Turn 2 Available Actions and Advisor Recommendations
After a rather amusing (to you) occurrence resulting in the firing of a leading contender for this year's Upper Class Twit Of The Year champion and the promotion of a far more sensible intern to take the twits place, you announce that henceforth the Academy will be referred to as The Aerie. You are quite proud to have limited yourself to only a half dozen or so bad bird puns in the course of the speech.
For once General Wolf and Dr Young seem totally united on something. From now on, no more bird puns in official speeches. The killjoys.
The advice you get from your advisors on the succession range from the somewhat whimsical (Janet offering to take you out clubbing with her to troll the waters, swearing that her fourth boyfriend from such a tactic will totally work out, unlike the first three who didn’t seem to know what the word ‘commitment’ meant) to the boringly practical (Professor Chapman sitting you down for a two hour discussion on historical precedents, political theory, and the pros and cons of various approaches in the absence of a settled precedent).
You spend most of those days pointedly avoiding Tyler Lee, at one point loudly commenting to Sergeant Ngô about just how many windows there are in the repaired palace to throw the old lech out of if he sticks his nose in.
And then he sticks his nose in.
“You know, I’ve got a grandson about your age. Good kid, hotshot junior test pilot over at Aves Aerospace.” he rather casually comments, leaning against the doorway to your office. “Granted, my son-in-law runs the place, but he’s still good people, almost good enough for my oldest daughter.”
You have to shake yourself… the walking hormone is
married? You realize too late that you said that out loud when the old lech laughs.
“53 years, kid, keeps me young.” he smirks at your expression. “Somebody had to win the grand prize, after all.” and he has the nerve to buff his nails on his suit jacket lapel.
You are still trying to get your head around the fact that some woman put up with him for over a half century as he saunters, positively saunters, out the door.
Before you can have him pitched out the nearest window.
The old bastard.
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General Wolf is pleased with the repairs to the Academy overall.
“I know that our military is in poor shape, but right now it’s more important that we fully dig ourselves out of the budgetary hole we’re in with all the repairs. At most we should buy some more tank platoons or perhaps an LRM carrier platoon or two, but that’s very low priority compared to getting our finances into order. One thing I would strongly advise is to start researching fortifications in order to make defending our planet easier.”
Military Projects
Tyler Lee, still un-defenestrated weeks after he stuck his nose in the entire marriage thing (you’ll get him eventually!), goes over a number of options with you and the rest of your advisors. With the rebuilding on track and the replacement of conventional power plants with new fusion plants underway he brings up the possibility of focusing attention on various sectors of the economy.
“Down the road promoting heavy industry and the tech sector will be very important, but for now we really can’t afford it. We could promote the financial sector, and the bankers would love us for it. But nobody else will and it may cause far more trouble than it is worth. This will sound odd coming from an unrepentant business tycoon like me, but once the budget can handle it I would strongly advise that we implement stronger environmental regulations. We can’t afford the hit to our economy right now, but the benefits when we can are more than worth it and it will let us leave a more positive legacy for future generations. With technology that’s coming down the road we’ll be able to shift much of our industry into orbit, after all, so once that happens we can get the best of both worlds. For now, though, let’s not start anything new and just finish up what we’ve got coming down the pike.”
He pauses, then slides a folder over to you. “There is one low-cost thing we can do, a general improvement to infrastructure is well within our means and would have small but important knock on effects to both our economy and our populations quality of life.”
Interior Projects
((Note a reminder, you can use any non-committed actions from any category to perform generic rating actions like improving infrastructure))
There’s been a lot of chaos within the Foreign Ministry, but Doctor Young assures you she is on top of the situation. While the contingency planning hasn’t progressed it is still an option, and in addition the Cultural Affairs section of the ministry sends you a memo proposing the commissioning of a monument to those who gave their lives in defense of the planet in the raid.
Diplomacy Projects
You and Professor Chapman spend most of your meeting discussing the ongoing reorganization of the government back to the lines in place under your father. Campaigning is already beginning in various areas, and the Professor has been fielding requests from prominent families for consideration for noble status ever since the Lords were announced. She has a small binder of the more amusing submissions which have the two of you chuckling for a few hours.
Everything is on track, with new construction for the capital buildings well underway along with dispersed bunkers to hopefully prevent what had happened to the previous government from happening again. The recent great enthusiasm for you personally is having an effect, people are working long hours wanting everything to succeed and the effects are starting to be felt.
((Every action either in progress or started this turn will have 1 free success added to its resolution roll. This means that a bare failure on the roll will be treated as a bare success, 1 degree of failure will be treated as a bare failure, and 2 degrees of failure will be required for an actual failure. Projects with this effect active will be marked with an asterix))
Political Projects
Dr Palmer video conferences in from her field office with piles of paperwork visible on the rickety desk she’s seated behind. She’s been camped out near one of the main crash sites for months overseeing the cataloguing of material for future research.
“The labs are coming along very well.” she reports. “They should be finished on time and on budget, then we’ll really be able to get started on some real research again.”
She shuffles some papers. “Until that is finished I’d really recommend not starting any serious research projects. The difficulty in working without good labs is going to hamstring any serious work and ultimately cost far more money than we can afford.”
Research Projects
Juanita Bailey comes in, looking even more grim-faced than usual, and sits down heavily. “Those people are scum. Complete scum. You’ve gotten the reports about those women we rescued?”
When you nod she grimaces. “We’ve been getting more intel out of them than out of the prisoners. It’s bad. The Star League has fallen, the entire Sphere is in a constant state of war with all of the powers nuking each other back into the stone age.”
There is silence in the office as this sinks in.
“We won’t be able to hide this for too long, so you’ll want to start thinking about how to handle this. In more local news, when your father was on the throne he’d regularly have us investigate the various politicians within Parliament, you might want to get a head start on that by looking into those who are already jockeying for positions as we get things restarted.”
“Oh, and as big of a bunch of scum as they are, my people are certain that the prisoners still have things to spill, our questioning has started bearing fruit but we can, with your permission, jack up the pressure.” an evil smile crosses her aged face. “I’ve ordered some workmen to erect a scaffold in full view of the POW camp and we’ve started testing the mechanism for the trap. That should motivate them to be very cooperative, yes?”
Intelligence Projects
Janet is her usual ebullient self when she bounces in at an indecently early hour with a giant steaming cup of coffee as a bribe for good behavior (and not getting thumped).
“I’ve got a great idea!” she announces, flopping back on your couch while you work on reducing the blood content of your caffeine system. “And I ran the numbers on it too! Remember when we spent a semester volunteering downtown at that women’s shelter?”
You nod, slowly coming awake.
“Well that got me to thinking, remember that legal aid clinic they had there? They did a ton of good, helping poor folk deal with issues. Got quite a few off the streets after all, and that’s always a good thing. We already have a public defenders office and it’s pretty well staffed, why don’t we expand it a bit both in size and scope to provide free legal services to the poor and indigent. If we prime the pump, we’ve got mechanisms in place for the existing legal aid clinics to merge in both with their manpower and their funding, so it would be almost cost neutral.”
She grins a bit. “So think of it, kay? Oh, and I really think we should do some background checks for the various candidates for office. Just doing a quick scan through the names and did you know that two of the ones vying for Lordships are convicted sex offenders, and one of the candidates for the Common’s has a laundry list of fraud convictions? Won’t cost much either, but boy will it save on embarrassment.”
“In addition once Mrs Bailey is done playing with the prisoners, let us know and we’ll start the trials of those scum buckets. Pirates are hostis generis humani, after all, so we don’t really need a trial technically but it might give their victims some closure and show that we at least care about the rule of law.”
Justice Projects