I'm... kinda baffled here? Like, what are we playing at?
We very clearly and obviously oppose the whole, "Defund the military and ruin reform just to ruin it" plan, which at the moment is most of what we've seen from the Wulframites. That and austerity.
So committing to helping them while also committing to opposing them seems like it's just going to end obviously badly.
I'm... kinda baffled here? Like, what are we playing at?
We very clearly and obviously oppose the whole, "Defund the military and ruin reform just to ruin it" plan, which at the moment is most of what we've seen from the Wulframites. That and austerity.
So committing to helping them while also committing to opposing them seems like it's just going to end obviously badly.
Hunter was our comrade in arms, and he died like a Saint.
Are we going to just abandon every principle entirely? Will we say that the sky is green if it serves the King's interests?
We promised to support the proclamation of Hunter as a Saint. We believe that Hunter is already a Saint, and that this is merely the acknowledgement of an established fact. Are we going to turn away from a cause we pledged to support, a cause that we believe to be true, merely because it is politically inconvenient?
You spoke against going on the mission with Katarina because we treasure our sacred honor. That sacred honor calls us to fight for our comrade, even as he gave his life fighting for his comrades. Fighting for us.
We can always just say we're in favor and then not actually do anything.
More broadly, this whole thing is an example of how the transition between the books becomes tricky when a lot of opportunities you open in book 2 turn out to be mutually exclusive.
[X] The Dowager's campaign will continue to have my support.
You suppose this will only makes things more difficult for you, if you intend to continue to support the King's policy, but it is one that you find yourself willing to make. If committing to the memory of your old commanding officer requires you to accept some complication within your political career, then so be it. As sacrifices go, it isn't so great a price to pay.
You continue to attend the meetings, especially as they move to the topic of raising further support for the cause. Though such matters are as of yet still only in the conjectural stages, you'll have all the knowledge at your disposal to make a real contribution, once the opportunity presents itself. It is almost the beginning of autumn when the news comes at last. You hear it coming before it even arrives: the sound of the courier running up your street. The street has fallen silent, so silent that you can hear the runner's hard-soled shoes beating against the cobblestones.
They know that this season, on this day, only one piece of intelligence could drive an Intendancy courier to such furious urgency.
As a Lord of the Cortes, you have the honour of being told directly, instead of being merely allowed to guess: Wulfram has moved at last.
-
The Cortes chamber is almost entirely full when the Duke of Wulfram presents his budget again. At least three quarters of the lords are present, an almost impossible proportion.
There are no shouting matches today, as there have been so often this year. There's none of the stately languidity which characterised the Cortes of past years, either. No, today, everyone is perched upon the edge of their seats, from the lowest baron to the King himself, sitting stone-faced on the Gryphon Throne as Wulfram reads out for the second time in as many years the budget which he intends to impose upon the Unified Kingdom.
It's the same budget as the last time: an end to the war taxes, a reduction of the army, a stoppage on all additional spending for the next five years. Yet the situation which greets it may well be entirely different from that of the year previous. The balance of power has shifted over the past few months, in whispered conferences, in the back rooms of clubs over brandy and cigars, in the hushed exchange of whispers and bank draughts.
But the question remains: how? Has Wulfram's delay allowed the initiative to shift back to the King's party? Or have Wulfram and his supporters used their time well enough to secure a majority, perhaps one so great that even the King cannot veto it?
At last, the motion is called to a vote…
[ ] [VOTE] I vote for the Duke of Wulfram's budget.
[ ] [VOTE] I vote against the Duke of Wulfram's budget.
[ ] [VOTE] I abstain.
The chamber fills with the sound of shuffling feet and rustling jackets when the ayes are called. For a moment, it seems as if the whole room has risen in a single moment. But no, you can see the wide swathes of bench where men stay seated by the dozen. More in individual enclaves surrounded by supporters of the Duke of Wulfram.
When the tally is made and they're ordered to sit, you take a deep breath. When the nays are called, you let it out and stand up.
Again, the whole chamber seems to rise, but this time, you know it is nothing but a trick of the eye. All around, you can pick out glimpses of those who have stayed seated, hidden by the multitudes who have stood to be counted.
And there are multitudes. For a moment, you don't even think you've been noticed amongst the standing crowd at all. No member of the King's party nods approval at your action. No supporter of the Duke of Wulfram looks askance. It's as if you're almost entirely anonymous, and only a brief moment of eye contact with the sergeant-at-arms as he tallies the votes seems to even come close to breaking that spell.
Then, at last, you too are ordered to sit, and the sergeant-at-arms steps to the foot of the throne to deliver the count into the King's hands.
The moment of truth is at hand.
The vote counts are read out, but the margins are narrow, so dreadfully narrow.
It takes you a moment to realise that the motion has failed once again.
The whole chamber bursts into a fury of shouting voices and flung papers. The Duke of Wulfram's supporters cry in outrage, whilst the King's crow in triumph. Whatever proceedings were meant to follow are quickly drowned out by the chaos. Some look to the throne to restore order, but the King is in no state to speak. He only sags in relief, sinking into the cushions of the throne and dabbing his sweat-slick brow with relief.
It is a victory, but you're in little mood for celebration.
Whatever setback this has given the Duke of Wulfram will only be a temporary one. Even as you exist the Cortes chamber, you can see him rallying his supporters in the foyer. He will be back next year, with the same bill. If you're fortunate, such a thing will do nothing save to prove the force of his campaign already spent, but you don't think either you or the King's party will be so lucky.
No, chances are, when Wulfram returns next year, he will do so with fresh reserves of energy and new allies to support him. Like Callum IV in the Wars of Unification, you don't think he'll simply take this narrow defeat and go home. No, he'll be back, and next time, he may have what it takes to win a majority to his side.
And what will happen then? The King will be forced to acquiesce. The war taxes will end, the army will be stripped down to its barest skeleton. Or perhaps he'll use his royal veto for the second time in his reign. No King of Tierra has ever used his veto twice.
No, you must hope that it doesn't come to that and wait to see what next year will bring…
-
The closing sessions of the Cortes of 615 come almost as an anticlimax. Without an alternative, the Earl of Weathern's own budget passes almost as an afterthought, the King's supporters upholding it out of loyalty, the Duke of Wulfram's refusing to oppose it out of sheer exhaustion. Other bills pass too, although none which seem to capture the same kind of attention as Wulfram's proposal. Even weeks after the crucial vote, the city's broadsheets seem to be fixated upon litigating and re-litigating its points. Terrible amounts of ink are spilled in the cause of explaining why this lord voted for, or this one against. More than once, you find your own name mentioned, with those papers favouring the Duke of Wulfram criticising your supposed motives, whilst those favouring the King heaping approval upon your loyalty.
It is only two weeks after the dismissal of the Cortes in the last days of summer that the last lingering commentaries on Wulfram's budget are chased out by a new story, and one which might prove of no lesser relevance to the future of the realm.
The Kian Ambassador, it seems, has not spent the summer idle. While the rest of the city was waiting for the vote on the Duke of Wulfram's budget, the Count of Leannejouwe had evidently been in deep and confidential negotiations with the Foreign Office, negotiations which have evidently gone well enough to result in an agreement which may go some way towards alleviating the country's current crisis.
As far as you can tell, the proposed treaty is, at its heart, a trade agreement. In exchange for the right to trade certain goods without being subject to tariffs and the right to be notified, should the King's government consider any similar negotiations with Takara, the government of the Kian Emperor is willing to allow the Tierran Crown a certain level of control over the Kian grain trade.
It is a prospect with effects far greater than might be expected at first glance. The Unified Kingdom has never truly been able to feed itself, and thus grain is Tierra's greatest import. Ever since the war with Antar cut off supplies from that quarter, it has been the Kian doing the bulk of importing it. Naturally, the merchants involved saw fit to maximise their profits, in the knowledge that Tierra's only options were to buy at their inflated prices or starve. The Crown's response was to implement grain subsidies, spending millions of crown a year to stave off famine, subsidies which have done and still do much to deepen the Crown's fiscal crisis.
If the Kian were to offer the Crown the ability to set price controls on Kian importers, there would be no need for such subsidies. While the relief of such a burden on the King's finances wouldn't be sufficient to solve its woes, it would certainly help matters a great deal. If the Kian are dealing in good faith, then the current crisis might be much alleviated.
If.
[ ] [KIAN] If the Kian are willing to assist us, then that is only for the good.
[ ] [KIAN] Only time will tell if this is as generous an offer as it seems.
[ ] [KIAN] I suspect the Kian have some hidden motive. I do not trust them.
[ ] [KIAN] I suspect the Kian have some hidden motive. I do not trust them.
I mean, duh, of course they are. That said [X] [KIAN] If the Kian are willing to assist us, then that is only for the good.
If we picked the stay in our estate path the king would have been forced to use his veto.
Funnily enough during a centrist run if you consistently pick the centrist option and have the stats for it you'd also sway enough people to sit it out that the vote would fail.
He shakes his head again. "My father always told me that humans were like children. Always, I thought that was meant in contempt. But now that I've lived among you and seen the glimmers of what you're capable of becoming, of the race you might be one day, I think I understand what he really meant."
He leans in even closer, his eyes almost blazing. "Tree! Your people have greatness inside them!" he hisses, with all the excitement and conviction of a true believer. "Underneath all your faults, you're capable of wondrous things! If only you had someone to teach you how!"
"You must be taught!" he declares with a grandiosity which would have seemed comical from almost anyone else. "You must learn to seize your destiny, as we have!"
"And who will teach us?" you ask. "You?"
Lord Cassius breaks out into a wide grin. "Of course! A race has a destiny too, and it is ours to instruct, just as it is yours to learn."
His excellency, our friend, Lord Cassius vam Holt is a lovable and jovial person, but holy hell he is a goddamn racist. As depressing as it sound, paternalist who said to us that we are children to be taught while commit blatant imperialism and killing us while proclaiming how much they love us is marginally better than just racist imperialist who just want to kill us. And as astonishing as it sound, most Takaran populace is way worse in racism front.
For more detail of politics and what happens regrading of Wulfam support for Hunter's Sainthood, look at this supplement materiel on Paul Wang's website.
[X] [KIAN] If the Kian are willing to assist us, then that is only for the good.
People don't tend to ask about hidden agenda from people who going to save them from starvation,
[X] If the Kian are willing to assist us, then that is only for the good.
Perhaps it's true that the Kian have their own reasons for tendering such an offer. No matter how well you might wish to think of them, you know that neither the Kian Grand Staff nor the Court of the Sun and Heavens are particularly inclined towards charity. There's no doubt some sense in which the Kian believe that they too might profit from such an arrangement.
Yet that doesn't mean that the Kian are acting entirely solely out of some mercantile sense of purchase and sale. They do, after all, tout themselves as the guardians of humanity. Perhaps it was the sight of a fellow human power facing such apparently dire straits which moved them to act thus? Or perhaps it was a simple matter of compassion, after their ambassador was able to bear full witness to the horrors of the past winter.
And it's not as if the Unified Kingdom is really in a position to refuse such an offer. Given the current situation, the Crown is likely to be eager to take any opportunity to alleviate its current crisis it can, regardless of what the offeror might demand in return, and from what you can discern, the price of the Kian offer is a low one indeed.
Of course, any serious discussion of the matter must wait for the next year's Cortes, for until such a treaty is read before the assembled Lords, it is little more than a private agreement. It will be up to the chamber to deliberate its merits and ratify the thing.
Or reject it.
In the meantime, you have more pressing matters.
Not long after the announcement of the Kian treaty proposal, a courier arrives from the country, carrying a parcel loaded with receipts, records, and letters from your estate manager.
According to his messages, his anxieties regarding the appearance of roadsmen were quite well-founded. If he is to be believed, they've proven themselves a considerable threat over the course of the summer, robbing and killing isolated travellers, preying upon merchants, and going so far as to blockade the roads out of your fief, evidently in some attempt to hold it for ransom.
Of course, if those unfortunate brigands had known that you left the management of your estates in the hands of a former Antari Church Hussar, you doubt they would have been quite so eager to make your lands the intended target of their depredations. Loch did not sit idle during the summer months, instead assembling and training a force of armed men from your tenants. No sooner had the roadsmen shown themselves by erecting their barricades did Loch attack with his makeshift force, killing some, capturing more, and scattering the rest in a brief but bloody engagement.
You're told that Loch himself led the charge. Though bereft of his warhorse, armour, and great Hussar lance, he evidently made do with a pair of pistols from your gun room and a spare sabre, exhorting his rag-tag force to follow as he personally cut down three of the brigands, one after the other. The exploit has made him almost something of a local hero. Even the most sceptical of your tenants overlook his Antari origins now, and you certainly have no intention of chastising him for the trespass of embodying your houseguard—something which, legally speaking, only the lord of the estate can do.
Despite the no-doubt severe long-term effects that the roadsmen's depredations will have on your fief, you cannot allow yourself to dwell solely upon how the situation was handled. For now, you must abjure the privilege of judging your estate manager's past actions from the safety of your Aetorian townhouse and turn yourself to the task of giving him directions for the seasons to come.
Roadsmen or no roadsmen, your fief must still be managed, and the man in charge of doing so will be of little use to you if he languishes through the winter for want of instruction.
You open up the reports which have been sent to you and read their contents:
Your estate manager, Karol of Loch, reports that the crisis with the roadsmen had all but closed the roads in or out of your fief. Whilst couriers mounted on fast horses could still pass with reasonable safety, travellers on foot dared not risk robbery or murder. As a result, no new tenants have come to your fief over the past months—and no disaffected ones have left.
Your estate manager also reports that your fief's relatively low rents allow your tenants some measure of surplus coin, which invariably offers some small increase to prosperity and contentment. He also reports he's had the worst parts of the roads within your fief repaired, a measure which is sure to please your tenants, and bring in the merchants and travellers which would have otherwise been dissuaded by the previously wretched state of the roads.
With the latest reports taken into account, your current financial situation is as follows:
Bi-Annual Revenues
Rents: 567 Crown Personal Income: 180 Crown
Bi-Annual Expenditures
Estate Wages: 175 Crown Food and Necessities: 75 Crown Luxuries and Allowances: 150 Crown Groundskeeping and Maintenance: 50 Crown Townhouse Rent: 135 Crown Townhouse Wages: 60 Crown Interest Payments: 174 Crown Special Expenses: 0 Crown
Total Net Income (Next Six Months): -72 Crown
New Loans: 0 Crown
Current Wealth: 2,443 Crown Projected Wealth Next Half-Year: 2,371
What do you wish to do?
-
[ ] [REPAY] I wish to pay off some of my family's debts. (Write in)
[ ] [REPAY] I wish to turn my attention to other matters.
[ ] [LOAN] I must try to renegotiate the interest on my loans.
[ ] [LOAN] I wish to turn my attention to other matters.
[ ] [LOAN] I mean to ask for a modest loan; 1000 crown, perhaps?
[ ] [LOAN] I am in need of a sizeable loan, 2500 crown or so.
[ ] [LOAN] I shall require a great deal of money; 5000 crown, at least.
[ ] [LOAN] I'll draw upon my connections to arrange a new loan on more favourable terms.
-[ ] I will see what friends in the capital are willing to assist me.
-[ ] Perhaps the Shipowners can offer me some assistance here.
-
[X] I should send some money home, to help improve my fief.
Were you physically present at your estate, you would be able to order the construction of new additions and improvements directly. However, as you're in Aetoria, you shall have to rely upon the judgement and good offices of your estate manager to order what construction he sees fit.
Of course, your estate manager cannot order any construction at all unless he has the money to afford it, and as your manager has no substantial independent wealth of his own, the burden of payment falls upon you, as lord of the estate. Should you wish your estate improved in any way, you shall have to send him enough money to pay for it.
At the moment, you have 2,443 crown available to send to your estate manager. So far, you've sent a total of 2,000 crown to your estate in total. Judging by his current reports, your manager should have something like 0 crown currently available to him.
According to his report, your estate manager is currently planning on repairing your estate's stables and outbuildings.. To do this, he'll require an additional 1,000 crown.
How much will you send?
[ ] [LOCH] Let's give our horses and Loch's mule a nice new home. (-1,000 crown)
[ ] [LOCH] I'm not sending any money to Loch this time.
[ ] [LOCH] I'll write down a different amount to send home.
-
You currently have 0 crown in investments.
You can afford to invest 2,443 crown. Do not forget that larger investments may boost overall confidence in the Exchange as a whole—and improve the opinion of other Shipowners' Club members.
How much do you intend to invest?
[ ] [INVEST] I would like to invest 1000 crown.
[ ] [INVEST] I mean to invest 2500 crown. (Requires loan)
[ ] [INVEST] I am investing 5000 crown. (Requires loan)
[ ] [INVEST] I must think upon the matter more.
It's interesting that the government needs to buy grain from Kian, while one of our farmers' issues is that nobody in the cities has the money to buy their harvests.
It's interesting that the government needs to buy grain from Kian, while one of our farmers' issues is that nobody in the cities has the money to buy their harvests.
Don't forget that Tierra's treasury ran dry while fighting the war with Antar, forcing the government to borrow money at ludicrous interest rates since no one had any confidence Tierra could win a land war in not!Russia. Miguel's wartime taxes don't just subsidize the grain trade - they're also still in place to service 14% interest payments owed to Kian and Takara.
See, the thing about having an estate manager in Lords of Infinity is that they won't move on from whatever their next project is until you've sent home enough money to do it. If we don't fork over cash this turn, Loch won't build anything, and will continue to do nothing until we give him the money for new stables. Chalk it up to the mechanical limitations of the ChoiceScript system Cataphrak uses to write and code the games.
Besides, fixing up the stables and your manor's other outbuildings does provide mechanical benefits in the form of increased Respectability for your estate.
You write up an appropriate letter to your bankers, authorising the transfer of the relevant funds. You imagine it will take some time to process, given travelling time and the general delays of even a private bureaucracy, but your instructions will almost certainly be put into action before the interest on your debt is due again.
Until then, there's little you can do save wait.
-
The courier bearing your messages to your estate isn't the only figure on his way out of the city. The dissolution of the Cortes and the coming of the first autumn rains marks the end of Aetoria's social season. Thousands flow out through the city's roads and quays, much as they had surged in not a handful of months before. The throng in the streets seems to loosen and compress, as if the whole city were exhaling a deep breath. The crowds thin, then break apart into clusters and strands before disappearing altogether, leaving the streets exposed and naked to the sky for the first time in weeks.
Aetoria changes under the greying autumn sky. The warm sunlit hues of the city's buildings fade, as if washed away by the cold rains. The market stalls and open stands which had been set up for the summer season are packed away, their colourful awnings and fanciful frames shut away or brought under the refuge of dull canvas covers.
A quarter of a million people still live within the city, if not more. It only takes a look out the window or a quick visit to the club to remind you that you are far from the last man in Aetoria. Yet even so, when you're not in the salubrious and still-lively premises of the Shipowners Club, the world outside seems so very empty, so devoid of life, like a city of the dead.
And in one way, that is not so unsuitable a description.
There is every indication that the winter to come will be far less severe than the previous one, but you suppose that must be a shallow distinction for those who have no homes to shelter in and no hot food with which to warm themselves. In a clime such as Aetoria's, a mild winter can kill just as thoroughly as a harsh one, if one possesses no protection from its depredations.
For you, of course, the situation is entirely different. Possessed with an ever-available refuge in the shape of a warm and well-appointed townhouse, the prospect of a relatively mild winter is one which may serve you quite well. If the snowfall is kept to a tasteful minimum and the streets remain more or less clear of ice, then you won't be obliged to cloister yourself in your townhouse as you did last winter. Although most of those who would normally make up the social life of the city have since departed, that doesn't mean you will necessarily lack for ways to remain active. Your club will almost certainly remain open, and if you will it, you might even have the chance to aid the Orders of the Blue in taking a more proactive role in aiding those who have found themselves without homes or food, certainly a better use of your time than doing nothing as men and women freeze in the streets.
And there are surely other options, as well; less socially acceptable ones, perhaps, but ones which may be worth pursuing, should the club or charity work prove too…staid for the disposition of a man who was once a soldier…
[ ] [WINTER] The Club sounds like a good way to spend a winter.
[ ] [WINTER] I ought to spend my winter helping those who need it.
[X] [WINTER] I ought to spend my winter helping those who need it.
Naturally, the Order of Saint Octavia is more than pleased to have you volunteer your services. Despite the Order's relatively high profile, it is not every day that a Lord of the Cortes stops by to offer a hand.
Of course, you're not assigned to ladle out soup or hand out blankets or anything like that. Such a thing would be far beneath the dignity of a gentleman of the blood, even if it were done for charitable purposes. No, you are temporarily assigned an office in the Order's sprawling Aetoria offices, across the street from its magnificent shrine. There, you and a small collection of Seekers are given the task of organising and arranging the arrival and dissemination of supplies to the Order's chapterhouses and charitable establishments throughout the city.
It is boring, tedious work, the sort of tallying and checking rather similar to the sort which you would be doing if you had been kept on as your old regiment's quartermaster officer. The Order's insistence upon un-cushioned ladder-back chairs doesn't help either, and you learn to your discomfort that there are some aches and pains which not even twelve years of war had introduced you to.
Still, it is good work, reputable work, something that is likely to make a difference to the city's poor and dispossessed should you do it well. You would have considered that alone recompense enough.
Yet some weeks after you begin, you find your name in the Gazette, praised unequivocally as one of a handful of Lords of the Cortes making some effort to alleviate the plight of the city's poor. It is certainly a pleasant surprise. Though your reputation is already quite illustrious, you certainly will not oppose a little extra burnishing.
The mildness of the winter season makes its end seem less a transformation than it had been the year before, but its character remains the same. The snow in the squares still melts, though there's less of it. The rains still reduce alleys and side roads into expanses of mud, though it's not anywhere near as heavy. The bodies of those who succumbed to the winter's cold are still dragged off the streets to be burned in their thousands, though likely not as many thousands as there was last year.
Spring brings also the first arrivals from the outside world: packet ships braving the last vestiges of the storm season, couriers in-bound on roads which are still half slush and half mud. The city rouses from its winter hibernation to receive them as they bring news from the country and abroad to the waiting populace—and more confidential parcels to their individual recipients.
One of those parcels finds its way into your hands: a fresh set of reports from your estate manager. You open them with some apprehension, wondering if your fief has managed to find itself in the grip of some fresh crisis, as it seems to be every time you open a new set of letters from your estate manager. To your surprise, you find no such dire tidings; the winter and the first weeks of spring have passed almost without incident. Though your tenants are still in a state of recovery from the depredations of the previous year, no fresh calamity has befallen them. For your lands, these past few months have actually proven to be a time of genuine peace.
Of course, that doesn't mean that they're not in want of your direction. Bundled with the letters are, as usual, a more sterile retelling of the last seasons, in terms of profits and losses. You look through them in preparation for issuing new commands of your own:
Your estate manager, Karol of Loch, reports that 11 new rent-paying households moved into your fief in the past few months. He also reports that 3 households have been driven away from your fief by their dissatisfaction with the way things are being run, and 2 households have left your fief in search of better opportunities elsewhere.
Your estate manager also reports that your fief's relatively low rents allow your tenants some measure of surplus coin, which invariably offers some small increase to prosperity and contentment.
In addition, your agent reports that your fief was graced not so long ago by a most curious visitor: a writer of some sort or other, touring the various regions of the Unified Kingdom with the intent of writing a travel narrative for the entertainment of his readers—a narrative which was just published by a rather respectable Aetorian printing house to moderate success.
Unfortunately, the author seems to have been less than impressed by your lands. If the reports are any indication, he writes rather unflatteringly and at length about what he considers to be the poverty of your tenants and the shabbiness of your barony.
You cannot know what sort of influence so blunt an appraisal will have upon the common view of the reputation of your fief, but you doubt it will be a positive one.
With the latest reports taken into account, your current financial situation is as follows:
Bi-Annual Revenues
Rents: 585 Crown Personal Income: 180 Crown
Bi-Annual Expenditures
Estate Wages: 175 Crown Food and Necessities: 75 Crown Luxuries and Allowances: 150 Crown Groundskeeping and Maintenance: 50 Crown Townhouse Rent: 135 Crown Townhouse Wages: 60 Crown Interest Payments: 169 Crown Special Expenses: 0 Crown
Total Net Income (Next Six Months): -49 Crown
New Loans: 0 Crown
Current Wealth: 1,894 Crown Projected Wealth Next Half-Year: 1,845
What do you wish to do?
-
[ ] [REPAY] I wish to pay off some of my family's debts. (Write in)
[ ] [REPAY] I wish to turn my attention to other matters.
[ ] [LOAN] I must try to renegotiate the interest on my loans.
[ ] [LOAN] I wish to turn my attention to other matters.
[ ] [LOAN] I mean to ask for a modest loan; 1000 crown, perhaps?
[ ] [LOAN] I am in need of a sizeable loan, 2500 crown or so.
[ ] [LOAN] I shall require a great deal of money; 5000 crown, at least.
[ ] [LOAN] I'll draw upon my connections to arrange a new loan on more favourable terms.
-[ ] I will see what friends in the capital are willing to assist me.
-[ ] Perhaps the Shipowners can offer me some assistance here.
-
[X] I should send some money home, to help improve my fief.
Were you physically present at your estate, you would be able to order the construction of new additions and improvements directly. However, as you're in Aetoria, you shall have to rely upon the judgement and good offices of your estate manager to order what construction he sees fit.
Of course, your estate manager cannot order any construction at all unless he has the money to afford it, and as your manager has no substantial independent wealth of his own, the burden of payment falls upon you, as lord of the estate. Should you wish your estate improved in any way, you shall have to send him enough money to pay for it.
At the moment, you have 1,894 crown available to send to your estate manager. So far, you've sent a total of 2,000 crown to your estate in total. Judging by his current reports, your manager should have something like 0 crown currently available to him.
According to his report, your estate manager is currently planning on repairing your estate's stables and outbuildings. To do this, he'll require an additional 1,000 crown.
How much will you send?
[ ] [LOCH] Let's give our horses and Loch's mule a nice new home. (-1,000 crown)
[ ] [LOCH] I'm not sending any money to Loch this time.
[ ] [LOCH] I'll write down a different amount to send home.
-
You currently have 0 crown in investments.
You can afford to invest 1,894 crown. Do not forget that larger investments may boost overall confidence in the Exchange as a whole—and improve the opinion of other Shipowners' Club members.
How much do you intend to invest?
[ ] [INVEST] I would like to invest 1000 crown.
[ ] [INVEST] I mean to invest 2500 crown. (Requires loan)
[ ] [INVEST] I am investing 5000 crown. (Requires loan)
[ ] [INVEST] I must think upon the matter more.
Our financial situation still isn't secure enough to move on with the stables... but we do probably need the reputation boost to our barony... but taking out a loan would reverse all the work we just did in slightly reducing our debts... hrmmm.
E: The only good news is that our reputation is truly excellent.
Our financial situation still isn't secure enough to move on with the stables... but we do probably need the reputation boost to our barony... but taking out a loan would reverse all the work we just did in slightly reducing our debts... hrmmm.
You have almost 1,900 crown worth of ready cash on hand. Given our negative net income, it might be wiser to put that money to work attracting new tenants to Reddingfield. If you don't, Loch won't move on to building more useful upgrades like clearing more land for agricultural use.
