Hmmm that's a thing as well, what does the diet of the average inhabitant of Silverport consist of? You do use a bit of salt in cooking rice to prevent it from sticking, but not as much as you would in bread. Still, even if it averages out to about a pinch per half a kilo, it's still serviceable as a unit of measurement.
Also @Exmorri, I had question.
I noticed that we don't have a piety score, nor do we seem to have any actions to supplicate a particular patron deity or our ancestors or the like, and we instead have a standard fee set aside for offerings to any and all gods that are relevant to us and our family. Are religious actions so standard and ubiquitous that they will always sort of happen in the background, or will there additionally be a possibility to, for example, start a line of actions to have a personal shrine or small chapel/temple constructed to the god of our trade (clerks? administrators?) or a particularly valued ancestor for social standing and/or blessings?
It seemed that we could draw some attention to ourselves with a large enough offering, so I'm assuming it's possible to be granted certain blessings if we show ourself pious enough?
@Siual
Yes, religious (,spiritual, ceremonial, mythological) actions are ubiquitous. For example Grandmother Avalanche, one of the founders of the clan, is a stubborn old ghost who hangs around in a grave-shrine in the basement of the old family mansion and sometimes comes out at night to talk to people. The sages frown on this, but then the sages frown on practically everyone in a merchant republic because you're pursuing profit instead of virtue.
I think "pious" is a potentially misleading word with Christian connotation to it, but yes, you could definitely gain blessings by sufficient devotion/bribery to gods, ghosts or other spirits. There's a tradeoff in picking a right-sized spirit to approach that's powerful enough to give a significant and lasting blessing, yet also small enough to care about your personal offering, and preferably one who doesn't have a priest-designate or similar favored mortal already. Knowing this sort of spirit lore uses Learning.
Hmmm that's a thing as well, what does the diet of the average inhabitant of Silverport consist of? You do use a bit of salt in cooking rice to prevent it from sticking, but not as much as you would in bread. Still, even if it averages out to about a pinch per half a kilo, it's still serviceable as a unit of measurement.
...I've never once used salt when cooking rice chinese style. You just bring it to a low boil and keep it there until it dries sufficiently(takes about 5-10 minutes for a small pot, though if you're using anything larger it can vary. Alternatively you can steam the rice separate from the heating element to prevent any burned rice.
Definitely not going to see any salt being used by the poorest.
Sticking is not a concern unless you deliberately use glutinous rice.
The write-in is a great plan, except for both the variation in people's diets and all the stored/wasted food. It's too imprecise, and might be difficult to combine with other sources of data.
Vote closed. Writing has 800 words already, since all plans agreed on the necessity of the gates and docks.
What would you like to see a longer post about between updates at some point? Not a formal vote but I'm open to suggestions.
-Spirit pacts and blessings
-What the other advisor options might have been playing
-The nature of anti-royalism in Silverport
-Something else?
You do use a bit of salt in cooking rice to prevent it from sticking, but not as much as you would in bread. Still, even if it averages out to about a pinch per half a kilo, it's still serviceable as a unit of measurement.
...I've never once used salt when cooking rice chinese style. You just bring it to a low boil and keep it there until it dries sufficiently(takes about 5-10 minutes for a small pot, though if you're using anything larger it can vary. Alternatively you can steam the rice separate from the heating element to prevent any burned rice.
You really only salt rice for taste and in my experience that's usually after cooking. I'm more familiar with how rice is cooked in Japan, but assuming you don't want sticky rice you just rinse the starch off before cooking. Salt does nothing for that.
[X] Plan Steady Progress
-[X] Several city gates and nearby roads have been neglected with their minders gone. Some are untolled, some tolled by bandits. Those tolls should go to the palace.
-[X] Do a proper reckoning of the various ports, docks, quays and wharfs around the city to make sure you're getting all the tariffs you should.
-[X] Ask your relatives for advice. Some of the older ones worked for previous Portlords and would know what to do.
-[X] Issue threats of audits and inspections to everyone to encourage them to clean up their own act.
-[X] Write-in approach: Doesn't matter who they are. Everyone eats. Ask the tariff collectors to count the amount of food going in and out of the city over the next six months. The difference is the amount consumed or wasted. By dividing this by the amount of food needed for a person over six months, you will obtain an approximate count for the maximum number of people that could be living in the city. This won't be too far off, a merchant that wastes much product won't stay a merchant for very long.
-[X] Look for reference materials. Somewhere in an archive or library there might be notes on the artificial creation of starmetal.
-[X] Socialize and build connections with one of the great clans of Silverport. (Clan Wisdom)
First things first: who and what's going in and out of the city seems like an important place to start. You grab some paper to make notes on the go, and head to the northwest corner of Silverport where the outer city wall approaches the coast, with the intent of walking south from there and recording docks you come across.
Irregularities crop up immediately. You spot some entrepreneurs who have begun landing their boats further north, even beyond the new outer city walls. They've extended two rickety wooden piers into the sea to assist in loading and unloading, and should definitely count as a dock. In principle, this is not a surprise. Silverport has always been a growing city attracting more people, more boats, and more commerce. Which necessitates more docks and more housing, which is why the new outer city walls are where they are, and the inner city walls used to be outer walls, and when you were a child your grandmother took you to see the ruins of the former inner city walls from her day.
This shouldn't be a problem. It just means your planned walk got a little longer. You head downriver and ask the fishermen whose dock this is. "Old Man Cragface" of no clan, apparently. Where's he? Oh, he's long dead. Whose dock is this now, then? Well, the fishermen still call it Cragface's Dock because he built it.
You look down to your paper, make a note to look for any dock registration or construction permit mentioning a Cragface, look up to the piers again, and with a sinking feeling, notice another cluster of landed boats one li further past them.
On your first day of port inspection, you don't even get back to the city walls.
[Counting the sea routes. Stewardship, 44+19-2(distracted by inspiration)=61. Excellent.]
But time is on your side, as are some fundamental facts about ports: they are effectively impossible to conceal. They need to be large enough to take ships. They are immobile. They have to be arranged in more or less linear fashion along the water's edge. Sometimes that edge curves a lot, to be sure, but an inland port would be a contradiction in terms.
You suppose there could hypothetically be something like a floating port out to sea - a large transport ship taking on goods from smaller ships - but then that ship would still have to come in to land itself. Unless it was large enough to have a small village aboard, somehow, and be self-sufficient. Maybe if one were to set up gardens on the spare decks, and perhaps one could grow grapevines in the rigging... an intriguing thought. You make several notes on the idea before realizing a fundamental flaw: the inability to repair the underwater part of a ship permanently at sea.
Then it's back to work. You ask a dockworker to point you to his boss, ask the boss under whose auspice she's operating, write down the sponsor and repeat the process. Once the sponsor names start to accumulate, you look them up with their clans or in the palace records. Where going up the chain fails, you instead start at the top and cross-reference down from dynastic cadasters and who they rent to. If people are uncooperative towards you, you tag Blade and he uses his connections and charisma to secure an answer for you in short order. Everything is really going very well.
In the process you wind up knowing an unreasonable amount about how docking fee structures and tariff schedules differ across docks and clans.
Only a few small patches have to be (re)registered or put up for auction in the end. It takes some skilful haggling and a few probationary offers that you won't look too closely at recent accounting as long as future accounting remains honest, but you get most owners and rightsholders to quietly resume paying tariffs without complaint or with quickly quashed complaint, and you count this a success to be proud of.
[Counting the land routes. Stewardship, 22+19-2=39. Acceptable.]
Gate and toll inspection proves harder. City walls, you're fairly sure, are supposed to be as linear as coast, and it's not clear why Silverport's outer walls aren't. It violates all logic and sense. And that's just the start of it. Not all the tolls are even collected at gates in the walls. You make a note to Wisdom Shining Void that he should consider a regularization of both tolls and walls.
Then the picture starts to become clearer as you investigate. The city walls were not all built at the same time, nor were they all ordered by the Portlord's office. Several were done by the clan owning that strip of land in return for toll privileges and the right to conduct their own gate patrols. Some stretches didn't start out as city walls at all but as estate border fortifications that were later reinforced and adopted.
You underline the note you've made.
There are slums. There are sinecures. There are bandits. But you bear the hat of authority and the seal of the Palace of the Portlords, and no petty rabble shall stand in your way. Nor do the bandits dare to come after you.
No doubt you'll hear complaints for a long time from the sort of farmer who only brings a produce cart to the city every month or two. But at least things are a bit more orderly now.
---
Proud of having made a complete circuit of the periphery of Silverport, you take time off with a clean conscience and go to visit the Harmonious Wind Spire School of Learning, which is supposed to be one of the more practically oriented academies with a decent library.
[Researching Starmetal. Learning, 14+17+2=33.]
There's numerous references to legendary figures like General So-and-so bearing a starmetal rod forged from the fallen star such-and-such whose passage through the heavens marked the fate of blah blah blah. Starmetal weapons supposedly have an air of inevitability about them, retaining some of the force and weight with which they fell from the sky, piercing armor and shattering parries.
Two days in the library produces sadly nothing on how to make or find starmetal other than the obvious (fallen stars), and you make a note to return after discharging some of your other obligations.
Like your clan's maneuvering for greatness. In this case some of your clan elders are meeting with Clan Wisdom elders (although not the heads of either house) and you're invited.
[Make a good impression. Diplomacy, 20+15=35.]
It goes reasonably well. You're discreetly excluded from a lot of the important conversations - or so you assume, discretion means they have plausible deniability, after all. But you don't embarass yourself, you learn some names, you can recount the good work you're doing, and you finagle an invitation to a social occasion with younger members of Clan Wisdom later.
But the happiest part of the evening is when your father pulls you aside and says: "You've done well. I'm very proud of you."
There's more words about silver linings and unexpected changes and high hopes for the future, and an admonishment not to rest on your laurels, but they seem so much less important compared to the recognition. For so many years from your parents and tutors and aunts and uncles, it's always been "When", either as a prediction or a question. When you're an adult-. When you're in charge-. When are you going to-?
You wish, of course, for your father's days to be many and your inheritance long in coming. But as he hugs you, you feel you have nonetheless ceased to be an heir. Today you have become instead one of the figures that young scions look up to.
---
When you're not trying to staunch the leaky budget, the Portlord has asked that you see if you can perform some kind of census and get a better estimation of the population of Silverport, too.
Before you even start, you spend quite a bit of time thinking how to do this. Counting the people in any sort of direct fashion is right out, there's just too many. You consider counting by district, by clan, by profession, or other ways of slicing the problem into more manageable parts. Anything like a direct count would take a hundred clerks...
...Hmmm. They're not clerks exactly, but the tariff collectors and gatekeepers you've been restoring recently could help. Maybe if you asked them to count people - no, that still wouldn't work, some people pass through the gates several times a day and some not at all in a month. Then it hits you: ask them to count food going into the city, and you can estimate how many people the farms and fishermen and sundry others are feeding. Nobody skips eating for a month, after all.
[Basics of a census. Stewardship, 32+19-2 = 49. Good.]
Well, maybe some strange mystics do. But those are few enough you can count them separately if it's absolutely necessary. You give out the instructions, and repair back to the library of the Harmonious Wind Spire School of Learning to hunt for the secrets of starmetal. One book says it's glowing white, another reflective grey like a mirror, a third claims it to be tinged with all the colors of the rainbow. Which rules out what, black and brown?
Later you find another book saying that stars even when fallen remain property of the celestial deities of the Overworld, which is why starmetal is so rare among mortals: the great gods come to claim it back. Maybe you could follow up on that by asking some priests.
Once your proto-census has been running for a while, you go to tally the numbers. It involves a lot of guesswork such as how many bowls of rice a duck is worth, and a lot of pestering the household cooks to assist you with their estimates. In the end, you run the figures, divide umpteen million bowls of moneychanged-rice by the three months you've been counting for, and come to a result of -
240 000 people, give or take a few thousand.
That can't be right. You know Silverport suffered badly under the reign of the Abominations, but they certainly didn't kill three-quarters of the population, or even half. You glare at the figures and count a second time, coming to the same result. Hmm. Maybe if half that many people again are growing their own food in gardens on the roof or something, and another half again who might be slum dwellers living on what you'd consider starvation rations and rats, also children eat less than adults, and a lot of the farmers living outside city walls should be considered part of Silverport but it stands to reason they wouldn't bring their own meals through the gates...
Even with optimistic assumptions, you can only get to half a million. You feel a strange sense of loss, guilt and disappointment. Intellectually, you know that your census didn't remove anyone from the city. Practically, it still hurts.
---
You take some time away from treacherous numbers and go socializing.
First with older kin in Avalanche, looking for those who worked in the palace during previous administrations. You're treated to the interesting experience of hearing Wisdom Shining Void repeatedly referred to as 'young man'. He's over twice your age! Which still makes him twenty years younger than than some of your oldest relatives.
[Find people willing to talk about the old days. Diplomacy, 9(roll)+15(stat)+10(clan)-2(inspiration) = 32. Good enough.]
[From anecdotes to actionable advice. Stewardship, 21+19-2 = 38. One big hint.]
After finding the right people, you need to very politely steer them towards talking about the palace budget and away from the personal flaws of Portlords thirty years dead. It's slow going. Your venerable kinsfolk are accustomed to a great deal of deference. And you have to not get distracted yourself with talk of starmetal or self-sufficient town-ships. But eventually, you get some advice like dispensing with permits and licenses that are rare or time-consuming and cost more to issue and inspect than they're worth, and one startling revelation from a granduncle:
"Kid, the palace never makes a profit. Never has, not in all the years I worked there, and not now from what you tell me. Not allowed to, really. You see, if it were profitable, it would be like a clan having two heads and the elections wouldn't just be murky, they'd be bloody. Any time the palace looks like it might make a profit, all the clans not in power get together and think of some city responsibility the palace should take on. So whichever clan is in power has to pay all the time for the right to hold office. And they make it up abroad: dumb stunties who are used to living under kings all the time come here and they go hmm, the Portlord must be a king. And then they learn the Portlord can't sign what they want him to sign, and they go hmm, must be the Portlord's family I need to talk to. Like that time in thirty-five when the Catoans, mmm, Catoa's part of Caligia now, isn't it?"
While your granduncle goes off on a tangent about the Catoans of thirty years ago, you consider his words. If you're not expected to succeed, that's a great weight off your shoulders, and it could explain why Void only asked you to halve the deficit. Then again, this information is thirty years out of date, and you don't want to blithely assume that Void is operating under the same rules. Maybe the Steward of thirty years ago was just incompetent and your granduncle is reading too much into it.
You can't very well ask anyone outright about this. You can drop a few hints when you're invited to the Sunrise Mansion of Clan Wisdom, though. But first you pick up a few hints from Blade, who advises you on just how to dress for the occasion.
[Build connections. Diplomacy, 46+15-2=59. Very smooth. Connection added to character sheet.]
It starts with polite formalities. Greetings both personally and in the name of your respective clans. Inquiries after your family's health. Have the gods graced you with good fortune recently? Yes, certainly. You?
Then the gossiping begins. You heap praise on Shining Void, and the young members of Wisdom lap it up. You take the opportunity to speak confidently of Clan Avalanche's imminent recognition as a Great House, and your listeners take it for granted. Hopefully that assumption will propagate upwards.
You listen respectfully to a young woman talking about horse breeding, and nod understandingly at a young man complaining about his lost investments. Everything is going swimmingly.
When you discreetly raise the topic of Clan Wisdom's payments, though, there's no sign of recognition. Maybe you need to talk to someone older. You quickly change topics and offer to share recipes, which goes over well. All in all, it's a great success, and you're invited to return once again.
And in one last effort to keep away from numbers for a while, you decide to foist some of your problems off on someone else by issuing threats of audits. You make cursory references to missing paperwork where you think there ought to be paperwork, and demand corrections be made or there will be Consequences.
[Make people clean up their own messes. Stewardship, 18+19-2=35.]
It works. Sort of. You get some corrections. You also get a lot of stalling and waffle. But even the stalling at least proves that these people exist and are alive, so you can inspect them and be sure you're not on a wild goose chase. If you find the time.
The days tick by. Soon Void returns from his expedition, and gathers the Privvy Council once more to hear how things have gone in his absence.
---
Voting time.
You can write in a report on the past turn to make yourself look good, play up the importance of something you want your boss to look into, flatter one of your fellow councillors by publicly praising their assistance, or otherwise shade the truth to fit your agenda. For example, you could mention only the quarter-million figure or only the half-million figure from your census estimate, or lie entirely and say you haven't done it. If you do not write in, you will be judged on results alone. How horrible.
[X] [Report] Just the facts.
[] [Report] Write In
Suggest courses of action for the next turn (six months); the Portlord is likely to choose one of them. You can use this to your advantage. One possibility is to suggest things that align with your personal goals, another is to suggest things you can do easily and have plenty of time left over to spend elsewhere. However, if there's a pressing concern the boss has that is not covered by what you put forward, he may 'write in' your orders, and cause a relationship hit due to losing respect for your abilities. Votes for this will be in plan format - the more options you give the Portlord, the greater chance he'll pick one, but the less you can steer his instructions.
[] I should continue fixing the palace budget and restoring cash flow.
[] The palace budget is unfixable as it stands, I should sort out the palace's underlying obligations.
[] The census is a lot more important than I thought, order me to do that properly.
[] Have you seen what passes for a toll gate in this city? It's both an economic and a military disaster! Our walls need fixing, fast.
[] I request your official approval to work on creating starmetal. (Will not be a main focus, just approval... or potentially disapproval.)
[] Creating starmetal should be my main project, it would be of immense value.
[] Clan Bridge and their allies like Plum need to be destroyed. Peacefully and financially, of course.
[] Other (write in)
You can think of the report and the courses of action like turn results and stewardship options seen by the hypothetical players in alternate universe Merchant Republic Quest.
Former wealth: 18g
Income: Earned 50g, embezzled 50g
Expenditures: Family 5g, temples 5g, clerks 5g, debt downpayments 35g
Current wealth: 68g
QM notes:
-Do tell me if I've missed something. This is the first proper turn of my first quest, after all.
-The amount of distraction penalty from Inspiration will slowly increase over time, faster if you ignore it entirely on a turn.
-The lack of a distraction penalty in "Make a good impression" is deliberate, since it wasn't a planned turn action.
@Exmorri, do we have an estimate for how much we've reduced the palace deficit from the tariffs and tolls actions?
[ ] [Report]
I'm not sure of the wording, but we should mention our successes in dealing with the ports and gates, and our troubles with the latter and the haphazard nature of the city walls. We may not want to mention our work on the census, because practically we haven't performed any of the functions of a census. We've really only found a lower bound for the city's population. An actual census is going to take a lot more effort, funds, and workers.
[X] [Orders] Plan Counting
-[X] The palace budget is unfixable as it stands, I should sort out the palace's underlying obligations.
-[X] The census is a lot more important than I thought, order me to do that properly.
We got results, we got progress and we got a hint that the Portlord's office should spend heavily whenever it starts turning a profit.
The population being off by a quarter is alarming though. Either theres a lot of food getting into town unnoticed(and thus untaxed!) or we're missing something big.
Based on the state of the walls...its probably due to heavy smuggling.
[X] [Report] Just the facts, but leave out the Census as anything other than a work in progress.
[X] [Action] Plan Merely The Flow Of Wealth
-[X] I should continue fixing the palace budget and restoring cash flow.
-[X] The palace budget is unfixable as it stands, I should sort out the palace's underlying obligations.
-[X] Have you seen what passes for a toll gate in this city? It's both an economic and a military disaster! Our walls need fixing, fast.
[ ] [Report]
I'm not sure of the wording, but we should mention our successes in dealing with the ports and gates, and our troubles with the latter and the haphazard nature of the city walls. We may not want to mention our work on the census, because practically we haven't performed any of the functions of a census. We've really only found a lower bound for the city's population. An actual census is going to take a lot more effort, funds, and workers.
The report doesn't have to be in dialogue form, so you can pretty much say that, just remove the word "may" and make your decision on whether or not to mention it. I'll turn the content into dialogue in the turn update.
It might be worth mentioning the potential that serious smuggling is occurring that is throwing off our estimate for the census. The state of the walls very much suggests that it's a problem.
It also might be worth publicly thanking the guy helping us. Don't need to make a big show of it, but we should show gratitude for the help.
