Andrew, Scion of House Ravenblood. Representative to the Guild Combine.
Basic Charachteristics
Twenty Six years old.
Halian Islander Ethnicity (Close to the Orthodox Canon of "Basic Humanity" in form, with some common charachteristics. Tanned skin, light brown or blond hair, green eyes. Does best in warm,
wet climates and with a diet heavily consisting of fish, and fruit.)
Light build, well groomed appearance.
Family history of modest amounts of ancient Gene Tampering. (You are currently unaware of any effects this may have had on you, personally, besides eliminating some of the potential for genetic diseases your ethnicity is most often afflicted by.)
Skills and Personality
-Naval upbringing.
-Strong, generalised education.
-Accustomed to life in Space
-Liberal mindset, due to exposure to technologies, cultures and creeds throughout the Imperium.
-Well travelled
-Shaky understanding of and history with the sects of the church has led to small amounts of mutual distrust.
-Strong understanding of the economic systems of the imperium in their many myriad forms.
-In depth knowledge of Interplanetary trade law.
-Generalised familiarity with technology.
Personal Possessions
Clothing
-Several sets of Halian formal wear, suitable for presenting yourself in formal gatherings with minor dignitaries and most Combine officials, when you wish to remind them of where you come from.
-Entire Wardrobes of varied outfits designed and made by the Textiles Guild, suitable for a wide range of activities, social gatherings and official meetings. Fashionable, elaborate, and suited to most engagements you are likely to encounter in the near future.
-A set of Ceremonial House Ravenblood Armour. Not intended for pitched warfare, but still offers some measure of protection should you ever want to project power. It does sacrifice some amount of practicality when compared with other sets of medium armour, but it nonetheless is a great deal better than clothing or the armour of a common foot soldier. It consists of three layers, a powered wetsuit which can buoy you to the surface of water, which is itself made of highly durable, waterproof fabric. A set of refined, practical plate armour over that. And finally, a set of red and black finery to be worn over that, decorated with the sigil of your house.
Weapons
A Naval Saber, made with conventional metals and Halian craftsmanship.
A Laspistol, made in a Combine factory.
Personal Wealth
-A collection of Combine-Made Jewellery.
-A chest of Imperial coins.
-Lavish station quarters, with personal serfs and attendants.
Your Current Resources
-Noble Retinue: A company of trained bodygaurds, assigned to protect your person. (300 currently. Armed with Sabers and Laspistols. Led by Captain Elthis, a landed aristocrat, and your friend.)
-Ravenblood Guild Combine Accounts: You've been put in charge of administrating your family's Guild accounts. Most of your family's wealth exists in the form of physical assets and resources on your home-planet, but these accounts exist specifically to purchase goods and services from the Combine. Currently these accounts possess enough liquid currency to purchase an entire Frigate, with a roughly equal amount of credit.
-Personal Guild Combine Accounts: Your personal savings are not insignificant, though your recent expenses have depleted them. If you spent all of your funds, you could probably hire a few small Combine Mercenary company's for a year of service. You have a generous line of credit in addition, though not nearly on the level possessed by your own family. You can however, expect better interest rates.
-Various contracts guaranteeing travel for yourself and your retinue with the usual Shipping Guilds.
-Position of Authority over family investments and interplanetary trade.
-Family ownership of a moderate amount of debt from the newly discovered colonists.
After paying the broker in question a fee to encourage him to keep quiet, you spend a little more time pouring over the specifics of the "shopping list" which the colonists gave him. What isn't on the list tells you as much about some of the broad strokes of the colonist's current predicament as what is on it. They arn't for example, asking for fuel, which tells you that they must have already secured a source of power. That could mean environmental power, like that derived from solar, wind or geothermal collectors, or it could mean biofuel. Given that much of what they are offering in trade in exchange for credits is raw minerals, that also tells you they have some kind of mining operations ongoing, and also that they lack sophisticated refining facilities which might otherwise enable them to offer something more valuable. They are however, looking for copious amounts of food and water, rather than crops they can cultivate, which also tells you that the agricultural potential of the world they are on must still be very low. The fact they are also seeking a variety of refined machine parts also confirms their lack of sophisticated manufacturing, which likely means their air and waste recyclers are beginning to break down, not having been meant to be running continuously for so long. You lack any sophisticated understanding of how early terraforming works, so you have no idea how that process might be benefiting or worsening their current circumstances.
You decide to commit minimal resources to the matter for now however, reasoning that your families currently complicated circumstances make it a poor idea to commit too heavily into potentially risky investments. You don't expect that the colony's survival to remain a secret forever, but keeping it under wraps, and an eye on the situation seems to be the wisest course of action.
Once again you meet with your preferred Technologist Guild representative, who seems increasingly pleased at the frequent meetings the two of you have been having. He's a well presented, handsome fellow, and a great deal less strange than many other members of the Guild that you've met. He's a former guild serf and therefore has no family name, but on the station he's often called Orange-Eye Jack, for the cybernetic orb which he had voluntarily installed in place of an eye. You have no idea what that false eye does, but it's rarely bothered you, as "Jack" is a fairly agreeable sort, good at saying what you need to hear to put you at ease. The meeting is rather short, as you know exactly what you are looking for.
"I'm looking for an engineering team at the usual rate for a one year contract, to be loaned out to an off-the-grid world. Discretion is the key word, i don't want the Shipping or Banking Guild catching on yet." You say a little more than you would with someone you havn't worked with before. Orange-Eye hasn't tried to pull a fast one on you yet, and while you don't entirely trust him, you don't distrust him either. He shoots you a grin. "Can be done. I won't even ask for coordinates if you just tell me what ship to put them on. It'll be an extra 5% to be discrete about it though. Logistical cost." You expected 8%, but you don't say as much. It might be that he's trying to keep your business, or it might be that there's something clever here that you arn't seeing. Engineering teams are cheaper than many of the other services the Technologist Guild provides, so the difference is a pittance as far as your family coffers are concerned. Within ten minutes, you're back on the station's promenade with your copy of the signed contract in hand.For the time being and with the broker's help, it's easy to monopolise the colony's business. The local currency that they are trying to offer is defunct, but when the Archaios absorbed their former house they also absorbed its debt, and still offer an exchange rate at one half its former value, so you accept it at one third. The raw minerals and ore they offer has a less flimsy value however, and therefore is where the bulk of their bartering potential comes from. You accept that too, at something much closer to market value. After your calculations are complete, you figure that the equal value of food, water, and machinery doesn't even make it worthwhile to send a freighter to deliver it. That suits you just fine, as a freighter would draw more attention, so instead you hire an independent courier ship to deliver both resources and the engineering team. Between the ship and the engineering team, you take on a slight loss to the family coffers, but you are of course, going to be charging interest on that. Overall, it's quite comparable to many of the investments you make on behalf of the family, this time it's just riskier. You toy for a little while with the idea of negotiating for mineral rights, but you just don't have enough information to commit to the idea to devote what would have to be a considerable investment of resources in exchange.
...
While engaging with affairs of trade, you consider the noble houses, and wether you should bring the means of war home. The Archaios are large, one of the major Houses in fact. They've never managed to make a credibly play for the Imperial Throne however, mostly because most of the religious Sects dislike them enough to veto their votes whenever they've come close. Historically the Archaios can be most closely associated with deep pragmatism and expansionism, though those traits are viewed by less charitable minds as near-blasphemy and dangerous ambition. The Archaios whole-heartedly embrace many technologies otherwise frowned upon by the conservative or moralistic, such as creating new human gene-strains outside of the Imperial Canon, or fielding highly intelligent automatons. They are hindered from explosive technological progress by poor relations with the guilds however, and you know from experience that the Archaios and Technologist Guild are currently engaging in a covert espionage war with one another, each in order to steal technology. The Archaios are also limited by their own ambition, which often leads them to reach beyond their grasp, spreading their efforts too thin. They have always recovered however, from every lost war, every automota revolution, and every censure. The Archaios have never had the benefit of strong allies or popular support, and yet they have been strong for most of well-recorded history.
The Navarric are much less expansionist, at least in theory. They consider themselves Righteous and Independent, but they are also a family which bears grudges, and answers slights with the sword. In times past, they were a much smaller vassal to another house, but slowly and steadily developed military might which could rival their Lord. Fearing the growing might of their vassal, this House attempted to exterminate the Navarric family, and very nearly succeeded. It is from the reprisal that
Navarric's righteous rage became entrenched in history, for their revenge over their traitorous liege became complete in a year, their destruction so complete that even the name of that family is now difficult to find unless you comb ancient volumes of the Imperial census. Now House Navarric is a power of their own, with a deep tradition of Knighthood and Chivalry that is overshadowed only by their legendary temper. They are however, a very conservative house, which is part of where the cold war with the Archaios comes into effect.
Traditionally, Ravenblood has kept its independance by playing the two against eachother, and has technically been at war with both. The Archaios however, never take war personally, and House Navarric has always considered any attack by the Ravenbloods to be due to duplicitous manipulation by the Archaios, something which has occasionally been true. House Ravenblood has never formally allied with either, though you believe it probably could if its leadership ever decided to pull for it. It may be that the reason that has not occurred yet is due to the Navarric's temperamental nature and the Archaios penchant for utterly pragmatic manipulation. The Ravenbloods have married into either family before, and while it may tug relations to one side or the other, such marriages have never been to seal formalised alliances, though certainly agreements of times past.
...
A day earlier than you had been expecting it, the return freighter from home arrives. You suppose that someone at Halia must have rushed it back out in order to get it back to you sooner. Before using your decryption key, you muse as to whether or not that's a good or bad sign.
The highest priority message is of course from the House Seneschal. He expresses mixed feelings about the cyberneticist you've sent, though he also notes that the Matriarch apparently doesn't share his misgivings, and is agreeing to CR-177's "extreme" procedure. It seems that between his last correspondence and this one he has had second thoughts about his own "by any means necessary to save her life" panic. Nonetheless, he expresses gratitude that you sent assistance so promptly, and a hope that the treatment will be successful. The next message is from CR-177 himself, and goes into great detail about what the procedure in question will entail. After he and his team did a thorough examination of Mistress Ravenblood and her Chirurgeon's more up-to-date information, he decided that surgery to excise any and all effected tissue would be her best chance for survival. In effect, her lungs will be removed entirely and replaced. There are risks, including that the artificial organs could be rejected, something which would cause "likely fatal complications". He notes that with your Grandmother's age, it may be helpful to replace nearly all of her organs, and expresses irritation that the Seneschal is preventing him from prepping her for an even more "thorough" surgery. The House Chirurgeons are reportedly quite helpful, and he reports that if she does not reject the lungs, she will live three to four more years with no additional significant treatments. The chances of rejection are apparently low, but not insignificant enough that it's not worth stating.
Your Father and Sister sent the next message, clearly having worked together on it. It's becoming increasingly apparent that your Uncle Eugen is marshalling for war. His personal Legion is the most worrying factor in that, consisting of hardened veterans armed with equipment and experience which is otherwise nearly impossible for Halian locals to acquire. More men die on the Void Predator front than return from it, but those that do manage to return are a force to be reckoned with. Eugen has been holding off seemingly out of respect for what the family's inner circle consider to be the Matriarch's impending death, but the fact that his traditional allies have been slow in mobilising a navy for him may also have something to do with that. It's not entirely clear who he intends to attack. Your Aunt, the house spymaster seems to be the primary target of his ire, but her personal holdings are minor, consisting of a pair of Town-Ships and their ranging territory. If he does attack anyone however, there are many small lords who are already mobilising to oppose him, including Adam, who is organizing some kind of volunteer legion under the banner of a knightly "Quest", which traditionally disbands as soon as the oaths which bind the Quest together are fulfilled.
Speaking of Adam, within a day of the freighter docking with the station, his chosen representative makes an appointment with you. You have mixed feelings when they enter your office. The visitor in question is another cousin of yours. Sino the Pious, though that is not the name he was given by his parents. He gave up the family name and any claims attached to it when he joined the Orthodox Sect to become a missionary.
In order to prevent it from getting awkward, you offer him a drink, something which allows him to remind you that he's taken a vow which prevents him from imbibing. You quietly berate yourself for the lapse in memory, as it allows your cousin to lecture you about your own proximity to and indulgence of excess, including the wealth you have so proudly decorated your office with. Already this is growing to be something of a tiring visit, though you pretend to politely listen. After the sermon, Sino seats himself and at last gets down to the matter of Adam's claim. Sino begins to lay out the argument for why you ought to support Adam should war approach. For one, Adam has the support of the Orthodox sect, and while they can't directly intervene in a civil war, they can still publicly and loudly support one claimant or another, and influence major players in doing so. In addition, Adam has more popular support than Eugen does right now. And finally, supporting an Orthodox claimant may convince the sect to forgive your own lack of demonstrated piety in the past, as you'd be proving yourself an ally of the church. They may even be willing to grant you a public indulgence should your support for Adam be vigorous and loud enough. You dismiss Sino to think it over, and then pour yourself a drink. Your cousin may have made a vow, but you certainly didn't.Sino isn't your only visitor however. Once you head to your quarters for the night, you find an unexpected guest waiting for you.
You feel a jolt of fear at the sight of an unexpected intruder. It wouldn't be the first attempt on your life, and you call for your guards, who quickly burst into the room from either door. The intruder has her hand raised in a gesture of peace however. Her weapons -and in fact, her other hand, a cybernetic augmentation- are on the ground, seemingly left there intentionally. Your guards gather them up, but your interest is piqued now, so you allow her to stay long enough to say her piece. "I've been sent by your uncle Eugen. I'm an officer in his legion." You wouldn't know it just by looking at her, she's dressed in simple, unassuming clothing, though she's scarred and weathered enough that you believe she could be a veteran in the Void War. "I've come to deliver you this. That's all." She hands you a Reader, already booted up for your convenience. Included on it is first, a decryption key which shares elements with the family code, though with differences, second, a series of audio records, and third, a series of garbled messages, which don't match up with any decryption codes you're familiar with. Apparently that's all this soldier was here for, so you dismiss her. You imagine it would have been simple to merely discretely send this to you, but perhaps Eugen is particularly paranoid, or perhaps this was a way to subtly intimidate you. A demonstration that Eugen could try to have you killed, and stand a fair shot at it. Once you've gathered yourself, you look more thoroughly through the reader. The garbled messages are apparently correspondences that Eugen intercepted from the spymaster's correspondence, which he believes are to and from a powerful off-world party. The audio messages are recordings he's apparently managed to obtain from discrete listening devices. There are only a few, but it does sound like recordings of your Aunt plotting with an unknown party, perhaps some of her trusted agents, and admitting that she desires the House Seat for herself, as she feels she is the true successor to the Matriarch's vision for the house, and the one most able to carry out her work. It isn't much, but it is at least somewhat suspicious, though it boggles your mind that she would be so careless. You arn't a spymaster, but you regularly have your office and quarters sweeped for listening devices. You suppose it's possible that the audio has been doctored, or that there may be some technology you are unaware of which might shield such devices from conventional detection, but if neither is the case then the fact she has allowed this to happen speaks of a certain level of incompetence in a spymaster.
Soon, Captain Elthis checks in with you to make sure all is well, and to tell you that Eugen's officer is currently restrained in your custody. Meanwhile, you have a week and a half until the next scheduled departure to Halia. How do you plan to prepare for that?
Author
Topic: Fading Empire (SG) (Read 6390 times)