Interregnum Year 12-13 Results
With Meryawy and Ma'atneferure now distracted by other duties, you find more of your time taken up by other tutors. Zizel-Kur from the Garden of Ptah teaches you about the motions of the stars and their significance, while High Priest Atumnemhat checks in from time to time to assess your mastery of important rites. Minor servants take up some of the slack from your governess in teaching you social etiquette while Ma'atneferure herself takes you to your aunt's chambers to show off your lessons. But of your tutors over the next two years, the ones who stand out the most are the Chief Eunuch Ptahshepses and the Royal Treasurer Ipy. Though both were very different individuals you were able to learn quite a bit from their contrasting approaches.
As the father of your friend Bakenptah, Ipy is familiar to you. He was one of the
fellahin, the free peasants who labor on the Nile, until he earned renown in the campaign of your grandfather against Kerma. Even twenty years later Ipy remains a formidable figure, bulky with muscle and rough-hewn, with the abrupt manners of the countryside. His blunt manner hides a keen observer and a willingness to listen to anyone regardless of their station. He teaches you to figure sums and look over records methodically, and to follow up by checking on actual conditions; a lesson complicated by your limited ability to leave the palace, though he prevailed on Ma'atneferure a couple of times to allow you to visit a few storehouses. From what little you hear of the man among the palace staff he seems to be well-respected among the common people and uninterested in petty disputes.
Ptahshepses has been a presence in your life for quite some time, though rarely a close one. He is the head of the corps of eunuchs and in charge of managing your personal household. Most eunuchs in the palace are either burly like Ipy or they turn soft and heavy in jowl and paunch, depending on how much physical exertion they make. Ptahshepses is neither, being toned but not heavily muscled. He wears expensively dyed muslin kilts and a fine wig, with jewelry and perfume of sandalwood. He is sly and cunning, and you watch him find out a thieving servant with innocuous questions and a patient prodding after the truth. He always takes an indirect approach whether haggling with merchants on supplies or enticing a craftsman into the service of the palace. You watch and learn, probably as he intended.
Your mother continues her own lessons, shrouding them with riddles for you to solve. As you do so she graduates to paradoxes, and you spend much time discussing them in your room at night. She says she is preparing you for something, but for what, you don't know yet.
+1 Diplomacy, +3 Stewardship, +2 Intrigue, +2 Learning
Leisure Time
1D100 => 3
As you spend time with Ptahshepses you play more and more rounds of the foreign game. Over the year you try strategy after strategy to defeat him, but his inscrutable strategy and patient exploitation of your every mistake keep him well ahead of you. Over time it becomes a driving focus. You must defeat him. Time after time you come back to him. Eventually he seems almost as frustrated as you are, as though he is trying to teach you a lesson that you simply fail to grasp. Finally, after countless sessions, you simply snap.
"Arrrgh"! You cry out as you sweep pieces off the board and your composure breaks down. "This isn't fun!"
The scattered ivory and black onyx pieces fall to the carpet around your table. Ptahshepses sighs and rises to pick them up. "Your Majesty, if the game is no longer pleasing perhaps…"
"No." You point at the board and grit your teeth. "Another match."
He reluctantly sets the pieces back in the starting positions. You are determined, determined to win this match. But your anger makes it difficult to look forward. You fall back on a furious and aggressive approach with little thought, as though you could wear your opponent down with sheer force of will. He counters your moves with almost contemptuous ease and you're back on defense and the sure track to a loss. Your game deteriorates further as you get more frustrated and fail to even slow Ptahshepses down from utterly dominating the board.
Several turns before he claims victory, which even you can see in your mounting anger, you've finally had enough. You rise and throw the board across the room, shattering it against the alabaster wall.
The eunuch looks shocked and speechless as you turn on him. "Get out. Get out now! I'm sick of this stupid game, and I'm sick of you!"
Slowly Ptahshepses rises from his pillow and prostrates himself before you. "As Your Majesty commands."
He backs out of the room and your expression hardens. He looks concerned as he leaves but it's the same fake expression he takes with everyone. He enjoyed beating you and showing how much more clever he was. Enough was enough. You're not taking any more lessons from him, you swear.
Gain Trait, "Wrathful"
Lose Foreign Game options
Dislike Pthashepses
Famine!
1D100+11 => 65 (Stewardship roll, corruption noticed)
Sennefer's Roll => ???
Still smarting from the falling out with Ptahshepses, you look into the matter of corruption by yourself. You demand access to the grain accounts and other documentation of the relief effort. You pour over the scrolls using the methodical approach that Ipy has taught you. There are… discrepancies in the reports of grain being handed out versus pre-famine reports of the availability of grain. Letters from several
nomes complain of widespread hunger despite reports from granary supervisors that they are distributing rations according to the commands of the palace. The rations provided through the granary system are not generous, but they are supposed to be sufficient to maintain the population. You suspect the grain is being diverted elsewhere, and so the next step would be to visit one of the suspect granaries.
Of course you can't do that so you need to find someone who can handle this. You aren't about to approach Ptahshepses, since the eunuchs may very well be involved in the matter. The Royal Council is still not inclined to take you seriously, and your access to the Regent has been curtailed significantly by the crisis and her worsening health. Ma'atneferure promises to inform the Dowager Queen of the problem, and within the week she introduces you to the royal scribe Sennefer during the midday rest.
You are sitting on the edge of the fountain in your interior gardens when the scribe approaches, escorted by your governess and a eunuch guard. Ma'atneferure bows while the bureaucrat prostrates himself on the stone floor.
"Your Majesty, Blood of Ra, Chosen of Horus, life, peace, and health be yours! How may this humble servant be of use?"
"Rise," you command.
As he springs to his feet you study him quickly. Sennefer is a lean, almost whipcord thin figure with the olive complexion of the Delta. He is almost trembling to be brought before you, though there's something else. He seems very eager to please you. You like that, especially compared to the attitude of Ptahshepses.
"We have come to the conclusion that something is amiss with the granary system. The people write piteously of their troubles and hunger, while Our officials say they are distributing grain according to Our command. This is particularly so in Our province of the Delta, and in certain
nomes of Lower Kemet. It is Our pleasure that you examine certain granaries and determine whether or not Our officials are diverting grain for their own private gain. Report back on the condition of the granaries and
nomes you visit, in any case."
Sennefer looks almost stunned, though his expression soon turns more calculating. "It shall be as you will, Your Majesty. I fear the officials may not cooperate, for I am not of the highest rank of scribe due to the hostility of my superior Wenamun."
"You shall enjoy Our special warrant," you respond, though you wonder if there was a good cause that Sennefer was kept back. But you had few choices and were not going to admit a problem now. "The rewards of obedience to Our will and of diligent execution of this task will be considerable."
Sennefer seemed even more eager at that point, and you have Ma'atneferure hand over the scrolls you were working with along with a list of sites to examine. He promises to begin immediately and you dismiss him to start on his investigation. You hear nothing back for almost a month, but when Sennefer returns you are both hustled into a meeting of the entire Royal Council.
His findings are alarming. Grain was not being diverted from the granaries. The levels of stockpiled grain at certain sites were massively below what had been reported. The grain was simply not there to distribute. Sennefer presents evidence that massive amounts of grain had been diverted away for sale to foreign merchants all throughout the Delta province over a period stretching back fifteen years. The overseers of the storehouses had simply falsified their reports and bribed the handful of available inspectors. Sennefer was indeed unsure if the inspectors had been in on the plot from the very beginning. What had begun as the normal corruption had at some point expanded into a major conspiracy which had even spread outside the province.
The Council accepted his report and commended his work. It also ordered the arrest and trial of implicated officials and sacked the Inspector of Granaries for failure to perform his duties. He was taken from the Council meeting in the arms of one of the Guard of Horus and would face execution if you had any say in the matter. The Regent and her councilors were facing a disaster, as their preparations had been based on the assumption that there was sufficient grain to maintain the country until the next harvest. That was in serious doubt.
It was finally agreed to seize the assets of everyone involved and to purchase up as much grain as possible from every possible source. The treasury would be squeezed hard, Ipy reminded them, but there was little other choice. If the people were not fed a revolution would inevitably result. At enormous cost, they would be.
Outcome:
Famine ended by large-scale grain purchases
Granaries administration purged
Authority malus removed
Childhood's End
As your fourteenth year approaches you grow more assertive in your role as Queen-in-waiting. Your coronation will come soon, even if the Regency will stretch on for years more. Unless you are rid of it. You find yourself thinking on the matter and pondering what you might accomplish once you have power. Ma'atneferure has made sure you have an understanding of what producing an heir will require, among other topics. And yet you can do more than birth a new Dynasty. The blood of a God still flows in your veins and your mighty ancestors have set many examples to follow. Conquest or expeditions will bring treasure, and treasure can build or rebuild the country in your image. As your ancestors did, and as the Dynasties before them did.
And one night you wake up in your bed feeling a stickiness and wetness on your linens. You call for a servant in alarm as you realize it is blood. The handmaiden hustles out as she realizes what is happening and brings forth your governess. Ma'atneferure is fetched from your aunt's chambers without her court wig and with only a skirt to protect her modesty. She hugs you and reassures you that night, explaining again what becoming a woman means. That all women have a cycle not unlike the Nile, which brings a flow to hasten the fertility of the womb. Fortunately you are in enlightened Kemet, not among a barbaric desert tribe which views such a thing as filthy, and as a woman now there is much more for you to learn.
She sings you to sleep after talking with you at length; and your mother whispers in your dreams that the time has come.
