I'm a High Fantasy Tax Collector, So What? A CKII Tax Collector Quest

[hYGP]

Plan Deliver the Final Blow wins, 9-1-1.

Equipment Expense: 11 Budget.

Roll me 8d100s.

Martial: Protection Detail: DC: 10. Base Stat: 17 + 2. Cost: 0 Budget.
Diplomacy: The Low Rumors II. DC: 18. Base Stat: 17 + 2. Cost: 2 Budget.
Intrigue: Mapping the Network II. DC: 24. Base Stat: 22 + 2. Cost: 0 Budget.
Learning: Experimentation. DC: 23. Base Stat: 20 + 2. Cost: 0 Budget.
Stewardship: Advancing the Case IV. DC: 10. Base Stat: 22 + 2. Cost: 0 Budget.
Stewardship: Deeper Thinking. DC: 25. Base Stat: 22 + 2. Cost: 2 Budget.
Piety: Justice at Long Last. DC: 25. Base Stat: 20 + 2. Cost: 0 Budget.

 

[hYGP]

Martial:
Protection Detail:
DC: 10. Roll: 17 + 2 + 4 + 7.0 = 30.

The action, at this point, is trivial; the mob has been quieted, and none of the nobility wants to stick their necks out for a clearly doomed regional count. Still, Kerrie and the mercenary companies go and do their job; when the court cases are presented, they are an honor guard to the prisoners, and they prevents the conspirators from leaving or breaking out even as their legal representation strides without a care in the world.

---

Diplomacy
The Low Rumors II:
DC: 18. Roll: 17 + 2 + 9.0 = 30.

Cormag in his presence as a member of the faith reminds the crowd that the trial is soon, and justice will be dealt; the justice of the king and justice of the nation may be slow, but it will be long and arduous for the Count and his band of robbers, he preaches. The lower-class are receptive, and are willing to watch and judge the Gorlin conspirators as they are shuttled from trial to trial.

In hindsight, perhaps you allocated your resources towards combatting the wrong threat.

---

Intrigue
Mapping the Network II:
DC: 24. Roll: 22 + 2 + 9.0 = 33.

Your efforts to make sure that the agents of the conspirators don't manage to achieve their goals works like a charm - you find one bribed guard, who leads you to a low-ranking but suspiciously well-off tavernkeeper, who writes a letter to a woman in the countryside, who sends an agent back with money earmarked for the judges.

Naturally, that money disappears, and Cormag lumbers into the tavern, agent over his shoulder, baldly lying that he found the agent wasted outside of a known gambling den, and the only place he could bring him was the tavern.

+20 Budget.

---

Learning
Experimentation:
DC: 23. Roll: 20 + 2 + 5.1 = 27.1

Ser Tekla attacks the experiments with a glee, rapidly putting your Endless Pen to work as he fills several pages on the qualities of tea and their leaves; the obvious use of steeping tea is obvious, but what about baking? Compression? Dessication? Different combinations of tea and other liquids?

You remembered that last one vividly. Seeing him drunk on a combination of wine, tea, and the sheer hubris of discovery was something else - especially trying to restrain him.

Eventually, when all is said and done, he sniffs the air.

Strange. The lab is nearly odorless, despite every atrocity against alchemy and plain good brewing that he's done. You shudder to think about the time he thought mixing milk and honey and tea and alcohol was going to work out, but...well, the less said about that night the better.

He makes a note of it, mentions it to you, and then you immediately drop everything and ask him to test how odorless he can make it.

If you can sell something to rid an area of odor...well. That would be very profitable indeed.

Odor Remover designs acquired!

---

Stewardship
Advancing the Case IV:
DC: 10. Roll: 22 + 2 + 3.9 = 27.9

With your court cases lined up, it's time to begin.

The first trial begins to much pomp and circumstance. The eager crowds surround the courtroom, and a hush falls over the crowd as the opening gavel comes down. The court cases open to a roaring broadside: you flat out declare that the Count and his conspirators are guilty of lying. You present your notarized receipts as the assessor of the tax office - on it, there is an item labeled "agricultural produce - chai". Tekla's evidence that chai and tea are identical slams down on the table next, presenting that the Port Authority lied to the Crown about what they were shipping. You then invite the members of the court to determine the difference between two boxes of chai and tea that you had prepared beforehand. One sampling session later, they all say that they can't clearly identify which is tea - they both taste like tea, and have the kick of tea, so for the purpose of the Luxury Tax, well... chai had to be tea, then.

The defense weakly attempts to argue that this "chai" was not the genuine article but tea that the assessors had planted and technically this wasn't proof of anything - but this is the point where the mob outside promptly begins to scream their guilty verdicts, and your judge, paid off ahead of time, speedily concurs.

One down, three to go.

The second trial, hot off the buzz of the first trial, opens to an even more explosive charge - stealing from the Crown. To prove this, you need to show that not only has the former Port Authority knowingly lied about the difference between chai and tea, they must have also collected the taxes of their own account.

You present the Port Authority's internal accounts from last year. They had oh-so-helpfully labeled the Luxury Tax collections, giving you an approximate number of the amount that the Port Authority had collected.

Measured against the amount sent to the Crown in the official receipts, and the conclusion was inevitable.

The only quibbling was over the fine owed.

Menacingly, you bring out a much larger stack of papers, slam it on the desk, and present it as the internal financial records from the Port Authority's past years. You conveniently don't mention how many of those papers are blank - it simply helps you make your rhetorical point, which is that the conspirators owe the Crown a gargantuan debt. One you've already estimated.

The outcome was never in doubt.

The gavel slams down guilty to thunderous applause, and the houses of their families are required to repay the amount stolen from the Crown, by decree of the high court.

Two down, two to go.

The next court case would be relocated to the Royal Village, where the highest of the high courts would determine whether the Count and his conspirators had violated the terms of the Gorlin Charter - and at this point, people could almost see the spirits of disaster hanging over their heads. The outcome was likely to be an unquestionable victory.

That was the mood as the Yarognev and Ainsworth companies paraded them out of the city, to thunderous applause and cheering.

---

Stewardship
Deeper Thinking
DC: 25. Roll: 22 + 2 + 8.0 = 32.

That said, it was time to start thinking ahead. You had mentally flagged down something strange with the grain prices last month, especially as you reconstructed their change before the runs on bread. Prices had risen, despite the general abundance of the last year's harvest - what exactly had gone on?

To find out, you first tracked down the people who you had tapped to help run things during the month of August. Happily, you find them continuing to organize their people - you would have hated to invest all that effort without at least looking a little bit towards the long run. From there, it only takes a few more questions to figure out who the merchants who had begun raising prices were - and critically, where they were from.

Once you have that, you start finding the remaining grain merchants from the region and pay them to tell you the general route they take. It greatly helps that they're aware that you could likely call a mob down on all of their heads should they not comply, so most of them decide that getting paid for something they could be intimidated for is the much better decision.

As for the rest, once you have an initial set of data, you don't need theirs anymore.

From the route you can construct, the prices increase from region to region - each additional region the merchant passes through on the way to the capital, the higher the grain prices increase. Understandable - paying for transporting the grain and the various patchwork tolls would naturally raise the prices the longer the distance traveled.

What set the alarm bells ringing for you was two provinces; one located in the west and one located in the east. From what you could tell, the amount that the grain prices jumped their was anomalously high - in fact, you were fairly certain that there were grain merchants that had traveled in the opposite direction because they had realized that they could make more money heading to those provinces rather than the capital. Without traveling to the provinces in person, you wouldn't be able to do anything more than make conjecture, but...

From what you could tell, prices had raised across the board in the western provinces, while the eastern province had seen an uptick in grain prices and a reduction in everything else.

Prices raising across the board to you sounded like either the prelude to a city in revolt or someone messing with the money supply. The situation to the eastern provinces may have just been a bad harvest, or a famine, or something, but in either case it was probably over your head at the current moment.

Nevertheless, it would probably be better to check on those problems sooner rather than later...

---

Random Event Roll: 17

You're awoken to the sounds of knocks and an arrest. A Duke you've never seen before orders you to quietly disarm and come with them to the county jail on suspicion of riling up the crowds.

You ask what evidence he has.

He answers with an order to cease talking.

You gauge your opposition, and the likely results of breaking out right here and now, and decide to come quietly. You signal Kerrie to fade away for now; she could come fetch you all later if the situation arose.

You and your companions are thrown into separate cells - in an ironic echo, you're fairly certain that these cells held the Count and his conspirators, at least before you shipped him off to the seat of royal power for the last and most important trial.

Patiently, you wait.

No sense in getting mad at a temporary inconvenience.

---

Piety
Justice at Long Last
DC: 25. Roll: 20 + 2 + 5.1 = 27.1

Not, at least, when you could be busy doing something about your position. At least, praying to Justice to answer your call.

Justice answers.

Your court cases will be seen through.

Also, there's a crowd thousands strong demanding your release.

Um.

---

Other Revenue: 20 Budget.
Mercenary Expense: 6 Budget.
Publicity Expense: 2 Budget.
Research Expense: 2 Budget.
Lodging and Materials Expense: 1 Budget.
Salaries and Wage Expense: 4 Budget.
Net Profit: 5 Budget.

Remaining Budget: 80 Budget.

Someone has done something extraordinarily foolish and jailed you. The people on the street, freshly energized from their victory over the now-hated Gorlin Conspiracy, were suddenly thrown a new battle - fighting for the heroes of justice who had kept the grain flowing at reasonable prices and brought criminal nobility to heel.

Also, you contacted Justice about the situation, and Justice decided to make the situation...more, by organizing the protests and groups.

At least Justice assures you that the case against the conspirators will go fine. Justice guarantees it.

Thus, just two scant months after the July Days, the September Days kicks off with a roar.

Wonderful.

Now...what to do about this jail cell.

[] The High Road
Demand a swift court case to exonerate you, and prepare to fight a legal battle - by which you mean, the judge is getting bribed and the people outside are going to make sure that there's only one real correct answer. Will grant more power to the Capital streets.
[] Untouchable
Don't even respect this farce of an accusation. Leave your jail cell - which you can do pretty much at will - and live your life free of this nonsense. Immediately head to the Royal Village and continue the court case against the conspirators there. Will grant more power to hostile Capital nobles.

 

[hYGP]

The High Road wins, 14 - 1.

Hm.

Roll me 4d100.

Stewardship:
Defense in Depth:
DC: 15. Base Stat: 22 + 3 (Justice).

Intrigue:
Ensuring The Right Outcome:
DC: 12. Base Stat: 18.

Piety:
Justice, Inherent and Inevitable:
DC: 25. Base Stat: 20 + 3.

 

[hYGP]

Intrigue
Ensuring the Right Outcome:
DC: 12. Roll: 18 + 8.3 = 26.3

Stewardship
Defense in Depth:
DC: 15. Roll: 22 + 3 + 0.9 = 25.9

Piety
Justice, Inherent and Inevitable
DC: 25. Roll: 20 + 3 + 6.2 = 29.2

The Trial of Agueda and his Conspirators

The first thing you have on your agenda: bribing the judge, and making sure the judge doesn't receive any payments from your rivals - provided they didn't already secure the judge. You kick back, confident that Kerrie would manage to flawlessly pull off the job; when a guard passes by your cells four days later, flashing success at you, you quietly applaud her work.

Fantastic as always.

The next day, surprising even the prosecution, the judge has you all hauled before court. You and Cormag barely have enough time to complete your prayer to the Spirit of Justice; with your combined knowledge and instinct, you realize that this prison must be a conduit for a particular kind of justice. You need the kind that will help you in the courtroom, so you choose to instead wait to begin your prayer.

You wait for the beginning of the trial proceedings. The prosecution, off-balance, attempts to regain control - but you interject first, requesting that a prayer be led to the Spirit of Justice hanging over the court. There's no way the prosecution can object, not with the mob outside and the paid judge inside - and so begrudgingly, the prosecution agrees. On one condition, however: that this court trial accept that the prosecution would also be willing to offer a prayer to Justice.

You accept.

The prosecutors begin with a prayer to Justice, demanding that as it had weighed the indiscretions of criminals and scum in the past, that Justice be meted out to those who had disrupted the peace and bring those who had wronged the ancient order of things that undergirded the whole world to heel.

It is good oratory, you admit, but both you and Cormag knowingly look at each other.

No spiritual entity had answered them, no matter how well they concealed it.

In response, you begin your own prayer to Justice. You pray that Justice delivers the even hand of its judgement and leniency, that it may guide the mortal framework to ensure that wrongs are set right and the innocent are divided from the guilty. You pray that Justice, in its great even-handedness, may assist the judge in reviewing the evidence with an unbiased eye.

A power descends upon the courtroom, and in that instant only the prosecution does not know that it is coming. Immediately afterwards, they realize just how badly they have been outmaneuvered, but by then the court case is inexorable. Justice, after all, was overseeing the trial.

From there the case rapidly falls apart. The prosecution is unable to provide any evidence that you and your cohort triggered the July Days; all they have is circumstancial evidence from the month of August, and when they gesture to the September Days, the judge quickly cuts them off before the listening mob can cut the prosecution off - If they had intended to arrest the defendants on these charges, they should have charged that, before ushering the prosecution back to their original position.

You simply take one moment to point out that their only evidence is hearsay at best that points to you doing their jobs in August. Unless they are presuming that you have a heretofore unknown ability to literally travel backwards in time, their evidence is on the face of it nonsensical. Honestly, you don't know why they thought they could try to get their friends in the Gorlin Conspiracy out of this in one piece, you say, casually waving an official looking letter of summons from the Port Authority. Bullshit, you knew, but if you were gauging the mob's reaction right...

The mob explodes in noise, and the confusion on the prosecution's face turns white when they suddenly realize just how angry the mob is.

That was a little bit of a nasty piece of work, but hopefully by giving the other nobles a way to pretend that the prosecution was simply paid off by the Gorlin conspirators, the rest of the nobility would decide to take the offered branch and not pursue. Certainly, the prosecution withdrew their case in haste and quickly got out of there, and with that, you were free to go.

---

Random Event Roll: 24

Except then, as you take a few days to categorize what you had and what was confisticated, two things happened.

One, the harvest turned out to go badly. Rotten spirits had apparently swept across the farms, and left the amount of grain coming into the city sharply limited. Grain prices spiked, and then spiked again, and suddenly you realized you were seeing what you had previously seen during the July Days. Rising prices in grain caused people to run out and buy grain while they could still afford it, driving grain prices up even higher.

To make a bad situation worse, however, the idiots in the Royal Village had decided that now was a great time to mobilize an armed force into the city to "quell the riots" - and make just about everything a million times worse, because those officers had got it into their heads that since Antonin Perrier had been able to threaten the mobs, clearly the nobility would be able to drive away the leaderless rabble.

Leaving aside how that pretty much ignored everything Antonin Perrier had done to persuade the mob, and how it ultimately had not come down to a show of force because that would ludicrously stupid and counterproductive, of course.

As for the result?

The streets positively exploded. If they had hoped to make sure that the July Days wouldn't repeat, they had only ensured that the July Days would be dwarfed by the blood in the coming days.

---

Other Revenue: 20 Budget.
Mercenary Expense: 6 Budget.
Salaries and Wage Expense: 4 Budget.
Lodging: 2 Budget.
Other Expense: 15 Budget.
Net Loss: 1 Budget.
Remaining Budget: 73 Budget.

Right. This was going to be an extremely tricky affair: balancing between properly bringing the case to it's conclusion in the Sejm and not immediately dying to a city on the brink of revolt because some damn fool in the army had made everything worse. Fortunately, it was at least possible to reach the Royal Village from the city; unfortunately, that also meant that if you wanted to finish this case, you had to stay near the city, which was about one thrown stone from literally erupting in flames and rock.

You sigh.

Let it be said that you never had the easy jobs.

This turn, you may spend up to 40 Budget.

You have one [Free] Action that you may spend on an action in any category.

You can cooperate with your teammates to add +3 base stat to an action that you are cooperating on. It is represented by using your [Free] Action on one of your already-selected Actions.

Martial (Choose 1) {Kerrie/Agueda Action}
[] [Martial] Safety in Numbers
Right, with the city as much a powderkeg as it was, it was time to pull the Ainsworth and Yarognev Companies back to defend your group. DC: 10. Cost: 0 Budget.
[] [Martial] Eyes on the Prize
You still needed the companies to keep an eye out for the conspirators, so you weren't going to pull both of them back; but you still needed to keep yourself safe, so it's time to pull one group back.
DC: 15. Cost: 0 Budget.

Diplomacy (Choose 1) {Cormag Action}
[] [Diplomacy] Military Matters
You need to convince the military to step down before they do something incredibly stupid that everyone's going to regret. DC: 25. Cost: 4 Budget.
[] [Diplomacy] The High Nobility
You also need to convince the Sejm to actually follow through with stripping the Count and his conspirators of their titles at some point, so that's a thing. DC: 27. Cost: 8 Budget.
[] [Diplomacy] Bread and Peace
Alternatively, you could just pay a shitton of money for what little bread remains and distribute it pretty much at will to the streets - this might go well, or extremely badly. Hard to tell. DC: 25. Cost: 15 Budget.

Intrigue (Choose 1) {Kerrie/Agueda Action}
[] [Intrigue] Making a Point
Right, the officer in charge of the military needs to be made to understand that cracking down by force is going to be exactly the wrong move. Kerrie's going to have to be the one to do it. DC: 20. Cost: 0 Budget.
[] [Intrigue] Noble Blackmail
Time to see what else you can dig up on potentially recalcitrant nobility. Let's see if we can't persuade them, one way or another. DC: 30. Cost: 8 Budget.
[] [Intrigue] Countering the Count
Don't forget that the Count still has his options; even though he's been taken away from his primary powerbase, you still need to keep a lid on his activities. DC: 20. Cost: 0 Budget.

Learning (Choose 1) {Tekla Action}
[] [Learning] Magical Mapping
Okay, this is long overdue. You need to figure out the spiritual landscape of this city so you can figure out how to maneuver around them deciding to make their voices heard. DC: Scaling. Cost: 2 Budget.

Stewardship (Choose 1) {Agueda Action}
[] [Stewardship] Advancing the Case V
You're so close, all you have to do is convince the Sejm that the Count has shirked his duties and should be stripped of his lands - but that's going to be the rub, isn't it? DC: 30. Cost: 0 Budget.
[] [Stewardship] Slowing the Case
Given the...everything going down in the Capital right now, might it not be a good idea to temporarily postpone the trial for next month, or at least until the rioting is over? DC: 20. Cost: 0 Budget.
[] [Stewardship] City Organizer II
Well, better to be leading the crowd from in front than getting trampled underneath it. Also, you can probably keep people from starving, so that's always a plus. The only slight downside is that this is probably going to feed rumors about you, but you can deal with that. DC: 25. Cost: 10 Budget.
[] [Stewardship] Product Sales
Hey, you're sitting on a veritable trove of good ideas and products. Time to package them all up and sell them - at least, if you can figure out how to do it in this powderkeg...DC: 20. Gain: 16 Budget.

Piety (Choose 1) {Agueda Action}
[] [Piety] Calling All Spirits
Fortunately, the spirits still think they made a fantastic deal last time, so they're plenty amenable to hearing out how the current situation might be prevented from exploding entirely. That would be fantastic. DC: 22. Cost: 2 Budget.
[] [Piety] The Impositions of Order
You're fairly certain that the army and the nobility are going to be trying to appeal to the spirit of Order; maybe you can preempt them, and turn Order's ears towards your ends. DC: 27. Cost: 4 Budget.

 

[hYGP]

Vote Closed. Plan Accidental Sans-Culotte Leader? wins 10-2-2-1.

Roll me 8d100.

Martial: Eyes on the Prize: DC: 15. Base Stat: 16. Cost: 0 Budget.
Diplomacy: Bread and Peace: DC: 25. Base Stat: 17. Cost: 15 Budget.
Intrigue: Making a Point: DC: 20. Base Stat: 18 + 2. Cost: 0 Budget.
Learning: Magical Mapping: DC: Scaling. Base Stat: 20.
Stewardship: Slowing the Case: DC: 20. Base Stat: 22. Cost: 0 Budget.
Stewardship: City Organizer: DC: 25. Base Stat: 22. Cost: 10 Budget.
Calling All Spirits: DC: 22. Base Stat: 20 + 2. Cost: 2 Budget.

 

[Vocalend]

Mercenary Musings

---

The day is clear, with the sun shining clear and bright on a fine Autumn day.

Except, of course, it's not a fine Autumn day- not now. Not in the volatile and dangerous September Days such as these.

But the two men looking out to the city cast in the glare of a sun that may scorch it alight are not regular men.

"So, Patsy- did you ever think it would come to this?" One is a man with salt and pepper beard grown almost haphazardly on his face.

A low growl answered him. "Once more, Yakob, it is Patxi." Another... isn't quite a man at all. Grey matted fur cover his lupine form in full, as half-irritated blue eyes peer on the man. "And no- we did not."

The Captain of the Ainsworth Company smiled grimly. "Do you think our employer would get us through?"

The Yaga of the Yarognev looks at Yakob oddly. "You do not have faith?"

"On something like him? Hardly. He's an employer- a damn good one at his job- but he's The Assessor for a reason. We're not Adventurers, wolfman." A note of envy shines through.

"No, we are mercenaries." A matter-of-fact nod accompanies that. "Quantity is more than quality, at least in this."

"Hmph." Undeniable- The Ainsworth is a premier band for a reason in Gorlin- Their weaponry are eclectic but always high in quality. Even now in Royal Village, their stash of weaponry are within reach- bribed officials look the other way for the stashes of armours within reach of the Company... and the arms in closer, more hidden, reach.

"Wolf got your tongue?" A twinkle of amusement is clear on the Yaga's eyes.

"Oh shut it. Still, who do you think are going in the Capital?"

"Good question." He looks appraisingly at the... not old, but definitely veteran soldier. "You have prestige and flexibility in spades while me and the lads are well- you know."

"Not everyone in your motley crew are Yagas."

"No, but there's enough." Undeniable yet again- The Yagas aren't necessarily stronger than humans- but they are more agile- with fangs sharp and claws, concealed behind padded gloves here in the Royal Village, sharper still. Their howls too, can pierce through the din of chaos, and when modulated in certain ways gives way known to a simple communication cipher known only to the Yarognev Group.

Power versus versatility. Either will be useful in a city in chaos. But only one can come.

"Hmph. Then we best prepare either way."

To that, there's no dissent- as the two look at the vistas of the city in the distance.

 

[hYGP]

Martial:
Eyes on the Prize:
DC: 15. Roll: 16 + 1 + 2 + 2.3 = 20.3

You sigh. Considering the situation, the choice was obvious. Leave the Ainsworth's mostly human company to stay with the humanoid nobility, call back the Yarognev's largely Yaga-based company because that had less consequences in the city. It might inflame tensions with the Royal Army, but ultimately you weren't going to try and convince them with kind words, so it didn't really matter.

"That's a really long-winded way to say you want someone to scritch your back," Patxi said, eyebrow raised.

Well yes, that was an added benefit, and more importantly, that wasn't a sign to stop!

Patxi laughed.

"For someone of your reputation, and, uh, you," he said, gesturing to your legs, "you're surprisingly...hm, what's the best word for it...similar to us," he laughed.

It's okay, they can admit that bipedalism was a mistake.

"Actually, that reminds me: how the hell do you hold anything? It's not like you have, well, fingers or anything..."

Magic, you deadpan.

Patxi huffs a laugh.

Fortunately, that's the extent of the threat you face during October.

---

Diplomacy:
Bread and Peace:
DC: 25. Roll: 17 + 9.3 = 26.3

Stewardship:
City Organizer II:
DC: 25. Roll: 22 + 7.9 = 31.9

The City Must Be Fed

Your highest priority, above all, is to ensure that the city is fed. Feed the city, the rioters go home with a full stomach and don't come out the next day. Starve the city, and violent revolt is not a possibility but an inevitability.

So that means you need to attack the problem from every angle you can get your hands on.

Your second priority, then, is to ensure that this doesn't end up with the Dukes in the city deciding you were the cause of the rabble; best to get ahead of that by coopting them and their works, along with judicious use of a King's seal to make it clear that you had at least some authority to do everything you were doing. Probably wasn't going to make some people happy, but with the right shareholders in your pocket you didn't need them to be happy.

You just needed to step a few things up.

First: You needed grain merchants to heavily expand their operations. As in, hire bands of young laborers to head out with them and ferry back as much grain as they could, even if they had to import it from farther away. Ideally, this would cause the laborers to leave the city and reduce pressures on grain here, while also bringing back more grain from afar to prop up the food prices. Fortunately (or not), your reputation was great enough that with one hand you could knock on the door, with another you could drag a bag of coin, and with a third you could hold out your credentials as a a tax inspector to make the merchants pretty much comply with anything you had them do.

Second: You needed the grain speculators to open up their doors. This step was even easier - as a tax inspector, you were nearly completely certain that all of them had at some point committed tax fraud, so all you had to do was show up with the Yarognev Company besides you with a warrant up and most of them were plenty willing to listen to what you had to say, especially since your offer was "let me buy grain at these prices and I will record you as having paid your back taxes, or I will have you hauled before the court and the streets for tax evasion, do you understand?"

Third: You needed to start actually getting grain into the mouths of the hungry or at least in the hands of the mob. To that end you started just throwing around lots of money to give to the mob so that they could afford to pay for the bread, as well as hooking back into the old networks that you allowed to somewhat run themselves in order to more efficiently coordinate information about who had what bread at what time and how to make sure that everyone was at least going to be able to survive.

Fourth: You needed to be conspicuously showing the King's authority, so that the King would at least be forced to take a stand against you if anyone complained about it. With the right maneuvering, you could also obtain license to help "quell the riots at the source" - which you do, albeit not with force like they envisioned.

So you do.

The paper sprawls across the floor and starts creeping up the walls as you grab, sign, and read papers almost as fast as they're being handed to you, but you make it work. Sheet by sheet, empty load of grain cart by grain cart, and granary by granary, the city is fed.

Absently, you check towards the end of the month why the bread ration for some of the neighborhoods dropped over the last few weeks.

The answer is hesitant, and that confirms the suspicions curdling in your gut.

They starved, and died of sickness.

But the survivors, at least, are fed.

---

Learning:
Magical Mapping:
DC: Scaling. Roll: 20 + 2 + 9.4 = 31.4

Piety:
Calling All Spirits:
DC: 22. Roll: 20 + 2 + 4.0 = 26.0

Which is why the next thing you do as part of your efforts is to bring in the spiritual background. Supposedly, this was caused by the spiritual imbalance of the grain causing fast acting rot, or perhaps simply grain-borne pestilent spirits. With the cooperation of the Gnarled Rod and the request of the spirits begging you to do what you did those months before, you manage to get a rough sketch of what happened to the grain in the fields.

Or more precisely, what happened to the grain in the river barges. What appears to have happened was that some damn fool had offended some river spirit or another, and as a result the spirit had cast a minor curse, cursing the grain to rot should the products of the village ever be washed in the river again. This didn't sound like a big issue, except...well, the spirit apparently hadn't been too careful with the curse, and also the town was a minor foresting town.

Cue the use of the lumber in river barges, who were almost guaranteed to get "washed in the river" again by some hapless buyer about three days downstream.

Cue the mass rotting of all the grain in those barges.

With the full approval of the city authorities, you sent Cormag on his own expedition in order to soothe the river spirit or find a different source for lumber or something.

Hopefully, he'd be back within a month.

Hopefully -

Oh, who were you kidding. You'd have to go sort this shit out yourself soon.

Oh well. At least you had a good map of what the city's magical network was supposed to look like, along with a whole host of sweet boons.

+2 Diplomacy, +2 Intrigue, +2 Stewardship party-wide buff for this turn only. +10 Budget.

---

Intrigue:
Making a Point
DC: 20. Roll: 18 + 2 + 9.9 = 29.9

Effect: Free Incriminating Documents (Nobility)

Meanwhile, you task Kerrie with the job of making sure the Army group outside the city didn't do anything. By slipping into their camp and making their situation clear, you say. You'll retroactively approve just about anything she can get away with, so long as it doesn't descend into murder, or worse, depleting their supply, because then they'd take the grain from the city and that'd set off a whole new firestorm.

Kerrie, who you only have to crane your neck up slightly to see, agrees.

You have no idea what else she's up to for the rest of the month, as she almost never returns to bed - what you do know is that for all the bluster, the Army group stays camped on the outskirts of the city, buying up grain at unaffordably high prices, and occassionally harassing the groups that you send out into the countryside for grain.

Finally, at the end of the month, Kerrie comes in carrying a thin stack of documents to your command center, where you have documents spread out all over the floor. Drily, she comments on you returning to your old habits with the whole web of documents you have laid out.

Hands occupied by other reports, you wave her off and point it to the western point. Automatically, you thank her for her work - and then she doesn't leave, asking if you want to hear about what she did or not.

Fine, you say, setting down the grain stockpile trackers you have written up to check when the last time you sent out the grain groups.

She coughs lightly, and you feel more than see the breeze threatenting to disrupt your carefully arranged documents.

Fine, you say, setting down your documents. What does she have for you?

Blackmail, ethically sourced from the officers trying to counterblackmail the high nobility, she blithely states. Also, stop drooling, it's unbecoming.

Don't care, you say, wiping your mouth. She did incredible work.

---

Stewardship:
Slowing the Case:
DC: 20. Roll: 22 + 1.4 = 23.4

Busy as you are, you can only quickly summon the legal precedent for nobility delaying a court case under the pressing needs of a present feudal obligation, and as Ser Tekla was the lead plaintiff, he was serving his pressing need of an obligation at this current moment in the city so please hold the grand jury trial for a month.

The Sejm, prone to indecision on the best of days now, quickly agrees.

---

Random Event Roll: 57

Mercifully, it all...works. The crowds, pushed to the boiling point, simmer down with the arrival of grain, and the army groups, floudering for something to do, quietly slink away when their time is up. The heated September Days fizzles out over the course of October, as the weather chills and fields are harvested more fully.

HOSTILE INTRIGUE INTERRUPT: DC: 20. Roll: 13 + 7.9 = 20.9

Except...in the middle of this, the Count and his conspirators had slipped away! Fortunately, they slipped away towards the end of the month, so they couldn't've gone far, but...

---

Service Revenue: 10 Budget.
Cost of Services Sold: 6 Budget.
Mercenary Expense: 6 Budget.
Public Relations Expense: 15 Budget.
Administrative Expense: 10 Budget.
Salaries and Wage Expense: 2 Budget.
Lodging Expense: 2 Budget.
Net Loss: 31 Budget.

Remaining Budget: 42 Budget.

You're so close to finally sealing the deal on the trial, you just need to actually see this thing through. You have peace in the city, some amount of blackmail on the nobles...all you need is just that little bit extra!

Just that little bit, and you'll be able to deliver on your boast right on time.

This turn, you may spend up to all of your remaining Budget.

You have one [Free] Action that you may spend on an action in any category.

You can cooperate with your teammates to add +3 base stat to an action that you are cooperating on. It is represented by using your [Free] Action on one of your already-selected Actions.

Martial Action (Choose 1) {Kerrie Action}
[] [Martial] Knock Knock
You have two companies of mercenaries, you know the Count's network, and you have yourselves. You're going to get answers about where they went, by force if necessary. DC: 25. Cost: 2 Budget.
[] [Martial] Speed Is King
You only need the mercenary companies' most elite teams and horseback in order to ensure that you can move as swiftly as the conspirators. You'll lose a lot of mercenary strength...but you'll get speed. DC: 20. Cost: 8 Budget.

Diplomacy (Choose 1) {Cormag Action}
[] [Diplomacy] The Noble Faction
Now that things have come down to this point, you can try to remove the roadblocks the noble faction is putting up in their jury trial. DC: 24. Cost: 10 Budget.
[] [Diplomacy] The Royal Faction
You can also work to ensure that there are absolutely no cracks in the royalist faction, in order to make sure that the other efforts don't go to waste for no reason. DC: 20. Cost: 10 Budget.
[] [Diplomacy] The Neutral Faction
By far the most nobility lay in the neutral faction, however, so you can work to sew up their willingness to convict the Count and his conspirators. While it won't be completely unanimous, if you can convince them of it you can get them to leverage the noble faction into giving way. DC: 22. Cost: 10 Budget.

Intrigue (Choose 1) {Agueda Action}
[] [Intrigue] Chasing the Count
With your previous efforts to figure out exactly who the Count's conspirators are, you can roll in hot on his trail. DC: 26. Cost: 8 Budget.
[] [Intrigue] Noble Blackmail
Since Kerrie's got some of this blackmail, it would be a shame to leave it unused - and you still probably need to get some blackmail on the rest. DC: 27. Cost: 4 Budget.

Learning (Choose 1) {Tekla Action}
[] [Learning] Sympathetic Resonance
While Tekla was toying around with some of the things he got as part of the grab bag of things that the nobility had effectively discarded, he suddenly realized that one of them was a magical tool that helped draw sympathetic resonances between items; and since you had things of the Count, you could in theory set up a link between those items and a tracker. DC: 25. Cost: 4 Budget.

Stewardship (Choose 1) {Agueda Action}
[] [Stewardship] Trial in Absentia
Oh well, if the Count and his conspirators doesn't want to speak in his own defense you can make sure to make the trial go ahead anyway in absentia, and then just vote to strip him of all his titles and wealth. DC: 28. Cost: 0 Budget.
[] [Stewardship] A Fair Trial
On the other hand, if you can drag the Count and his conspirators back here in time, well...the Count's escape would practically seal their fate. Requires the capture of the Count. DC: 15. Cost: 0 Budget.
[] [Stewardship] Sales
At this point, you have a huge collection of things you could sell for quite the tidy profit. Do so. DC: 15. Gain: 30 Budget.

Piety (Choose 1) {Agueda Action}
[] [Piety] Spiritual Interrogation
With the right appeasements to the land, the land itself may be able to help point you in the direction of the Count. DC: 24. Cost: 4 Budget.
[] [Piety] Justice, Unerring and Unflagging
Alternatively, you could try praying to Justice again, and see whether Justice might be able to help you track down where in the world the Count went, especially after fleeing the trial. DC: 26. Cost: 0 Budget.

 

[hYGP]

Plan Making Swift Justice (And The Shiny) A (Nigh) Certainty - Intrigue Edition wins, 7-2-1.

Roll me 8d100s.

Martial: Knock Knock: DC: 25. Base Stat: 17 + 1 + 2 + 2. Cost: 2 Budget.
Diplomacy: The Royal Faction: DC: 20. Base Stat: 17 + 2. Cost: 10 Budget.
Intrigue: Chasing the Count: DC: 26. Base Stat: 22 + 3 + 2. Cost: 8 Budget.
Learning: Sympathetic Resonance: DC: 25. Base Stat: 20. Cost: 4 Budget.
Stewardship: A Fair Trial: DC: 15. Base Stat: 22 + 2. Cost: 0 Budget.
Piety: Justice, Unerring and Unflagging: DC: 26. Base Stat: 20. Cost: 0 Budget.

 

[hYGP]

Martial:
Knock Knock:
DC: 25. Roll: 17 + 1 + 2 + 2 + 8.8 = 30.8

Intrigue:
Chasing the Count
DC: 26 Roll: 22 + 3 + 2 + 3.1 = 30.1

Learning:
Sympathetic Resonance:
DC: 25. Roll: 20 + 3.8 = 23.8

Piety:
Justice, Unerring and Unflagging
DC: 26. Roll: 20 + 10.0 = 30.0*

Random Event Roll: 33

The Capture of the Count

The night sky is pouring rain when the Yarognev Company caves in the door of the tavern. Behind the first mercenaries are Agueda and his squad, under the rain guard of Cormag's robes. The tavernkeeper looks up, sighs, and starts pouring out glasses.

"If you're looking for the Count, he's headed for the border. He'll pass through the town of Yarmouth on the way there to stop at a safehouse, at least until the rain stops and their group can move through again," he diffidently said. "The safe house is a farmhouse on the western outskirts, the one with the red paint."

"I'm glad we could come to an understanding," you say, depositing a good sum of money for his trouble. He simply nods, defeated.

Outside, Ser Tekla attempts to get a resonance between a doll and the Count, but cannot get it to point consistently in any direction - but that's alright. You didn't expect everything to work, after all, and this might be worth looking into later, when you had more time than you did. While you're still under the warm and dry roof, you offer a prayer to Justice.

Immediately, you feel energy flooding through you, and from the shocked faces around you you're not the only one being suffused by the power.

That was as clear a sign as you were going to get, so it was time to go.

Through the driving rain, your team marches. Though your team is soaked in mud up to their ankles and you're barely keeping the mud intact where you step, your team marches. The rains pour down through the whole night, and into the morning, and still you march, keeping time like you were marching in the most ideal weather possible.

By noon, the torrent lets up, from a pounding driving rain that drowned out all else to a mere downpour, and your team, soaked, crawls into town. Inexorably, your feet are drawn to the farmhouse that the tavernkeeper said was a safehouse, and when one of the flickering lights notices your approach, the door swings wide open.

The woman guarding the farmhouse, clutching her musket, simply lets you through. Instinctively, you categorized the musket as unusually pricey for the area, concluding that she likely runs some other business - before you wrly smirk and realize you're intruding on her other business.

Regardless, despite a sensation within your breast telling you that you're close to your destination, you decide to make sure. You signal the Ainsworth Company to go around, while you have the Yarognev Company in the front. Your team breaches in - and a red flash of steel streaks out.

The movement is abruptly sent vertical by Yakob's sweep of his spear. The red blur reaches the apex in an instant. The swordswoman slams back into the ground, knocking the Ainsworth Company flat. The powder of the hand dragons scatters into the mud.

A dagger suddenly hits the ground beneath her. Ice springs into existence around it, freezing her feet to the ground. Her arms clatter as she slams her sword against them, but then a second dagger joins the first, ice spreading just as quickly as she can destroy them. She looks up, sees the Yarognev team's muskets at long range and the Ainsworth Company's hand dragons at short range, and quietly raises her hands.

The rest of the Count's conspirators, suitably cowed, come quietly.

---

Diplomacy
The Royal Faction
DC: 20. Roll: 17 + 2 + 1.2 = 20.2

Carefully, you have Cormag double check that there's no problem among the Royalist Faction - no sudden upwelling of support from their faction at the worst possible time, and all that. He reports back: no problem, the Royalists are committed to the takedown of the conspiracy.

You hope that it's enough.

---

Stewardship
A Fair Trial
DC: 15. Roll: 22 + 2 + 7.4 = 31.4

The trial is the very image of fairness, backed by all the power of the Sejm and the King and the onlooking spirits. Naturally, this means you smash the conspiracy flat.

Your charge is nothing less than the complete breach in contract of the Governor General's office - that the city be governed well, in accordance with the city's charter, and respecting the obligations that the King levied on the Governor General. Your proof is in the testimony of the merchants, since the guildmasters had been defanged and systematically removed or replaced with Port Authority puppets. You corroborate your evidence of fraudulently collecting taxes on the same merchants repeatedly with their internal documents from the past year, and the documents from your financial office. The previous court rulings are paraded out, proving duplicity and deception. Finally, you point to the recent escape from the jail as the ultimate sign of guilt - would an innocent person try to run away, so close to the trial?

With that, the Sejm reluctantly gives way, and even the noble faction that might want to keep the Royalists in check feel no need to protect a clearly doomed group of provincial rabble, as one put it.

The conspirators attempted to mount a few defenses - that all of what the prosecution was lies on the say-so of non-nobles, that this was unjust, that justice needed to take longer than this - but their arguments fell flat, and with just a little counterpush they collapsed completely.

The Sejm agreed to convict, and strip the Conspirators of their titles, wealth, and lands. The land would thus be temporarily managed by the Crown, while the Sejm figured out what to do with...all of that.

Funny thing about "temporary". When every meeting got stuck, temporary could last a long time.

And just like that, the Gorlin Chai Ring was brought to its knees, and the money from their coffers flowed back to the Crown.

---

Piety
Justice, Unerring and Unflagging
DC: 26. Roll: 20 + 10.0

CRITICAL BONUS: TITLE: THE JUST

Outside the courtroom, you see a faint mirage of a tilted scale, and realize that Justice has decided to personally speak with you.

There must be a balance in all things.
​

There must be a balance in all things, you agree.

A good deed is repaid in kind, and an upraised fist likewise.
​

A good deed is repaid in kind, and an upraised fist likewise.

When there is an imbalance, the world will seek to correct it.
​

When there is an imbalance, the world will seek to correct it.

Thus the world now balances the scales.
​

The scale in front of you tips even, and then you understand more than you feel the mark of the spirit imprinting you with your own justice.

---

CASE:

BREWING SUSPICION

RESOLVED​

---

Achievement Get: Swift Justice. For completing within one year, +1 Shiny.
Achievement Get: The Spirit Talker: Successfully convene with every group of spirit. +1 Piety, party-wide.
Achievement Locked: Thorough: Defeat All Enemies.
Achievement Locked: The Ministry Funds Itself: Through the course of normal operations, earn more money than you spend.
Achievement Locked: In The Light: Do not use evidence acquired with less-legal methods.

---

[] [Interlude] The Rotting Crown
The Crown is ill. The great power once contained within the King's brow is fading fast, and some illness or another afflicts him. And still... there is one last great task that he can take up.
[] [Interlude] Sheathed Blade, Sheathed Spite
In all things, there are winners and losers. In some senses, his heritage lost the battle - and so he stands here, holding a blade that he was never allowed to not wield.

 

[hYGP]

King Julius the Bold, hero of the Third Wyvern War, is dying.

He knows this, the same way he eventually learns everything: through long, bitter failure.

It had started with an inexplicable tiredness that his viziers had suggested was merely a part of growing gray hair, of showing the seasons. It had progressed, over the years, to a persistent cough, that never went away. One night he woke up to find bruises he couldn't explain, and since then it had been a recurring condition. Recently, his coughs have begun to be flecked with blood - and yet, the viziers he relies on but cannot trust tell him that surely this tonic will work.

None of them have.

And yet here he is, swilling the vile things that his viziers hand him because he knows but cannot be certain that this tonic will be a failure like all them before it.

The sun is bright outside his window today. The chill air fills the room, and for once and all the times afterwards he hates it. He hates how enticing it is, how he once strode out there into the air to adulation of the crowds as the conquering hero - but those times are past him. His braveness, his boldness, the one quality he had been chosen as king for, made obsolete by the force of his own arms.

Of course, he's realized since that that wasn't what he had been elected for.

Damn his foolish, wasted early years. Unable to comprehend the lightning quick legislation that the nobles were telling him were good for the country, not before they got his stamp of approval, blindly trusting that the comrades he counted on for the grand campaigns would have his own interests when they reach the Sejm, foolishly believing that virtue and training would be enough.

He felt a sense of embarassment, raging and isolating the tenuous allies he had then. It wouldn't be able to bring them back, but he convinced himself that it was merely a sign of growth, of being learning through beatings and difficulty.

Ah, but that he was young and a warrior again! When he was leading the cavalry, hearing the deafening roars of the artillery, the sound and the fury of the musketeers, and at last, the glorious charge against the wyverns from which the Oskarian cavalry gained its wings!

But those days were in the past, the cannons slowly cut down and the musketeers drawn down with the depletion of the royal treasury - the nobility cited the lack of need for such a structure, when they presented it to him, and promised that as the king's retainers they would help maintain the cavalry for which Oskaria was so renowed.

He coughed again.

Damn. This imbalance of humors was doing him no favors. He wiped the blood off of his hands with a handkerchief stained black to hide the bloodstains.

His hands were trembling, and his gut roiled.

He knew this feeling.

He prayed to the Compact, hoping that anyone, anything would listen.

The answer came back, just as it had the day before and the year before:

There was one great task the Compact had for him and his holdings: a Crusade, against a blasphemer in southeastern Transulinia. One who defied the natural limitations of the world and the Compact through magics most foul. Should he do this, the Compact would support him, his troops, and lend the wind to his back for the one last great act he could perform.

King Julius laughed a wet laugh.

When the Compact put it that way, how could he possibly refuse?

---

Across the Kingdom, the word is going out: the Royal Army is recruiting, and so are the noble retainers, in a great bidding war for warm bodies. After all, come the campaign season, the army will be marching out at the head of a grand crusade to put down the heretics to the Compact. Money endlessly flows out of the royal treasury, to finance the production of those arms and the soldiers who would be wielding the force of Oskaria's arms.

-5 Cash Flow! Neighbors shift to Gathering Crusade! Military strength will increase!

That meant your job, in the Finance Ministry, was to go bust the big fraud rings, and hopefully earn somewhere close to the amount of money that your work the last year had managed to achieve. You scowled, but this was just the kind of thing you would have to do. Well, you think, time to leap into action.

[] [Case] Grainy Resolution
Ever since the near-disaster you averted during the July and September Days, you've been keeping your eye on whatever the hell has been going on in the eastern provinces. Their grain imports have been shooting up, and their grain payments to the capital have been dropping steadily, while the imports and exports of other goods don't seem to suggest either a mass death or migration. Considering that the army will have to either take an eastern route or southern route, somebody's going to have to figure out what is going on over there.
[] [Case] The Origins of Specie
The second factor is that you're fairly certain that the currency in the western provinces is devaluing. You have no real way to prove it; the currency seems broadly similar, and the weight of a bag of coin doesn't feel any different - but the prices have been steadily increasing on products that come from and move through that region, without output noticeably dropping. Considering how much manufacturing goes on in the nearby regions, it's worth investigating.
[] [Case] Highway Robbery
In the southern provinces, travelers are beginning to report a huge uptick in highway banditry - and so are the taxmen. Something more suspicious than the usual corruption is going on down there, and you need to figure out what.

---

In exchange for your lightning-quick dismantling and liquidation of the Gorlin Chai Ring, you have obtained 1 Shiny. Here are things you can spend it on:

[] [Shiny] Cold Hard Coin
Money talks, and loudly. Best to start with more.
[] [Shiny] Archbishops' Authorization
Due to your hard work, you've impressed some among the archbishops. With a little bit of cash, you can impress them a little more for an official permit to investigate matters related to the cloth.
[] [Shiny] Unidentified Objects
The liquidation of huge chunks of the conspirators holdings has meant that they've turned over some more esoteric things - and you might be able to snatch some of those. Loot Roll.
[] [Shiny] Wider Remit
It would be great to have a much wider remit to search for incriminating documents among persons of interest, and not just potential culprits.

Upgrades:
[] [Shiny] Well Organized
+1 Stewardship.
[] [Shiny] Well Spoken
+1 Diplomacy
[] [Shiny] Well Trained
+1 Martial
[] [Shiny] Inspired
+1 Learning
[] [Shiny] Unremarkable
+1 Intrigue
[] [Shiny] Faithful
+1 Piety
[] [Shiny] Party Upgrades
Kerrie gains +1 Intrigue, +1 Martial, Cormag gains +1 Piety, +1 Diplomacy, Tekla gains +2 Learning.

[] [Shiny] Null
Save the Shiny for later.