You're the Queen - Now What? [CK2ish Character-Focused Quest]
- Thread starter Kylia Quilor
- Start date
- Mature Fantasy
Turn 5 Council Plan Vote
Kylia Quilor
I Have Two Moods, and Bitter is One of Them.
- Location
- Hiding in the corner of your vision.
- Pronouns
- She/Her
Clawing back the money and meeting the family wins. Rolls and Income Post forthcoming.
Rolls for Council Meeting Turn 5
Kylia Quilor
I Have Two Moods, and Bitter is One of Them.
- Location
- Hiding in the corner of your vision.
- Pronouns
- She/Her
[X]Plan: Clawing back the money and meeting the family
-[X][TAX ASSESSMENTS] Vannecht County Land Tax
-[X][TAX ASSESSMENTS] South Eyrist County Land Tax
-[X][CORRESPONDENCE] Lend Clerks to help another Keeper with their Task (+3/+6 to their Task on a Weak/Strong Success) (Base Chance 50% + Stewardship)
--[X]Helping the Keeper of Secrets
-[X][ROYAL VAULTS] Negotiate Bridge Loan of 100 Dureks To Help Pay Down Current Debts (Failure will mean no loan, Weak Success will mean the higher of the two offered interest rates, Strong Success will mean the lower of the two) (Must be Used To Pay Down Existing Debts)
--[X] From The Goldaxe Bank (Lortan Dwarves) (9.5% or 8%) (Base Chance 55% + Stewardship)*
-[X][HIGH MARSHALL] Send a unit of soldiers to deal with Dorien and Vrel at the ruined Necrotic Temple in the Thornwood (No Roll, Additional Scene) (Costs 4 Dureks)
-[X][SECRETS] Attempt to Claw Back some of the funds Syrokis and his cronies stashed away in foreign banks. (Better success means more money. More money available in the Varaday Banks all told))
--[X] In the Varaday Banks (Base Chance: 40% + Intrigue)*
-[X][SHERIFFS AND REEVES] Negotiate With the Striking Southmarch Miners (No Roll, Additional Scene. Will Present Financial Costs)
-[X][JUSTICE] Investigate charges as yet unproven against former Syrokis loyalists (Base Chance 63% + Intrigue + 1/2 Learning)*
-[X][ENVOYS] Open Trade Negotiations (Could Produce Additional Durek Income)
--[X]With Veldros (Base Chance 63% + Diplomacy)* (Scrying Veldros is more difficult)
-[X][QUEEN] Meet and Greet with Arriving Suitors: Janera Talcraft, Regara Rezan, Loran Taygraf (LOCKED, MUST TAKE) (Janera and Loran will be Greeted as Suitors, Regara will not)
-[X][QUEEN] Hold and Host a Gala for all your present Suitors. (LOCKED, MUST TAKE)
--[X] Spend 8 Dureks on the Gala (will be very grand and memorable, will raise Vanessa's international prestige)
-[X][QUEEN] Social Action(May use both Queen Actions on Social Action)
--[X] Reach out to Vanessa's noble mother/family in Veldros
-[X][BANDITRY GENERAL] Send General Darach (Rolls will use her Martial and Trait)
-[X][BANDITRY PLAN] Disperse to Cover Major Trade Caravans (Get Merchants to travel in caravan convoys, and disperse to guard them directly) (Medium Casualties at Most) (Base Chance: 57% + Martial)*
-[X][BANDITRY TARGET] The Trade Towns (Locked, Must continue what you started)
-[X][TAX ASSESSMENTS] Vannecht County Land Tax
-[X][TAX ASSESSMENTS] South Eyrist County Land Tax
-[X][CORRESPONDENCE] Lend Clerks to help another Keeper with their Task (+3/+6 to their Task on a Weak/Strong Success) (Base Chance 50% + Stewardship)
--[X]Helping the Keeper of Secrets
-[X][ROYAL VAULTS] Negotiate Bridge Loan of 100 Dureks To Help Pay Down Current Debts (Failure will mean no loan, Weak Success will mean the higher of the two offered interest rates, Strong Success will mean the lower of the two) (Must be Used To Pay Down Existing Debts)
--[X] From The Goldaxe Bank (Lortan Dwarves) (9.5% or 8%) (Base Chance 55% + Stewardship)*
-[X][HIGH MARSHALL] Send a unit of soldiers to deal with Dorien and Vrel at the ruined Necrotic Temple in the Thornwood (No Roll, Additional Scene) (Costs 4 Dureks)
-[X][SECRETS] Attempt to Claw Back some of the funds Syrokis and his cronies stashed away in foreign banks. (Better success means more money. More money available in the Varaday Banks all told))
--[X] In the Varaday Banks (Base Chance: 40% + Intrigue)*
-[X][SHERIFFS AND REEVES] Negotiate With the Striking Southmarch Miners (No Roll, Additional Scene. Will Present Financial Costs)
-[X][JUSTICE] Investigate charges as yet unproven against former Syrokis loyalists (Base Chance 63% + Intrigue + 1/2 Learning)*
-[X][ENVOYS] Open Trade Negotiations (Could Produce Additional Durek Income)
--[X]With Veldros (Base Chance 63% + Diplomacy)* (Scrying Veldros is more difficult)
-[X][QUEEN] Meet and Greet with Arriving Suitors: Janera Talcraft, Regara Rezan, Loran Taygraf (LOCKED, MUST TAKE) (Janera and Loran will be Greeted as Suitors, Regara will not)
-[X][QUEEN] Hold and Host a Gala for all your present Suitors. (LOCKED, MUST TAKE)
--[X] Spend 8 Dureks on the Gala (will be very grand and memorable, will raise Vanessa's international prestige)
-[X][QUEEN] Social Action
--[X] Reach out to Vanessa's noble mother/family in Veldros
-[X][BANDITRY GENERAL] Send General Darach (Rolls will use her Martial and Trait)
-[X][BANDITRY PLAN] Disperse to Cover Major Trade Caravans (Get Merchants to travel in caravan convoys, and disperse to guard them directly) (Medium Casualties at Most) (Base Chance: 57% + Martial)*
-[X][BANDITRY TARGET] The Trade Towns (Locked, Must continue what you started)
[Correspondence] 50 (Base) + 6 (Stew) = 56% = WEAK SUCCESS
[Royal Vaults] 55% (Base) +10 (Stew) +5 (Trait) = 70% = WEAK SUCCESS
[High Marshall] No Roll Required
[Secrets] 40% (Base) + 7 (Int) +5 (Trait) = 52% + 3 (Correspondence Help) = 55% = STRONG SUCCESS
[Sheriffs and Reeves] No Roll Required
[Justice- Trait Roll] 60% + 9 (Magic) = 69% = STRONG SUCCESS
[Justice] 63% (Base) + 6 (Int) + 4 (1/2 Learn) = 73% +5 (Trait Strong Success) = 78% = STRONG SUCCESS
[Envoys - Trait Roll] 48% (Base) + 10 (Magic) = 58% = WEAK SUCCESS
[Envoys] 63 (Base) + 7 (Dip) = 70% +3 (Trait Weak Success) = 73% = WEAK SUCCESS
[Queen 1] No Roll Required
[Queen 2] No Roll Required
[Queen 3] No Roll Required
[Banditry Plan] 57% (Base) + 10 (Martial) = 67% = WEAK SUCCESS (2 VP/3 VP Required)
[General Darach Trait Roll] 70% (Base) + 6 (Magic) = 76% = WEAK SUCCESS (10% fewer casualties)
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Eternal_0bserver
(Unverified Bookworm)
- Location
- Earth, Northern Europe
Our spymaster continues to win, I see.
Overall this is a good turn. Not brilliant, but at least no failures this time.
Turn 5 Income, Expenditures & Debt Servicing
Kylia Quilor
I Have Two Moods, and Bitter is One of Them.
- Location
- Hiding in the corner of your vision.
- Pronouns
- She/Her
Starting Treasury: 19.5 Dureks
Pre-Income Costs: 12 Dureks
Final Treasury: 210 Dureks + 100 Dureks Bridge Loan
Outstanding Debts:
Previous Debts Owed By Syrokis: 286.75 Dureks (12% Monthly Interest) (34.5 Dureks)
Owed to the Axecavern Bank (Lortan Dwarves): 219.75 Dureks (10% Interest) (22 Dureks)*
Owed to the Redhammer Bank (Lortan Dwarves): 114 Dureks (11% Interest) (12.5 Dureks)
Owed to Assorted Individual Wealthy Merchants/Etc based in Eaglecrest, Port Lest and Westcrown: 102 Dureks (8% Interest) (8.25 Dureks)
Owed to Assorted Individual Weathy Merchants Based in Zedarsh or Selissa: 151.75 Dureks (11% Interest) (16.75 Dureks)
Owed To The Goldaxe Bank: 100 Dureks (9.5% Interest) (9.5 Dureks) Cannot Be Paid off This Turn
Total Interest To Be Added If No Debts Are Paid Down This Turn: 103.5
Because You got a Bridge Loan, at least 100 Dureks (the total of the loan) must be paid to other debts. Failure to do so will cause the Kingdom's credit score (as it were) to take a significant, albeit not debilitating, hit. The first 100 Dureks of any debt repayment plan will come out of the Bridge Loan, anything else will come out of the 210 of your final treasury.
You will have expenses come up when it comes to negotiating with the miners, so bear that in mind.
Example Plans:
[ ]Plan: Bridge Loan To Syrokis (100 Dureks)
-[ ]Pay 100 Dureks to Previous Debts Owed By Syrokis
[ ]Plan: Wipe Out Redhammer (114 Dureks)
-[ ]Pay 114 Dureks to Redhammer Bank
[ ]Plan: Zedarsh & Selissan Repayment (151.75 Dureks)
-[ ]Pay 151.75 Dureks to Individual Wealthy Merchants Based in Zedarsh or Selissa
[ ]Plan: Really Hack At The Biggest Debt (225 Dureks)
-[ ]Pay 225 Dureks to Previous Debts Owed By Syrokis
There Is No Voting Moratorium
The Reason being I was going to do this yesterday, but RL conspired to make that impossible, so there's just less time to get this resolved before the next update.
Pre-Income Costs: 12 Dureks
- 4 Dureks Spent sending forces to deal with Dorien and Vrel
- 8 Dureks spent on an extravagant Gala for the suitors
- 79 Dureks Recovered from Bank Accounts belong to Syrokis and attainted/exiled/dead/etc members of his inner circle in various Varaday banks. Not all the money was recovered, but about 70% of it.
- Caveat: Must Be Used To Pay Down Other Debts
- Crown Holdings: 124 Dureks
- Free Cities Taxes: 42.5 Dureks
- Counties Taxes & Dues: 40 Dureks
- Lordships & Towns Taxes and Dues: 39 Dureks
- Royal Administration: 44 Dureks
- Wages & Supply of Royal Army: 68 Dureks
- Basic Maintinence of the Crown & Palace: 10 Dureks
Final Treasury: 210 Dureks + 100 Dureks Bridge Loan
Outstanding Debts:
Previous Debts Owed By Syrokis: 286.75 Dureks (12% Monthly Interest) (34.5 Dureks)
Owed to the Axecavern Bank (Lortan Dwarves): 219.75 Dureks (10% Interest) (22 Dureks)*
Owed to the Redhammer Bank (Lortan Dwarves): 114 Dureks (11% Interest) (12.5 Dureks)
Owed to Assorted Individual Wealthy Merchants/Etc based in Eaglecrest, Port Lest and Westcrown: 102 Dureks (8% Interest) (8.25 Dureks)
Owed to Assorted Individual Weathy Merchants Based in Zedarsh or Selissa: 151.75 Dureks (11% Interest) (16.75 Dureks)
Owed To The Goldaxe Bank: 100 Dureks (9.5% Interest) (9.5 Dureks) Cannot Be Paid off This Turn
Total Interest To Be Added If No Debts Are Paid Down This Turn: 103.5
Because You got a Bridge Loan, at least 100 Dureks (the total of the loan) must be paid to other debts. Failure to do so will cause the Kingdom's credit score (as it were) to take a significant, albeit not debilitating, hit. The first 100 Dureks of any debt repayment plan will come out of the Bridge Loan, anything else will come out of the 210 of your final treasury.
You will have expenses come up when it comes to negotiating with the miners, so bear that in mind.
Example Plans:
[ ]Plan: Bridge Loan To Syrokis (100 Dureks)
-[ ]Pay 100 Dureks to Previous Debts Owed By Syrokis
[ ]Plan: Wipe Out Redhammer (114 Dureks)
-[ ]Pay 114 Dureks to Redhammer Bank
[ ]Plan: Zedarsh & Selissan Repayment (151.75 Dureks)
-[ ]Pay 151.75 Dureks to Individual Wealthy Merchants Based in Zedarsh or Selissa
[ ]Plan: Really Hack At The Biggest Debt (225 Dureks)
-[ ]Pay 225 Dureks to Previous Debts Owed By Syrokis
There Is No Voting Moratorium
The Reason being I was going to do this yesterday, but RL conspired to make that impossible, so there's just less time to get this resolved before the next update.
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Eternal_0bserver
(Unverified Bookworm)
- Location
- Earth, Northern Europe
As far as I understand, there is now a moratorium?
In principle, the choice of which debt we should pay off is still obvious. But how much should we pay, or rather, how much should we leave? Between the cost of roads, the means to mint new coins and all the necessary luxuries, given the presence of foreign delegations? I want to keep about 60 dureks, since the Count's recent success means we can afford it.
[X] Plan: Payment of old debts and resource reserve.
-[X] Pay 250 Dureks to Previous Debts Owed By Syrokis.
In principle, the choice of which debt we should pay off is still obvious. But how much should we pay, or rather, how much should we leave? Between the cost of roads, the means to mint new coins and all the necessary luxuries, given the presence of foreign delegations? I want to keep about 60 dureks, since the Count's recent success means we can afford it.
[X] Plan: Payment of old debts and resource reserve.
-[X] Pay 250 Dureks to Previous Debts Owed By Syrokis.
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Kylia Quilor
I Have Two Moods, and Bitter is One of Them.
- Location
- Hiding in the corner of your vision.
- Pronouns
- She/Her
There is not, apologies, I'll edit that in.
- Pronouns
- He/Him
Agreed very much. There's also the miners.
[X] Plan: Payment of old debts and resource reserve.
-[X] Pay 250 Dureks to Previous Debts Owed By Syrokis.
- Location
- Who knows?
[X] Plan: Payment of old debts and resource reserve.
-[X] Pay 250 Dureks to Previous Debts Owed By Syrokis.
Yeah roads ,eams having some in the bank is nice
-[X] Pay 250 Dureks to Previous Debts Owed By Syrokis.
Yeah roads ,eams having some in the bank is nice
[X] Plan: Payment of old debts and resource reserve.
-[X] Pay 250 Dureks to Previous Debts Owed By Syrokis.
It feels a bit overly-cautious, but this will still cut down on the biggest debt to the point we can remove it next turn, and continue knocking out the other debts, and still have a big buffer to deal with anything funny.
-[X] Pay 250 Dureks to Previous Debts Owed By Syrokis.
It feels a bit overly-cautious, but this will still cut down on the biggest debt to the point we can remove it next turn, and continue knocking out the other debts, and still have a big buffer to deal with anything funny.
- Pronouns
- He/Him
It does feel a bit overly cautious, I agree, but not too much.
[X] Plan: Payment of old debts and resource reserve.
-[X] Pay 250 Dureks to Previous Debts Owed By Syrokis.
[X] Plan: Payment of old debts and resource reserve.
-[X] Pay 250 Dureks to Previous Debts Owed By Syrokis.
Turn 5 Debt Payment Vote
Kylia Quilor
I Have Two Moods, and Bitter is One of Them.
- Location
- Hiding in the corner of your vision.
- Pronouns
- She/Her
Voting closed. Council Actions update coming by Monday. Suitor arrival will be a separate post, as will the galas. That does mean quite a few Turn 5 posts, but nature of the beast.
Turn 5: Council Actions
Kylia Quilor
I Have Two Moods, and Bitter is One of Them.
- Location
- Hiding in the corner of your vision.
- Pronouns
- She/Her
"Well, Rucdorn, I can say I'm quite surprised at just how well you've improved the financial state of the Kingdom," Vardeck considered, moving a piece across the board to capture one of Rucdorn's.
They were playing a traditional dwarven game, Treddekar, which he'd heard humans describe as 'checkers, by way of chess', but while Rucdorn had tried both games, he had no idea what the people who described Treddekar like that were thinking when they made the comparison.
"I like a good challenge, and fixing the solvency of a Kingdom in a state like Halrun's? Not an easy task, but one very well suited to my abilities." Rucdorn said. "We've proven our dedication to cutting costs where possible, and raising revenues. The tax reassessments have done wonders for the Kingdom's income in the short, medium and long term alone."
"True enough," Vardeck agreed, then shook his head. "Still, being surrounded by humans all the time, moving things at their pace. You have to have it even worse than me," the Goldaxe banker sighed. "It's still a risk, you understand, making a loan like this, but a lot less of one now then it was five months ago when last we discussed the matter. Queen Vanessa's proven she can listen to a smart dwarf's advice when it comes to money, and how to see things from a banker's point of view. I assume this new development of her courting suitors is your doing?"
Not exactly mine alone. Rucdorn had made it clear how important bankers would find having an heir to be for getting better loan rates, yes, but Vallefor and Balmain had made cases for getting an heir for other reasons as well, and Vanessa wasn't an idiot.
Temperamental, perhaps, but given what she had to put up with, and that she was just a human, and a mage at that, probably inevitable.
"Largely," Rucdorn said, massaging the truth a little.
"Still, the Kingdom of the Necromancers. An odd choice."
"Bah, the coin of a lich spends as good as the coin of anyone else," Rucdorn waved a hand dismissively, moving several pieces in formation to a new position on the board. Each flat, metal disc was inscribed with runes identifying the piece, what it did, and how it moved. "Have you ever heard of the Archnecromancer reneging on a deal or trying to get out of paying for something?"
"Not to an outsider like us," Vardeck allowed. "Never heard of him taking any loans either. Have to respect a man who can live within his means, even if it's bad for business."
"Still," the banker moved a piece in response to Rucdorn's movement. "Selissa's the place that would do wonders for the Kingdom's finances. Their bankers aren't dwarves, but they're nearly as good."
"Oh, don't let your friends in Varaday hear that." Rucdorn chuckled.
Rienne probably shouldn't have taken personal command of the force sent down to take care of Dorien and Vrel and their men, but she hadn't actually had the chance to fight in a proper battle since the civil war, even with sending men out to fight bandits, and she was going to take the opportunity now that it had arisen.
She'd taken a hundred of the best soldiers in the mobile reserve, and made hard for the Thornwood, not wanting to risk the two criminals catching wind of their arrival with enough time. But of course, as close as they were now, there was no need to keep being careful or quiet.
There were ten guards outside the ruined Necrotic site - a crumbled structure of black stone, not overgrown by anything - the death magic of the Necrotic Empire holding vines and grass and more at bay.
Rienne spurred her horse forward, riding directly at one of the guards, bolting from the treeline at the man, who tried to jump away, but though he evaded her charge, her sword slashed and got him in the throat. The rest of her men charged and swarmed the remainder - outnumbered as badly as they were, it was a short work to deal with them all.
The rest, however, proved to be a little tougher. Rienne took two dozen men into the ruins with her, quickly having to enter tunnels, built long, long ago, lit by nothing more than the torches and lanterns carried by her men, or a few lights set out by the men plundering this site.
The tight confines made it harder to overwhelm them, but Rienne was even better with a blade than she was commanding, and she proved that thugs, even ones armored in well-made breastplate, were no match with for a swordswoman of her caliber, or soldiers she'd overseen the drilling of.
But still no sign of Dorien or Vrel. There were two mages in the group, maintaining constant checks for any sign of the memory modification magic, or similar assaults on their senses or wills. But so far, nothing.
Down another level, through the undertunnels, and then it opened into a massive underground cavernous chamber. Rienne couldn't help but gasp a little, and her soldiers did as well - the room was well lit by pale, ghostly light, silvery crystals casting shadows around the room, but more than enough to see even without torches and lanterns. The crystals glowed seemingly of their own nature.
"Well, it seems the Crown's best have come for us," a confident voice rang out, and Rienne felt a shiver run down her spine, ice suddenly filling her veins. She tightened her grip on the hilt of the blade of her sword.
The voice was confident, and cruel, yes, but hardly anything compared to what she'd faced. She looked back at her man, and all of them, to a man and woman, were clenching teeth, shaking a little - it was hard to say in the light of the room, but the closest were paling, eyes wide. She looked to the mages.
"It's him," One got out, voice shaking. The mages lifted their hands and started to chant, trying to push back against the magic afflicting their minds -
"Ah, ah, ah, none of that!" The mage's voice rang out. Suddenly, the room was plunged into near total darkness as every crystal suppressed it's light, only a handful of torches and lanterns against the totality of the chamber -
An eire scream rang out, the sound of scampering insects - but massive, everywhere, all around - and one torch was dropped,
"He -" one of her mages said, "He's - this power is - we can't - we can't hold his magic at bay for much longer!"
"And you won't have to." Another voice said, the other man no doubt, Vrel. His voice was husky and low.
There was a flicker in the darkness, and then cries from the left of the group as one of her men was felled, gurgling on blood.
Rienne rushed to see a man with two knives, Vrel, ducking and dodging and weaving under the opponents massed around him - he dropped, rolled between one soldier's legs and came up in front of one of her mages, past all the guards.
Rienne's blade came down at the last moment, hitting his arm with a poorly-placed weak side-swipe as she attacked from an awkward angle - but it was enough to stop his blades from hitting the mages throat and side as intended, and instead one knife went wide, and the other connected with the mage's arm.
The woman cried out, falling back, no longer working to block Dorien's magic - Rienne felt an overwhelming urge to run, to scream, to curl into a ball and hide -
But she pushed back, discipline of a soldier holding her in place. She had a mission to complete, an enemy to defeat, and people to protect.
"Well, I suppose you'll be a fun one to fight then." Vrel chuckled, and then he attacked - his knives slipped past her guard repeatedly,a nd it was all she could do to twist and dodge so they could connect with her armor rather than her skin, but even still, she cut a cut along her leg when a knife slipped into a gap and joint in the armor, and several dents on the rest of the armor, the knives striking with far more force than she'd have expected -
He was too close for her to easily swing her blade at him, his speed far more than she'd have expected - the rest of her man, some were closed tight around the mages, others seemed to have succumbed to Dorien's fear spell -
And a few more of their men had occupied the rest.
In the end, Rienne got cut several more times from where the knives got past her armor, but a lucky blow with the hilt of her sword against Vrel's skull sent him staggering back, and he was left on the defensive. Blood pumping in her ears and heart pounding in her chest, Rienne took advantage, slicing at his hands, the cuts forcing one, then the other knives from his hands as the blood poured freely from cuts and then one more stab, right through his heart - the leather armor resisted the point of her sword for a second, but he was dead before his body hit the ground.
Defeating Dorien proved to be harder, including finding him in the room. Her mages were able to resume pushing back against his magic, but only so much, and most of her men were immobilized by fear still, the magic too much for their psyches.
But Rienne did find him, and dispatched him, though she was nearly cooked in her armor as a blast of a strange black fire missed her by inches, and she screamed, even that glancing heat enough to cause damage it would take a priest to heal.
But Dorien too, was dead. There'd been no taking the man alive.
A few prisoners among Dorien and Vrel's men had been taken, however, and from what was gathered from them over the next few days, the crystals in this cavern were were what Dorien had been after the whole time. It had taken a great deal of excavation with limited manpower and tools to get there - Dorien keeping the secret of what was here to a select group - but from what her mages had to say, these crystals seemed to be quite the font of magical power. Though with Dorien dead, using them safely might require a great deal of experimentation.
Something for Her Majesty to look into, I suppose.
Given the distance between Halrun and Varaday, for all that Varaday was a critical banking center, there just wasn't much need for an Ambassador between the two kingdoms.
Still, when need for official communication between the Republic of Varaday and the Kingdom of Halrun arose, there had to be a channel for that, and these days, that channel was helmed, on the Varaday side for Halrun, by Lucaris Maldest. A Halrun-born man who was invested heavily in Andelerian Sea trade and still had loyalty to the Kingdom in principle, even if he hadn't been back home since he was fifteen.
He was fifty now, and had taken the overthrow of Syrokis with equanimity. This new Queen had paid off the Feltrini bank and had recently made a hefty payment on Syrokis's debts to the Vincaro and Dontrelli Banks, which kept them from giving him or other Halrunian merchants too much grief.
So Queen Vanessa was good enough.
At least, he'd been thinking so until the moment members of the justly feared and famed Varaday Banking Control Office stepped into his office and accused Queen Vanessa of being behind several recent successful bank heists.
"And you don't think it at all telling that every secure box and vault hit belonged to the very men and women you have been pestering our banks about?"
"I hardly think I have done anything," Maldest said, maintaining a carefully controlled tone and expression, a polite smile on his face at the two gray-uinformed women in front of him.
Your Majesty, or whoever it is that is actually behind this, what insanity are you on! No one messed with Varaday Banks like this! No One!
"All I ever did was pass on repeated requests from my Queen to have the property of attainted and convicted traitors and criminals handed over, and passed back the Senate's repeated refusals to entertain the idea."
If Her Majesty got him in trouble with the most dangerous people for a thousand miles - because that's what these men were, their whole organization was worse than any demon-worshipping cult in the damage they could do to someone - then he was going to...
Well, do something.
"You know nothing about these robberies?"
"Only what you've just told me what I've read in the broadsheets." Maldest answered truthfully. The white crystal held in front of him glowed white. Maldest smirked, and leaned forward, "And do you have anything other than suspicion to believe Halrun was behind this?"
"Yes." One said quickly, then she muttered a curse as the crystal glowed again, this time an angry, throbbing red. The double-edged sword of the Liar's Crystal. It worked for all lies spoken around it.
Smart people doing business with Varaday's government - the only people who knew how to make a Liar's Crystal - learned how to use that to their advantage.
"So you're just here to fish then." Maldest noted.
"And what possible reason would anyone else have to rob these vaults and boxes exclusively?"
"Well, there's the fact that most of the people they belong to are either dead, imprisoned or otherwise quite far from Varaday. The banks in question won't have to deal with meaningful complaints or threats of legal action from their owners." Maldest leaned forward. "Have you checked with any of the bank owners? You and I both know how easy it is for a bank to find itself in need of a bit of... liquid capital."
"And do you have any proof of that accusation?"
"Of course not. But since you have no good reason to believe my Queen had anything to do with these thefts, then you'll do to get out of my home." Maldest said flatly. After a long moment, both women staring at each other, exchanging hand gestures and flicks of their eyes, they nodded and left without even a proper goodbye.
Typical of their sort, really.
I'll need to prepare to make a bolt for one of my ships very quickly if they find proof.
But if they didn't have any, then perhaps Halrun had somehow, impossibly gotten away with it.
And I need to be very careful about not finding anything about it. That part shouldn't be too hard, since there'd be no reason for whoever had arranged this - the Keeper of Secrets, whoever it was, likely (Maldest honestly couldn't remember the man's name. Count something or another. He only knew Keeper Synvara's name because that was what was signed on the correspondence he got with what few instructions he'd been given.)
Still. Really. Robbing multiple Varaday Banks!? What madness!
Balmain had had to rough it a few times during the rebellion, but she had to admit, she didn't care for it. She had worn clothing suitable for ending up in the sort of dirt and grime-covered environs of a mine, but still, it wasn't going to be simple for her servants to clean off this off her clothing. Did these miners really need to burn coal to cook their meals? She supposed it was simple, since the seams were there in with the silver and iron they were primarily here for but...
The soot clung to everything.
"Her Majesty has dispatched me to see if we can find a way to meet your demands in a fair and equitable manner." The miners and residents of the Southmarch had kept the organization they'd used during the civil war, and she recognized several of the spokespeople she was here meeting with...
As well as representatives for the leaseholders of the mines themselves.
"One that leaves everyone at least acceptably satisfied." Balmain added.
"That'll be the day," one of the miners snorted.
"Now, now," another said. "They say a compromise is one where everyone leaves unhappy. We're all starting unhappy, so we're halfway there, aren't we?" There were a few weak chuckles from around the table.
They were all seated at a cheap wooden table set up not far from the resident villages for the miners of this particular mine, tent canvas propped up on poles overhead in case the cloud cover above decided to rain.
"You're the ones who have stopped working, so right now, the onus is on you and yours," she said to the miners representatives, "to set your demands out."
"We figured you'd start with that. We've got everything written out all nice and fancy." One of them said, passing over a sheet of parchment.
Balmain quickly read over the demands. They were, when summarized, quite straight forward.
In principle, Balmain could see the merits of all of them, but there was no way the Crown could afford to cover the costs of all of these. Which meant someone would have to be fobbed off on the lease-holders. And then there'd have to be compensation in the form of reduced mining taxes for at least a while.
"This is an expensive list of requests." Balmain said after a long moment. "These mines aren't valuable enough to the Crown to cover all of them in perpetuity."
"Not right now, but we both know Syrokis was looking to expand the mining operations before before he went and started a rebellion against hisself," one of the miner spokesmen said. "You'll have a hard time doing that anytime ever if none of us agree to that work."
"You're that sure of your ability to hold all your people together?" One of the lease-holders snapped. "You're all the same, you'll break into groups under pressure like every time you've tried this before!"
"We've fought and died together! Something you'd never know about!" A miner shouted.
"Yeah! And if you try to force us off or starve us out, we'll fight you just like we did Syrokis's men!" Another added.
"No one is fighting anyone," Balmain insisted. The last thing the Kingdom needed was a violent labor uprising. Or violent labor suppression.
It probably wouldn't spark any major uprisings anywhere else, yet, but it would destroy Queen Vanessa's goodwill among the common people. Or at least erode it a great deal.
"You're requesting more than the crown can afford right now, even if these mines were - as they are right now - worth the diversion of revenue required to create these funds, increase your wages and reduce quotas. But," Balmain said, holding up a hand. "We can address the safety of the mines, the ones that merely need overdue maintenance, and the ones that need significantly more than that."
It wouldn't be cheap, especially to it all at once. A good mine started to pay for itself once you were extracting ore, and the maintenance, the replacement of support beams that needed it, the shoring up of chambers and tunnels, and so forth, was built into the cost. But with years of overdue work...
"If we handle the mine safety, and promise to revisit the rest when we can..."
"A promise isn't enough on its own, Keeper." One of the spokesmen, the one who'd handed her the list of demands. "We're being overworked, and underpaid, and we have been for years. They," he gestured to the lease holders, "have us paying room and board out of our wages, they penalize us for not meeting quotas they deliberately set just too high for most of us to meet. If you want us back to work, then you and the Queen have to prove you're interested in actually keeping your word."
Rebuilding the three most damaged mines will take 24 Dureks to be finished in 5 Turns.
Maintenance overhaul on all the other mines will cost 25 Dureks, and be finished in 1 Turn.
[ ][REBUILDING] Start the Rebuilding Now (-24 Dureks)
[ ][REBUILDING] Don't Start It Right This Second
[ ][MAINTENANCE OVERHAUL] Do the Maintenance Overhaul (-25 Dureks)
[ ]MAINTENANCE OVERHAUL] Don't Do it Yet
(The miners will not return to work in any mine until the maintenance overhaul is finished and the rebuilding has at least started)
What Else Do You Offer The Miners As A Show Of Good Faith?
(Picking one choice results in Base Chance 50% + Diplomacy)* (Balmain's stats). (Each additional choice taken gives you +6% Base Chance) (Weak Success Means you've gotten then back in line and back to work for now, but that may change, Strong Success means you've gotten them fully onboard)
[ ][MINER DEMANDS] Decrease Quotas
-[ ]Force the Leaseholders to Eat the Cost (Upsets Mine Leaseholders)
-[ ]Reduce Southmarch Mining Taxes income by .5 Dureks to cover the leaseholder's expenses
[ ][MINER DEMANDS] Increase Wages
-[ ]Force the Leaseholders to Eat the Cost (Upsets Mine Leaseholders)
-[ ]Reduce Southmarch Mining Taxes income by .5 Dureks to cover the leaseholder's expenses
-[ ]Add a .5 Durek line item to the Expenses that will cover the increased wages.
[ ][MINER DEMANDS] Eviction Restriction (Upsets Mine Leaseholders)
[ ][MINER DEMANDS] Create the Fund for Severely Injured Miners/The Immediate Family of Dead Miners
-[ ]Force the Lease Holders to Pony Up the Money (Upsets the Mine Leaseholders a lot)
-[ ]Reduce the Southmarch Mining taxes by 1.5 Dureks to cover the leaseholder's expenses
-[ ]Create the Fund from Crown Resources with 10 Dureks to start with and having Rucdorn Relcred find someone trustworthy to manage the investments. (-10 Dureks)
[ ][MINER DEMANDS] Offer all the miners a substantive bonus (to be distributed to all the miners) (-5 Dureks)
"So what sort of punishments are we looking at?"
"A few imprisonments, and a maiming of the hand," Itrick said. He grimaced as he mentioned that last one, which didn't surprise Vanessa. Itrick had advocated several times for the elimination of the removal of the hand as a punishment under circumstances where it existed. In his mind, the main acceptable punishments for crimes were: Fines, Imprisonment (in varry degrees of conditions and for varying degrees of length), Exile on pain of Death, and actual execution.
Torture, maiming, and similar things, which all technically still sat on the books, even if they were only rarely used (and the post-Syrokis legal settlements had removed several of the contexts in which torture in particular could be done)
For a variety of reasons, Vanessa hadn't pushed on that issue. For one, while she could simply decree the end of the punishment in the Royal Demesne, to get it done across the Kingdom she'd need to go through the Estates, and that hardly seemed worth it. For another, she wasn't entirely sure she agreed that imprisonment was always a better option than chopping someone's hand off.
For rapists who had too much standing to be easily put to death, chopping their hands off seemed too light a punishment to Vanessa, in all honesty.
"Nothing that merited death?"
"Nothing that turned out to be true, at least. Mostly just cases of people extorting prisoners, passing information to the Loyalists while pretending to be rebels, the rapist, and some accusations of torturing prisoners that at most came out to be some overly rough handling. Punishable, but not really torture, given the contexts."
"Seems a little light, given all the accusations floating around. And given what we know other Loyalists did during the war."
"Well, they say where there's smoke there's fire, but sometimes the smoke is just thick steam." Itrick quoted an old saying, one Vanessa had heard quite a bit in her lessons on logic from Cyril and at the Academ before that. "More seriously, I think the biggest factor is that we handled all the cases where the evidence was clear and unambiguous in the immediate aftermath of Syrokis's defeat, so the only ones left were the minor accusations, and the ones that just didn't have a lot of real proof behind them."
"That makes a great deal of sense. Well, at least getting this done will make it harder for people to say I've decided to start embracing the loyalists. Apparently there have been a few saying that, after you rounded up that conspiracy." Vanessa considered.
"They'll be saying it again once I start pursuing claims against ex-rebels. We can't leave that off forever, especially since Lady Balmain's second cousin Marteen tops the list of the accused. If we don't investigate sooner rather than later-"
"People might think he's being given special treatment." Which he might just have to get anyway. Vanessa was fairly certain that unless is guilt was extreme and entirely unambiguous, she'd have to reduce his sentence to a life in a cell somewhere.
Hopefully Balmain doesn't try too hard to push back against anything else. This was of course, only if he was guilty. Vanessa was trying to keep an open mind.
"Well, that'll be a matter to discuss soon, but for now, good work, Keeper Grosdan," she told Itrick.
Arandel wasn't entirely surprised his efforts to scry Veldros had been less successful than would have been ideal. The city-state, descended from the Necrotic Empire as it was, still had a strong component of mages in their nobility, and had a much greater willingness amongst those nobles to marry commoners... that were mages. It's not that commoner mages marrying nobles was unheard of elsewhere, but it was less common, and less commonly approved of.
The details on the ground did matter - Vanessa, for instance, being pedigreed by apprenticeship to Cyril, probably would have been acceptable to some, though Arandel doubted Vanessa would have personally sought a noble marriage as means of advancement before being named queen.
It didn't really seem like the woman.
Regardless, the number of high-ranking mages in the city's government, as well as the role the clergy played in the quilt of factions that made up the ruling council of the city-state, made the number of rooms and buildings well protected against a casual scrying in the city quite high.
But he'd still been able to pick up on the anxieties plaguing the Veldran ruling class. Predictably, the biggest concern was the one that had plagued Veldros ever since Halrun had been created: they wanted to maintain their independence in the face of the massive ogre in the room that was Halrun.
At most all Veldros could really do on their own would be buy time. Granted, the other city-states of the Riverlands would probably not just sit there and let Halrun take Veldros over, but...
Well, probably did not a sense of security give.
The fact that Vanessa was Veldran by birth had done little to ease the ruling Council's anxieties, especially given her treatment by her noble mother. By all reports, House Kolmain was actually in a bit of poor favor in the city's Halls of Power, out of fear that the way Vanessa's mother and 'stepfather' had treated her might have alienated her against the city-state.
The other concerns, of course, were that the economic dislocation in Halrun would destroy their number one export market - the civil war had done a number on their economy as it was, and compensating by trading more with Osorien had only done so much.
Veldros's exports were primary finely crafted goods - their master craftsmen were considered artists of the highest order, and Arandel himself had a number of the colorful glass small sculptures that they were capable of making, they were beautiful and so detailed that you could almost thing an elf made them.
(That he'd actually tricked a few of his friends back in Syleria with that fact was neither here nor there.)
They imported a great deal from Halrun - food, primarily, but also raw materials of all sorts from the Kingdom, or that came through the Kingdom from elsewhere. The breakdown in trade in both directions from the civil war, and the fact that Halrun's economy was still in a shaky state meant that the city's leaders, even if they tried to pretend they disdained craftsmanship and trade, were nervous.
Neither detail was particularly surprising, but it had been surprising to learn more about the specifics underlying those anxieties, and Arandel was fairly certain he could use what he'd learned.
"In principle, I have no objection to increasing trade between Veldros and your Kingdom," The Veldran Ambassador, a man named Mark Corovel, told Arandel. "Though increasing tariffs as you propose to would of course have a deleterious effect on trade. I'm afraid that given the state of things in Halrun, it would be a tall order to expect our craftsmen and merchants to bear that increased cost... I simply can't say they'd be right to expect it would be matched by an increase in how much they could expect to gain."
And he's not even being performative about it, this time. The Kingdom's debts and all the other debts around had created what Rykall and Rucdorn called a 'credit crunch' on the realm and while the recent minting of coins had helped a great deal, there was simply not as much money around for the luxuries Veldros had to offer. Not unless you were a rich Lord or the uppermost tier of the urban elite or rural gentry. And that certainly made money, but the real money for the average Veldran Craftsman was less a noble buying their tenth exquisitely crafted wooden box, and more a middle-class family, or a newly up and coming merchant looking to show off their new wealth by buying something with a Veldran Maker's mark.
Things were improving, but not enough - not yet - that increased tariffs wouldn't just get in the way.
"And, if we're going to commit to greater exports, we'll want the same with Halrun. But it's much easier to move our products into your Kingdom than it is for your people to move great loads of lumber and ore and food into our territory, given the state of the roads."
"A fair concern, to a point, but given how close the Kingdom's great river is to Vannecht county, and given that Vannect County's roads are in pristine condition, not quite as great as you're making it out to be. The tariffs are something we can table for another time, though I think you must admit your predecessor ran circles around mine when negotiating the tariff rates ten years ago. It was practically robbery."
Arandel leaned forward, "I think we can come to agreeable terms, including in terms of commitment to ensure your people get the raw materials they need at acceptable prices."
New Trade Deal With Veldros: +2 Dureks Per Turn for 12 Turns
Vanessa had to admit that the prospect of rubbing her Throne and Crown in the face of her mother and everyone else she'd known back at the Academ (or at least the ones who had mocked and insulted her for her bastard birth, which was not all of her fellow nobleborn students) had been part of why she'd accepted the crown.
Not the largest part, certainly, but still.
She'd simply not had the chance to do that yet, but she found herself with a few free hours, and given the news that Arandel had signed a new trade deal with Veldros, she had her mother on her mind.
Vanessa had decided to send her mother a letter.
Dearest Mother,
I would say I hope this letter finds you in good health, but I'm not entirely sure that I hope that. We haven't spoken in many, many years, not since my eleventh birthday. I have no idea if you've thought of me much in the intervening years, but I have thought of you.
I don't blame you for me being a bastard, and throwing me off to the Academ was perhaps the best thing you could do, given how it turned out for me. On the other hand, even the slightest bit of maternal regard would hardly have gone amiss, so it's not as if your list of sins as a mother is short.
On the other hand, frankly, given what I've heard of my half-siblings, I doubt you'd have been any better a mother to me had I been born legitimate. Just bad in a different way.
I'm quite curious what's been going through your mind since you heard of my ascension to the throne? Fear? Anxiety? Concern? Pride, that your blood rose to such a height? I suppose I must grant my magical power to you, given the number of mages on your side of the family tree. Not that I know much about my true father's family - tell me, was it absolutely so essential to destroy his business and drive him from the city when he dared to try to reach out to me at the Academ, once I was no longer living under your roof? Is he even still alive? Do you even know? I've never been able to find him, and I have scrying magic under my control now.
Oh, and by the way, if you're going to keep cheating on your husband, perhaps do it somewhere that's warded? I really didn't need to see my mother like that.
You barely had time for me, mother, and frankly, I don't have much time for you, but I do want you to know, always know, that whatever your other children accomplish, even allowing for your abysmal parenting and poor judgment, they'll never accomplish what I did. I'm a Queen, mother, responsible for more people and more money than will ever fit in your tiny little world, than anyone of your family will ever achieve.
In a hundred years, when people think of House Kolmain, they'll think of me, and my descendants, than anything that happened in Veldros, no matter how storied your family's history is, no matter the glories it achieved.
At best, you and your family will be a footnote, forever.
Spite has proven to be, as I've found in many cases, quite constructive.
Sincerely,
The Daughter You Like To Pretend You Never Had
Vanessa looked at the letter after she wrote it, debating if it was actually a good idea to send it. Her mother was influential in the Veldran Government, but hardly that influential. Veldros had spent the last seven decades being very aware of the overwhelming power Halrun had compared to it, so what could Veldros actually do? Shoot itself in the knee and embargo? Try to declare war?
And that assumed her mother's influence would be enough to convince Veldros to commit suicide like that.
But equally, this was a very provocative letter...
[ ][VANESSA LETTER] Send It.
[ ][VANESSA LETTER] Don't Send It, Write Something More Conciliatory (but still backhanded)
The guards for the caravans had continued to work to strengthen the confidence of the merchants and traders operating in the Towns, and sap the resources and morale of the bandits. According to all the information they'd been able to get from Vallefor's people and local knowledge, the people who did business with the bandits were, largely going elsewhere as the money dried up.
Including selling their food to the Army, rather than the bandits.
Unfortunately, that had made the bandits desperate.
General Darch looked over the sight of the battle. It had been pure luck that the bandits, rallying together in an attempt make a bold move and show they were still a going concern, had chosen to attack the detachment of cavalry she'd been in charge of guarding this caravan.
She'd barely been able to get a blessing to Adun out when the battle had joined, but she had, and she knew that had helped a little, but there had still been more casualties than she'd wanted to have.
Whcih was to say, any.
But, the bandits had lost more. They had been desperate, and more numerous, but they were starting to gather the dregs in many cases. The smart bandits who really knew how to fight proper battles had likely melted away to find work as mercenaries, in most cases. The remaining bandits were those too brutal to get that work, and the usual post-war detritus of dislocated people who turned to banditry and stuck with it, getting decent at ambush and raid, but still not fit for a pitched battle.
In the end, eighty-seven dead bandits (and fifty-nine captured) traded for 19 actual casualties, not all of them dead, just too injured to return to service on any practical time scale, was not a bad ratio, but still.
Casualties from the Mobile Reserve (# Saved by General Darah's Trait in Parentheses)
-4 Heavy Cavalry (1)
-15 Light Cavalry (2)
The Votes in the Mining Section Must Be By Plan. The Vanessa Letter Option May Be Separate.
Voting Opens in 24 Hours.
They were playing a traditional dwarven game, Treddekar, which he'd heard humans describe as 'checkers, by way of chess', but while Rucdorn had tried both games, he had no idea what the people who described Treddekar like that were thinking when they made the comparison.
"I like a good challenge, and fixing the solvency of a Kingdom in a state like Halrun's? Not an easy task, but one very well suited to my abilities." Rucdorn said. "We've proven our dedication to cutting costs where possible, and raising revenues. The tax reassessments have done wonders for the Kingdom's income in the short, medium and long term alone."
"True enough," Vardeck agreed, then shook his head. "Still, being surrounded by humans all the time, moving things at their pace. You have to have it even worse than me," the Goldaxe banker sighed. "It's still a risk, you understand, making a loan like this, but a lot less of one now then it was five months ago when last we discussed the matter. Queen Vanessa's proven she can listen to a smart dwarf's advice when it comes to money, and how to see things from a banker's point of view. I assume this new development of her courting suitors is your doing?"
Not exactly mine alone. Rucdorn had made it clear how important bankers would find having an heir to be for getting better loan rates, yes, but Vallefor and Balmain had made cases for getting an heir for other reasons as well, and Vanessa wasn't an idiot.
Temperamental, perhaps, but given what she had to put up with, and that she was just a human, and a mage at that, probably inevitable.
"Largely," Rucdorn said, massaging the truth a little.
"Still, the Kingdom of the Necromancers. An odd choice."
"Bah, the coin of a lich spends as good as the coin of anyone else," Rucdorn waved a hand dismissively, moving several pieces in formation to a new position on the board. Each flat, metal disc was inscribed with runes identifying the piece, what it did, and how it moved. "Have you ever heard of the Archnecromancer reneging on a deal or trying to get out of paying for something?"
"Not to an outsider like us," Vardeck allowed. "Never heard of him taking any loans either. Have to respect a man who can live within his means, even if it's bad for business."
"Still," the banker moved a piece in response to Rucdorn's movement. "Selissa's the place that would do wonders for the Kingdom's finances. Their bankers aren't dwarves, but they're nearly as good."
"Oh, don't let your friends in Varaday hear that." Rucdorn chuckled.
Rienne probably shouldn't have taken personal command of the force sent down to take care of Dorien and Vrel and their men, but she hadn't actually had the chance to fight in a proper battle since the civil war, even with sending men out to fight bandits, and she was going to take the opportunity now that it had arisen.
She'd taken a hundred of the best soldiers in the mobile reserve, and made hard for the Thornwood, not wanting to risk the two criminals catching wind of their arrival with enough time. But of course, as close as they were now, there was no need to keep being careful or quiet.
There were ten guards outside the ruined Necrotic site - a crumbled structure of black stone, not overgrown by anything - the death magic of the Necrotic Empire holding vines and grass and more at bay.
Rienne spurred her horse forward, riding directly at one of the guards, bolting from the treeline at the man, who tried to jump away, but though he evaded her charge, her sword slashed and got him in the throat. The rest of her men charged and swarmed the remainder - outnumbered as badly as they were, it was a short work to deal with them all.
The rest, however, proved to be a little tougher. Rienne took two dozen men into the ruins with her, quickly having to enter tunnels, built long, long ago, lit by nothing more than the torches and lanterns carried by her men, or a few lights set out by the men plundering this site.
The tight confines made it harder to overwhelm them, but Rienne was even better with a blade than she was commanding, and she proved that thugs, even ones armored in well-made breastplate, were no match with for a swordswoman of her caliber, or soldiers she'd overseen the drilling of.
But still no sign of Dorien or Vrel. There were two mages in the group, maintaining constant checks for any sign of the memory modification magic, or similar assaults on their senses or wills. But so far, nothing.
Down another level, through the undertunnels, and then it opened into a massive underground cavernous chamber. Rienne couldn't help but gasp a little, and her soldiers did as well - the room was well lit by pale, ghostly light, silvery crystals casting shadows around the room, but more than enough to see even without torches and lanterns. The crystals glowed seemingly of their own nature.
"Well, it seems the Crown's best have come for us," a confident voice rang out, and Rienne felt a shiver run down her spine, ice suddenly filling her veins. She tightened her grip on the hilt of the blade of her sword.
The voice was confident, and cruel, yes, but hardly anything compared to what she'd faced. She looked back at her man, and all of them, to a man and woman, were clenching teeth, shaking a little - it was hard to say in the light of the room, but the closest were paling, eyes wide. She looked to the mages.
"It's him," One got out, voice shaking. The mages lifted their hands and started to chant, trying to push back against the magic afflicting their minds -
"Ah, ah, ah, none of that!" The mage's voice rang out. Suddenly, the room was plunged into near total darkness as every crystal suppressed it's light, only a handful of torches and lanterns against the totality of the chamber -
An eire scream rang out, the sound of scampering insects - but massive, everywhere, all around - and one torch was dropped,
"He -" one of her mages said, "He's - this power is - we can't - we can't hold his magic at bay for much longer!"
"And you won't have to." Another voice said, the other man no doubt, Vrel. His voice was husky and low.
There was a flicker in the darkness, and then cries from the left of the group as one of her men was felled, gurgling on blood.
Rienne rushed to see a man with two knives, Vrel, ducking and dodging and weaving under the opponents massed around him - he dropped, rolled between one soldier's legs and came up in front of one of her mages, past all the guards.
Rienne's blade came down at the last moment, hitting his arm with a poorly-placed weak side-swipe as she attacked from an awkward angle - but it was enough to stop his blades from hitting the mages throat and side as intended, and instead one knife went wide, and the other connected with the mage's arm.
The woman cried out, falling back, no longer working to block Dorien's magic - Rienne felt an overwhelming urge to run, to scream, to curl into a ball and hide -
But she pushed back, discipline of a soldier holding her in place. She had a mission to complete, an enemy to defeat, and people to protect.
"Well, I suppose you'll be a fun one to fight then." Vrel chuckled, and then he attacked - his knives slipped past her guard repeatedly,a nd it was all she could do to twist and dodge so they could connect with her armor rather than her skin, but even still, she cut a cut along her leg when a knife slipped into a gap and joint in the armor, and several dents on the rest of the armor, the knives striking with far more force than she'd have expected -
He was too close for her to easily swing her blade at him, his speed far more than she'd have expected - the rest of her man, some were closed tight around the mages, others seemed to have succumbed to Dorien's fear spell -
And a few more of their men had occupied the rest.
In the end, Rienne got cut several more times from where the knives got past her armor, but a lucky blow with the hilt of her sword against Vrel's skull sent him staggering back, and he was left on the defensive. Blood pumping in her ears and heart pounding in her chest, Rienne took advantage, slicing at his hands, the cuts forcing one, then the other knives from his hands as the blood poured freely from cuts and then one more stab, right through his heart - the leather armor resisted the point of her sword for a second, but he was dead before his body hit the ground.
Defeating Dorien proved to be harder, including finding him in the room. Her mages were able to resume pushing back against his magic, but only so much, and most of her men were immobilized by fear still, the magic too much for their psyches.
But Rienne did find him, and dispatched him, though she was nearly cooked in her armor as a blast of a strange black fire missed her by inches, and she screamed, even that glancing heat enough to cause damage it would take a priest to heal.
But Dorien too, was dead. There'd been no taking the man alive.
A few prisoners among Dorien and Vrel's men had been taken, however, and from what was gathered from them over the next few days, the crystals in this cavern were were what Dorien had been after the whole time. It had taken a great deal of excavation with limited manpower and tools to get there - Dorien keeping the secret of what was here to a select group - but from what her mages had to say, these crystals seemed to be quite the font of magical power. Though with Dorien dead, using them safely might require a great deal of experimentation.
Something for Her Majesty to look into, I suppose.
Given the distance between Halrun and Varaday, for all that Varaday was a critical banking center, there just wasn't much need for an Ambassador between the two kingdoms.
Still, when need for official communication between the Republic of Varaday and the Kingdom of Halrun arose, there had to be a channel for that, and these days, that channel was helmed, on the Varaday side for Halrun, by Lucaris Maldest. A Halrun-born man who was invested heavily in Andelerian Sea trade and still had loyalty to the Kingdom in principle, even if he hadn't been back home since he was fifteen.
He was fifty now, and had taken the overthrow of Syrokis with equanimity. This new Queen had paid off the Feltrini bank and had recently made a hefty payment on Syrokis's debts to the Vincaro and Dontrelli Banks, which kept them from giving him or other Halrunian merchants too much grief.
So Queen Vanessa was good enough.
At least, he'd been thinking so until the moment members of the justly feared and famed Varaday Banking Control Office stepped into his office and accused Queen Vanessa of being behind several recent successful bank heists.
"And you don't think it at all telling that every secure box and vault hit belonged to the very men and women you have been pestering our banks about?"
"I hardly think I have done anything," Maldest said, maintaining a carefully controlled tone and expression, a polite smile on his face at the two gray-uinformed women in front of him.
Your Majesty, or whoever it is that is actually behind this, what insanity are you on! No one messed with Varaday Banks like this! No One!
"All I ever did was pass on repeated requests from my Queen to have the property of attainted and convicted traitors and criminals handed over, and passed back the Senate's repeated refusals to entertain the idea."
If Her Majesty got him in trouble with the most dangerous people for a thousand miles - because that's what these men were, their whole organization was worse than any demon-worshipping cult in the damage they could do to someone - then he was going to...
Well, do something.
"You know nothing about these robberies?"
"Only what you've just told me what I've read in the broadsheets." Maldest answered truthfully. The white crystal held in front of him glowed white. Maldest smirked, and leaned forward, "And do you have anything other than suspicion to believe Halrun was behind this?"
"Yes." One said quickly, then she muttered a curse as the crystal glowed again, this time an angry, throbbing red. The double-edged sword of the Liar's Crystal. It worked for all lies spoken around it.
Smart people doing business with Varaday's government - the only people who knew how to make a Liar's Crystal - learned how to use that to their advantage.
"So you're just here to fish then." Maldest noted.
"And what possible reason would anyone else have to rob these vaults and boxes exclusively?"
"Well, there's the fact that most of the people they belong to are either dead, imprisoned or otherwise quite far from Varaday. The banks in question won't have to deal with meaningful complaints or threats of legal action from their owners." Maldest leaned forward. "Have you checked with any of the bank owners? You and I both know how easy it is for a bank to find itself in need of a bit of... liquid capital."
"And do you have any proof of that accusation?"
"Of course not. But since you have no good reason to believe my Queen had anything to do with these thefts, then you'll do to get out of my home." Maldest said flatly. After a long moment, both women staring at each other, exchanging hand gestures and flicks of their eyes, they nodded and left without even a proper goodbye.
Typical of their sort, really.
I'll need to prepare to make a bolt for one of my ships very quickly if they find proof.
But if they didn't have any, then perhaps Halrun had somehow, impossibly gotten away with it.
And I need to be very careful about not finding anything about it. That part shouldn't be too hard, since there'd be no reason for whoever had arranged this - the Keeper of Secrets, whoever it was, likely (Maldest honestly couldn't remember the man's name. Count something or another. He only knew Keeper Synvara's name because that was what was signed on the correspondence he got with what few instructions he'd been given.)
Still. Really. Robbing multiple Varaday Banks!? What madness!
Balmain had had to rough it a few times during the rebellion, but she had to admit, she didn't care for it. She had worn clothing suitable for ending up in the sort of dirt and grime-covered environs of a mine, but still, it wasn't going to be simple for her servants to clean off this off her clothing. Did these miners really need to burn coal to cook their meals? She supposed it was simple, since the seams were there in with the silver and iron they were primarily here for but...
The soot clung to everything.
"Her Majesty has dispatched me to see if we can find a way to meet your demands in a fair and equitable manner." The miners and residents of the Southmarch had kept the organization they'd used during the civil war, and she recognized several of the spokespeople she was here meeting with...
As well as representatives for the leaseholders of the mines themselves.
"One that leaves everyone at least acceptably satisfied." Balmain added.
"That'll be the day," one of the miners snorted.
"Now, now," another said. "They say a compromise is one where everyone leaves unhappy. We're all starting unhappy, so we're halfway there, aren't we?" There were a few weak chuckles from around the table.
They were all seated at a cheap wooden table set up not far from the resident villages for the miners of this particular mine, tent canvas propped up on poles overhead in case the cloud cover above decided to rain.
"You're the ones who have stopped working, so right now, the onus is on you and yours," she said to the miners representatives, "to set your demands out."
"We figured you'd start with that. We've got everything written out all nice and fancy." One of them said, passing over a sheet of parchment.
Balmain quickly read over the demands. They were, when summarized, quite straight forward.
- Increasing the wages now and in the future for all miners who have a year of work under their belt by one-fifth.
- A reduction in the ore quotas for each mine set by the lease holders by one tenth.
- A complete rebuild of three specific minesthat had fallen into particularly bad state. This would require shutting them down entirely for several months.
- Overdue maintenance for every mine, which would take at least a month while all labor was dedicated to building new supports, clearing out vents and rebuilding existing lifting and gear systems.
- The lease-holders of the mines would no longer be able to evict miners that suffered injuries in the mines, if their injuries could be recovered from within six months.
- The creation of a fund to support miners whose injuries were more severe, and the surviving immediate family of any miner who died.
In principle, Balmain could see the merits of all of them, but there was no way the Crown could afford to cover the costs of all of these. Which meant someone would have to be fobbed off on the lease-holders. And then there'd have to be compensation in the form of reduced mining taxes for at least a while.
"This is an expensive list of requests." Balmain said after a long moment. "These mines aren't valuable enough to the Crown to cover all of them in perpetuity."
"Not right now, but we both know Syrokis was looking to expand the mining operations before before he went and started a rebellion against hisself," one of the miner spokesmen said. "You'll have a hard time doing that anytime ever if none of us agree to that work."
"You're that sure of your ability to hold all your people together?" One of the lease-holders snapped. "You're all the same, you'll break into groups under pressure like every time you've tried this before!"
"We've fought and died together! Something you'd never know about!" A miner shouted.
"Yeah! And if you try to force us off or starve us out, we'll fight you just like we did Syrokis's men!" Another added.
"No one is fighting anyone," Balmain insisted. The last thing the Kingdom needed was a violent labor uprising. Or violent labor suppression.
It probably wouldn't spark any major uprisings anywhere else, yet, but it would destroy Queen Vanessa's goodwill among the common people. Or at least erode it a great deal.
"You're requesting more than the crown can afford right now, even if these mines were - as they are right now - worth the diversion of revenue required to create these funds, increase your wages and reduce quotas. But," Balmain said, holding up a hand. "We can address the safety of the mines, the ones that merely need overdue maintenance, and the ones that need significantly more than that."
It wouldn't be cheap, especially to it all at once. A good mine started to pay for itself once you were extracting ore, and the maintenance, the replacement of support beams that needed it, the shoring up of chambers and tunnels, and so forth, was built into the cost. But with years of overdue work...
"If we handle the mine safety, and promise to revisit the rest when we can..."
"A promise isn't enough on its own, Keeper." One of the spokesmen, the one who'd handed her the list of demands. "We're being overworked, and underpaid, and we have been for years. They," he gestured to the lease holders, "have us paying room and board out of our wages, they penalize us for not meeting quotas they deliberately set just too high for most of us to meet. If you want us back to work, then you and the Queen have to prove you're interested in actually keeping your word."
Rebuilding the three most damaged mines will take 24 Dureks to be finished in 5 Turns.
Maintenance overhaul on all the other mines will cost 25 Dureks, and be finished in 1 Turn.
[ ][REBUILDING] Start the Rebuilding Now (-24 Dureks)
[ ][REBUILDING] Don't Start It Right This Second
[ ][MAINTENANCE OVERHAUL] Do the Maintenance Overhaul (-25 Dureks)
[ ]MAINTENANCE OVERHAUL] Don't Do it Yet
(The miners will not return to work in any mine until the maintenance overhaul is finished and the rebuilding has at least started)
What Else Do You Offer The Miners As A Show Of Good Faith?
(Picking one choice results in Base Chance 50% + Diplomacy)* (Balmain's stats). (Each additional choice taken gives you +6% Base Chance) (Weak Success Means you've gotten then back in line and back to work for now, but that may change, Strong Success means you've gotten them fully onboard)
[ ][MINER DEMANDS] Decrease Quotas
-[ ]Force the Leaseholders to Eat the Cost (Upsets Mine Leaseholders)
-[ ]Reduce Southmarch Mining Taxes income by .5 Dureks to cover the leaseholder's expenses
[ ][MINER DEMANDS] Increase Wages
-[ ]Force the Leaseholders to Eat the Cost (Upsets Mine Leaseholders)
-[ ]Reduce Southmarch Mining Taxes income by .5 Dureks to cover the leaseholder's expenses
-[ ]Add a .5 Durek line item to the Expenses that will cover the increased wages.
[ ][MINER DEMANDS] Eviction Restriction (Upsets Mine Leaseholders)
[ ][MINER DEMANDS] Create the Fund for Severely Injured Miners/The Immediate Family of Dead Miners
-[ ]Force the Lease Holders to Pony Up the Money (Upsets the Mine Leaseholders a lot)
-[ ]Reduce the Southmarch Mining taxes by 1.5 Dureks to cover the leaseholder's expenses
-[ ]Create the Fund from Crown Resources with 10 Dureks to start with and having Rucdorn Relcred find someone trustworthy to manage the investments. (-10 Dureks)
[ ][MINER DEMANDS] Offer all the miners a substantive bonus (to be distributed to all the miners) (-5 Dureks)
"So what sort of punishments are we looking at?"
"A few imprisonments, and a maiming of the hand," Itrick said. He grimaced as he mentioned that last one, which didn't surprise Vanessa. Itrick had advocated several times for the elimination of the removal of the hand as a punishment under circumstances where it existed. In his mind, the main acceptable punishments for crimes were: Fines, Imprisonment (in varry degrees of conditions and for varying degrees of length), Exile on pain of Death, and actual execution.
Torture, maiming, and similar things, which all technically still sat on the books, even if they were only rarely used (and the post-Syrokis legal settlements had removed several of the contexts in which torture in particular could be done)
For a variety of reasons, Vanessa hadn't pushed on that issue. For one, while she could simply decree the end of the punishment in the Royal Demesne, to get it done across the Kingdom she'd need to go through the Estates, and that hardly seemed worth it. For another, she wasn't entirely sure she agreed that imprisonment was always a better option than chopping someone's hand off.
For rapists who had too much standing to be easily put to death, chopping their hands off seemed too light a punishment to Vanessa, in all honesty.
"Nothing that merited death?"
"Nothing that turned out to be true, at least. Mostly just cases of people extorting prisoners, passing information to the Loyalists while pretending to be rebels, the rapist, and some accusations of torturing prisoners that at most came out to be some overly rough handling. Punishable, but not really torture, given the contexts."
"Seems a little light, given all the accusations floating around. And given what we know other Loyalists did during the war."
"Well, they say where there's smoke there's fire, but sometimes the smoke is just thick steam." Itrick quoted an old saying, one Vanessa had heard quite a bit in her lessons on logic from Cyril and at the Academ before that. "More seriously, I think the biggest factor is that we handled all the cases where the evidence was clear and unambiguous in the immediate aftermath of Syrokis's defeat, so the only ones left were the minor accusations, and the ones that just didn't have a lot of real proof behind them."
"That makes a great deal of sense. Well, at least getting this done will make it harder for people to say I've decided to start embracing the loyalists. Apparently there have been a few saying that, after you rounded up that conspiracy." Vanessa considered.
"They'll be saying it again once I start pursuing claims against ex-rebels. We can't leave that off forever, especially since Lady Balmain's second cousin Marteen tops the list of the accused. If we don't investigate sooner rather than later-"
"People might think he's being given special treatment." Which he might just have to get anyway. Vanessa was fairly certain that unless is guilt was extreme and entirely unambiguous, she'd have to reduce his sentence to a life in a cell somewhere.
Hopefully Balmain doesn't try too hard to push back against anything else. This was of course, only if he was guilty. Vanessa was trying to keep an open mind.
"Well, that'll be a matter to discuss soon, but for now, good work, Keeper Grosdan," she told Itrick.
Arandel wasn't entirely surprised his efforts to scry Veldros had been less successful than would have been ideal. The city-state, descended from the Necrotic Empire as it was, still had a strong component of mages in their nobility, and had a much greater willingness amongst those nobles to marry commoners... that were mages. It's not that commoner mages marrying nobles was unheard of elsewhere, but it was less common, and less commonly approved of.
The details on the ground did matter - Vanessa, for instance, being pedigreed by apprenticeship to Cyril, probably would have been acceptable to some, though Arandel doubted Vanessa would have personally sought a noble marriage as means of advancement before being named queen.
It didn't really seem like the woman.
Regardless, the number of high-ranking mages in the city's government, as well as the role the clergy played in the quilt of factions that made up the ruling council of the city-state, made the number of rooms and buildings well protected against a casual scrying in the city quite high.
But he'd still been able to pick up on the anxieties plaguing the Veldran ruling class. Predictably, the biggest concern was the one that had plagued Veldros ever since Halrun had been created: they wanted to maintain their independence in the face of the massive ogre in the room that was Halrun.
At most all Veldros could really do on their own would be buy time. Granted, the other city-states of the Riverlands would probably not just sit there and let Halrun take Veldros over, but...
Well, probably did not a sense of security give.
The fact that Vanessa was Veldran by birth had done little to ease the ruling Council's anxieties, especially given her treatment by her noble mother. By all reports, House Kolmain was actually in a bit of poor favor in the city's Halls of Power, out of fear that the way Vanessa's mother and 'stepfather' had treated her might have alienated her against the city-state.
The other concerns, of course, were that the economic dislocation in Halrun would destroy their number one export market - the civil war had done a number on their economy as it was, and compensating by trading more with Osorien had only done so much.
Veldros's exports were primary finely crafted goods - their master craftsmen were considered artists of the highest order, and Arandel himself had a number of the colorful glass small sculptures that they were capable of making, they were beautiful and so detailed that you could almost thing an elf made them.
(That he'd actually tricked a few of his friends back in Syleria with that fact was neither here nor there.)
They imported a great deal from Halrun - food, primarily, but also raw materials of all sorts from the Kingdom, or that came through the Kingdom from elsewhere. The breakdown in trade in both directions from the civil war, and the fact that Halrun's economy was still in a shaky state meant that the city's leaders, even if they tried to pretend they disdained craftsmanship and trade, were nervous.
Neither detail was particularly surprising, but it had been surprising to learn more about the specifics underlying those anxieties, and Arandel was fairly certain he could use what he'd learned.
"In principle, I have no objection to increasing trade between Veldros and your Kingdom," The Veldran Ambassador, a man named Mark Corovel, told Arandel. "Though increasing tariffs as you propose to would of course have a deleterious effect on trade. I'm afraid that given the state of things in Halrun, it would be a tall order to expect our craftsmen and merchants to bear that increased cost... I simply can't say they'd be right to expect it would be matched by an increase in how much they could expect to gain."
And he's not even being performative about it, this time. The Kingdom's debts and all the other debts around had created what Rykall and Rucdorn called a 'credit crunch' on the realm and while the recent minting of coins had helped a great deal, there was simply not as much money around for the luxuries Veldros had to offer. Not unless you were a rich Lord or the uppermost tier of the urban elite or rural gentry. And that certainly made money, but the real money for the average Veldran Craftsman was less a noble buying their tenth exquisitely crafted wooden box, and more a middle-class family, or a newly up and coming merchant looking to show off their new wealth by buying something with a Veldran Maker's mark.
Things were improving, but not enough - not yet - that increased tariffs wouldn't just get in the way.
"And, if we're going to commit to greater exports, we'll want the same with Halrun. But it's much easier to move our products into your Kingdom than it is for your people to move great loads of lumber and ore and food into our territory, given the state of the roads."
"A fair concern, to a point, but given how close the Kingdom's great river is to Vannecht county, and given that Vannect County's roads are in pristine condition, not quite as great as you're making it out to be. The tariffs are something we can table for another time, though I think you must admit your predecessor ran circles around mine when negotiating the tariff rates ten years ago. It was practically robbery."
Arandel leaned forward, "I think we can come to agreeable terms, including in terms of commitment to ensure your people get the raw materials they need at acceptable prices."
New Trade Deal With Veldros: +2 Dureks Per Turn for 12 Turns
Vanessa had to admit that the prospect of rubbing her Throne and Crown in the face of her mother and everyone else she'd known back at the Academ (or at least the ones who had mocked and insulted her for her bastard birth, which was not all of her fellow nobleborn students) had been part of why she'd accepted the crown.
Not the largest part, certainly, but still.
She'd simply not had the chance to do that yet, but she found herself with a few free hours, and given the news that Arandel had signed a new trade deal with Veldros, she had her mother on her mind.
Vanessa had decided to send her mother a letter.
Dearest Mother,
I would say I hope this letter finds you in good health, but I'm not entirely sure that I hope that. We haven't spoken in many, many years, not since my eleventh birthday. I have no idea if you've thought of me much in the intervening years, but I have thought of you.
I don't blame you for me being a bastard, and throwing me off to the Academ was perhaps the best thing you could do, given how it turned out for me. On the other hand, even the slightest bit of maternal regard would hardly have gone amiss, so it's not as if your list of sins as a mother is short.
On the other hand, frankly, given what I've heard of my half-siblings, I doubt you'd have been any better a mother to me had I been born legitimate. Just bad in a different way.
I'm quite curious what's been going through your mind since you heard of my ascension to the throne? Fear? Anxiety? Concern? Pride, that your blood rose to such a height? I suppose I must grant my magical power to you, given the number of mages on your side of the family tree. Not that I know much about my true father's family - tell me, was it absolutely so essential to destroy his business and drive him from the city when he dared to try to reach out to me at the Academ, once I was no longer living under your roof? Is he even still alive? Do you even know? I've never been able to find him, and I have scrying magic under my control now.
Oh, and by the way, if you're going to keep cheating on your husband, perhaps do it somewhere that's warded? I really didn't need to see my mother like that.
You barely had time for me, mother, and frankly, I don't have much time for you, but I do want you to know, always know, that whatever your other children accomplish, even allowing for your abysmal parenting and poor judgment, they'll never accomplish what I did. I'm a Queen, mother, responsible for more people and more money than will ever fit in your tiny little world, than anyone of your family will ever achieve.
In a hundred years, when people think of House Kolmain, they'll think of me, and my descendants, than anything that happened in Veldros, no matter how storied your family's history is, no matter the glories it achieved.
At best, you and your family will be a footnote, forever.
Spite has proven to be, as I've found in many cases, quite constructive.
Sincerely,
The Daughter You Like To Pretend You Never Had
Vanessa looked at the letter after she wrote it, debating if it was actually a good idea to send it. Her mother was influential in the Veldran Government, but hardly that influential. Veldros had spent the last seven decades being very aware of the overwhelming power Halrun had compared to it, so what could Veldros actually do? Shoot itself in the knee and embargo? Try to declare war?
And that assumed her mother's influence would be enough to convince Veldros to commit suicide like that.
But equally, this was a very provocative letter...
[ ][VANESSA LETTER] Send It.
[ ][VANESSA LETTER] Don't Send It, Write Something More Conciliatory (but still backhanded)
The guards for the caravans had continued to work to strengthen the confidence of the merchants and traders operating in the Towns, and sap the resources and morale of the bandits. According to all the information they'd been able to get from Vallefor's people and local knowledge, the people who did business with the bandits were, largely going elsewhere as the money dried up.
Including selling their food to the Army, rather than the bandits.
Unfortunately, that had made the bandits desperate.
General Darch looked over the sight of the battle. It had been pure luck that the bandits, rallying together in an attempt make a bold move and show they were still a going concern, had chosen to attack the detachment of cavalry she'd been in charge of guarding this caravan.
She'd barely been able to get a blessing to Adun out when the battle had joined, but she had, and she knew that had helped a little, but there had still been more casualties than she'd wanted to have.
Whcih was to say, any.
But, the bandits had lost more. They had been desperate, and more numerous, but they were starting to gather the dregs in many cases. The smart bandits who really knew how to fight proper battles had likely melted away to find work as mercenaries, in most cases. The remaining bandits were those too brutal to get that work, and the usual post-war detritus of dislocated people who turned to banditry and stuck with it, getting decent at ambush and raid, but still not fit for a pitched battle.
In the end, eighty-seven dead bandits (and fifty-nine captured) traded for 19 actual casualties, not all of them dead, just too injured to return to service on any practical time scale, was not a bad ratio, but still.
Casualties from the Mobile Reserve (# Saved by General Darah's Trait in Parentheses)
-4 Heavy Cavalry (1)
-15 Light Cavalry (2)
I tried to give you more casualties, but the RNG refused to cooperate. 
To be clear, you had 5 HC casualties and 17 LC casualties, but General Darach's ability saved 1 HC and 2 LC.
To be clear, you had 5 HC casualties and 17 LC casualties, but General Darach's ability saved 1 HC and 2 LC.
The Votes in the Mining Section Must Be By Plan. The Vanessa Letter Option May Be Separate.
Voting Opens in 24 Hours.
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taovkool
Forever Gone
- Location
- The Library, Department of General Works
Oh wow, what a bitch.
You know what, I'll vote to do it. Just for the lolz and sheer catharsis.
- Location
- PA
That letter…
That woman does not deserve the time for a second letter.
I'm not convinced that it's wise to send that first letter given that much fire and spite wrapped up in it.
I…Have no words about the cheating situation and how that went down though.
I'm not convinced a Vaness that tries again won't end up really steaming up again, because that's some bad blood right there.
(I also suspect the QM may have had the misfortune to have dealt with people in ways to build a well-stocked reservoir of spite for emotional inspiration!)
A part of me kind of wishes there was an option for:
[X] No, if Mother wants a letter, she can send the first letter.
Just seems best to not even try with this burnt bridge.
That woman does not deserve the time for a second letter.
I'm not convinced that it's wise to send that first letter given that much fire and spite wrapped up in it.
I…Have no words about the cheating situation and how that went down though.
I'm not convinced a Vaness that tries again won't end up really steaming up again, because that's some bad blood right there.
(I also suspect the QM may have had the misfortune to have dealt with people in ways to build a well-stocked reservoir of spite for emotional inspiration!)
A part of me kind of wishes there was an option for:
[X] No, if Mother wants a letter, she can send the first letter.
Just seems best to not even try with this burnt bridge.
- Pronouns
- He/Him
Voting isn't open yet.
Rockeye
Plausible Engineer
- Location
- Midwestern U.S.
I'm really happy about the state of our debt servicing. We're at the point where we are comfortably above water on it now and can afford to spend money on other stuff. We've gone from being 15.5 dureks/turn underwater on base rate expenses and interest versus income, to being 42.5 above. We've eliminated 31% of the interest and 20% of the actual monetary debt.
......I notice that Crown Holdings income declined a decent chunk this turn. Maybe it's time to survey the Crown Holdings and see what state they're in? Since it might be 'a bad one'? Unless I missed or forgot an explanation for this.
| Turn 1 | Turn 2 | Turn 3 | Turn 4 | Turn 5 | Projected turn 6 | |
| Income (base only) | 225 | 233 | 240 | 247 | 245.5 | 245.5 |
| Expenses (base only) | 122 | 122 | 120.25 | 122 | 122 | 122 |
| Interest | 118.5 | 101 | 98.5 | 97.75 | 94 | 81 |
| Income after expenses + interest | -15.5 | 10 | 21.25 | 27.25 | 29.5 | 42.5 |
| Debt Remaining | 1005 | 910.75 | 896.25 | 899.8 | 874.25 | 797.75 |
......I notice that Crown Holdings income declined a decent chunk this turn. Maybe it's time to survey the Crown Holdings and see what state they're in? Since it might be 'a bad one'? Unless I missed or forgot an explanation for this.
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Kylia Quilor
I Have Two Moods, and Bitter is One of Them.
- Location
- Hiding in the corner of your vision.
- Pronouns
- She/Her
The miners are no longer working in the Southmarch, so you've lost 6 Dureks/month from the Mining Tax until that's resolved. Which isn't a lot, granted, but it does add up, and the option will exist later to try to expand the mining operations for more money down the line.
The money from the wage increase would still need to come from somewhere, and you'd still need to seed capital the fund. But that is a possible write in option.
- Location
- Denmark
When it comes to the mines, then I think that we should both start the rebuilding and the maintenance overhaul now, since we have the money for it now. Also, since the chances for getting at least a weak success is so big, then I do not feel the need to give them more, than one concession. Of their demands, then I think the eviction restriction seems like the best pick, since the Southmarch is underpopulated, so we do not have enough people to do all the work, we might want to have done in the Southmarch already. Though I am unsure, how troubled the Leaseholders will be by this, it does not seem to cause them any significant expenses, since then we would likely have the option to compensate them.
[ ]Plan: Get the Mines Fixed
-[ ][REBUILDING] Start the Rebuilding Now (-24 Dureks)
-[ ][MAINTENANCE OVERHAUL] Do the Maintenance Overhaul (-25 Dureks)
-[ ][MINER DEMANDS] Eviction Restriction (Upsets Mine Leaseholders)
When it comes to the letter to her mother, then I prefer writing something more conciliatory, though I think both options will likely be fine.
[ ][VANESSA LETTER] Don't Send It, Write Something More Conciliatory (but still backhanded)
[ ]Plan: Get the Mines Fixed
-[ ][REBUILDING] Start the Rebuilding Now (-24 Dureks)
-[ ][MAINTENANCE OVERHAUL] Do the Maintenance Overhaul (-25 Dureks)
-[ ][MINER DEMANDS] Eviction Restriction (Upsets Mine Leaseholders)
When it comes to the letter to her mother, then I prefer writing something more conciliatory, though I think both options will likely be fine.
[ ][VANESSA LETTER] Don't Send It, Write Something More Conciliatory (but still backhanded)
I mean, it's 6 dureks per turn, in a few months from now. Using the same amount for money to pay off loans will get save us 10 the next turn alone. Not worth it for now
- Pronouns
- He/Him
The problem is that we need 15 Dureks to purchase the second and (expected) final round of coin minting. Otherwise, I'd be all for this plan.
Kylia Quilor
I Have Two Moods, and Bitter is One of Them.
- Location
- Hiding in the corner of your vision.
- Pronouns
- She/Her
Voting Is Open!
The Following Voting Options NEED TO BE in a Single Plan.
[ ][REBUILDING] Start the Rebuilding Now (-24 Dureks)
[ ][REBUILDING] Don't Start It Right This Second
[ ][MAINTENANCE OVERHAUL] Do the Maintenance Overhaul (-25 Dureks)
[ ]MAINTENANCE OVERHAUL] Don't Do it Yet
(The miners will not return to work in any mine until the maintenance overhaul is finished and the rebuilding has at least started)
What Else Do You Offer The Miners As A Show Of Good Faith?
(Picking one choice results in Base Chance 50% + Diplomacy)* (Balmain's stats). (Each additional choice taken gives you +6% Base Chance) (Weak Success Means you've gotten then back in line and back to work for now, but that may change, Strong Success means you've gotten them fully onboard)
[ ][MINER DEMANDS] Decrease Quotas
-[ ]Force the Leaseholders to Eat the Cost (Upsets Mine Leaseholders)
-[ ]Reduce Southmarch Mining Taxes income by .5 Dureks to cover the leaseholder's expenses
[ ][MINER DEMANDS] Increase Wages
-[ ]Force the Leaseholders to Eat the Cost (Upsets Mine Leaseholders)
-[ ]Reduce Southmarch Mining Taxes income by .5 Dureks to cover the leaseholder's expenses
-[ ]Add a .5 Durek line item to the Expenses that will cover the increased wages.
[ ][MINER DEMANDS] Eviction Restriction (Upsets Mine Leaseholders)
[ ][MINER DEMANDS] Create the Fund for Severely Injured Miners/The Immediate Family of Dead Miners
-[ ]Force the Lease Holders to Pony Up the Money (Upsets the Mine Leaseholders a lot)
-[ ]Reduce the Southmarch Mining taxes by 1.5 Dureks to cover the leaseholder's expenses
-[ ]Create the Fund from Crown Resources with 10 Dureks to start with and having Rucdorn Relcred find someone trustworthy to manage the investments. (-10 Dureks)
[ ][MINER DEMANDS] Offer all the miners a substantive bonus (to be distributed to all the miners) (-5 Dureks)
This last option does NOT need to be part of a plan, and can be voted on seperately.
[ ][VANESSA LETTER] Send It.
[ ][VANESSA LETTER] Don't Send It, Write Something More Conciliatory (but still backhanded)
The Following Voting Options NEED TO BE in a Single Plan.
[ ][REBUILDING] Start the Rebuilding Now (-24 Dureks)
[ ][REBUILDING] Don't Start It Right This Second
[ ][MAINTENANCE OVERHAUL] Do the Maintenance Overhaul (-25 Dureks)
[ ]MAINTENANCE OVERHAUL] Don't Do it Yet
(The miners will not return to work in any mine until the maintenance overhaul is finished and the rebuilding has at least started)
What Else Do You Offer The Miners As A Show Of Good Faith?
(Picking one choice results in Base Chance 50% + Diplomacy)* (Balmain's stats). (Each additional choice taken gives you +6% Base Chance) (Weak Success Means you've gotten then back in line and back to work for now, but that may change, Strong Success means you've gotten them fully onboard)
[ ][MINER DEMANDS] Decrease Quotas
-[ ]Force the Leaseholders to Eat the Cost (Upsets Mine Leaseholders)
-[ ]Reduce Southmarch Mining Taxes income by .5 Dureks to cover the leaseholder's expenses
[ ][MINER DEMANDS] Increase Wages
-[ ]Force the Leaseholders to Eat the Cost (Upsets Mine Leaseholders)
-[ ]Reduce Southmarch Mining Taxes income by .5 Dureks to cover the leaseholder's expenses
-[ ]Add a .5 Durek line item to the Expenses that will cover the increased wages.
[ ][MINER DEMANDS] Eviction Restriction (Upsets Mine Leaseholders)
[ ][MINER DEMANDS] Create the Fund for Severely Injured Miners/The Immediate Family of Dead Miners
-[ ]Force the Lease Holders to Pony Up the Money (Upsets the Mine Leaseholders a lot)
-[ ]Reduce the Southmarch Mining taxes by 1.5 Dureks to cover the leaseholder's expenses
-[ ]Create the Fund from Crown Resources with 10 Dureks to start with and having Rucdorn Relcred find someone trustworthy to manage the investments. (-10 Dureks)
[ ][MINER DEMANDS] Offer all the miners a substantive bonus (to be distributed to all the miners) (-5 Dureks)
This last option does NOT need to be part of a plan, and can be voted on seperately.
[ ][VANESSA LETTER] Send It.
[ ][VANESSA LETTER] Don't Send It, Write Something More Conciliatory (but still backhanded)
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