Diplomacy
Patchwork
DC: 20. Roll: 20 + 8.3 = 28.3
In the wake of the deaths and the arrests you've made over your career, as well as the men carried off by the levy, the customs of who farms which land is badly torn apart. The confusion is palpable, and barely settled as winter begins to set in. You decide to help resolve the issue; before your status as the Just, you were the Assessor, after all, and that leaves you in a position to report on who is able to farm what lands under what conditions - especially ones that might ensure future prosperity.
Which is to say, you set up contracts where farmers work on land they don't technically own in exchange for a commission on the sales of crops on the land, close to but not quite equaling the interest rates one might pay for taking out loans to hire other farmers. You briefly considered a mad scheme where you'd have everyone in the province owe each other some amount of money in order to correctly align incentives for farming other people's lands, but you decide to throw that out in favor of a much simpler system: a quota due to the landholder that could be disregarded in times of crisis, as agreed upon by at least one party and an outside observer.
It wasn't a fantastic solution, and you were also adding in new laws that had not been implemented before, but as a solution it seemed to work well enough for getting farmers back onto the land and producing food at reasonable rates. So - you handed in the code for what you had done to the Countess, and also left notes about how you were fairly certain that people were going to be abusing the crisis function soon enough, provided she didn't step in and start bringing either some real rigor to the code or simply phased it out as life moved on.
That was probably good enough, and you were forced to simply accept good enough so that the rest of the country wouldn't fall apart around your ears first.
Learning
Rewriting the Notes
DC: 15. Roll: 20 + 7.9 = 27.9
Tekla is hard at work figuring out exactly what his cryptic writing from last month meant - what did it mean that the first rotation of the, what the hell is this, red soul goes first?
Hey, he said it, not you, you shrug.
He glares at you, but over the course of the month he eventually figures it out.
It's a lot more complicated than it sounds, but largely, he explains, the formation of ghosts boils down to some sort of obsession in life, an abrupt end, and an exposure to a spiritual power, apparently. While it's not that anybody who encounters those conditions becomes a ghost, it's more like it is impossible for ghosts to form without those necessary conditions - much like how fuel, air, and heat do not always make a fire, but a fire always needs all three. Importantly, obsessions don't have to be life-long, as paradoxical as it seems - so long as the obsession is sharp towards the end of the life, it creates the conditions for a soul to cling onto the mortal plane. An abrupt end, then, is necessary for the spirit to not be greatly weakened by the weakening of the body. Ghosts themselves are significantly weaker spirits than ensouled spirits, and the process of death is...extremely traumatic, to put it lightly, so the soul cannot be overly weakened at the start of the process or the spirits will simply lack the strength to incorporate their obsession. Finally, Tekla notices that there needs to be some source of magical energy to commence the conversion into ghosthood - while he's not certain of whether it's something in the grave site or just something to do with natural energy from the environment, some grave sites produced huge outbreaks of angry ghosts bent on revenge, while others didn't.
If he had longer in the field, he might be able to try to experiment on them - but, well, the dead were well and truly buried, and not even he was foolish enough to risk digging them back up for some more experiments.
Stewardship
Reporting In
DC: 20. Roll: 23 + 3.6 = 26.6
Well, this thing's a doozy to put together. You have to explain that the Countess was pushing the adoption of a proscribed crop and was busy fighting resistance to it, and that's why you had to...join forces with her to arrest the deceitful tax collector in the province...before pushing for the wide-scale adoption of the proscribed crop so that you could feed the army...and then sticking around to help bandage the bleeding wound you ripped into the province.
Hm.
Well, never let it be said that you're bad at paperwork.
You begin your work to recast the whole thing as a series of desperate necessities. You
needed to boost food production, and buying up grain from the neighboring provinces would have completely defeated the point. You
needed the liquidity that the Wahners had embezzled - which in a short-sighted move, they had apparently spent in order to keep their extortion scheme running. After an initially bad harvest, you
needed to boost food production for the army. You decide to leave off the little war with the nobility you had in the middle there - it'd only make things more unnecessarily awkward, and might result in a trial before the Sejm, which you
really didn't need at the moment. You simply leave it as "the peasants grew too hot-headed and slaughtered other peasants", and leave the rest to their imagination. The rest was a process of obtaining justice and sorting out the tax schema in the wake of the madness, and that's what you'll stick with.
Piety
Burying the Arisen Dead
DC: 25. Roll: 24 + 6.7 = 30.7
Random Event Roll: 23
Well, the good news is that the outbreaks have stopped and the dead are well and truly buried now.
The problem is that some of the spirits in the local Gathering have petitioned for the existing ghosts to become recognized as ancestral spirits - and unfortunately, this made enough sense that they were able to persuade enough members to make it a quorum, before the Gathering at large realized what the ghosts
were.
That is to say, one big seething mass of hatred and grudges from life given spiritual nourishment and the urgent need to see it done. Their developed ability to reason didn't really help their case, when all of their solutions inevitably turned to "violent retribution" - if you had more time in the province, you would probably want to kick them out. At this point, though, they had well-entrenched themselves into the Local Gathering - prying them out would be an entirely other hassle that you had neither the time nor the justification for.
Martial
Transferring Command
DC: 15. Roll: 17 + 2 + 5.5 = 24.5
Intrigue
Conduit Protection II:
DC: 15. Roll: 22 + 3.8 = 25.8
Piety
Transferred Justice
DC: 27. Roll: 24 + 3 + 2.7 = 29.7
In some respects, much of your work is already done. The Guardians of the Spirits need only select their own leader, who answers to the Countess. You've long since spun off your network of whispers and payments, and the only thing left is the transfer of the Title of Justice's Overseer.
The search for a candidate whose Justice that the people would accept is difficult - the problem being that the person must at once be seen as neutral, be seen as spiritually attuned, and have the presence to command the province. You eventually settle for one of the old doorsman of the Countess, a holdover from when the Count still lived, as your best available candidate. Cormag and the doorsman shook hands, balancing the scales - so that when Cormag released, the title of Justice's Overseer rested on the shoulders of the doorsman, who now commanded the routes through which the communities' own justice must flow.
It wasn't a perfect solution, but it was one that would be good enough.
Good enough to pack up your things and start heading to the next case.
CASE:
GRAINY RESOLUTION (I)
RESOLVED
Achievement Get: Swift Justice. For completing within one year. +3 Minor Boons.
Achievement Get: Thorough: Defeat all enemies. +1 Shiny.
Achievement Get: In the Light: Do not use evidence acquired with less-legal methods. +1 Respect.
Achievement Get: I Am Altering the Terms: Convince the local Compact to loosen technological barriers. +1 Learning, party-wide.
Achievement Get: Pray That I Do Not Alter It Further: Convince farmers to adopt a new crop - with or without the Compact's permission. +1 Shiny.
Achievement Get: War For Fun and Profit: Win a short war that makes you a lot of money. +1 Martial, party-wide.
Achievement Get: The Starting Penalty is Waived: Successfully feed the army without starving the peasantry. +3 Minor Boons.
Achievement Locked: The Ministry Funds Itself: Through the course of normal operations, earn more money than you spend.
Achievement Locked: Order Above All: Prevent the adoption of a new technology.
Achievement Locked: Loyalty To The Crown And Nothing Else: Betray or oppose every faction within a province and successfully close the case anyway.
Achievement Locked: An Uneasy Peace: Successfully prevent stochastic massacres from occurring after a period of heightened tensions.
[] [Interlude] Pouring Rain
Wind blows, rain falls, and the strong prey upon the weak. When the strong collide, then, what is the weak to do but run away?
[] [Interlude] The Swagger of Heroes
The conquering hero did it again! You knew that your job here was a little bit of a...journey, but hey, you got respect, power, and you didn't need to look for a dry place to sleep anymore!
