite bit more complicated than I'd have expected from this action.
I mean, sure, I'm slightly traumatised how the last one action involving MArids and diplomancing that I pushed through had hurt the thread, but still.
But whether it was or wasn't to be backgrounded isn't really the problem here, I think.
@DragonParadox, I insist on you taking a whole day, or several, off to write up decent background, motivations and plans for anyplace we decide to "surprise visit" like this look at Vialesk had been.
We can live with the delay, and you seem to desperately need that time to write without endless "patching" and self-contradiction here and there.
We had gone to places you haven't had good background for in person before.
We will again.
You just gotta bite the bullet and stop winging it to everyone's eventual disappointment.
I mean, sure, I'm slightly traumatised how the last one action involving MArids and diplomancing that I pushed through had hurt the thread, but still.
But whether it was or wasn't to be backgrounded isn't really the problem here, I think.
@DragonParadox, I insist on you taking a whole day, or several, off to write up decent background, motivations and plans for anyplace we decide to "surprise visit" like this look at Vialesk had been.
We can live with the delay, and you seem to desperately need that time to write without endless "patching" and self-contradiction here and there.
We had gone to places you haven't had good background for in person before.
We will again.
You just gotta bite the bullet and stop winging it to everyone's eventual disappointment.
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Crake
I AM THE STORM THAT IS APPROACHING
- Location
- USA
So basically it was bullshit.
Which makes sense... he was spinning bullshit to us the entire time we interacted in any way.
Yes, on the one hand I'm kind of happy i finally managed to get something past you guys, on the other it looks like GM Fiat so I'm obviously not doing it properly.
Crake
I AM THE STORM THAT IS APPROACHING
- Location
- USA
The thing is, you could have had Hermetia give ANOTHER aside in the next update that went something like "so it was all bullshit? Maybe our talks with the Greens will go some places then".