Martial
Power Mapping
DC: 15. Roll: 16 + 1 + 1 + 5.7 = 23.7
The power dynamics were much different in a more rural location like this province. There wasn't anywhere near the hustle and bustle like in Gorlin or in the capital - to move armed was to be conspicuous in this town, where not quite everybody knew everybody - but chances were, everyone in this town was friend of a friend of a friend with each other.
Or really, you note, it's more like everybody was an enemy of an enemy of an enemy to each other.
Damn, you were always a little surprised at how vicious small town politics got. 'Course, it wasn't anything like the viciousness of your childhood, but still, for a people that called themselves civilized they sure were pretty vicious in small groups.
In recent times, however, there were two big complications that changed things.
One, the province had begun dividing into two factions: the Countess' faction, and the Wahner faction.
Two, the army and the Kingdom had begun to call up muster.
That meant that while in a more normal time, the province was a powderkeg, in these times the town had had many of its readily available forces that could be potentially armed for the Crusade drafted into the Countess' retinue. This tipped things wildly in favor of the Countess - since she was the feudal lord in this region, her call for her own retinue made her technically in command of the most powerful force in the province, as the armies would be gathered up in individual provinces and sent out slowly to the border to ensure supplies weren't strained. In practice, though, her control over the retinue was tenuous - anyone belonging to the Wahner's retinue was mostly hostile, and while that still left the Countess with nominal control over a majority of the armed forces she had given command of the retinue over to Baron Kaufmann, who was more neutral. In so doing, she all but handed over power to the Baron Kaufmann to wield, since anybody who didn't want to take sides between the Countess and the Wahner family could simply take cover behind "following the Baron Kaufmann's orders". This left the balance of power distinctly in the Wahner family's favor, since the forces loyal to the Countess were slim and steadily shrinking with her continued attempts to impose the adoption of the new crop.
More importantly for you, though, it meant that there were no forces available to hire.
The only way you'd be able to secure forces would be to work with one of the factions - the Countess, the Wahner family, or Kaufmann's neutral factions, unless you wanted to got it alone. Against you would be arrayed a retinue mobilizing for war, on the eve of said war, should you need to take overt action. A difficult situation, to be sure.
Of course, once the army got here in five to seven months all of that would become irrelevant - but also it would all be irrelevant because if you can't get the grain production up the army is going to be running ragged before it even leaves the country.
Diplomacy
The Ground
DC: 20. Roll: 17 + 5.3 = 22.3
You decide to eschew both factions in your first month. Your goal is to find out what people think on the ground first - and it is...decidedly mixed.
The farmers, surprised that someone important is finally paying attention, lay out their grievances - a justice system that allows their landholders to visit upon them any indignity with no hope of justice, a taxation system that forces them to choose who eats and who starves, and finally an interventionist noble with her head up her ass thinking that she knows better than the people who have farmed the land for innumerable generations. No, the farmers said, you cannot just plant these...potatoes into the fallow fields, they're fallow because the land needs to heal, and you simply cannot squeeze more food out of starved land! And yet, the Countess has the gall to mandate it with her own personal troops that she probably imported from some foreign country, because the late Count's noble soldiers wouldn't have enforced such a thing! Worse, these crops aren't even all that edible; you can't mill it, you can't preserve it, and you can't even eat it for fear that you'll croak like the old man three villages over! Sure, if they absolutely need to indulge her twisted curiosity they can plant these things during the planting rotation for wheat crops, but no more. That would be foolish to the extreme.
The merchants you hear from are equally unhappy. Who wants to buy a crop that's tasteless on a good day and might poison you on a bad one? Who wants to buy a crop that can't be stockpiled? Who wants any of that, especially since the Countess' attempts to get her peasantry to adopt the potato is driving down the production of valuable grain? No, this whole thing is bad for business, even if they are making more by importing grain into what normally was an exporting province.
Just about the only people that seem to be happy about it are some of the more eccentric learned people in the town, who seem to believe that the potato merely needs mass adaption to truly be worthwhile, since the Countess is a learned woman whose knowledge from foreign Alanyiva who probably knows better than the filthy illiterate peasants anyway.
The only reason that this hasn't ended in the Wahner family's complete takeover, however, is that the Wahner family is seen as opportunistic at the best of times and unable to hold even an oath backed by spirits at best - what you just found out is that the previous Wahner family patriarch had literally died five years ago when they were struck by lightning on an open road - a sign that many took to be the spiritual retribution for violating an oath, and which the Wahner family felt to be in no rush to redress, even as they continued to enforce the law selectively on their own allies and to the maximum extent on their new holdings, when the previous lords had understood the delicate give-and-take that would make everyone happy.
So while the Countess might be an unstable lunatic trying to make the farmers adopt potatoes, at least she could be counted on to keep her promises. Meanwhile, the Wahner family was offering a replacement to the unhinged lunatic running the province, but nobody trusted the Wahner family, and many just simply hated them for enforcing every little petty regulation they could.
Intrigue
Into the Spider's Web
DC: 25. Roll: 22 + 3 + 3.5 = 28.5
You almost don't have to look. On the second day, you're already receiving attempts at bribery, which you politely rebuff - especially since these assholes didn't want to promise anything upfront. If they were worried about you stiffing them, they could do what everyone else did and give some upfront with more promised later, but instead they insisted on giving nothing upfront, which meant they were trying to cheat you from the get-go. In other words, probably the work of the Wahner family.
The next day someone from the Countess' side tries to threaten you, their head maid or something believing that you could be intimidated into silence.
You offered her tea and a nice chat, because threats were rude. She definitely noticed the ring and bracelets you oh so clumsily hinted at their magical abilities, and told her that everything could be discussed like civilized people. Oh, also, she might want to check in with her hire about a month ago - you had friends who figured out who had been turned quickly.
That got her out of your hair quickly, even if it meant sending her on a little bit of a wild goose chase.
Kerrie comes back a week later after tailing the two attempted bribes with a list of names, and you spend the rest of the month passing around money and tracking associations between the two factions. By the end, you have a pretty good idea of how the shadow war is going.
By and large, the Wahner faction's money is propping up low level agents, while the Countess' network is using their superior abilities in a more targeted fashion to make sure that key cornerstones of their support stay loyal and that the cornerstones of the Wahner family's support don't. It's hard to say who's winning the undeclared war at this point, but one way or another you're certain it's going to have to resolve by the time the army marches through.
Learning
The Root of the Issue
Roll: 20 + 7.8 = 27.8
Tekla begins by buying up a stock of potatoes to begin his experimentation. He finds first that the potato leaves are inedible, as suggested, but that the roots are quite edible and filling, if starchy and basically tasteless otherwise; for a few days, he pretty much subsists on potato roots. Next he tries following the Countess' instructions and cuts off eyes of the potato to grow in a small plot he's...rented? for a year, to check whether the fallow land could really take the potatoes, before doing all sorts of other experiments that you don't understand all that well.
He comes up with some surprising results: for example, the most reliable way to ensure that there were no malign spirits in the potato was to simply boil it for a little under half an hour, the potatoes appeared to all have a homogeneity of spirit that grains never had, and that yes, the potatoes would take in technically fallow land. Estimating the rate of growth for potatoes after one month was difficult, and certainly more work would have to be done; for now, however, the potatoes seemed like they might have the properties the Countess promised they'd have.
Stewardship
Auditing and Assessment Services
DC: 20. Roll: 23 + 7.6 = 30.6
One of the more unspoken secrets of being an auditor or assessor is the large amount of judgement calls you need to make, judging either where a border had changed and the natural productivity of the soil meant that previous tax burdens were unreasonable or too light, and whether it made sense to put a certain item in a certain category.
You, of course, are not only experienced in the act of assessing such properties, but you also have an almost instinctive grasp of the law, trained into you. With your reputation proceeding you, the task is simple -
At least, provided the farmers are working with grain.
Like so many other of your recent problems, the problem boiled down to the new adoption of the Countess' crop. While you had some idea that the potato was a viable crop that could satiate someone - and thus would likely be technically viable under grain laws, the real problem was that the difficulty in figuring out whether the taxation should be levied upon the entire farmable land or whether it should levied on the old patterns of grain and fallow land.
You decided to go with a fallow land estimation - better to judge the land based on usage rather than technical potential, by your estimation. Most of the landholders were glad to have got your expert opinion on the matter, and paid you accordingly.
Piety
Local Spirits
DC: 20. Roll: 23 + 2 + 1.2 = 26.2
By and large, the local spirits are ecstatic to work with you - working through the Baron's agents was difficult in the best of times, but the Wahners were spiritually untrustworthy and the Countess was busy literally uprooting their community, so they needed to work with anyone neutral at all. That is to say, until they found your group. They're plenty willing to grant you some boons in exchange for helping dissuade, or at least getting the Countess to properly talk with them about not destroying their livelihood and not calling down the attention of the Compact at large - while these potatoes might be a safe crop to introduce, the Gathering might also decide to proscribe the crop, in which case the spirits wanted to be nowhere nearby. Thus, the adoption had to be stopped, or at least slowed until the Divine Gathering could come to a decision about the issue, and if it took showing you some of the secret paths and stashes, so be it.
+1 Diplomacy, +1 Intrigue party-wide buffs.
Random Event Roll: 37
A hacking cough and fever spreads through the town, likely off the back of one of the merchants. It doesn't appear to be anything serious, Cormag reports, but towards the end of the month Tekla catches the fever. Under Cormag's gaze he should be alright, but he's likely not going to be operating at full capacity in the next month - he should definitely be focusing on resting and recuperating, Cormag says, before rushing off to another sickhouse.
Tekla receives -2 to all stats next turn due to illness.
Service Revenue: 2 Budget.
Cost of Services Sold: 0 Budget*.
Lodging Expense: 1 Budget.
Research and Development Expense: 2 Budget.
Salaries and Wage Expense: 2 Budget.
Spiritual Expense: 2 Budget.
Other Expense: 5 Budget.
Net Loss: 10 Budget.
Remaining Budget: 90 Budget.
*Yes, you technically spent some amount of money in order to perform your job this month. This 0 Budget is because the units of abstraction were too low to constantly display the cost savings from the Endless Pen; this 0 Budget figure simply represents finally recognizing all those cost savings in one period.
With 90 Budget remaining, you will only spend 10 Budget on discretionary items (read: the actions listed below).
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] Bulling Through
After analyzing the situation, it appears that many of the forces are assembled but not always available at a moment's notice; for you, that means if you act swiftly and decisively enough, you can seize documents on your own power and the King's legitimacy. DC: 22. Cost: 0 Budget.
[] [Martial] Force Requisition - Kaufmann
With the players on the board as it is, you can ask the currently neutral Kaufmann for a force to help you enforce the King's will and get to the bottom of this case. This being Oskaria, neutral probably means "hasn't been offered a big enough bribe yet." DC: 15. Cost: 6 Budget.
[] [Martial] Force Requisition - Natalia
You can take the side of the Count, and lend the Royal legitimacy to her forces - provided you decide to side with her. Requires Natalia's Invitation. DC: 10. Cost: 0 Budget.
[] [Martial] Force Requisition - Julia
Alternatively, you can side with the Wahner family, and lend the Royal legitimacy to her faction - again, provided you decide to side with her. Requires Julia's Invitation. DC: 10. Cost: 0 Budget.
Diplomacy (Choose 1) {Cormag Action}
[] [Diplomacy] Julia's Invitation
Julia and the Wahner family backing her were willing to introduce you and waive the standard costs of meeting with and interacting with the nobility, on their own family treasury. You do need someone to be your local guide...DC: 10. Cost: 0 Budget.
[] [Diplomacy] Natalia's Invitation
Alternatively, you could accept Natalia's invitation, and meet the local power players through her side - though of course, it will be taken as you taking her side. DC: 10. Cost: 0 Budget.
[] [Diplomacy] The Third Way I
You get the feeling that most of these people would rather a third party come in that they can support - one backed by spirits and royal authority. It may be worth considering simply arriving on the scene and making the invitations yourself... DC: 20. Cost: 4 Budget.
Intrigue (Choose 1) {Agueda Action}
[] [Intrigue] Hit the Wahner Books
Thanks to your scouting the previous month, you know that the Wahner's intelligence - and thus counterintelligence - are mostly propped up on them having a lot of money to spend and a lot of willingness to stiff their patsies. This means that getting into their books should be a fairly simple affair, just to see if they're not doing anything too untoward. DC: 25. Cost: 0 Budget.
[] [Intrigue] Hit the Countess' Books
By contrast, you know that the Countess has a much tighter counterintelligence network, led by her head maid. Obtaining her own accounting would be far harder - besides the fact that you get the feeling that you could just ask and she would be overjoyed to share the numbers with you. DC: 26. Cost: 0 Budget.
[] [Intrigue] Counter Counter Network
Clearly, these two networks were battling over control of a few key individuals. You were an old hat in this game, and better to boot; time to outdo both networks. DC: 27. Cost: 4 Budget.
Learning (Choose 1) {Tekla Action}
[] [Learning] The Root of the Issue II
Tekla's illness means that the continued research will be slowed down, not least because even sick he understands his own chickenscratch better than any of you do. DC: 15. Cost: 0 Budget.
Stewardship (Choose 1) {Agueda Action}
[] [Stewardship] Inheritance Law I
Clearly, the question of who should legally get to rule this province is a touchy subject. Perhaps it would be best to look into what the relevant laws for this area should have been. DC: 30. Cost: 4 Budget.
[] [Stewardship] Account Review - Julia
As the chief tax inspector and known fraud-buster, you should be able to request politely that Julia give her own report of what's going on with this county's taxes. Perhaps you might be able to discern some more details. DC: 25. Cost: 0 Budget.
[] [Stewardship] Account Review - Natalia
However, with your reputation you could also probably ask to see the Countess' documents, at least on the subject of potatoes, grain exports, and taxes, as a sort of expert in the field. DC: 20. Cost: 0 Budget.
Piety (Choose 1) {Agueda Action}
[] [Piety] To Good Health
Since the local spirits have been so cooperative, perhaps they might be willing to help Tekla with his illness? DC: 25. Cost: 2 Budget.
[] [Piety] Spiritual Politics
Part of this case might involve going all the way up into the Divine Gathering to argue a case. Clearly, it would be best to start figuring out how exactly such a case would work. DC: 25. Cost: 0 Budget.
