Martial
DC: 10 Roll: 17 + 7.2 = 24.2
The Yarognev group joins the Ainsworth group under contract as well; the two of them, while threatening to make up a very large outlay of money, will definitely be able to provide enough muscle to allow your team to be serving out multiple warrants for searches and investigations, just as planned. That being said, you were definitely going to want to use the mercenary company's services sooner rather than later; already, both companies are antsy that they're not going to be able to go on the merchant trade ships to ply their trade elsewhere, after all.
Yarognev Group, like the Ainsworth Company, grants you +2 Martial each.
Diplomacy 1
DC: 13. Roll: 18 + 6.9 = 24.9
Cormag takes to the lawyers and educated profession with aplomb; he didn't believe you when you said that the random frame of glasses and broken pocketwatch among your other collections of goods would help, but help they certainly did. Also helping: flattering the rotating pool of lawyers, judges, and scribes that floated around doing part time work, who were able to point out local legal resources and help narrow down the boundaries of the case.
Then you had Cormag drop the real bombshell: you were building a case to take down Count Lucilius Belluomo in the Port Authority, and you had some fairly solid evidence. Was anyone in interested in helping represent the King in court against the Count?
One Sota Johannsen volunteered for the job. You nearly had him agree to do it just for the exposure of taking down a Count, but at the last second your damned sense of honor volunteered to pay him while he was on the government payroll.
Ah well.
Diplomacy 2
DC: 20. Roll: 18 + 5.5 = 23.5. HIDDEN MALUS REVEALED: ENEMY ACTION: -3 = 20.5
You're greeted coolly by the nobles that you finally make contact with, and it doesn't take you long for you to figure out why:
The Count Lucilius and the Bishop Besim were actively trying to use their influence to shut you out entirely. They tried pushing the heresy angle, the angle where they blamed you for the fire for being suspicious, and the angle where they just straight up intimated that they wouldn't speak with you if they wanted to keep being on their good side.
When you begin your counteroffensive, you simply laugh off the heresy charges, as your words palpably pulse with the force of spiritual backing. Not only do you hint that you know that their adventurers and magicians have tried to hit you with spells of compelling truth, you actively invite it. What reason would you have to cause the fire in the financial office? If you think about it, wouldn't the Port Authority have a far more likely reason? To dispose of their own wrongdoings and mistakes, deeming everyone else acceptable casualties? Isn't that completely plausible, considering how the Port Authority has mistreated and refused to compensate these nobles for their own mistakes in fire prevention?
And if the Count and Besim think they can force these nobles to do anything, when Besim can't even get put on his pants on time in the mornings, well, who are they deluding into believing they have power? No, the Count overstepped when he brought in Besim, you argue. This is a grand opportunity to...help the Count destroy his own powerm at which point they would be the ones to step in and fill their shoes.
You certainly don't convince every noble, and many of them that you tentatively mark down as allies of the Port Authority and Besim you tiptoe carefull around, but by the end of it the nobles know that a force is going to oppose Besim and the Port Authority, and some of them are willing to help.
Intrigue
DC: 23. Roll: 22 + 4.1 = 26.1 HIDDEN MALUS REVEALED: ENEMY ACTION: -3 = 23.1
This time, you're fully aware of the trap the Port Authority's agents are setting.
You're just better than them, even if you got super lucky with that one patrol not looking up for the brief instant you needed to get to another roof.
By the end of the month, Besim is sick, tired, crabby, and the adventurers assigned to be his escorts aren't faring any better under the pressure. Unfortunately, his bout of the "sickness" leads the Port Authority to tighten the guards and for him to not go anywhere near his most protected sites, leaving you with no real leads for where he keeps his really incriminating stuff.
Oh well.
Messing with Besim is kind of it's own reward, if you're being honest.
Random Event Roll
Roll: 90.
Effect: Free The Merchants Action.
You figure that while you're out and about securing some chai samples, that you may as well go and grab some merchant testimony while you're at it; no sense to make two trips when one would suffice, after all.
You note the streets brimming with people, the hawkers in the street selling all sorts of rope, sheets, changes of clothes, foodstuffs from the winter, and more besides. Men and women stream through the streets, all in a hurry for what looks like work; the normally everpresent trickle of adventurers running about from Port Authority job to Port Authority job are positively swallowed up by the sheer mass of humanity.
Fortunately, it looks like you were lucky this month, and no serious new illnesses emerged in the city; it was always a risk when the streets swelled with people from all over. Next month, the streets would begin draining of people like a pot of water tipped onto its side, you figured, but while there was still time to reach the merchants now might be one of the few times.
So you go about searching for which merchants sold "chai" and which merchants sold tea. From the chai merchants, you went ahead and bought a reasonably large sample; from the tea merchants, you asked if they were resellers; you simply had a few questions about who they sold it to. Cowed, many of them caved and pointed you to their buyers.
Some of them simply refused on principle, and you made sure to thank them for their principles; those were rare, nowadays. You didn't need their help finding their buyers, but it was always appreciated when someone had a modicum of honor.
Regardless, you went off to find their buyers, which you accomplished fairly easily. From there, you told them the truth: you were on a mission from the Crown to investigate whether the Luxury Tax was being properly collected. Right now, you were fairly certain that the Count Lucilius Belluomo was unfairly taxing the merchants; there was a number that scaled with transaction size, after all, and you had fairly ironclad proof that they were taking more than that. Would these merchants be willing to testify in writing that they had the Luxury Tax applied to them multiple times, to help take down the Count?
Yes?
Excellent.
Obtained Merchant Testimony!
Learning
DC: 20. Roll: 20 + 9.3 = 29.3
Tekla gets to work in his new workshop, comparing the shape, the color, the patterns, the color of the smoke, the color of the tea that each leaf steeped in water created, a taste comparison test, and desirability to known pests.
On every single metric, he found largely that the two of them had largely identical properties, and you still had samples of both left over, just in case you wanted to invite the judges to consider the matter of their own accord.
Obtained Residual Analysis (Chai)!
Stewardship
DC: N/A. Roll: 22 + 4.0 = 26
Now that you had the time to truly dig through the documents you had obtained two months ago, you began noting discrepancies and running a more full analysis on what exactly was occuring in their ledger and their accounts. Carefully, you set aside the most recent results - those would definitely finger you as the culprit for the fire, but with earlier records nobody could prove that you hadn't just bribed a scribe a generous sum to obtain a copy of all those files, even the internal files.
What you find is a fairly depressing story of endemic rot and corruption. It starts at the very top with the tea and the chai fraud, but as you kept moving through the ledger you kept on finding expenses in unexpected places that just screamed to you that the treasurers and higher-ups were embezzling some money out of an already extremely luxurious spending budget, with at least a good quarter of the outlays paying the professional mercenaries and adventurers on permanent staffing, while spending at least another quarter of the budget on hiring mercenary and adventurer legbreakers. The rest, of course, kept falling under "administrative" or "extraordinary expenses" at all the wrong times, as if the officials inside the Port Authority were all treating the money they were confisticating at swordpoint from the citizens as their own personal hoard of gold.
In your darker moments, it made you wonder whether it might not be better to completely non-metaphorically burn the entire organization to the ground and start over from scratch.
Importantly, however, it helped you establish a pattern; this wasn't just a one-time thing, this was a pattern of calculated fraud, and while the numbers being sent to the government were basically totally faked, you could at least estimate what the real number was; seeing as you were one of the foremost assessors in the nation (which is partially how you got this job), even if you were one of the people presenting the case your testimony about the true extent of the back taxes would likely be admissible in court.
And that number was...staggering.
Obtained Agueda's estimate for back taxes owed to the Crown!
Piety
DC: 23. Roll: 20 + 2 (Gnarled Rod) + 2.1 = 24.1
It's one of the last opportunities you're going to get with boarding a ship for contacting its spirit, so you decide to take the chance. It took a lot of coaxing, but you managed to get onto the ship with your Gnarled Rod, and then do the rituals necessary to convince the spirit to present itself and grant blessings, but you succeeded.
You're fairly certain that the sailors are grateful for revealing the spirit of the ship again, but you also kind of wished you had decided to earn money instead of just praying for a blessing again.
Your party receives +1 Martial and +1 Diplomacy for the next turn only.
Mercenary Expense: 6 Budget.
Socialization Expense: 5 Budget.
Research and Development Expense: 2 Budget.
Spiritual Expense: 2 Budget.
Lodgings Expense: 2 Budget.
Salaries and Wage Expense: 4 Budget.
Total Expenses: 21 Budget.
Net Loss: 21 Budget.
Remaining Budget: 153
The trade ships are leaving with the winds this month, and with them go the itinerant workers volunteered or pressed into service as sailors, the mercenaries escorting the merchants, and most of all the adventurers. You might be able to convince a few of them to stay behind at the last second, but the prices are going to run you way up for that.
But honestly?
You have two mercenary companies on your payroll. You have essentially all the evidence you need to nail the Count to the wall. You're still not sure what Besim is up to, but you're sure that it is something, and you don't want him to complete it. While there are still forces in the area that might be friendly, or at least stall out the other enemies of the Port Authority, you're going to really want to grab the Count soon. You can stall out maybe one more month, but after that performing the arrest is going to be extremely difficult, at least for another six months.
This turn, you may spend up to 50 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 Action}
[] [Martial] Energy Spike
The real strength in this city is concentrated in the hands of the adventurers. That means that if you want some of that power, you'll have to pay some real coin for their services. This is going to be your last chance to hire an adventurer, and you will be hiring them at a steep price. DC: 20. Cost: 15 Budget.
[] [Martial] Searching For Answers
You have back up, you have an official writ from the King, and you have you. Time to officially start kicking down some doors and getting some real answers, from both the Count and the Bishop. Requires Going Loud. DC: 17. Cost: 2 Budget.
[] [Martial] Arresting the Count
You have the writ of the King. You have these year-old financial documents. You have the proof that chai is fundamentally identical to tea. The Count is suspected of being guilty of grand larceny from the Crown treasuries, and you intend to detain him until his trial. Requires Going Loud. DC: 25. Cost: 0 Budget.
Diplomacy (Choose 1) {Cormag Action}
[] [Diplo] Prepaid Neutrality
You're not asking for much. You're just asking for one day of latitude, which you will guarantee will not affect their other business. One day, where they won't make a fight much harder than it needs to be. Simple, right? DC: 27. Cost: 6 Budget.
[] [Diplo] The Noble Society
This is going to part of the battleground you and the Count will be fighting over. You need to convince the nobility that they are better off jumping off the Count's sinking ship rather than riding to the end, and that's going to take some doing. DC: 18. Cost: 4 Budget.
[] [Diplo] The High Church
Cormag is deeply rooted into the local priests, the ones running the congregation and healing the sick. Now you need him to step up and take it to the next level, to begin cutting out and isolating the Bishop Rosenberg's allies. DC: 22. Cost: 4 Budget.
[] [Diplo] Going Loud
Your enemies know you're here, and their enemies know you're here. Just about everyone in the city knows you're here; just, not officially. You're going to fix that by announcing that the King's Ministry is here to conduct an inspection on the Port Authority. DC: 10. Cost: 4 Budget.
Intrigue (Choose 1) {Agueda Action}
[] [Intrigue] Cutting the Line Part I
It'd take forever to figure out whose judicial system you'd be falling into to prosecute the Count Lucilius Belluomo and his conspirators. However, what if you just skipped that step by creating a new judicial district for this crime? You'd have to find a patsy, give them money to procure a venal office, and then make it understood that they are to pronounce them guilty, but if it succeeds, you might literally shave years off of the process. But first, you'll have to find an acceptable patsy...which might be a problem. Worse, you've taken so long with this that if you tried to make up a venal office now, it'd almost certainly strangle the legitimacy of the court in the crib. DC: 32 Cost: 6 Budget.
[] [Intrigue] Screw Besim
You gave him a little bit of leeway last time, and he nearly got you. No more of that. Make it hard for him to do anything, and in general completely embarass him. DC: 22. Cost: 0 Budget.
[] [Intrigue] Screw the Port Authority
Alright, you know who you need to target now. Best to start making their lives hell in order to take away their chances to do that to you. DC: 26. Cost: 0 Budget.
[] [Intrigue] Plant Evidence
If you're not satisfied with the state of your evidence, maybe it's best to plant some incriminating stuff. Though...if you planted The Box of Frames and got away with it...well, suffice it to say you could make a problem go away with extreme prejudice. DC: 19/29. Cost: 1 Budget.
[] [Intrigue] Uproot Besim's Cache
You need to find the really incriminating stuff in Besim's cache, the kind that you can actually nail a man of the cloth to the cross for. That's going to take some doing. Worse, they're onto your scent; they know someone's coming for this stuff. At least, in the shadows. DC: 28. Cost: 0 Budget.
[] [Intrigue] Mapping the Network
The Bishop Besim and the Count Lucilius Belluomo certainly have their own agents and methods to ensure that money and whispers ends up in the right ears and hands. If you can start mapping them out, you can prepare to intercept them when they inevitably attempt to bribe the judge, or break either of them out. DC: 27. Cost: 2 Budget.
Learning (Choose 1) {Tekla Action}
[] [Learning] Magical Mapping
You've started mapping out the city's magical flow with the Gnarled Rod, but there turned out to be some unexpected implementation issues. This time, you should have better luck. DC: 23. Cost: 0 Budget.
[] [Learning] Calamitous Inquiries
You impress that these inquiries need to be secret, and Tekla completly understands. If someone or some divine entity figures out why you're asking questions about Calamity Frames and Armors, you're screwed. But all the same...you need to understand. DC: 23. Cost: 2 Budget.
Stewardship (Choose 1) {Agueda Action}
[] [Stew] Refining the Case I
Now that you have your potential judges down to just a handful, Sota Johannsen will work with you to narrow down your judge and figure out how you can dismiss all attempts at getting into another jurisdiction as quickly and expeditiously as possible; it appears he wants him prosecuted just as badly as you do. DC: 22. Cost: 2 Budget.
[] [Stew] The Expensive Expedient
You know that there's only a handful of judges that this case could possibly appear before. Save yourself some time at the expense of...well, a pretty damn big expense. DC: 20. Cost: 40 Budget.
Piety (Choose 1) {Agueda Action}
[] [Piety] Local Spirits
Offering tribute to local spirits as per local custom might actually get them to respond, which would help with literally everything. Problem is, this is a port city, so all the local spirits are greedy little fucks, not that you'll ever admit thinking that out loud. DC: 25. Cost: 2 Budget.
[] [Piety] Spirit of the Ships
Now that you've confirmed that the Gnarled Rod can actually tease out ship spirits, well, that's an excellent opportunity to put out services advertising your ability to locate and give offerings to ship spirits...for a reasonable price, of course. This is the last opportunity these sailors are going to get; don't let it slip away! DC: 25. Gain: 12 Budget.
[] [Piety] National Spirits
This is a bit of a long-shot, because most of the big-name spirits also have big-name projects and priests so attuned to them that they are almost mortal extensions of divine will. That said, it's not out of the possibility that you might be able to contact them, and get them to send a word of advice or two. DC: 28. Cost: 0 Budget.
[] [Piety] The Spirit of Justice
Your new friends among the lawyers swear by it, even if Justice is slow to respond on the best of days; get Justice herself on your side, and you will find yourself more eloquent, and the enemies of justice find themselves tongue-tied and abashed. DC: 28. Cost: 0 Budget.
