Amidst all conflict, strife and murder, you and yours have lasted long by simply sidestepping most of it. Some of the family die far from home, in ports on other coasts. Some of the family die nearby and all too young. But the family endures.
And so does the family business. Beneath the notice of Leadenhall Street and atop the arteries of subcontinental commerce, you and your dynasty have lasted for more than long enough by staying out of notice.
Perhaps it is time to change history.
* * * * * * * * They are always sober, modest, thrifty, and cunning in identifying the source of their profit, which they are always at pain to maximize. They have an exceptional capacity of discovering the humour of those who are in a position to help or hurt them. They flatter those they know they need to be in the good books of. In case of loss, they console themselves easily and can hide their sorrow wonderfully ... In general, they are a people with whom one could get along well so long as one is on one's guard.
- Hendrik Adriaan van Reede tot Drakenstein, heer van Mijdrecht, about the Bania merchants of Bengal, 1687
* * * * * * * *
There are sails on the horizon, marked by a great red cross. The sails are purest white, marred by sea-foam and the winds of half the globe, and the cross is red as wine, red as blood, red as the ledgers aboard. They coast into harbor with half their sailors sick or flea-ridden, the captains on the quarterdeck tall and proud and zealous as they bark the orders to dock. Cannon are rolled out just in case, as the teeming mass of dhows, coastal luggers, and the occasional junk are all too close for comfort – the port is larger than the newcomers are used to, the accoutrements of its officials glittering with gold thread and more suited to a duke than a port-captain.
The captain has a great black beard and a crucifix hanging from his neck, a doublet and hose richly fastened with what silks he brought with him and yet worn by the voyage from across the world. He steps down from the ship almost gingerly, and the port authorities – such as they are – come to meet this voyager with trumpets and elephants and ceremonial. The governor of the region is curious, and wishes to know what the newcomers want. Where they came from. What tax they will pay.
Most of all, the latter.
The governor meets the adventurer-captain in a meeting hall older than half the kingdoms on the other side of the world, pillars scarred by age and warfare shrouded with silks and tapestries. He is seemingly gracious, an avaricious glint in his eye as he examines the letters that the adventurer hands him. Letters written in courtly Arabic and other languages besides, speaking of spice and trade and most of all silver.
The adventurer is a Christian, but there are few of that breed here in any case. When asked about his faith, about conflicts with the port, about the piracy haunting the seas, he swears he comes in peace to trade. In the name of his king, his nation, and his God, he comes in peace. And in the name of the family of da Gama, whose name he bears, he comes to trade.
The governor nods slowly, an advisor whispering in his ear as the court begins to murmur. The haze of novelty hangs over the day like a pleasant whisper in the senses, and the court itself sees a main chance. For some, it is an opponent that has already ravaged the Mediterranean and about whom tales have been sung in souks from Cairo to Tunis. For some, it is a new trade captain and envoy, another power bloc on the great chessboard of the continent. For yet others, it is silver coinage gleaming bright and pure, perhaps marked by the odd cross that the captain wears on a necklace. None of them can hear what the governor's advisor says.
The advisor draws back. The governor smiles, teeth stained red by betel-nut and the gifts of the captain lying at his feet. A fine cloth cap or six. Coral, with the sheen of the seas. Sugar, oil, honey, the work of artisans thousands of leagues away. The governor frowns. The captain himself smiles a smile that fails to reach his eyes, and warily watches the court as he answers a final question with an apologetic tone. There is no silver, no gold, no tax that he shall give. He comes as a royal envoy, and will be treated as such.
A stamp rises. A stamp descends. A trumpet begins to sing.
The fleet leaves with damaged ships and sixteen fishermen impressed by force into its ranks, sailing towards the setting sun. The captain has anger in his eyes and vengeance on his lips, and in time his God will grant it.
Two year later, another captain with sails of white blazoned with a cross as red as blood comes across the oceans. There are no gifts that he brings save war.
In this, he fails. For now.
* * * * * * * * * *
On Leadenhall Street in London, where the Thames flows thick and dark and muddy beneath a cold and rainy sky, there is a building with a richly carved frontage and polished wooden doors. There is a doorman at that portal, his uniform splendid in comparison to the port-workers around him, opening the door and saluting the sober gentlemen in dark clothes who seem to almost inhabit that building. If one asked the doorman, he would tell you that this was the Honorable Company, and gesture to the wrought iron signage that adorns the building's frontage. If one went inside, past the doorman and the doors of exotic teak, there is a secretary. If one asked him what went on here, in the den of the wealthy abutting the Thames, he would say that it was Trade with India. If one asked the director, chief among those who inhabited the building and spun webs of commerce and speculation to beguile kings and lords alike, he would tell you that the great trial and greatest loss ahead was War.
Far, far from Leadenhall Street in London, there are mountains on the coast of India that shield a plateau in the interior. The clans of the mountains and their king have called for aid from Leadenhall Street, and the Honorable Company has found it profitable to answer. Ships come from across the world, bearing red-jacketed soldiers who march like marionettes with motions drilled time and again. Their uniforms are almost a target, bright red coats with long tails, pipeclayed cross-belts white in the subcontinental sun holding cartridges for the muskets that are fired in volleys from the line. The mountain kings are the same ones that once almost held India, and the ones that face them have allies who fly the fleur-de-lis.
The Company's soldiers initially do not do well. Profits shrink, the army is thinned as its outposts are taken by the illiterate king of the Carnatic at the head of his French-trained army. Despite the rains of the monsoon and the biting heat of the summer, the campaign presses on until at last, on the coast and facing more of Leadenhall Street's prized infantry, it does not.
More Company troops come from the mountains to the north, and the promise of loot and a black ledger drives the Company's mighty and its generals as much as it calls to the private soldiers with the song of clinking coin. There are peace offers made by the king, offers of gold and land that are rejected. Leadenhall Street has scented blood, with the long experience of the London Exchange and the finely honed noses of the near-pirate commanders in the field.
Needless to say, much blood is shed. The fields of the Deccan are well-fertilized under the summer monsoon.
Peace comes, but it comes under a red-and-white striped flag with a Union Jack on its canton.
The southern subcontinent slowly, slowly burns as gold flows first into pockets and thence to London.
* * * * * * *
.... All the city's people found within the walls of the city of Delhi when our troops entered were bayoneted on the spot, and the number was considerable, as you may suppose, when I tell you that in some houses forty and fifty people were hiding. These were not mutineers but residents of the city, who trusted to our well-known mild rule for pardon. I am glad to say they were disappointed...
* * * * * * *
Pune is a hot place in summer. The plains of Maharashtra in summer have a humid heat, prickly and irritating. When one wears a uniform made of wool and with high-collared coats, when one spends time on a parade field under a bright, glaring sun, the heat does more than irritate. Tempers fray. Tension spikes. Some turn to drink, some to lassitude, some to the city's fleshpots.
That, perhaps, is why the incident began. That, most certainly, is why the buildup to it was not noticed. After all, when one is barely coping with the heat and the humidity and fresh from the green fields of England, the fine points of native language and customs are not what one observes.
Excuses? Probably.
On the coast of the subcontinent, the weavers are hungry. Cloth has begun to flow into the nation far faster than before, and the Honorable Company has begun to push prices well below starvation wages for the native weavers. There are mills in Manchester that have workers and magnates to support, and to feed the great industrial cities across the world there are costs to be borne.
They are borne by starving families across the subcontinent, farmers indentured to grow dye and nothing else, by weaver-families who have known their trade for more than a century. Dreams, heritage, and what little pride there was is rendered dust in the name of Progress and Company, the pittances of thousands upon thousands paying for the mansions of Lancashire and the ornate gardens of the Home Counties.
In the interior, the princes are restless. The throne in Delhi is a puppet of a Resident who hands out favors with the careless ease of one who does not know their significance. The great game of court ceremonial is a hollow one played by a blind emperor and his puppetmaster as the taxes and lands that were the emperor's gift are now used to feed the bloated ships that gently rock in harbor.
On the parade ground, the troops in their red uniforms under the Pune sun are handed muskets. New muskets, with new cartridges. There is a smell of lard in the paper wrapping, and the powder is slick with grease. The firing drills are a failure. The troops refuse to work the guns.
For the Muslims, it is pork that they must bite into for unwrapping the cartridge. For Hindus, it is meat that they have to bite into. Neither does it. The lines of redcoated infantry stand rigidly stiff in the sun as their officers shout and threaten and cajole. They do not move.
An example is chosen. A whip whistles. The whip is caught before it lands, and a gun goes off.
An officer dies.
The subcontinent catches fire. In the name of a blind emperor, in the name of affronts too many to mention, there is a war. There are atrocities against those viewed as oppressors and those who are innocent, the settling of more grievances than just those born of the Honorable Company. And across the world in London, there is a hue and cry. A royal hand in London signs a law, a strident voice in Parliament tells tales of terror, and a nation marches to the call of Leadenhall Street.
Peace, when it comes, is on the wings of blood and terror.
A blind emperor is herded from a threadbare, decaying hall by bayonet, put on trial in a court that hates him and in a language that he cannot speak. He is old and sick. He is made to leave his country. He will die in exile, among those who refused to desert him.
Soldiers in red uniforms herd sepoys in rags to a stand. Dozens are tried at a time, a justice system and laws that they cannot read or understand without explanation. Muslims and Hindus, Sikhs and others are brought up on trial in the name of Christian principles of the King's law, and summarily given a choice. A bullet or a noose.
Eventually, the choice is withdrawn. Bullets are more convenient.
A year later, an empress comes to the throne of the subcontinent. The Honorable Company is dissolved.
Beneath the surface of peace and the endless whirl of a new colonial aristocracy, some embers yet simmer. Slow, sure, and enduring.
Yours are not those. Amidst all this conflict, strife and murder, you and yours have lasted long by simply sidestepping most of it. Some of the family die far from home, in ports on other coasts. Some of the family die nearby and all too young. But the family endures.
And so does the family business. Beneath the notice of Leadenhall Street and atop the arteries of subcontinental commerce, you and your dynasty have lasted for more than long enough by staying out of notice.
Perhaps it is time to change history.
* * * * * * * * *
Pick one: You are a merchant dynasty that will play through the Raj's existence, from 1858 to 1947 or whenever independence comes. While you have to maintain profits and keep yourselves alive, remember that history is rarely changed by those who do not act. At the same time, calamities and the folly of nations can cripple you for decades, so be wary and keep a weather eye on your rumor mills and spy networks. Different commodities will have different markets, uses, and price fluctuations:
Dye: Sold mainly to Europeans in the form of indigo as well as other more esoteric natural dyes from the subcontinent, this is grown in plantation by sharecroppers. Its growth is backed by the edict of the Viceroy and the Raj is implicitly required to maintain a certain productivity to feed England - however, note that the security of the dye trade is often weighed against the havoc it wreaks with the lives of rural India. Asia is also a market for indigo, but pays a tad less.
Spices: Sold to Europe and to a lesser extent the rest of the world from India, spices are lucrative but becoming less so year on year as production from European colonies goes up. However, they are not at all likely to be replaced in Europe and will always have a market. Some spices are grown mainly in India and sold onwards in Asia as well.
Cotton: Grown in plantations to feed the mills of Lancashire, the hunger for cotton is only growing. Cotton is sold mainly to British merchant houses in the Mediterranean and the Indian coast, who aggregate the influx from more than one middleman merchant like yourself and sell it onwards to Britain. Or, of course, to some of the new small mills in China, India, or elsewhere in Europe.
Coffee: Coffee is grown in Africa, in India, and in Arabia, and is sold onwards to a thirsty population in Europe. You deal with plantations that you might have a stake in, plantations that might be run by Europeans, and native plantations that all sell to you, and you in turn will sell onwards to Europe or elsewhere. There is a market for coffee outside of Europe as well.
Tea: Grown at present in small amounts in northeastern India and being slowly expanded by British fiat, tea is increasingly in demand in Europe and most of all in Britain. Almost all of your tea will be sold onwards to Britain using British factors through trade stations in the Mediterranean and India due to the prices at present, although that can and probably will change. Of course, there are again markets for tea outside of Britain.
Grain: What is described. The coastal grain trade, from raw grain to the milled, finished product. Usually rice, wheat or millet. Bulky and usually sold off nearby rather than internationally.
Iron: Iron from India is often worked into more valuable finished products such as ships' parts, ploughs, and the like, and sold within the nation. Iron and most other metals don't travel far along the great routes that encircle Asia and the globe, being far too commonplace for that.
Bear in mind that other goods and routes will become possible, not just the usual middleman to England or the Med/Africa that is popular at present.
[]Bengal: You are one of the Bania merchants of Bengal, traders in spice, grain, and tea besides. Ships leave the ports on the Ganges for destinations as varied as Britain, China, Malacca, and Burma, while at the same time gold flows into the cities of Bengal from England, paying for its soldiers and supplies on the subcontinent. Bengal is perhaps the wealthiest part of the Raj at present, yet also a home for agitators aplenty. You must be judicious here, but there are plenty of contacts to be made. Primary trade: Dye, Tea, Spices. Staple Trades: Grain, Textiles. More British scrutiny, more agitators locally, more prosperous area initially.
[]Bombay: The primary Company port in the subcontinent and thus far more connected to British trade to Europe, and growing rapidly. New industrial developments north of the Presidency are intended to feed the mills of Lancashire and generate raw materials for the Empire, and there are always London merchants willing to sell here. As a result, import-export businesses with contacts in the interior of India have sprung up like wildfire, as have traders in cotton from the massive plantations in northern India. Primary trade: Cotton, Spices, Coffee. Staple Trades: Iron, Textiles. More rapid growth, less initial scrutiny, more European influence and contact.
QM Note: The above narration, I will admit, has a certain bias. On the other hand, it is factually correct in broad strokes. If someone wishes to inform me on the merits of colonial rule in India and the like, this is not the place. Please take it elsewhere.
Last but certainly not least: There will not for the moment be a Discord for this quest or for other quests of mine. Please do not coordinate votes and so on using Discord. If there is discussion to make, keep it in thread.
The intent is to simulate a merchant family primarily in the commodity trade, and that baseline of watching markets and making money enables other activities that the players can undertake. As such, there are three main sections of stats to watch, beginning with trade related quantitative ones:
Money: This is a notional tracker for how much money you have. Given that banks are often unreliable and you will be keeping it in vaults both at home and at trade stations, this will not always be safe from others. And remember, great wealth draws eyes. Lastly, everything will cost money or favors from others, sometimes both. This is the lifeblood of your game. You may borrow money, but that will mean paying it back with interest.
Primary Trade Routes: These are routes that you and your dynasty find the most profit in, and can be traded in more than one place. While grain and cattle and the like are low margin bulk goods and therefore not suitable for very-long-distance international trade, your Primary Trade Routes are the reverse. These can be changed in destination and commodity each turn, but bear in mind that changing routes has a penalty. You will have to rebuild expertise, rebuild contacts, and if changing ports build up a new trade station. While special shipments can be made without a primary route, those are not as lucrative and are dependent on catching word of momentary prospects early.
Staple Trade Routes: These are 'locked in' by location, and are the local trade that your family deals in close to home. Grain might be shipped downriver or textiles sent to rural areas for sale, but these are ultimately low-margin bulk goods that do not require massive oversight and family attention to trade. Think of them as a trickle of steady income, and they will be badly affected only by calamities. At which point you can reorient them.
Trade Stations: You can maintain a certain number of trade stations abroad, and those stations are at the destination of your primary trade routes. You can use those stations to gather intelligence on trade prospects, make contacts that can be lucrative later, and they have to be watched by family members. The trade stations are a cap on the diversity of trade destinations, although more than one route can be sent through a station. The route cap is thus more than the station cap.
Then we have the heart of the quest. Where money might be the clan's lifeblood, the beating heart of it and the brain of it is the family. You will send family members to trade stations for overseeing trade, manage each family branch's influence by doing that and granting them concessions, and setting up staple trade route related businesses for family members. You have a limited number of capable family members who you can use, and they can and will often die. Be careful.
Characteristics: Family members have a unique characteristic or two, never more than that. That characteristic governs what commodities, places, routes, and people they're good at and often what vices they are vulnerable to. Family members can be disloyal or careless, so remember their vices and keep their flavor text in mind when using them.
Then, there is the turn format. Each turn is ten years in game for Part-I, which ends at 1900. Each turn will have actions related to Primary and Staple trade routes, and family actions to maintain a hold on the family and keep them together. Lastly, there are special actions each turn that can range from sending shipments to fulfill a sudden market opening or give a loan to a Chinese revolutionary. Dice are not always rolled for actions, and not rolled for profits given the time each turn. Profits are governed each turn behind the scenes, and the rumor mill/information network gives advance warning.
Calamities can change things dramatically without warning, and can occur 'between' turns. This can cripple a family that is overly invested in a single commodity or route, so be wary. This can range from angering a local governor and being expelled to a war between the Raj and another party resulting in your ships being seized. Google can be your friend for the larger crises – and the larger market shifts.
Narratively, we have contacts in each port described in the station flavor text and with a network level from 1-5. At level 1, default, you see the obvious market prices. At level 5, you can potentially shift prices by a whisper in the right ear. Remember that the local authorities in each station are often your contact points, and have to be kept happy. Favor trading is a part of life, as much as money changing hands. And above all else, your word and reputation matter. Remember that. In the 1800s, it is far more reputational and far less institutional.
Dynasty Information: The House of Chandekar, of Bombay
Family Members: There are two family members at present, one running the business and one assigned to a station. There are four members possible to recruit or pressure into the family business.
Vijay Chandekar: The patriarch of the family and the one that runs the dynasty's finances from a sprawling bungalow at Bandra across the Mithi River from the city proper. Vijay Chandekar is very much a child of the 1857 Uprising and the years of grinding slow decline that preceded it, and therefore is cautious rather than bold, very often willing to placate the rulers and mighty rather than risk their anger. He has seen dozens die from executions, riots and religious tension aplenty, the masses of 'new poor' come to the city from the villages that cannot sustain them. The first priority, for the patriarch at the august age of forty, is thus to keep the finances alive and afloat – everything is secondary to that.
-Cautious: Actions taken in defiance of the authorities are less likely to succeed. Commercial actions proposed in turn are more likely to turn a profit and will be less adventurous. The dynasty will be far less inclined to diversify and take risks.
-Multilingual (India): Able to speak Urdu, Hindi, Marathi, some smattering of English, and a smattering of Tamil, Vijay Chandekar is much better able to coordinate trade stations and far-flung outposts throughout India. Of course, this also makes him more inclined to stay within the subcontinent. Indrajit Chandekar: A younger brother of Vijay who followed his elder into the family business rather than attempt to establish a landed estate or seek other more cultured avenues, Indrajit is the audacious risk-taker of the two. While Vijay Chandekar as the patriarch is far more risk-averse from the lessons of the past decade and a half, Indrajit has instead internalized the lesson of adaptability and change being paramount. The family has to shift with the tide to maintain its profits, and it is the income rather than the trade network that is paramount.
-Audacious (Trade): Indrajit is a believer in diversification, in encouraging more members of the family to join the business to do that, and in risk-taking when an opportunity appears. The British are for now as much opportunity as scourge, and the family ought to take advantage of that. When running a trade station, this family member gives more options to expand and diversify routes, and more special prospects that may or may not turn a profit (high risk high reward).
-Proud: Indrajit is a proud man, someone who knows that he and his family have survived a great calamity with most of their lives and assets intact. He will not take insults lightly when they come from those in the same social stratum as him, and may cause an incident or two when away from home. Chance of incidents with other merchants and native landowners. --Posting: Trade Station Calcutta Gurudas Gheewalla and Adit Chandekar: The pair who run the Singapore trade outpost, one of them a Parsi that sold you an iron mine and went to the East to lose the ire of his community for marrying wrong, while the latter is your nephew. Your nephew will probably take the station over once Gurudas retires or finds a prospect he'll pursue on his own, and until then the two of them have cultivated a wide and somewhat shady network of contacts in Singapore. And of course, they've been dabbling in the rubber trade.
-Dubious Contacts: The networks that these traders have lets them tap into the Singaporean underground and the opium or smuggling trade. Of course, that can always lead to legal trouble later on if they get overbold. Family Upkeep: 1 Money per turn
Debt: 1 Money
Borrowing Limit: 3 Money, repayment with 50% interest and fees
Trade Routes and Stations
Trade Stations: 3 of 3 possible
Trade Station Calcutta: Calcutta is a city of contrasts, where the marshes along the Ganges abut a city more British than any other in the subcontinent. It is a Western city's core surrounded by a chaotic urban sprawl of laborers' tenements, factories, warehouses, and all of it feeding the great maw of the Calcutta seaport. The same seaport from which cotton, dye, tea and jute go to England and places westwards. For now, most of the actual exports are run by Englishmen, but things can always change.
--Routes: 1/1: Dye to Britain: 0-3 Profit per turn (Upgrade Contacts to narrow the range and increase profit).
--Contacts: Level 1 of 5 possible: Most of the family's contacts in Calcutta are lower level merchants and suppliers, who are useful to get information from the hinterland but who also have their own agenda. The Uprising of 1857 has erased most of the family's old network, and the recent laws regarding the dye trade (and the formation of English cartels) has damaged things further – further networking in the patriarch's opinion should focus on the English and on securing a decent market.
Trade Station: Bombay: Bombay is the headquarters of the family and the place where the patriarch of the merchant dynasty runs things with a deft hand on the tiller. It's one of the fastest growing cities in India, a place of industrial buildup mainly happening due to British hands, and a center of governance for all of western India.
--Routes: 2/2: Cotton Textiles in India (0 to 4 Profit per turn), Cotton (1 Profit per turn, lowered due to supplying the mill)
--Contacts: Level 3 of 5: Focus: Other Shippers: The network of the family has been rebuilt slowly, but with the emphasis being on closer ties to the other major merchants in the city rather than the English or the local nationalist milieu. At present, the other shippers who we have contact with allows us to reliably predict profits, find markets for what we sell more easily, and ensure that we have advance warning of laws being changed through the grapevine.
Trade Station Singapore: The nexus of British trade in southeast Asia and Malaya, a port that's perfectly sited for small shipping to break cargo for the longer voyages to Europe or Africa. It's also home to a thriving underworld due to the British undergovernment, although that seems to be changing as more Sikh police and British bureaucrats are imported every year. We ship rubber from here, selling onwards from the Malay-run plantations in the interior to the European traders of the port.
--Routes: 1/2: Rubber to British Buyers in Singapore (0-2 Profit per turn)
--Contacts: Level 1 of 5
Staple Routes: 2 of 2 possible
Grain: The family has a number of estates in inland Maharashtra where grain flows to the cities, as does fruit and preserves. The fruits are sold in Bombay proper, but Vijay Chandekar has secured the family's assent to sell the grain and preserves onwards to the rest of the coastline. Profit: 1-2 per turn.
Iron: Vijay Chandekar bought an iron mine from the Parsi named Gurudas Gheewalla in 1866, the mine itself being in Portuguese Goa. The Portuguese are willing to allow the iron to be sold through the port of Goa as per the original deed stated, thus allowing the Chandekar family to engage in the coastal iron trade. Profit: 1-2 per turn.
It's a story that I have - at this point, after writing for a year and a half - some confidence in telling. It's about colonial empire, about trade and the reshaping of the world, and most of all about how that impacted Asia, all through the lens of a merchant dynasty that bends with the winds of history. I've wanted to tell something like this for a long while, and if it's niche so be it. If it dies, then...eh. So be it. I can't change that.
I know Bengal is said to have agitators and be prosperous, but if we really want to throw out the colonizers I think Bombay is the way. Inland connections, less scrutiny, rapid growth: I think the way to go is to play the long game, building up our own business and connections, rather then try to get a foot in the door in Bengal with agitators already drawing attention.
With the upcoming American civil war, the dependable cotton trade could get us a lot of early capital to act with. It's going to be a boomtown in a few decades and it should let us ride it up to some early prominence.
