Quest Deep Periphery Quest (Battletech Sandbox Empire Builder)

[LordSunhawk]

Turn 28 - You Can Feel His Stripes But You Know He’s Clean

Spoiler: Luck, Event, and Rating Rolls

Meta Event - 5 - +5% POP Growth
Dynasty Luck - 11 - favorable withdrawal terms from Griffin V

Approval - 1
Approval Change - 1

Politics - 3
Research - -2
Economy - 0

No Parliament rolls

POP - 6
Econ - 5

Spoiler: Action Results

USS Enterprise Scouts Phoenix* [75]
Target - 75
Roll - 62
Result - SUCCESS

Purchase New Units
-2 Flight of Rocs [70]
Target - 70
Roll - 9
Result - SUCCESS

-3 Flights of Eagles [auto]

-2 Flight of Goshawks [70]
Target - 70
Roll - 14
Result - SUCCESS

Build infrastructure on Pollux* [50]
Target - 50
Roll - 69, Economist Reroll - 50
Result - SUCCESS

Initiate relief shipments to Griffin V [80]
Target - 80
Roll - 1
Result - CRITICAL SUCCESS

Build factories for Trooper GP Mech [100]
Target - 100
Roll - 1
Result - CRITICAL SUCCESS

Commission toys based on AFGR fighters, mechs, and tanks* [80]
Target - 80
Roll - 100, Jarow Reroll - 85
Result - Bare Failure - Automatic success next turn

Establish Relations With Remnant Population on Griffin V [85]
Target - 85
Roll - 39
Result - SUCCESS

CULTURE - Benefit Concert [75]
Target - 75
Roll - 58
Result - SUCCESS

Enhanced ER-PPC* [50]
Target - 50
Roll - 38
Result - SUCCESS

XL Fusion Engine* [50]
Target - 50
Roll - 63, ShadowArxxy Reroll - 3
Result - SUCCESS

Life-extension therapy* [40]
Target - 40
Roll - 33
Result - SUCCESS

LOSTECH - Target Acquisition Gear* [45]
Target - 45
Roll - 98, Kelgar03 Reroll - 6
Result - SUCCESS

Orbital Survey [100]
Target - 100
Roll - 66
Result - SUCCESS (automatic FAILURE due to event)

Screen relict population on Griffin V for ISF/O5P agents [85]
Target - 85
Roll - 6
Result - SUCCESS

Sarah is able to provide to you an itemized list of critically needed relief supplies, mostly medicine, food, and warm clothing. USS Defiant is assigned to escort USS Harris and the still unnamed Confederate-class dropship from the 332nd cache.

You idly think you should correct that…

[] Write-In name for Confederate, QM reserves right to veto any suggestion

Jake accompanies the expedition on-board the USS Harris, taking a small diplomatic staff from Isoroku, although your Foreign Minister pointed out quite sensibly that having an ethnic Japanese representative make contact might be… contraindicated.

Instead there is a recorded greeting from yourself, introducing Jake as your ambassador plenipotentiary for the purpose of coordinating assistance to the ‘former victims of Drac aggression’. Jake himself has been instructed to facilitate the future integration of the population into the kingdom.

Initial contact is surprisingly cordial, Jake speaks fluent Polish and seems to get along with the leadership of the refugees surprisingly well. This is most certainly a case of a round peg being put in a round hole, and thankfully Willis is willing to handle the patting you on the back so you don’t have to risk putting your arm out.

This sets the pattern for the next several months. Your dropships shuttle back and forth between Griffin’s Roost and Griffin V, carrying needed supplies and construction materials with them on the outbound legs. On the first such cycle a team from your Intelligence Agency accompanies the shipment, and on the trip back you have several dozen Kuritan agents to interrogate. Turns out that none of the ISF plants spoke Polish after all.

Arrogant bastards.

The counterintel teams are still at work, of course, just because the ‘hint’ had panned out didn’t preclude the possibility that more sneaky snakes weren’t still present.

Back at home the infrastructure work on Pollux has been completed, giving a badly needed shot in the arm to the economy. The continent is now well and truly open and projects like building new cities and such can easily commence, not to mention new factories.

On that note, the new factory for the Trooper battlemech has been completed. And completed incredibly well indeed. The assembly lines are laid out well and the contractors worked so quickly that the factory has been rated at level 2 immediately, able to build 8 mechs a year instead of merely 4.

The new ASFs are in service, beefing up your already formidable aerospace force and giving you somewhat more of a buffer against the Dracs. Depending on how well talks go with the people on Griffin V you might soon want to dispatch some of them there to provide cover against any Drac aggression.

USS Enterprise completes its survey mission of Phoenix. Multiple mineral deposits have been located in the mountains that ring the central desert. In addition the sheer massive extent of the germanium deposit at the center of that ultra-arid frozen wasteland has been mapped… based on that deposit alone you’ll probably never run out of the stuff.

The concert goes extremely well, with a heavy metal theme that features songs about historical Polish themes. A great deal of money is raised, pretty much covering all of the expenses for providing humanitarian relief to the left behind population.

On the other hand the copyright and classification issues related to the new toys are still not fully resolved, although there has been progress with the designers finally agreeing to remove certain details from the toys and the companies in question being willing to at least talk again. Maybe next year?

Coming from the research labs comes some extremely good news. The R&D teams have achieved a massive breakthrough on both the enhanced extended range PPC and the extra-light fusion core. The work on the XLFE core has gone so exceptionally well that the scientists have some ideas on how to make the shielding surrounding the core itself less bulky, although that is for further in the future.

The team working on Target Acquisition Gear has also reported a breakthrough, although they did lose the test sample in the process. With that breakthrough they have also developed a semi-guided LRM to take advantage of the TAG system.

In addition the Medical School research teams have come up with some effective therapies to extend lifespans and boost the quality of life in one's older years. These therapies have had some interesting knock-on effects for cancer research.

However there is one dark spot in the research lights.

A missing close paren.

That’s it.

A missing close paren.

And you very nearly had a disaster leading to a Kessler Cascade.

A single bloody missing close paren.

If it wasn’t for Sarah and some extremely alert monitoring teams that missing close paren would have resulted in all of the orbital survey satellites attempting to navigate to the exact same orbit at the same time, resulting in total chaos.

The programmers were able to fix it, and the issue is traced to a legacy bug that dated back to the Star League era which had somehow propagated into the navigation software for the survey satellites. This particular bug only showed up under an extreme edge case condition, which inadvertently occurred when the execute command had been given for the orbital survey.

 

[LordSunhawk]

Turn 29 - You Could Have A Steam Train

The first successful relief mission sets a pattern, as you use your small group of Dropships to ship supplies and materials to Griffin V. With USS Enterprise completing its survey work you can direct that she either join the relief effort or engage in the survey and exploration work she’s intended for.

[] Join Relief Effort - +1 Goodwill this turn
[] Remain available for exploration actions

Back on Griffin’s Roost things are proceeding apace, the major shakeup in the professional hovercraft racing league has seen viewership skyrocket as several formerly dominant teams are now seemingly unable to catch a break. The revelations about the depth of the corruption in the league has led to quite a few lawsuits, but things seem to be heading in a very positive direction.

Jeremy is in his final year at the Aerie and his MechEng class is hard at work on their final project, a design study on what an ‘ideal’ Heavy mech would be. You’ve gotten to see some of the work they're doing and it is quite impressive theorycrafting, although actually fielding such heavy mechs is a way in the future.

The twins are happily focusing on racing, although James likes to grumble about Quan having the faster hovercraft he’s won just as many races as his twin. They are now in the senior division, the Lee Cup. You checked, it had been called that from the start, so you can’t go and defenestrate Tyler over this.

You still call and threaten him with that.

Thanh is doing quite well in her classes and now that she’s actively working towards becoming a combat pilot much of the strain and conflict between you and her have eased. She’s still by far the most aggressive of your kids, but she’s maturing before your eyes as she goes through the Aerie.

Little Sarah is doing very well as well, top of her class and already accepted in Griffin’s Roost University on a full-ride merit academic scholarship in History.

Sekhmet had spent a few months away down on Capricorn and returned with her mate, Thoth, a massive male tiger, and pregnant with a new cub. Bastet, meanwhile, splits her time between the Aerie and the palace. Although she makes a point to be at every single one of the twins' races ‘standing guard’ on their haulers.

You decide to not twit Willis too much over hitting 50, because next year you’ll be hitting that milestone as well and don’t want to give him any ideas. That came to nothing as Tyler sent him a giant black balloon reading ‘Condolences On Being Over The Hill’. You and Willis both resolve to throw the old man out of the window as soon as the doctor’s give permission.

Damn doctor’s don’t give permission, although he’s a mighty spry 105 this year.

Damn old man.

The economy is doing extremely well through Q1, with the specter of immediate attack off the table corporations are investing heavily into growth and this is translating into very serious economic activity.

Amidst all this economic activity comes some interesting news from Pollux. Farmers there have been looking over conditions and it appears that the combination of the soil, rainfall patterns, drainage, and general overall conditions make this prime agricultural land, perhaps even more valuable for this than for regular economic exploitation.

They are proposing restricting development to agricultural work. This would be somewhat expensive, but could have some major benefits for population support.

[] Agree - +10 POP Limit immediately, Doubles benefit of Improved Agriculture. -1% GDP
[] Disagree - -5 Approval Change

Sarah is monitoring the system for any activity and so far it appears that the Dracs are keeping to their end of the bargain. Time will tell if this continues but for now it appears to be holding.

You spend several days down in Hue Moi at the Ngo family compound for a wedding, Sergeant-Major Thanh’s youngest sister is finally tying the knot and it is a beautiful celebration. It’s nice connecting with your adopted family, you spend plenty of time with them but it’s always good to have an excuse to spend more time down there.

While you are down there, though, there is a development on the deathopotamusaurus front, a large migration has begun which requires the Aerie Cadre to deploy on hippo herding detail. Jeremy is part of the force sent out and distinguishes himself by rescuing a classmate who’s Ambush got mired and was threatened with being trampled. Thankfully they are able to steer the herd away from settled areas over parts of the tunnel complex that have been completed, saving enormous amounts of money.

 

[LordSunhawk]

Turn 29 - You Could Have An Aeroplane Flying

USS Enterprise joins the next convoy heading out to Griffin V, although this particular trip is carrying more than simply supplies.

Granted, the exploration Aerodyne is packed to the overheads with crates of medicine and food, but all of the ‘mech stalls on HMS Harris are filled with something else.

Massive grifftigers from the Great Hunter Company. The Eldest had rather pointedly volunteered their services to help secure Griffin V and had pointed out, quite reasonably, that a bunch of great big cats would be marginally less threatening than sending mechs. Cats, after all, were cute.

You weren’t all that certain of the logic, but were willing to give the big guys their chance to join in the diplomacy, besides the ex-slaves on Griffin V would probably need to get used to the big cats sooner rather than later.

Willis and Sarah going along was less welcome, but they’d talked you around to it. The Royal Family really needed to make an appearance, and Sarah had made a solid case that the two of them could generate plenty of good will.

Of course, this meant that Bastet decided to go along as well.

You realize belatedly that this might have been a ploy by the tigers. After all, the few tigers who’d visited the titanium mining area down in the antarctic had all reportedly been fascinated by thick snow and had spent hours playing in it. Now there’s an entire planet of the white and frozen stuff.

You are tempted to recall the convoy at that point, as you remember just how much Sarah loved playing in the snow the one time you’d gone up to near the summit of Mt Griffsport where there was a year round snowpack. This was obviously a conspiracy by your youngest and the grifftigers to have an entire planet of snow to play in.

That’s your theory and you’re sticking to it.

There’s a massive landrush on Pollux once you make the decision to focus the continent on agriculture and direct the Ministry of the Interior to prioritize the same. The extremely agreeable climate and superb conditions swiftly show through. The initial boost in food production has brought food prices tumbling down and as herding is established in those parts of the continent less suitable for farming prices drop even further. Some of the established agribusinesses are grumbling about the loss of profits, but you check the latest tax audits on them and they’d previously been printing money, now they are simply rolling in it. Greedy bastards.

As the development of Pollux grows the total cultivated region will expand, with significant benefits for food production. As more cities and settlements are established the benefit will grow as well.

Naturally, Parliament now decides to stick their oar in.

Granted, the idea isn’t half bad, to be honest. Moreover in the long term it may well be very useful.

What they are proposing is a new Department of Colonization, to manage expansion to other worlds, their settlement, terraforming, and integration into a wider Griffin’s Roost empire. Not a bad plan at all. It would come jointly under the Ministry of the Interior, Foreign Affairs, Justice, and Military and would be in charge of all of the above facets of expansion.

The catch is that they are also proposing that this Department report to a joint oversight committee rather than directly to the Crown, thus bypassing some of your authority.

[] Agree in full - Colonization Actions will now be a separate category that uses either Interior, Diplomacy, Justice or Military slots to complete. +5 to all colonization targets. -2 Crown Influence, One time cost of 100,000, +2 Lords and Commons Influence

[] Agree in part - you want the Department, but not the joint oversight committee. You’d be responsible for the results either way, that committee is just a way for the politicians to take the credit while leaving you the blame. As above, but no change to Influence, -25 support in Commons and Lords.

[] Disapprove - -10 Support in Commons and Lords

In other news, there’s an amusing ‘scandal’ taking place in Griffsport. Oh, it started out seriously, but then it went so far off the rails that it didn’t take a genius to realize that the Department of Periphery Studies was involved.

It started out with a mild panic, because Griffsport Police getting sudden calls about dire penguin sightings in downtown have a way of causing a reaction. Officers swarmed the area, searching for the lethal little avians.

There were no birds.

Well, not real birds.

Somebody in Periphery Studies had bought a shipment of toy remote control battlemechs and had installed them inside plushy dire penguin casings, loaded recordings of what they thought were actual dire penguins, then conducted a Dire Penguin Parade to further their campaign for Dire Penguin Rights and that Humans And Dire Penguins Can Coexist In Peace! They hadn’t bothered to get a parade permit, nor had they actually told anybody, including their faithful white-coated research assistants, what they were going to be getting up to. Thus the mild panic.

The first clue that this was off the rails was that that recording, you know, the one of ‘actual dire penguins’? Were actually ducks. Lots of ducks. Quacking. Loudly. In chorus.

You can’t stop chuckling, although you do send a note to the zoo that since it’s impossible to keep actual Dire Penguins, perhaps animatronic ones based on these silly things might be an idea to showcase that type of wildlife?

 

[LordSunhawk]

Turn 29 - You Could Have a Bumper Car Bumping

Willis and Sarah will be remaining on Griffin V, now known as Nowy Gdansk, for a while longer as they engage in personal diplomacy.

Personally, you think that they are just there to play in the snow with Bastet.

However the presence of this ‘Home Army’ does create an opportunity. Trained men, used to combat? Valuable. Just lacking in equipment. You speak with General Potter and he’s willing to release a full foot company set of gear for their use. The cost is relatively trivial, so you authorize the weapons shipment.

You do wonder how the Poles will react to going from a few scavenged and improvised weapons to having the equipment of a fully modern infantry unit, including pulse laser rifles, man-pack PPCs and Support Lasers, and all the SRMs. Probably wish they had them back when the Dracs first arrived.

At the meeting General Potter lays before you an offer from Tank-X to upgrade the Foxhound and Wolfhound hovertanks to new models in order to boost the capabilities of the Rapid Reaction Force. They’d been stockpiling excess ferro-fibrous armor, and with the new XLFE and Enhanced PPC technology they’d decided that the time was ripe to show what they could do with the new tech.

They are offering to fully upgrade both regiments of hover tanks to the new standard for the cost of labor and new weapons.

[] Agree. Will cost 5751 but not take up any strategic materials. The new Foxhound swaps the Large Laser for an ER Large, drops the LRM rack, upgrades the SRM rack to a 6 pack, and adds a machine gun plus TAG. The new Wolfhound drops the entire weapons fit and replaces them with an Enhanced ER PPC plus LRM 10 rack combined with an Anti-Missile System. Both use XLFE and Ferro armor. Wolfhound goes to 100 hp, A/D of 15/15, and specials of SWIFT, ARMORED, ANTI-MISSILE 1, while the Foxhound goes to 44 hp, A/D of 11, and specials of SWIFT and TAG.

[] Disagree

Parliament is not happy with you taking their Department of Colonization idea, running with it, yet stripping out the language that would have effectively given them the primacy in governance and reduced you to reigning without actually ruling. Many speeches from the legislators responsible denounce you for incipient tyranny and refusing to follow the ‘elected will of the people!’. The fact that these lawmakers are then able to walk out of Parliament and return home without being molested, spied upon, abused, arrested, or killed kind of puts the lie to their claims of tyranny, though, especially in the eyes of a populace who rather like you.

Jake sends you a good memo about how to handle that, which leaves you cackling a bit.

So you write a column for the largest newspaper in Griffsport, which is reproduced in newspapers across the planet, in which you personally thank those legislators for their hard work on the Department of Colonization. You make the entire thing a gracious exercise in giving credit, without once mentioning their latest demonization campaign. Which, by your very silence on that matter, does more to thoroughly discredit it and make you look like the adult in the room and Parliament like a bunch of greedy toddlers. (+5 Approval)

This goads the most intemperate of your critics to rant, rage, and howl in fury, only for them to be ruthlessly undercut by the ‘official’ opposition, with Dominique utterly skewering them for their vain self-importance allowing you to play them like violins.

The fact that she makes this broadcast while sitting in front of a large fireplace, with a white angora cat on her lap which she is petting, and the grifftiger who’d adopted her looking truly smug in the background… you send her a note advising that next time she tries that scene to have it shot at the observation center for Mt Griffsport to have lava in the background. Accompanied by a compilation of your favorite Bond themes. (You sense a distant cry of ‘Pierce Brosnan’ to which you are compelled to respond ‘Sean Connery’. Sekhmet finds this very amusing, and ‘Daniel Craig’ pops up on her communication board.)

You get another visit from General Potter. There are several competing designs for a new fire-support mech that have reached the final stage of the design competition, any one of which can fulfill the requirements.

[]	Name	Cost	Materials	HP	Attack	Defense	Special
[]	Missile Support Mek	1990	DHS	60	25	25	Missile-LRM
[]	Magonel Missile	2145.2	Endo, DHS	60	25	25	Missile-LRM
[]	Ashigaru ASH-1	2223.2	Endo, DHS	64	26	26	Missile-LRM TAG
[]	Ambush Big Brother	2325.6	Endo, DHS	60	25	25	Missile-LRM TAG

He also shows you the results of one of your son’s most ambitious MechEng projects. A 10 ton ultralight, extremely fast but armored with tissue paper mech that only uses trivial amounts of endosteel in the chassis, so little that they practically require only scraps from the foundry thus do not consume actual strategic resources. You have the option of putting them in production as well, although the General admits that they might not be all that useful except in extremely limited circumstances compared to a ‘proper’ mech. He does note that the mad lads in his class had come up with a sword of all things, on the grounds that a proper Winged Hussar needed his cavalry saber or he’d be ‘underdressed’ and two are always better than one for some odd thematic reason he didn’t understand.

[]	Name	Cost	Materials	HP	Attack	Defense	Special
[]	Winged Hussar	354.8	None	8	3	3	Swift, Fragile, TAG

Maybe the Poles would appreciate them? You send a note to General Potter asking him to look into a full infantry support variant replacing the Medium Laser with a machine gun designed to fire both lethal and non-lethal rounds to make for a superior law enforcement mech. He promises to get back to you on that.

You do have to admit that they look cool…

Spoiler: Winged Hussar

QM NOTE - replace the katanas with cavalry sabers… further, note that the cockpit is technically torso mounted rather than in the head, the head and shoulders pop off to allow ejection.

Speaking of Jeremy, he’s graduating this year and being commissioned as a Second Lieutenant. He’s not yet been assigned a mech, but he’s been assigned to 1st Armored in the expectation that one will open up within the year. Looking at him in his dress uniform (with a much less pronounced ‘pointy bit’ than yours, thank god, you still can’t figure out how to convince everybody to get rid of the damn thing, tradition be damned) you feel an incredible swell of pride. Enough so that you probably embarrass the hell out of him by breaking down in sniffles and giving him a giant hug during the formal commissioning and graduation ceremony.

Well, you are his mom, and the queen, you are allowed to embarrass your son if you want.

The twins, of course, start ribbing him, so you wait until their next big race and do the same to them during driver introductions.

Thanh pointedly reminds you that she didn’t tease her big brother over this.

Doesn’t save her, you do the same thing to her at the formal presentation of her years top students. The fact that you slip her the keys to your old personal sport hovercraft while doing so is probably the only reason she’s not mad at you.

Sarah is still safe… for now. You’ll get her later.

Then it’s budget time budget time budget all the way.

You hate budget time.

Meetings are evil.

General Swanson kicks things off like usual. “Your Majesty, now that the budget is a bit better off, and being mindful of the large expenses coming up next year, we have several proposals. First of all, with the new Trooper mechs, we’d like to get started on 1st Armoreds 3rd Mech Battalion, 2nd Regiment. However we would like a factory built or converted to construct whatever new fire support mech is developed so that we can build out 3rd Battalion as what we are calling a ‘Fire’ battalion, with 2 line companies and a fire support company.”

She checks her notes. “We recommend accepting Tank-X’s proposal for improving the hovertanks of the Rapid Reaction Force as well. Our analysts are torn about the ultralight mech, but there might be a place for them. They are small enough that they won’t require a dedicated factory as they can be produced at existing industrialmech factories. In terms of conventional forces, we’d like to finish up the Mechanized Infantry regiment for 2nd Brigade and get started on the Artillery elements with a buy of Paladin SPGs.”

General Reyes then takes the podium. “Your Majesty, I’m going to be in an unusual position of recommending a minimal ASF buy this year then pausing most ASF procurement for a while. Maintenance and upkeep is becoming a serious drain on our budget overall, and our ASFs are a major component of that strain. I’d recommend finishing off the Goshawk wing, building out the new Roc and Eagle wings, then idling the factories until the economy expands enough to justify the maintenance expenses.”

Admiral Benjamin nods “We’ll be finishing HMS Intrepid this year, Your Majesty, and she’ll be in commission early next year. We might want to lay down a second Harris, but that might be a bit overly ambitious. We don’t need much mech transport, after all. While I think we should continue building Defiants, we might be better served to allow the private sector to play in the dropship sector for cargo lift and such, would make exploiting the other planets in the system much easier, which in turn would increase the budget for building up our Fleet.”

General Potter takes the podium and looks a bit grim. “We’ve run the numbers, military upkeep and maintenance are rising faster than our income, if this continues we’ll eventually be the best defended bankrupt mess in the Periphery. Let’s avoid that, Your Majesty. We should finish bulking out 2nd Brigade of 1st Armored, and possibly build up 3rd Brigade, but other than that, garrison forces for Nowy Gdansk if and when the Poles agree to join formally with Griffin’s Roost, and Defiant production we should slow down on military procurement.”

Bridget is as bubbly and bouncy as ever. “Your Majesty! With the new Department of Colonization we can do SO MUCH MORE! New cities, especially on Pollux, would be a big priority, along with continuing work up around Five Fingers because having a port up there and developing the coastal regions would be valuable and would give us a base of operations for when we want to start applying some of that terraforming know how of ours to the interior and get some water in there did you know that there is a spot there where it’s so cold and dry that there’s actually dry ice on the ground, that’s so cold that it scares me to think about so we should think about that also we should rework our economic setup to support multiplanetary economies it’s pretty simple but we’ll need throne backing to get it done as it will possibly irk Parliament to lose more power but that’s the way it is.”

Isoroku is his usual zen self. “Your Majesty, the Foreign Ministry is ready to support colonization efforts by promoting the new resource and city areas to the population. It’s fairly low cost but has a solid return on investment. In addition, with the Planetary Olympics coming up next year, we really should think about putting up a memorial to those lost against the Dracs on Nowa Warszawa, would be a lovely gesture for our new Polish friends, while also the side effects would give us more funding next year to help offset the costs of the Olympics. That being said, it’s too late for this edition, but for the next running of the Olympics we should make certain that Nowy Gdansk is invited to send a team.”

Jake isn’t available, but he sends a memo reading simply “Reorganization is never fun, but is needed, let’s get it done.”

QM Note - if both political and interior actions regarding the shift are done this year they’ll synergize their requirements rather than requiring sequential ordering

Dr Palmer has been released from the hospital, but she’s still in poor shape. She’s still enthusiastic though! “Your Majesty, we really should focus on general science this year. Improving communications is important, now that we have forces spread so far throughout the system, and improving our orbital infrastructure would help us better support high tech industry and research. In addition, we need to upgrade the space station at L4, the knock on effects will reduce the costs for orbital infrastructure and several other research projects. Finally, and this is going to sound mad, let’s see about setting up a space station in Nowy Gdansk orbit. It would be an ambitious project, but beyond the further reduction in costs for some projects it would be a valuable test of our logistics capabilities.” she pauses, grimacing a bit. “And a cure for cancer would be nice too, mine is in remission but…” she shrugs.

Janet and Harry are both at Nowy Gdansk working with their counterparts. Harry sends a memo listing a number of recommendations specifically related to counter intelligence work that he’d like to see implemented, while Janet is requesting the funding of a working group to merge Griffin’s Roost and Nowy Gdansk legal practices into an Imperial whole.

 

[LordSunhawk]

Turn 29 - I'm Gonna Be Your Sledgehammer

Spoiler: Event and Luck

Meta-event roll - 4 - +10% GDP +5% POP
Dynasty Luck - 11 - family visit to Nowy Gdansk massively speeds integration

Approval - 4 successes
Approval Change - 3 successes
Politics - 1 Failure

Economy - 2 Failures
Economy Event - 5 Successes
Research Event - 0 Successes

Parliament
Lords - 2 - FAILURE
Commons - 1 - FAILURE
Crown - 4 - FAILURE

Spoiler: Action Results

Initiate relief shipments to Griffin V [80]
Target - 80
Roll - 45
Result - SUCCESS

Harden Factory 8 [65]
Target - 65
Roll - 57
Result - SUCCESS

Harden Factory 9 [65]
Target - 65
Roll - 6
Result - SUCCESS

Purchase New Units
-2 Flight of Rocs [70]
Target - 70
Roll - 33
Result - SUCCESS

-3 Flights of Eagles [auto]

-1 Flight of Goshawks [70]
Target - 70
Roll - 30
Result - SUCCESS

-2 Lances of Ambush Battlemechs [70]
Target - 70
Roll - 65
Result - SUCCESS

-1 Lance of Pathfinder Battlemechs [70]
Target - 70
Roll - 56
Result - SUCCESS

-1 Lance Trooper Battlemech [70]
Target - 70
Roll - 58
Result - SUCCESS

-10 Platoons of Weasel IFVs [70]
Target - 70
Roll - 51
Result - SUCCESS

-10 Companies Mechanized Infantry [70]
Target - 70
Roll - 37
Result - SUCCESS

-1 Platoon Avenger-2 AAA [70]
Target - 70
Roll - 38
Result - SUCCESS

-3 Platoons Lion Tank [70]
Target - 70
Roll - 69
Result - SUCCESS

Construct Port on Five Fingers [75]
Target - 75
Roll - 29
Result - SUCCESS

Permit the design of Civilian Dropships [65]
Target - 65
Roll - 56
Result - SUCCESS

Reorganize economy to support multi-planetary Imperial system [85]
Target - 85
Roll - 20
Result - SUCCESS

Build Factories for Gyrfalcon on Pollux [100]
Target - 100
Roll - 55
Result - SUCCESS

Expand Orbital Factory 6 (DHS) [80]
Target - 80
Roll - 77
Result - SUCCESS

Commission toys based on AFGR fighters, mechs, and tanks* [auto]

CULTURE - Monuments Ho! [75]
Target - 75
Roll - 6
Result - SUCCESS

Reorganize government on Imperial lines [85]
Target - 85
Roll - 93, Kelgar03 omake reroll - 28
Result - SUCCESS

Build Relations with House of Commons [60]
Target - 60
Roll - 50
Result - SUCCESS

Build Relations with House of Lords [60]
Target - 60
Roll - 51
Result - SUCCESS

Orbital Survey* [100]
Target - 100
Roll - 44
Result - SUCCESS

Advanced LB-X Autocannons [60]
Target - 60
Roll - 71, Kelgar03 omake reroll, 61
Result - Bare Failure - automatic next turn

Improved Communications Lvl 3 [75]
Target - 75
Roll - 35
Result - SUCCESS

Orbital Infrastructure lvl 3 [60]
Target - 60
Roll - 40
Result - SUCCESS

LOSTECH - Terraforming Equipment Lvl 2 [70]
Target - 70
Roll - 61
Result - SUCCESS

Investigate individuals linked to 331st [65]
Target - 65
Roll - 38
Result - SUCCESS

Upgrade counterintelligence [75]
Target - 75
Roll - 93, Kelgar03 omake reroll - 42
Result - SUCCESS

Interrogate POWs [65]
Target - 65
Roll - 18
Result - SUCCESS

Establish Legal Liaison with Nowa Gdansk [75]
Target - 75
Roll - 5
Result - SUCCESS

You have always enjoyed racing, despite your adamant denials about any tendency towards being an adrenaline junkie. You most certainly are not one and anybody who brings up the royal fleet of high performance vehicles is a lying liar who lies. Those are all obviously Willis’ fault.

You attend the championship race for the Professional Racing League’s Lee Cup, and actually get to drive the pace hovercraft for the parade laps. You most certainly did not have to be told by race control to slow down. You led the field on the parade lap at a perfectly reasonable and respectable 100 kph.

So they wanted it to run at 40 kph. Oh well. So you ran it at that plodding speed that is unreasonably slow.

Of course, you then had to open up the taps and do a lap at full speed, lapping the field and showing the young whippersnappers how it’s done. Just because you categorically are not a speed freak adrenaline junkie doesn’t mean you don’t know how to drive a hovercraft at maximum speed.

It’s Willis’ fault.

Honest.

Race control didn’t seem to appreciate that bit, but the crowd loved it, the driver’s loved it, and that’s all that mattered. Your personal feelings are totally irrelevant.

You loved it.

Then the race itself started. Both of your boys were in the Championship 5, with a chance to win the championship itself depending on how high they finished this one final race. All the points in the season, all the wins, it all came down to earning your slot in the top 5 for this race.

For James it was an incredibly frustrating race, and the crowd seemed to be on his side in that regard. In the first stage of the race one of the older driver’s who had a reputation for never giving anybody, even the leaders, a free pass even when multiple laps down had spun out and, indeed, went about ten laps down while repairs were made to the hovercraft after a hard impact with the safety barrier. And then he promptly wrecked James when he charged back out onto the track - he came up the track before even being at full speed, and forced James into a spin to avoid tail-ending the far slower racer.

The loud and sustained booing of the crowd was an epic accompaniment to the resigned statements of the race commentator that it was just that driver doing his normal shenanigans and how hard he was to get past, even for a leader. James went a lap down and struggled for the rest of the race.

Quan, on the other hand, had a few minor issues very early on, but managed to stay on the lead lap through them all, until on lap 382 of 400 he passed the leader on the inside during the transition from water to land and never looked back.

He had won the championship. James finished on the lead lap in fifth, but didn’t seem to mind all that much as he jumped out of his own racer and rode around the track perched on the side rail of his brother’s vehicle.

Your son had won the Lee Cup. And of course His Tylerness made the presentation. How you managed to get through the entire speech, which was laden with statements that to an outsider sounded perfectly casual and normal but to somebody who’d been family with the man for decades at this point were referencing things that were extremely hilarious and embarrassing, without busting out laughing or getting Sekhmet to practice some Tyler-tossing into the water part of the track is beyond you.

And of course Tyler just had to be maximum Tyler and pinch your butt when you gave him a hug. Damn the man!

The personal visit of Willis and Sarah to Nowy Gdansk had proven incredibly successful. Sarah and Bastet had mostly spent the trip playing in the snow with the young people of the ex-slaves population, but plenty of serious diplomacy and political talk was accomplished.

It was so successful that by the time Willis, Sarah and Bastet returned home the population of Nowy Gdansk was already drafting their official petition for joining the Empire of Griffin’s Roost.

Not a very creative name, you admit, but it was better than the alternatives that were proposed.

Of course, when Sarah returns home you make a point of fussing all over her in the same over the top manner as you had done to the rest of your kids. Unfortunately, Sarah had forewarning from her siblings and was clearly taking after your side of the family with how devious she could be. She’d brought back a snowball lovingly packed in an insulated and chilled container which she’d promptly stuffed down the back of your dress when you started fussing over her.

The little minx.

Jeremy has graduated from the Aerie with distinction and has been assigned to one of the new Trooper mechs that have just come off the line. He’s not the lance commander, but he is the second in command of the little unit behind a more experienced Mechwarrior.

Procurement goes very well this year. The Aerie Cadre had grown to a full battalion in strength of Battlemechs, which was making field exercises for the cadets much more intense and showing definite returns on investment.

There is talk about developing a trainer mech optimized for rookie mechwarriors. The Aerie has pointedly requested that they not get any machines with freezers, although they do request ones with more punishing heat curves in order to better teach cadets how to manage their machines.

1st Armored’s 2nd Brigade now has 2 full battalions of Lion tanks and a full Mechanized Infantry Regiment. The ASF forces have also expanded well. Even the RRF has gotten a bit larger with the AAA unit now fully up under a still very nervous young Major who seems to be quite obsessive about proper maintenance and procedure, bless his soul.

The hardening of two factories takes place without incident or disruption in production.

The new port on Five Fingers has been completed with some fanfare. Careful exploitation of the new petroleum fields has started, along with large fisheries that are now more readily exploited in a sustainable manner.

You have established a licensing bureau similar to the one already implemented for civilian small craft to license and regulate civilian dropships. Already firms have started design work on a series of bulk cargo dropships that should prove extremely useful for logistics and future expansion.

Relief and infrastructure efforts on Nowy Gdansk have actually completed a bit earlier than expected thanks to an outpouring of donations and support from the people of Griffin’s Roost combined with the sheer industriousness of the ex-slaves on Nowy Gdansk blowing the timelines out of the water.

The new Gyrfalcon factory is operational, and the DHS factory has been expanded to nearly double its former size. Considering the sheer level of demand for DHS it would probably be wise to build additional DHS factories in addition to the other strategic resources.

The models are finally in full circulation. For some reason the factory continuously experiences serious glitches on the Eagle models, with finished products seemingly never making it to the distribution warehouses. Careful tracking has so far failed to produce any leads, apart from sightings of a short, squat, heavily bearded individual who looks a bit blocky yet somehow manages to never get caught, who appears to somehow be looting all the Eagle models.

Justice is on the case.

A large statue of a freed Polish resistance fighter, broken shackles on his wrists and a rifle in his hands, standing with one foot pressed down on the severed tail of a dragon and in a quite determined and heroic pose is unveiled. It is extremely popular, both on Griffin’s Roost and on Nowy Gdansk, with a reproduction promptly unveiled in the town square of the planetary settlement there.

Jake’s deputies spend quite a bit of time shuttling between the Lords, the Commons, and your office, and in the end you are able to at the very least calm the worst of their anger over you catching them out on their little power grab. Not that you are at all sorry about that, but if they think you’ll just roll over for them they have another think coming.

There is a serious kerfuffle with the orbital survey.

And the survey crew has been called in for a very stern motherly talking to.

You see, they are mostly younger researchers, many still grad students, and don’t always make the best decisions. They decided to calibrate the satellites by taking ultra-high definition 3d images and movies of a ‘known point target’. Unfortunately, they chose poorly which ‘known point target’ to use and, more importantly, when to use it.

The single largest nude beach on the island-continent of Griffsport.

During spring break.

When you, Thanh, Janet, her three daughters, and several of the younger girls' friends were visiting said nude beach.

Nude.

And the survey crew had filmed it. All of it. In ultra high definition so sharp that you can count the number of hairs.

The survey crew hadn’t been able to look you in the eye when you summoned them, with the younger males looking distinctly uncomfortable.

You’d promptly ordered them to take more ethics courses about appropriate use of the survey satellites.

The other research teams have done quite well. The field tests on the full range of LB-X autocannons have been completed and are now available for use in various designs. You’ve already been told that there was much whooping, cheering, and hollering in the offices of Nollak Industries at the news.

You are very afraid of this. Willis is definitely annoyed at the news.

Improved bandwidth capabilities on communications equipment has been researched, with a significant improvement in wireless data transfer rates over long distances.

New orbital infrastructure research has been completed, permitting more growth and expansion of orbital assets.

The new Department of Mega Engineering has been established to manage terraforming and massive infrastructure projects, like the infrastructure burial project taking place in Capricorn. They’ve already prepared a list of proposed project types that they can handle, which would be in addition to any Interior projects of that year.

The investigation into the backgrounds and pasts of those individuals linked to the 331st shows no major discrepancies, although part of that could be because your great-grandfather had evidently altered the records to seamlessly integrate their ancestors into the population at the time where they’d served as military and industrial advisors. You have a historical record from their descendents which shows loyal service to the Throne, with no relatives implicated in the Gem conspiracy, and none involved with the Department of Periphery Studies.

Prisoner interrogations go… well enough, you suppose. The ISF agents left behind on Nowy Gdansk are extremely long on fanaticism, contempt for gaijin, and brutality, but appear to be critically short on intelligence.

Counterintelligence procedures have been improved and new policies and methods have been implemented which should make it more difficult for anybody to infiltrate in the future.

The establishment of legal liaison offices and staff has proven to be a very useful step towards full integration of Nowy Gdansk.

On that note, the projects to develop a proper Imperial political and economic structure to address the challenges of multiplanetary and multisystem expansion has been completed with excellent results. The new system would leave planetary garrisons in the hands of the various planets, albeit the Imperial government would need to pay for their initial procurement and any upgrades required by them. It would also leverage the central bank to invest yearly surpluses in order to generate greater dividends, thus increasing available funds, but at the expense of requiring loan interest payments in the event of deficits. A small Imperial bicameral parliament would be seated, on similar lines to that already on Griffin’s Roost.

QM NOTE - The new sheets will show up tomorrow morning!

 

[LordSunhawk]

Turn 30 - Welcome to Your Life

The year starts off with a wedding.

And you can’t keep yourself from crying.

Your little man. Your son. Your firstborn. He who stole your heart and never let go the moment you held him. He who grew under your heart and into your soul.

He belongs to another woman now.

Sure, he’ll always be your little boy. But now he’s Alita’s man. You couldn’t be happier. You couldn’t be sadder.

So you cry.

Royal tears, granted, not great big sobs.

But you aren’t some storybook queen from the past who had the stiffest of stiff upper lips and could handle triumph and adversity with nothing more than a tiny twitch of her lips.

You are you. And so you do you.

You cry.

You smile through the tears, as you are genuinely happy. He looks so grown up in his dress uniform (with the almost invisible little point on the collar, damn your ancestors!) as he stands up at the altar waiting for his bride.

He’s every inch an Officer. A Gentleman. A Good Man.

A Prince.

He looks, at that moment, like he belongs on a recruiting poster. His uniform is perfectly turned out, his shoes shine like mirrors, every bit of insignia and decoration is perfect.

Alita had considered wearing her own dress uniform, as she was assigned to the Quartermaster Corps here in Griffsport working in procurement, but instead was wearing an absolutely lovely traditional western-style bridal gown that was a confection in lace and pearls.

It looked gorgeous.

You liked her, and approved of her, and all of that. But a part of you still didn’t think anybody this side of the Pearly Gates was good enough for your boy.

But to be honest, she was.

The ceremony was held in Griffsport and was being live streamed across the planet, with a transmission going out to Nowy Gdansk as well. You’d had an aid whisper in your ear that this was now among the most watched events in Griffin’s Roost history, at least in terms of absolute number of viewers.

So you are understandably very upset when not 2 minutes after they finished saying their vows and were in the process of leaving the cathedral for the reception that the planetary alert alarms started blaring.

You are rushed to the new command bunker.

Upon arrival Sarah updates the situation. The highly modified Star Lord that had shown up intermittently in the sensor records had just appeared at the Nadir point.

The AI performs a high definition scan of the vessel and gives a report. There is evidence of wear and tear, perhaps some light damage from micrometeoroid impacts and a few signs of minor scarring from weapons fire that have been patched up, but the conglomerate vessel is substantially the same as it was.

It’s launched a couple Sparrowhawk ASFs which are patrolling around it, but is otherwise simply sitting still and charging it’s drive.

At full thrust HMS Defiant and HMS Intrepid could reach the jump point well before the Jumpship could jump out.

[] Send them to intercept

[] Attempt to communicate with the Jumpship.

 

[LordSunhawk]

Turn 30 - There’s No Turning Back

HMS Defiant and Intrepid are warmed up and ready, in an elliptical orbit which would give them plenty of base velocity to build upon for the interception.

“This is Griffin’s Roost Imperial Aerospace Control. You have entered this system without prior permission. Identify yourself and state your reason for entering our space.” had been transmitted out a few minutes earlier. You weren’t wholly satisfied with it, as it was somewhat bellicose, but reviewing the briefing papers and historical data from Sarah it appeared to be a rather standard greeting.

”Vi är de fria. Gå inte utan tillstånd. Tänk inte att attackera. Bättre män än du har försökt. Bättre män än du har dött. Vad vill du.” came crackling over the speakers, the voice harsh with a slight mechanical undertone.

You glance over at a monitor as Sarah provides a translation, marking the language as 98% probability Swedish. “We are the Free. Do not approach without permission. Do not think to attack. Better men than you have tried. Better men than you have died. What do you want.” was the approximate translation. Sarah had once informed you that the code base for her translation software apparently originated as something called ‘Giggle Translate’, so you weren’t 100% certain you trusted this.

You purse your lips, this could go in several directions…

[] Friendly and conciliatory, they are obviously suspicious and defensive, let’s approach with a smile on our face.

[] Diplomatic and firm, this is your system and they are visitors here. Repeat the request for their intentions but do so in diplomatic language.

[] Aggressive but open to peaceful contact. You’d fought off the Dragon, a single souped up porcupine of a dropship doesn’t intimidate you, but they’ve not yet proven hostile.

[] Write-in

QM Note - I am experimenting a bit with smaller updates for something as interactive as this to give the players more control. Think about what image you want to portray here! I will start writing the next update when there are 8 votes total so long as the leading option is ahead by at least 2, and at 10 votes total even if the leading option is ahead by less than 2.

 

[LordSunhawk]

Turn 30 - Even While We Sleep…

“I repeat, this is Griffin’s Roost Imperial Aerospace Control to unidentified Jumpship. Identify yourself and your purpose in this system.”

You nod at the proposed wording, then scribble an addition. A few moments later it was broadcast.

“I repeat, this is Griffin’s Roost Imperial Aerospace Control to unidentified Jumpship. Fully identify yourself and please state your purpose in this system. Repeat. Fully identify yourself and please state your purpose in this system.” a short pause, then… “Detta är Griffins Roost Aerospace Control till oidentifierat fartyg. Identifiera dig själv fullständigt och ange ditt syfte här.”

You hope the giggle translated translation isn’t a mistake…

A short time later, thanks to transmission lag, you receive a response.

“We are The Free. We are recharging our drive here and will move on upon completion. We have no intention of approaching closer to your planets than this.” came the terse response in heavily accented English this time. “Any attempt to approach us will be considered a hostile act. We do not start fights, dirtbound, we finish them, do not challenge us.”

The last bit is said with a definite sneer in the tone, as if the speaker is contemptuous of you.

You nod to the comm tech who loads up the pre planned response in the event of these ‘Free’ responding the way you suspected they would.

“Be aware that the last Jumpship to make use of that point was from the Draconis Combine, and we drove them off.”

You pause a moment, wondering whether or not to make an offer you’d already considered.

[] “If you run afoul of the Dragon, know that you’ll have a safe harbor here.”

[] “We would rather have peaceful contact with you than not, but will respect your privacy. Is there anything you would need that we could provide?”

[] Write-in

QM Note - Same rules as before! Let me know what you think of this in the discord, if I should do this for these sorts of interactions in the future or just allow the tone you've set to guide a larger update.

 

[LordSunhawk]

Turn 30 - We Will Find You

You nod to the communications officer, who gets a positively feral grin on his face at this point.

“Your belligerence and banter is signally unimpressive, Spacer. We have eyes on you, do you have eyes on us? But, Free Folk, if you remain peaceful and do not threaten us, we will react in kind. If you wish to trade with us, know that we are not the Dragon, we will treat honorably with you so long as you return courtesy with courtesy.” a pause, and the comms officer nearly snarls into the mic. “And if the Dragon threatens you and yours, know that Griffin’s Roost stands with those who stand against House Kurita.”

You nod in approval as the response is sent back to the Jump Point.

You wait out the communications delay as Sarah engages in major analysis of the heavily modified Jumpship. Tactical analysis shows that the jumpship had, in the recent past, been attacked by a number of fighters with 5cm lasers consistent with DCMS Sabres.

A bit early for them to have heard the whole message and a response comes, and whoever is on the other side is mad.

“Vi kommer att krossa de moderlösa hororna och pissa på deras ruttnande lik. Vi kommer att mala deras ben och fläta deras hudar. Död känner jag för dem!” is practically shouted from the speakers.

Sarah rather tactfully translates this as ‘Very angry Swedish threatening brutal death to the Dracs’.

There’s a short pause. “Understood, Aerospace Control, we are always ready to kill some snakes.” the voice has calmed down some at this point. “Send a manifest of what you have to offer and we will do the same. Any attempt at betrayal will be met with force.”

[] Accept their trade offer. Griffin’s Roost will have +1% GDP gain, Nowy Gdansk +.5% GDP gain, will create a regular trade opportunity with the Free Folks, opens a new event chain

[] Decline their trade offer.

 

[LordSunhawk]

Turn 30 - Acting On Your Best Behavior

It takes a few days, but HMS Harris, escorted by HMS Defiant, rendezvouses with the Free Folk jumpship. A few days of haggling, trading, loud language, and quite a bit more ale than is probably healthy in low gravity later you have a deal A load of fresh foodstuffs, basic electronics and raw materials for their machine shops, and a number of spare medium lasers from you, in exchange you receive some rare metals and the complete chassis (minus weapons, electronics, fusion engine, or armor) for a WHM-6D Warhammer heavy mech, along with the maintenance manuals (what of them the Free Folk have).

A day or so later and the Free Folk depart, promising to return in several years when their perambulations about the Deep Periphery bring them back to this area of space.

Jeremy and Alita come back from their honeymoon, which had been delayed by the initial alerts but which had then proceeded more or less as planned after things had resolved peacefully, and Alita is already pregnant. A few weeks later and it is confirmed that your son and daughter-in-law are gifting you with your first grandbaby.

You now fully understand just why Ba had always been so happy about grandbabies, all the joy and happiness of babies… with fewer midnight feedings. You think you could get used to this.

The twins have finally brought girlfriends home with them, although you aren’t sure about either of them. Both are involved in the racing league, although neither are drivers. One is a PR person for the League itself, the other is one of the mechanics who works on Quan’s racer.

Thanh appears determined to marry an Eagle rather than anything human, while Sarah might have had a few boyfriends none of them proved to be anything serious.

Things seem to be going quite well. Until the Eldest and Dominique arrive at your office looking… distressed and in need of a stiff drink.

Dominique in fact declares that she’s giving up the entire opposition thing. It had seemed like a great idea, but too many of the people who’d backed her proved to be snakes. And the Eldest has disturbing news.

They both do, in fact.

It appears that the new Imperial Parliament is going to kick things off with a bang and a power grab.

They were set to declare that since you were already Queen of Griffin’s Roost, the planet, that you becoming Empress of the Empire of Griffin’s Roost would require their approval, which they had decided not to grant but to instead ‘graciously’ permit you to continue to rule the planet ‘as you have proven so capable of’, while they would take full control of the Empire, appointing a Chancellor to rule who would be drawn from the Senate with the consent of the Chamber of Delegates. Members of your family would be barred from the Chancellorship ‘to avoid distracting Her Majesty from her just rule of Griffin’s Roost’.

Moreover, they’d somehow found a judge that was willing to sign off on their… innovative interpretation of the law and precedents, and were arguing that while you could veto legislation in the Planetary parliament that the Imperial parliament hadn’t ‘accepted that authority’.

They were trying to sneak this in under the radar of the wedding and the alert from the Free Folk had given them a further smokescreen.

It’s incredibly slimy. The same coterie of nobles and politicians who’d been behind the last attempted power grab with the Ministry of Colonization were behind this one, and seemed quite certain that they had backed you into a corner.

When they showed up several days later to ‘graciously inform you’ of their ‘decision’, you already knew they were coming and what they were up to. This was not going to stand, and unlike last time where you’d let the politicians get away with their shenanigans without consequences, this time they were going far too far.

You allowed them to think they had snuck this up on you, meeting them with a broad welcoming smile and being the gracious host you usually were when various nobles and politicians came calling during business hours.

They played the game quite well as well, acting as if this were nothing more than a routine meeting and being perfectly polite and cordial, before springing their little trap. Sekhmet had a nearly invisible earpiece tucked inside one enormous ear, and she tapped your foot when she got confirmation from Janet that the cabal's pet judge had indeed issued a permanent injunction barring you from vetoing Imperial Parliamentary votes.

So when they sprang it on you you merely smiled. “I see, gentlemen. And no doubt Judge Wilson has already issued a ruling from Castor that you are certain forbids me from interfering.” You smirk a little at the start of surprise. “You will no doubt be very pleased to hear that I’ve already discussed this very issue with Justice Harrison, Justice Nils, and Chief Justice Harper.” your smile is all teeth, and would send a great shark fleeing in terror in the other direction. “I do believe that a ruling vacating Judge Wilson’s order should be issued… right… about…” Sekhmet taps your foot again and your smile becomes downright evil “Now. Jane?” You barely raise your voice, and Jane slips into the office behind the now gaping politicians.

She is accompanied by a squad of agents from the Special Branch. “I do believe that what you attempted comes under the broad heading of Treason, gentlemen. After all, you are attempting to, under false pretence and under the color of law, stage a coup against your liege.” One of them opens his mouth to speak and you simply glare at him, silencing him. “Attempted, gentlemen, if you had actually been at all competent in executing your plan I would have no choice but to consider you guilty of misprision of Treason, Treason, and impose the penalties required for the same. Consider that… carefully.” you nod to Jane, who promptly signals her men to cuff the now visibly furious Lords and haul them out of the room while cheerfully discussing all the latest advances in chemical interrogation techniques that were completely lawful to use in this situation.

They’d been real clever, sneaking their little trap into legislation that had absolutely no relationship whatsoever to what they were doing, stampeding Parliament into passing it without a reading (who would object to unanimous consent to pass a bill honoring the Royal Wedding?) with literally no public debate or time for anybody to actually read the actual text of what they shoved through. If it hadn’t been for the Eldest and Dominique you’d have had to play catch up at that point.

(-20 support Senate and Chamber of Delegates, -1 Influence Senate, Chamber of Delegates, +1 Politics, +1% Interest Rate)

Weather on Nowy Gdansk is severe, especially in the local winter where it gets even colder and more miserable than during the local summer. The population has enough food and supplies to hunker down and deal with it, however conditions are so cold and windy that dropship operation is becoming treacherous. It’s not that the equipment can’t handle it, it’s that weather conditions have become so bad that flight operations are only possible in increasingly short windows before wind and weather make it impossible to operate safely.

[] Continue operations regardless, risks must be taken. - +1% GDP on Nowy Gdansk, +1 Rating Change on Nowy Gdansk, risk of loss of a dropship.

[] Suspend operations due to the weather. - No change

 

[LordSunhawk]

Turn 30 - Turn Your Back On Mother Nature

The imagery from Noya Gdansk is fascinating, with the settlement itself resembling nothing more than a number of white lumps indistinguishable from natural features. Quite literally the only thing still sticking up above the snow drifts is the control tower from the landing site, and even that you could practically open the windows and walk out on top of the snow.

Looking closer, of course, you can see the tell tale signs of civilization under the snow, with melted out chimneys of ice kept clear by regular flushes of superheated plasma in order to keep up air supplies to the buildings beneath them.

You suspect that the Department of Mega Engineering and Department of Colonization are going to have a lot to do on Nowy Gdansk once the weather clears enough to resume flight operations.

This year you are the recipient of Tyler’s questionable ‘humor’ in regards to 50th birthdays, as the old goat takes out advertisements in every single media outlet in the Empire to offer his condolences to you getting old.

Full page advertisements.

Complete with testimonials from ‘elder care facilities’ that a quick check show only exists in Tyler’s twisted sense of humor about various ways to show proper appreciation for somebody who’s ‘getting old’.

And coupons for people who purchase various consumer electronics made by Lee Consumer Electronics that give the buyer a discount if they bring in a bag of adult diapers or a bottle of ‘over 50’ nutritional supplements.

You send Tyler a note stating that until he apologizes you will ensure he doesn’t get to meet his great-great-grandson when he’s born. By cutting off his hands. At the neck.

His ‘apology’ would be more believable if it weren’t so completely Tyler and delivered via a giant black balloon.

DAMNIT TYLER.

You are reminded that you are still not allowed to defenestrate him.

In less happy elder related news, Dr Palmer’s cancer is back and more aggressive than before. She’s completely sidelined this time, and the doctors give her a less than 20% chance of living out the year. As a consequence, she reluctantly sends you her resignation from the post of Chief Researcher.

You are going to need to pick a replacement, which is going to be difficult since she left quite large shoes to fill.

[]	Name	Actions (note these are base)	Special
[]	Mark Briggs	5 Research	+5 All Difficulty Rolls
[]	Mary McEvedy	5 Research +1 Military Research	+5 Difficulty Rolls if under 50
[]	Walter Mitchell	4 Research +1 Military Research	-2000 Research Upkeep
[]	Beverly Campbell	5 Research	-2000 Research Upkeep

Dr Briggs is the current deputy to Dr Palmer and has specialized in biomedical research. He is well-respected amongst his colleagues although he does have a reputation as being more of a follower than a true leader. He’ll be attending the budget meetings this year at least.

A quick inquiry shows that Colonel Mary McEvedy is in fact a descendent of the 331st and is currently in charge of the labs at the Aerie, she has a reputation for being very terse and concise in her language and rarely uses two words when one would suffice. Her subordinates at the Aerie think well of her, but she is known to be a disciplinarian towards students.

Professor Mitchell works in aerospace engineering and was involved in the Defiant and Harris projects. He has zero patience for red tape or bureaucratic niceties and tends to rub the bean counters the wrong way, but still manages to get results.

Dr Campbell is a bit of a dark-horse choice, being a social scientist rather than a physical scientist who studies the science of, well, science. She is disliked by most of the hard sciences types in the main labs, mostly due to her treating them like lab specimens. When you met her she seemed quite friendly, but you aren’t a research scientist so perhaps you have a different perspective.

And with that it’s budget time. Oh joy oh joy oh rapturous joy.

You totally are being sarcastic about this.

General Swanson gets things started. “Your Majesty, one of our first priorities must be to properly garrison and defend Nowy Gdansk in case the Dracs decide to return. To that end, we propose standing up a full foot regiment immediately, drawn from a mix of the Home Army and recruits from Griffin’s Roost itself. In addition, we propose building an annex of the Aerie on Nowy Gdansk and standing up a 2nd Aerie Cadre there to serve as a training unit and core of the defense.”

General Reyes nods in agreement. “To that end we propose basing our 2nd Wing out of Noya Gdansk to provide rapid reaction ASF protection to the planet. It would be a harsh condition posting, but doable. We would also strongly recommend looking into a modernization program for the Gyrfalcon as we restart production. The proposal that has been sent to us from Roost Aerotech is quite intriguing, replacing the twin nose 5cm lasers with one of the new Enhanced Extended Range PPCs, replacing the drive with an XLFE, upgrading to double heatsinks and Ferro-Aluminium armor… the final product looks like it would be devastating, although it would also be expensive. It would cost us approximately 3052.80 to perform the upgrade to our existing stock of Gyrfalcons.”

[]	Name	Cost	Materials	Speed	HP	A/D	Special
[]	Gyrfalcon II	1195.20	FA, DHS	15	60	15	SWIFT
[]	Reject	-	-	-	-	-	-

Admiral Benjamin then takes the podium. “Your Majesty, we are ready to lay down a new Defiant class dropship this year, and the yard has assured us that the issues that raised costs for HMS Intrepid have been dealt with, so this new vessel will enjoy a rather steep cost discount. We would also like to lay down a new Harris class vessel to increase our transport capacity. Operationally, we would recommend that USS Enterprise be used to closely survey Griffin IV to ensure there is nothing left behind.”

General Potter steps up. “I have several things for you, Your Majesty. First of all. I would like to strongly endorse expanding the Aerie to Nowy Gdansk, the benefits to us in terms of training opportunities and research are too great to be ignored. I would also strongly endorse the proposed garrison, upgrade, and dropship acquisitions.”

He checks his notes. “In addition, we have a number of submissions for a properly optimized training mech, although…” he smiles slightly. “Optimized might not be the best word, perhaps ‘customized for training’ would be better.”

[]	Name	Cost	HP	A/D	Special
[]	Clunker Training Mech	1724.4	32	18
[]	LRM Training Mech	1439.2	32	18
[]	Primus Training Mech	2292.4	40	20
[]	Puppy Trainer	1465.6	40	20
[]	SRM Training Mech	1851.6	36	19

“None of these designs use any strategic materials.” General Potter points out in his basso profundo voice. “And all would fully fulfil the mission of training new Mechwarriors.”

Bridget is, well, as Bridget as always, far too bouncy, far too energetic… and you are definitely having a Mom moment because you notice to your irritation that she decided not to wear a bra and is bouncing all over the place. You strongly resist the urge to send her to her room.

“Your Majesty! We have all sorts of awesome things we can do and we really should do as many of them as we can because that would be so awesome and productive and everything good like we all have seen how bad winters are on Nowy Gdansk so how about we do our city planning there with arcologies that can look at Winter and go ‘bleh’ and ignore it and how about we build really big reinforced walls around the drop port so we can maintain operations year round thus boosting economic growth there which is really important because they are starting off so poor and would only have beneficial results for us long term and then we have all the cities and towns we can build here on Griffin’s Roost with Imperial encouragement and then there’s finishing up the development of Five Fingers I know that the planetary government will be taking over stuff going forward but let's see about getting as much done as we can first is what I say and then I agree on having our exploration teams take a big look at Griffin IV and also we need to survey Nowy Gdansk to make sure there’s nothing sneaky sneaky there like snow tigers or something!”

Isoroku is up next “We have the Olympics this year, and it’s in Capricorn this year.” he smirks a little. “The Olympics in Hue Moi, Lord You know we’re gonna screw that up.” He pauses for the expected groan from everybody at the table. “But more seriously, the only thing I’d really recommend doing this year is to lend some of our expertise to the planetary authorities here on Griffin’s Roost to advertise for settlers on Castor and Pollux.”

Jake nods “With this transition things are in quite a bit of flux as the planetary authorities get stood up, next year many of these options will be going away so we can either wait and let the locals deal with it or do it ourselves now. Specifically, getting government services implemented up in Phoenix. I’m sure the planetary government will do it next year, but we’d get some nice public relations mojo if we do it first.” He checks his notes. “We could work on restoring relations with Parliament after the latest debacle, but at their reduced influence it may not be worthwhile right now.”

Mark is as invisible as he’d ever been as Dr Palmer’s assistant and simply hands over a datapad filled with recommendations.

• Industrial Exoskeletons Tier 4
  • With this level of refinement external power sources are no longer required even for higher energy work
• Industrial Mechs Tier 2
  • Reduces the difficulty associated with major construction and engineering programs
• Improved Education Lvl 4
  • Brings the education system fully up to Star League levels and significantly improves the pool of lab assistants available, making research easier overall
• Cure For Cancer
  • If we get lucky we might still save Dr Palmer, but irregardless it is a significant boost to health, morale, and has significant knock on benefits
• For the Military slot - Streak SRM-2
  • Inexpensive but a capable weapon system with broad usage across the military

Harry sends a memo rather than attend the meeting himself as he’s overseeing interrogations. “We recommend continuing to question these imbeciles, we’re picking up a few bits of useful intel between the babble about the Dragon, once we’ve wrung them dry we can see about how we want to deal with them long term.”

Janet, by contrast, is present and she is looking quite unhappy. “I wish I could say Judge Wilson was an aberration, but there are a number of members of the judiciary who are pretty much in the back pockets of various politicians. Some of them may nominally support us, but it still leaves a bad taste in my mouth. I’d like free rein to winnow through the sitting judiciary and purge out the corrupt elements.”

 

[LordSunhawk]

Turn 30 - Everybody Wants To Rule The World

Spoiler: Event, Luck and Rating rolls

Meta-Event - 55 - no event
Dynasty Luck - 28 - You are Ba!

Imperial Approval - 6
Approval Change - 4
Political - 4

Economy Rating - 1
Economy Event - 2
Research Event - -3 (no rerolls allowed for research failures)

Griffin’s Roost Economy - 3
Griffin’s Roost Health - 8
Griffin’s Roost Rating Change - 6

Nowy Gdansk Economy - -3
Nowy Gdansk Health - 3
Nowy Gdansk Rating Change - 3

Spoiler: Action Results

Advertise for colonists to Pollux [60]
Target - 60
Roll - 32
Result - SUCCESS

Purchase New Units
-2 Flight of Rocs [70]
Target - 70
Roll - 1
Result - CRITICAL SUCCESS

-3 Flights of Eagles [auto]

-1 Lance of Pathfinder Battlemechs [70]
Target - 70
Roll - 57
Result - SUCCESS

-1 Lance of Trooper Battlemechs [70]
Target - 70
Roll - 57
Result - SUCCESS

-9 Platoons Paladin SPG [70]
Target - 70
Roll - 1
Result - CRITICAL SUCCESS

-27 Companies Foot Infantry [70]
Target - 70
Roll - 47
Result - SUCCESS

Build Space Station Nowy Gdansk Orbit [80]
Target - 80
Roll - 4
Result - SUCCESS

Expand Space Station 1 [80]
Target - 80
Roll - 25
Result - SUCCESS

Expand Space Station 3 [80]
Target - 80
Roll - 69
Result - SUCCESS

Build factories for Enterprise Dropship on Castor [100]
Target - 100
Roll - 88
Result - SUCCESS

Build Drop-port on Five Fingers [80]
Target - 80
Roll - 79
Result - SUCCESS

Have Exploration Fleet Survey Griffin IV [75]
Target - 75
Roll - 100, Kelgar03 Omake Reroll - 8
Result - SUCCESS

Develop Infrastructure on Nowy Gdansk [75]
Target - 75
Roll - 17
Result - SUCCESS

Snow Barriers Around Nowy Gdansk Spaceport [75]
Target - 75
Roll - 85, Kelgar03 Omake Reroll - 95, ShadowArxxy Omake Reroll - 75
Result - SUCCESS

CULTURE - Polish Cultural Festival [80]
Target - 80
Roll - 53
Result - SUCCESS

Extend Government Services to Phoenix [75]
Target - 75
Roll - 50
Result - SUCCESS

Build Relations with Chamber of Delegates [60]
Target - 60
Roll - 98
Result - FAIL

Build Relations with Senate [60]
Target - 60
Roll - 49
Result - SUCCESS

Improved Automation lvl 4 [80]
Target - 80
Roll - 7
Result - SUCCESS

Improved Education lvl 4 [75]
Target - 75
Roll - 7
Result - SUCCESS

Gauss Rifle [55]
Target - 55
Roll - 53
Result - SUCCESS

Pulse Lasers [55]
Target - 55
Roll - 2
Result - SUCCESS

Interrogate POWs [65]
Target - 65
Roll - 55
Result - SUCCESS

Extend law-enforcement to Phoenix [75]
Target - 75
Roll - 54
Result - SUCCESS

Investigate Judiciary [85]
Target - 85
Roll - 10
Result - SUCCESS

You are now a proper Ba, with a grandson who is absolutely precious. You have completely fallen to the ba side of the Force with this development as you hold John Van Griffith, your first born grandson, in your arms.

You fully expect in a few years that you’ll be able to engage in proper grandmotherly behavior, namely loading the kid up with all the sugar and candy just before handing him back off to his parents, but that will have to wait, for now you just luxuriate in the experience.

Jeremy has the same goofy look on his face that Willis had when you gave birth to Jeremy himself, the comparison brings a slight smile to your face. Alita is looking radiant as any new mother should be.

Your family is growing again. You like this and want it to continue, so in the grand tradition of ba’s everywhere…

“So, when will I get more grandbabies?” you bestow a properly inquisitive look at all of your children. Ba has spoken.

The assorted cries of ‘Mom’ from all of your kids is priceless.

You had approved the upgrades to the new Gyrfalcon II design, and the newly built factory had been working double shifts in order to complete all 36 of the refits in a timely manner. The end result was a wickedly lethal interceptor that looked to be a serious improvement on what had come before.

The engineers were already talking about improvements to the Goshawk, Eagle, and Roc to bring them fully up to date, although some of the technologies they wanted to use on those birds were still stuck in development hell.

You met with Mary McEvedy, who’d shown up to the meeting wearing a labcoat over her service uniform looking absolutely no nonsense. Jeremy had been visiting and had promptly, even though he was off duty, snapped to at her entrance. Oh yes, she’d been one of his professors, hadn’t she….

The meeting went quite well. You find her brisk, no-nonsense style quite refreshing and she seems to have a gift for breaking down the benefits and risks of the various projects swirling around the various labs quite succinctly.

She does present to you one proposal, for an upgrade to the Ambush light trooper mech. And she does so in style, with a very detailed presentation.

• Advantages
  • More capable platforms with enhanced long range striking power
  • The long-range paradigm improves survivability in a light combat unit by reducing the risks of coming into the enemies ideal ranges
    • Enemy mechs observed so far in this mass range appear to favor high speed and short range weapons such as SRM and 5cm lasers over long range weaponry like LRMs and 8cm lasers or PPCs.
      • Important Caveat, we are aware of at least one common enemy light mech design that is centered around a standard PPC
  • The upgrade permits incremental improvements to cockpit ergonomics, control layouts, and ejection systems further increasing combat efficiency.
• Disadvantages
  • Makes use of strategic materials
    • Specifically, Endo-steel and Double Heatsinks
  • More expensive than the current Ambush
  • The increased firepower may tempt Mechwarriors into engagements that such light mechs should not be engaged in
• Recommendation
  • That we proceed with the upgrade plan. The total cost to bring all of our current Ambush mechs up to the new standard is $6,609.80.

[]	Name	Cost	Materials	HP	A/D	Special
[]	Ambush Mk II	1491.2	Endo, DHS	48	22	Mech
[]	Reject Upgrade

General Dunn of the Rapid Reaction Force and General Potter also had scheduled a meeting with you.

The RRF would really like to get their paws on, to use General Dunn’s phrase, ‘vast quantities’ of Winged Hussar ultralight mechs. However General Potter is opposed, as the RRF is supposed to be a pure hovertank unit, and the Winged Hussar is most certainly not a hovertank, moreover he’s not fully convinced of its battlefield utility.

General Dunn gets a truly shit-eating grin on her face and takes out a small sheaf of papers. If you want to keep all of the RRF on hovercraft, well, some of her techs had been… tinkering. What you see looks like a scaled up Peewee Racing Hovercraft, sized for a single Winged Hussar to stand on and control like a stand-up jetski.

You give the generals a very speaking look.

[] Approve the RRF to field Winged Hussars directly
[] Approve the RRF to field Winged Hussars with the HoverSki Upgrade
[] You are being too silly, no Winged Hussars for you

There is a surge of settlers heading to Pollux in order to profit from the agricultural sector, this in turn spurs home building and other sectors of the economy and results in some nice economic growth this year.

On the military procurement front things go extremely well.

The full battalion of Paladin SPGs has been deployed, along with the start of the garrison for Nowy Gdansk, which will be under the command of Michal Sikorski. In addition new mechs and ASFs have been procured.

However in addition to the planned procurement there was a serious paperwork snafu and mixup, and the Goshawk factory apparently had built enough airframes to fully flesh out the aerospace compliments of the newly constructed and expanded space stations. Thankfully the corporations involved took a very philosophical view of the whole affair and agreed to eat the costs of the excess production in exchange for keeping their maintenance contracts, which the snafu had jeopardized.

Speaking of space stations, both the new construction project over Nowy Gdansk and the expansions to the two currently orbiting stations have been completed successfully.

The first civilian dropships are, much to your surprise, already entering operation. Granted, they are little more than cargo small craft with extended fuel tanks and barely qualify as ‘dropships’, but it’s still faster than you’d hoped. Commerce between Nowy Gdansk and Griffin’s Roost is now starting to pick up a bit.

Lee Aerospace, however, is Up To Something(™). They’ve built a large cargo handling station in Griffin’s Roost orbit, and a matching one over Nowy Gdansk, both of which seem designed to handle containers rather than bulk cargo. In addition, they are assembling something in orbit of Griffin’s Roost that so far looks like a small craft without engines attached to a long lattice truss spine and terminating in a growing cluster of fuel tanks and drives.

You’ve confronted Tyler about this, he simply grinned and pretended, and you could TELL he was pretending, ignorance. You ask Willis, and he says it’s a surprise. Any further inquiries are preempted by him deviously and with malice aforethought mentioning going to visit your grandson.

The new Enterprise dropship line is complete and ready for operation.

USS Enterprise, meanwhile, spends several months surveying Griffin IV. The planet has a small number of incredibly deep oceans. The total amount of water is about equal to Griffin’s Roost, but the surface area is so miniscule that there is nearly no water cycle on the planet to speak of. It’s hot, dry, dusty, with only a few stubborn life forms clustering on the shores around the extremely salty oceans.

The former DCMS base has been thoroughly explored. Apart from a few… adult… publications found in a left-behind tent, some discarded packaging for MREs, and a mass grave that has been marked for future investigation there is nothing left behind at all.

The planet is very mineral rich, and the sandy soil is actually extremely rich in nitrates. If you could solve the water issue the planet could be an ideal option for colonization. Some of the more creative of the DoME engineers have looked at the situation and are making noises about mass excavations to massively enlarge the surface area of the oceans by simply digging out the land around them and dropping the fill into the oceans.

The drop port on Five Fingers has been completed and is in service with the petroleum industry there.

Once the worst of the winter storms had passed, infrastructure work on Nowy Gdansk had advanced rapidly with a new full service hospital built along with a proper school and improved sanitation systems. In addition a massive wall has been constructed around the perimeter of the landing field, fully equipped with fusion powered heating elements to simply melt the drifts before they can overtop the barrier. Future winters won’t be as disruptive to flight operations, hopefully.

The Polish cultural festival was an incredible success. The great interest the people of Griffin’s Roost have about their new countrymen fuels immense crowds tasting kielbasa for the first time, along with Polish style vodka, pierogies, bigos, kotlet schabowy, golabki, and other Polish dishes. There were bagels of all kinds, surprising people who hadn’t realized that one of the most popular breakfast foods on the planet was actually Polish in origin. There was music, dance, ancient films dredged up from historical datacores… all in all it was an incredibly good time.

Imperial authorities assist the planetary authorities with extending services and law enforcement to Phoenix as part of the final transition to the Imperial structure.

Relations are improved with the Imperial Senate following a series of meetings between Jake and the various party leaders, however in the Chamber of Delegates there is absolutely no improvement despite his best efforts. The leaders quite stubbornly snub him, to the point of threatening to have security remove him from the Chamber. Elections to the Chamber won’t occur for a few years, you might have to take steps at that point if this hostile intransigence continues.

Mary shows up with the reports about research progress, again in the form of highly detailed and informative charts.

• Industrial Exo-Skeleton Lvl 4 - In Progress, On Schedule, On Budget
• Cure for Cancer - In Progress, On Schedule, On Budget
  • Initial trials have begun and are showing promise
• Improved Automation Lvl 4 - Complete
  • Licenses to the private sector for the improved technology have been sold. Economic benefits are as expected.
• Improved Education Lvl 4 - Complete
• Gauss Rifle - Complete
  • Several test engineers have been admonished for excessive enthusiasm during field testing, as they were caught firing unapproved payloads from the prototype (including steel I beams, waste baskets, and scrap iron)
• Pulse Lasers
  • All system tests passed successfully
  • A proposed upgrade to the Anti-Missile System making use of a 3cm pulse laser instead of the traditional machine gun is available for testing

Prisoner interrogations continue, with reports coming back that they still seem to be living in a fantasy land where the Dragon will return and squash us beneath its mighty belly. They are recommending ending questioning at this point as all they are getting is the same information repeated over and over, and even the threats are getting rather stale.

The intensive investigation of the judiciary produces a bit of a shit storm with hundreds of criminal and civil cases now needing to be reviewed after multiple judges are found to have been engaged in corrupt and unethical practices. The guilty judges have been removed and, in several cases, jailed on criminal charges when the conduct rose to that level. All have been stripped of their pensions and barred from judicial appointments for life.

 

[LordSunhawk]

Turn 31 - The Last Fire Will Rise

With the massive undergrounding project finishing on Capricorn the time has come to decide precisely what sort of factory would be built, as the excavations had created a large area perfect for military manufacturing. Due to the nature of the location there are several limits. First of all, it cannot be a dropship or ASF line, as it would be a little difficult to fit a dropship through the tunnels and the production site is far away from the nearest airfield. Therefore this will have to be a mech factory of some sort.

[] Ambush II
[] Pathfinder
[] Trooper II
[] Shortbow
[] Cadet

QM Note - this will be a Lvl 2 factory with Hardening 10

Perhaps you are in a bit of a ba fugue, or it’s just a sign of the type of year this will be, but Quan decides to introduce you to his girlfriend, Linda King, who also happens to be his race engineer and is nearly as mad about hovercraft racing as he is.

Both Bastet and Sekhmet give the Lick of Approval(™) and Janet hasn’t raised any red flags to you about her in the past, although that was before anybody had considered that one of your boys might decide to date her.

The twins are doing… acceptably… at school while their main focus remains on their racing careers, and both have started this season out with a bang. Smirky McSmirkface is back racing (you refuse to dignify him by ever referring to him by his actual name) after his suspension and seems to still have it out for your boys. True, the wreck on lap 84 was ruled accidental as Smirky did have a skirt collapse in a tight turn causing him to spin into James and knock him into the wall, but you are rather not inclined towards charity towards Smirky.

The fact that James’ and Smirky’s crews got into a massive brawl on pit road was on the highlight reels all month afterwards as it was a regular donnybrook. Both teams were fined for the altercation but neither driver was involved.

Thanh is officially on report at the Aerie, although a back channel message from the commandant indicates that it isn’t because of any actual disapproval of what she was doing, but rather that she had the poor taste as to get caught. She’d been sneaking into the simulator pods to get extra sim time after hours and had gotten picked up by campus security.

You do laugh when you read the punishment levied. Your headstrong daughter was ordered to spend her free time providing basic flight training for incoming cadets who lacked a pilot’s license, forcing her to (horror, horror) spend time doing *gasp* paperwork, and teach ground school.

Willis is horrified, or at least he pretends to be, declaring this to be cruel and inhumane punishment for any pilot. He can’t maintain the facade when you offer to change the punishment to remote piloting test drones for Nollak Industries as you both break down laughing.

Sarah is doing exceptionally well over at Griffin’s Roost University. Although she does have a bit of an unfair advantage in that Sarah is only a comm call away for your daughter and the two of them are still thick as thieves.

Mary and General Potter come to you with a proposal one January morning.

“Your Majesty, we have several solid AFVs, but none of them, including the Lion, are true main battle tanks. Within their niches each is a solid weapon system, and are very affordable, however our tankers will likely always be outnumbered on the battlefield and thus require a qualitative edge.” General Potter states. “We have been studying a number of upgrades for our existing designs, however none are quite ready yet. We do, however, have a proposal for a true Main Battle Tank design.”

They fire up a presentation to show the details of the proposal.

• Mass - 75 tons combat weight
• 64.8 KPH top speed
• Long range weapon focus
  • Gauss Rifle
  • Enhanced ER PPC
  • LRM 15
• Heavy armor plus active anti-missile defenses

The cost would be comparable to a lance of Ambush mechs, and would require the use of Ferro-Fibrous armor from the orbital forges.

[]	Name	Cost	Materials	HP	A/D	Special
[]	Jaguar MBT	2681.2	FF	120	21	Armored, AMS 1
[]	Reject

The manufacturer of the Jaguar is offering to construct a battalion set of them in exchange for the Legionnaires of 1st Battalion, 1st Brigade, 1st Regiment of 1st Armored Division for a discounted cost of $12,968.10, which is approximately a 25% discount on the normal upgrade cost. In exchange they are asking for a commitment from the AFGR to purchase at least one additional battalion set within 5 years.

[] Agree - upgrade to the new tanks (+40 HP, +10 A/D, adds AMS 1) for 12968.1
[] Disagree

QM Note - first vote is to approve the design for availability, second is for the upgrade of the Legionnaire tanks to the new Jaguar’s.

Mary then takes the floor. “There is one area of research that we have been neglecting for cultural and historical reasons.” she says bluntly. “Kearny-Fuchida physics. If we ever want jumpships, hyperpulse generators, or any of the other faster than light technologies we will need to take the fight to the enemy, this must change.”

She puts up a presentation of her own. “We have good reason for not wanting to engage in this research. However, those reasons do not apply if we conduct the research in a safe manner.”

• Proposal - Deep Space Research Facility
  • Advantages
    • Sufficiently distant from inhabited areas to prevent any disasters from affecting the population
    • Location can be kept secure to prevent possible espionage or sabotage
    • Would open up the possibility of researching the base technologies that can lead to Kearny-Fuchida cores and HPGs
  • Disadvantages
    • Extremely expensive, both to build and to maintain
    • Due to cultural and historical fears an area which is vulnerable to demagoguery
  • Recommendation
    • Construct the facility in deep space
      • Projected Construction Cost - 250,000 a year for 4 years
      • Projected Project Success - in excess of 80%

[] Approve - would be a misc expense of 250,000 for 4 years, target 85, at conclusion would unlock Kearny-Fuchida Physics Tier 1 as a research option. Unlocks certain events

[] Disapprove

You have a great deal to think about...

 

[LordSunhawk]

Turn 31 - Black House Will Rock

You’ve been making sure to get your recommended daily allowance of grandson time, which incidentally gives your son and daughter-in-law some time to actually sleep. You’ll wait a few years before starting to get your right and proper revenge for midnight feedings and being pooped on by your little boy.

You’ve decided that the new factory complex will be dedicated to the Cadet mech, to provide training platforms for the Aerie. The facility itself is extremely impressive and it doesn’t take long for it to be ready to produce the new mechs in quantity.

The new complex, along with the rest of the underground infrastructure, have a somewhat unexpected side effect. Economic activity on Capricorn starts to boom as tourists flock to see the wonder, with small towns catering to the tourist trade springing up in underground caverns throughout the continent. (QM Note - +10% GDP this turn)

You get to see a demonstration of the new Jaguar MBT. It’s only a bit smaller than the Lion but has a lean, predatory look to it. The chiseled and sculpted turret housing the gauss rifle and Enhanced ER PPC looks lethal, and the vertically set launch tubes for the LRM is rather innovative. You hear that maintenance crews are already singing the tank's praises as evidently it requires less man-hours than the much lighter tank it is replacing.

Of course, to meet the terms of the contract with the Tank Works will require upgrading the Ferro-Fibrous forges significantly, but that would be needed in any event eventually.

The economy has seen a few minor hiccups but in general is doing quite well so far this year, with sustained economic growth in most, if not all, sectors of the economy. The settlers on Nowy Gdansk seem to be doing well enough, with the new hospital and schools being extremely welcome. There are concerns that once the immediate needs of building the essentials are finished, however, that there are very few manufacturing or mineral extraction projects in play to employ the freed slaves.

The Chamber of Delegates is being rather unreasonable, in concert with a few of the more avaricious and less ethical corporations in Griffsport they are proposing nothing less than economic imperialism, sending waves of settlers to the planet, displacing the locals into what would amount to slums on the edges, and exploiting the place for all it’s worth.

The Senate is standing foursquare against that proposal, instead discussing economic incentives for Griffin’s Roost firms to invest in partnerships with the locals on Nowy Gdansk. Any emigration to the planet would be measured and controlled in order to avoid diluting the local culture and disenfranchising the people who already are there and, most importantly, would be under the control and guidance of the locals rather than outsiders.

Notably the Eldest is firmly in favor of the Senate plan, and has taken to growling at Delegates who pass within line of sight. There are enough Delegates who are willing to follow your lead that, if you wished, you can force the entire chamber in line. Moreover, so long as you can justify it on the grounds of National Security, you can pretty much dictate what you please and both chambers will just have to lump it since neither has enough influence to stop you.

[] Back the Chamber of Delegates. Might piss the Poles off, but right now they aren’t contributing much at all and you need the resources and income of a settled planet more than you need their contributions. +25 support in the Chamber of Delegates, +200% POP Growth on Nowy Gdansk for next 10 years, -1% POP Growth on Griffin’s Roost for next 10 years, +600% GDP growth on Nowy Gdansk for next 10 years, -1% GDP growth on Griffin’s Roost for next 10 years, -25 Approval, -50 Approval Change, loss of ‘the Just’ title, +2 Influence Chamber of Delegates, -1 Influence Senate.

[] Back the Senate plan. Much slower and will take decades to really pay off, but slow and steady wins the race… plus you wouldn’t be a deal-breaking imperialist -5% support in the Chamber of Delegates, +5% support in the Senate, +10% POP Growth on Nowy Gdansk per year for the next 20 years, +10% GDP growth on Nowy Gdansk per year for next 20 years, +5 Rating Change on Nowy Gdansk, +5 Approval, +1 Political, +1 Influence Senate, -1 Influence Chamber of Delegates.

You are seriously considering whether or not folding the old Parliament directly into the new Imperial Parliament was a particularly wise decision, but elections are next year, hopefully most of the idiots can be voted out and replaced with those who aren’t in the hip pockets of people you really wish could have been implicated in something, anything, illegal.

Sometimes following the concept of rule of law is difficult, but it’s usually worth it in the end.

You know that you are going to have to give a speech about your decision, the question is how to do it. Jake has a few options for you…

Location:

[] Give it from Nowy Gdansk as part of reviewing the Home Army and personally meeting the leadership there.

[] Give it from your office in a televised speech broadcast system wide.

[] Call a joint session of Parliament and address them directly.

Tone:

[] Calm, cool, measured

[] Passionate, fiery

[] Other (write-in)

 

[LordSunhawk]

Turn 31 - Immortal Fear

You are truly irritated with the Chamber of Deputies, not only for their greed but for their sheer abject stupidity making it more difficult to fully integrate Nowy Gdansk into the new Empire.

You had already been scheduled to make a State Visit to the colony to meet personally with the leadership and review the Home Army who made up the core of the initial garrison. You had intended to discuss establishing internal immigration guidelines with the local leadership but the actions of the Chamber had made that fraught. At least the Senate had their head screwed on more or less straight.

The reception was far warmer, however, than you had feared, even if the weather was disobliging by freezing colder than a witch’s tit. Your kids and the tigers might like all this fluffy white stuff, you rather preferred the beach.

Old Leopold, the Sejm, and the Council were all waiting to meet with you after you reviewed the Armia Krajow. The troops looked hard, tough, and angry. You are quite glad that you aren’t a Kuritan since you strongly suspect that these hardened guerrillas wouldn’t be all that concerned about the niceties of ‘rules of war’.

You can live with that.

So you decided to throw out the planned itinerary a bit.

Standing in front of the troops you folded your hands behind your back and made use of the lungs that God had given you and which had been quite well trained by then Sergeant Ngo in the ancient art of bellowing orders. Microphones were for wimps.

“You have all no doubt heard by now of the recent debates in the Imperial Parliament.” you start, your gaze slowly sweeping the line of soldiers. “We shall be charitable and ascribe the actions of the Delegates to ignorance, after all, no person in their right mind who is aware of history would think that the descendents of those who stood at the Battle of Wizna would lay down and allow their ancient liberties to be trampled in the name of greed. That men and women whose ancestors defied the Nazi’s with cries of Warszawo, walcz would permit themselves to be subjugated by anybody.”

“We will one day liberate Nowa Warszawa. We will crush the Dragon beneath our heel. And we will do it with you at Our side as comrades, not slaves. It will take blood. It will take sweat. It will take the utmost dedication of all of us. But we will prevail. And We will do so without sacrificing the principles that We hold, to treat all of our people, regardless of culture, regardless of origin, regardless of how much or how little they can contribute at any given point to Our great struggle, as Our people, not as disposable tools to be used and discarded.”

You smile then, a smile almost colder than the arctic climate of this benighted place. “And We expect you to hold Us to that pledge. You have already pledged your service to Us. And We pledged Ourselves to you in turn.” you pause for a beat. “Colonel Sikorski.” you turn to the Home Army commander. “Dismiss the formation.”

As you finally head inside you make a mental note, the winter version of the AFGR uniform was still too damn lightweight, you were feeling cold in places that should only know warmth.

While you are meeting with the representatives of the ex-slaves one of your aides brings you a datapad with a report on it.

You strongly resist the urge to bang your head on the table and shout ‘DAMNIT TYLER’.

Lee Aerospace has unveiled what they had been working on. Evidently inspired by the skeletonized Behemoth they’d constructed what appeared to be an incomplete frame of a dropship with a set of engines on one end and a pressurized control area on the other, linked by a girder and tube arrangement, with additional girders and pierced steel plates radiating from the central girder.

At first glance it looks completely mad, but then the announcement shows specially designed small craft delivering vacuum sealed cargo containers that are easily secured to the framework. In a matter of hours (according to the time lapse information at least, the video itself is only a few minutes long) the framework is filled with containers and the unwieldy craft slowly boosts from Griffin’s Roost on a transfer orbit to Nowy Gdansk. According to the video it is carrying machine tools, mining equipment, and farming equipment.

QM Note - you now have access to a superheavy cargo craft that is far too fragile for any military purpose but which will allow for far easier trade between planets in the system. For the next 10 turns Nowy Gdansk will have +10% GDP, Griffin’s Roost will have +1% GDP, and the Empire will have +1% Tax and Interest rates each year.

Upon your return to Griffin’s Roost you are immediately besieged by outraged complaints from the Chamber of Delegates, however you pretty much ignore them. The polling is showing that the Delegates are very likely going to find themselves voted out of office soon, so it’s no real skin off of your hide how much they dislike you for pointing out for all to see their petty nature.

And then it’s that time of year again. The time of year you always wait for with existential dread because good God are the meetings boring.

Budget time! (yay?)

Like always the military goes first, and General Swanson leads the military briefers. “Your Majesty, overall ground forces are in a good position for now. We should focus on procuring Jaguar tanks for 2nd Brigade, 1st Armored for now. We might also want to consider purchasing a regiment of Winged Hussars for Nowy Gdansk, it would be a good operational environment for the design and would expand our RRF’s reach beyond Griffin’s Roost itself.”

General Reyes then takes over. “We are in a solid place ASF wise, although more is always preferable. I would recommend filling out our Roc and Eagle wings and possibly starting a new Gyrfalcon wing while holding off on further Goshawk production until we have a suitable upgraded design. The challenge there will be strategic materials availability.”

Admiral Benjamin then takes over. “Your Majesty, HMS Valiant will be joining the fleet early next year, bringing our number of Defiant class assault ships to 3. We are in the final stages of a RFP for a new transport dropship for conventional forces to supplement the Harris class. We have two options at this time.”

He lays out the basic details of the two designs. Both are intended to be easily convertible between an armored battalion carrier and a mechanized battalion carrier.

[]	Name	Cost	Speed	HP	A/D	Special
[]	Hera	1879.89	5	70	20	Dropship, AMS 2
[]	Stork	2264.47	5	81	31	Dropship

General Potter simply confirms the recommendations of his subordinates and leaves it at that.

Bridget is even more excited than usual. “We’ve got all sorts of things we can do, Your Majesty! Starting with things like developing the infrastructure on Nowy Gdansk even more to spur internal growth and other things like really looking hard at Griffin IV to see if and where we would want to colonize the place we can even use Sarah to do basic resource surveys of Griffin IV and Nowy Gdansk to find places of interest and that would be very useful for future growth not to mention building more orbital infrastructure like factories and such and expanding space stations for the improvements to research and defense and building bigger orbital factories and the rest and we have some longer term plans that would require help from Jake to implement since it would go through them.”

Isoroku is his usual stoic self. “Your Majesty, this year we recommend the musical festival for cultural affairs. In addition, we in the Ministry are pondering expanding the Olympics into summer and winter events, in order to better incorporate Nowy Gdansk. It would have no net cost change, at least in our current estimates, but should broaden the appeal of the event.”

[] Approve - No change in cost, +1% Interest Rate in the years with a Games
[] Disapprove - Summer games are enough!

Jake is grinning a bit. “Bridget stole a little bit of my thunder, but we have a working group in our department who have proposed a template for expanding the Department of Mega Engineering. The main problem is that there simply aren’t that many overly ambitious civil engineers to go around for supporting multiple projects, but a solid promotional campaign combined with scholarships for those who commit to the field early should correct that issue. It’ll be expensive, but it would allow us to do more.”

Mary is as incredibly organized as ever, and presents a full powerpoint breakdown of the available projects.

• Military Projects
  • Medium Aerodyne Dropships
    • Up to 5,000 tons
    • Superior assault dropship configuration
      • Can better concentrate forward firepower
      • Better protection for a given mass of armor
  • Medium Spheroid Dropships
    • Up to 10,000 tons
    • Superior transport dropship configuration
      • Larger, thus able to support larger amounts of cargo and units
      • Poorer armor protection for a given mass of armor
      • Superior all around weaponry, most useful while landed
  • Streak SRM-2
    • Least expensive advanced weapon system research option
    • The SRM-2 is used on several of our light units and the Streak guidance package would be a natural upgrade for them without requiring strategic materials
  • Advanced Ultra Autocannons
    • UAC/2, UAC/10, and UAC/20
    • Provides high volume of fire
    • UAC/20 would be highly lethal against enemy dropships
  • Heavy Bipedal Mechs
    • Up to 75 tons
    • Would permit a wide variety of highly versatile designs ranging from fire support, anti-aircraft, direct assault, cavalry, and general purpose trooper
  • Artemis Fire Control
    • Can be added to any missile system to improve accuracy and lethality
  • Laser Anti-Missile System
    • Relatively straightforward upgrade to the small pulse laser to permit interception of enemy missiles without consumption of ammunition
  • ER Medium and Small Laser
    • Add the enhanced focusing systems of the ER 8cm laser to the 5cm and 3cm lasers.
    • Expected to be highly efficient weapons when perfected
  • Guardian ECM
    • Provides valuable ECM support
      • Note - it is not believed that the Dracs field any systems which would be affected directly by ECM
  • Beagle Active Probe
    • Extremely capable sensor package
  • Light Quad Mech
    • Has high potential for stable high-mobility scout platforms
  • Arrow IV
    • A highly lethal artillery missile
    • Can be carried by ASFs as underwing ordnance for air-to-ground strikes
• Non-Military Projects
  • Terraforming Equipment - Lvl 3
    • The civil engineers are annoyingly vague about the projects that they are thinking about.
      • Expanding oceans, reclaiming land, lowering mountains are among the possibilities but details are scarce
    • Will be threatening the engineers with relegation to the Department of Periphery Studies if they continue to be evasive
  • Industrial Mechs Tier 2
    • Larger and more powerful industrial mechs will have a significant benefit for major civil engineering projects, including DoME projects.
  • Materials Research Lvl 4
    • General materials research, upon completion of this project a number of new fields will open up for investigation in more specialized areas, while general research will still be available
  • Electronics Lvl 4
    • As above, but only with electronic systems, especially fire control and avionics
  • Power Generation Lvl 4
    • As above, with power systems, including reactors, drives, myomer, etc
  • Orbital Infrastructure Lvl 4
    • Slightly different, in that research advances in this field are coupled with improvements in surface-to-orbit communications capabilities, more sophisticated traffic routing routines to deconflict orbital pathing, and general improvements to satellite networks.
  • Improved Communications Lvl 4
    • As for Materials Research Lvl 4, but focused specifically on communications systems of all kinds
  • Organize Expedition to the Ruins
    • The archaeologists are making Big Sad Cry Eyes at me to beg for this, it’s cheap but it takes a long time to complete, thus limiting flexibility
  • Improved Agriculture Lvl 3
    • The agronomy folks are talking about vertical farms, high intensity hydroculture and advanced greenhouse systems.
  • Orbital Survey
    • The satellite folks promise not to look at any nude beaches if they are allowed to play with their toys.
  • Life-Extension Therapy Lvl 2
    • I am not a specialist in the biological sciences, but the biomedical people say that there are promising avenues of ethical research in this area.
  • Genetic Editing
    • This could be a risky endeavor, but the potential rewards are great. The more visionary scientists speak of artificial gestation and the redevelopment of Iron Wombs, but also of genetically tweaking in vitro to produce Home Superior, a very dangerous path indeed.
• Recommendations
  • I have sufficient research teams to support 2 military and 3 non-military projects
  • Military Project Recommendations
    • Medium Aerodyne Dropship
      • Best candidate for a small carrier
      • Could yield a larger ‘frigate’ analogue to the Defiants PT Boat
      • We have the most experience with this layout, allowing for greater design flexibility
      • Least expensive of the improved dropship projects
    • Streak SRM-2
      • While it is of limited utility, this project is inexpensive and straightforward.
      • Would provide immediate upgrade capability to the Phalanx and Legionnaire light tanks as well as the Weasel IFV, which is currently our most common combat unit.
  • Non-Military Project Recommendations
    • Materials Research Lvl 4
      • Perhaps the most critical area of study
      • Sub projects would include:
        • Improved Heat Dissipation and Management
        • Reduced bulk of lightweight armor and structural components
    • Industrial Mechs Tier 2
      • The across the board improvements for infrastructure development make this a very attractive project indeed.
    • Genetic Editing
      • The potential to reintroduce the Iron Womb alone is reason enough for this project.
      • There is no need to continue research beyond the Iron Womb

Harry chuckles “That is a hard act to follow, Your Majesty. The only thing from us is we’d like permission to debrief the Home Army folks to see what we can learn from them. Primarily about the Dracs, but they might have some good ideas for our operations as well.”

Janet has, as usual, provided all of the caffeinated goodness that allows you to survive these meetings. She’s also brought along baby pictures of her first granddaughter. You spend most of the allotted time cooing over them and sharing pictures of baby John. The rest is spent laughing about the latest antics of Special Branch as they are dealing with a small bank robbery gang in Griffsport that race around in really small fuel cell cars.

 

[LordSunhawk]

Turn 31 - Cry Little Sister

Spoiler: Event, Luck and Rating Rolls

Meta Event Roll - 5 - +10% GDP
Dynasty Luck Roll - 67 - No Event

Imperial Approval - 0
Imperial Approval Change - +3
Political Event - +2

Economy Rating - +7
Economy Event - -2 (-1% GDP)
Research Event - 0

Griffin’s Roost Economy - -1
Griffin’s Roost Health - +5
Griffin’s Roost Ratings Change - +4

Nowy Gdansk Economy - +5
Nowy Gdansk Health - +4
Nowy Gdansk Ratings Change - 0

Spoiler: Action Results

Establish Special Forces [80]
Target - 80
Roll - 36
Result - SUCCESS

Build Aerie Satellite Campus on Noya Gdansk* [80]
Target - 80
Roll - 68
Result - SUCCESS

Establish Cities to exploit resource areas (Pollux)* [80]
Target - 80
Roll - 73
Result - SUCCESS

Infrastructure Development on Nowy Gdansk [75]
Target - 75
Roll - 29
Result - SUCCESS

Purchase New Units
-2 Flights of Rocs [70]
Target - 70
Roll - 68
Result - SUCCESS

-3 Flights of Eagles [auto]

-1 Flight Gyrfalcon [70]
Target - 70
Roll - 27
Result - SUCCESS

-1 Platoon Jaguar MBT [70]
Target - 70
Roll - 69
Result - SUCCESS

-1 Lance of Trooper Battlemechs [70]
Target - 70
Roll - 67
Result - SUCCESS

-16 Lances of Winged Hussar [70]
Target - 70
Roll - 1
Result - Critical SUCCESS

Expand Factory 5 (Ferro-Aluminum) [80]
Target - 80
Roll - 38
Result - SUCCESS

Build Orbital Factory Ferro-Fibrous Armor Griffin's Roost L5 [90]
Target - 90
Roll - 47
Result - SUCCESS

Build Orbital Factory Ferro-Fibrous Armor Nowy Gdansk L5 [90]
Target - 90
Roll - 54
Result - SUCCESS

Build Orbital Factory DHS Nowy Gdansk L5 [90]
Target - 90
Roll - 72
Result - SUCCESS

Build Orbital Factory DHS Griffin's Roost L5 [90]
Target - 90
Roll - 28
Result - SUCCESS

CULTURE - Benefit Concert [75]
Target - 75
Roll - 33
Result - SUCCESS

Build Relations with Chamber of Delegates* [60]
Target - 60
Roll - 42
Result - SUCCESS

Build Relations with Senate [60]
Target - 60
Roll - 18
Result - SUCCESS

Conduct Referendum on Imperial Name [95]
Target - 95
Roll - 27
Result - SUCCESS

Cure for Cancer* [55]
Target - 55
Roll - 21
Result - SUCCESS

LOSTECH - Industrial Exoskeletons lvl 4* [80]
Target - 80
Roll - 31
Result - SUCCESS

Materials Research lvl 4 [80]
Target - 80
Roll - 27
Result - SUCCESS

Aerodyne Dropships (Medium) [95]
Target - 95
Roll - 71
Result - SUCCESS

Beagle Active Probe [85]
Target - 85
Roll - 43
Result - SUCCESS

Debrief Home Army [95]
Target - 95
Roll - 5
Result - SUCCESS

---

Tyler gets confronted in an interview about the Lee Aerospace video referring to ‘Hohmann Transfer Orbits’ when the proper term would be a direct transfer burn, and his response is so Tyler that you strongly renew your vow to defenestrate him.

He claims he was distracted.

By looking at your backside.

And the reporterette has the unmitigated gall to call you up to ask for a comment on Tyler. You are rather impressed by the brashness until you check and realize that this is a cousin of yours by marriage, one of Tyler’s many great-grandchildren.

So you cheerfully give her a short history of lese-majeste, and totally deadpan announce that Tyler will be properly defenestrated once it was convenient to you. And until then he had lost great-great-grandson cuddling privileges.

You then arrange for that reporter to get an assignment to report on dire penguin breeding habits.

Clever girl that she is, she trolls back using the Department of Periphery Studies ‘experts’ and the animatronic dire penguins in her report without ever once going close to the antarctic.

Definitely a Lee.

Jeremy and Alita are enjoying parenthood while dealing with military life, Jeremy had been promoted to 1st Lieutenant and was now the XO of his Mech company while Alita was still working in procurement.

The twins were still more racing mad than anything else, you had some hopes in that they’d been dating steadily for over a year, but it seemed they weren’t all that interested in officially introducing their girlfriends to you, preferring to keep things more informal.

Both James and Quan are having good seasons, but only James makes it all the way to Championship Week at the end, Quan having missed the cut off by a single solitary point. Smirky is in championship contention again this year, he may be a pure jerkass but he was a talented driver.

And the smirking jackass managed to punt James into the catch fence during the second stage of the race and went on to win the championship. The fans were booing almost as loudly as you were, and you very nearly put a fist through the holovision.

The stewards ruled it a racing incident, but that didn't stop another massive brawl from breaking out in the pits and many of the other teams shunning Smirky’s crew as they celebrated the win. Smirky does nothing for his reputation in the post-race interview where he snidely comments that ‘maybe little mama’s boys shouldn’t be racing with men’.

That provoked an even bigger backlash, as the twins cheerfully embraced the moniker by ‘recruiting’ you to star in a rather playful video that they play on a large screen right outside the championship awards ceremony in Hue Moi. It features the twins racing with commentary about how they know they’re fast, and you blast past them in a hovervan with a ‘#1 Mom’ vanity plate followed by the twins looking at each other, back at the camera, and confessing ‘Yup, total mama’s boys.’

You have fun filming that.

Rumors reach your ears that Thanh may have found a boyfriend, although your daughter is not admitting anything. Of course, she denies it the same way she denied taking the last cookie from the cookie jar. Thanh is a terrible liar.

So you troll your loving daughter with an earnest Talk about birth control options now that she’s in the military. You’ve never seen her turn that red before, even when you had given her The Talk (™) when she was 12 and The Other Talk when she was 14. Maybe the anatomically correct demonstration models for how to put a condom on one's boyfriend were a bit over the top.

A bit.

You do get some interesting paperwork from General Potter, a proposal has been received to upgrade the SH-1 to a -1B configuration with the new Beagle Active Probes that had just been developed. In fact, it would simply be a production version of the test bed VTOL from the project.

To completely upgrade the existing battalion’s worth of the machines in 1st Armored would normally cost just under 4k, however the Griffin’s Roost planetary government has offered to cover the cost of procurement as part of an economic development plan they’re running on Hue Moi.

[]	Name	Cost	Materials	Speed	HP	A/D	Specials
[]	SH-1B	802.4	FF	21	24	3/3	Scout, TAG, Swift, VTOL, APC 1
[]	Reject

You check into the development plan and find that it is part of an effort to procure a civilian-grade SAR/Law Enforcement VTOL that is a civilian-spec SH-1, the SH-1B is simply a militarized variant of the same concept.

In military news, procurement has gone extremely well, overly so in the case of the Winged Hussars as the factory managed to produce an extra lance. The output has been split between the garrison on Nowy Gdansk and the Rapid Reaction Force.

All of the rest of the ordered equipment has been procured, and USS Endeavor has been laid down.

Special Operations Command has stood up and has developed doctrine for special ops troops. They are equipped and organized on the lines of Jump Infantry, but are more heavily equipped and extremely lethal.

The Aerie satellite campus has been opened, and Jeremy actually was sent as the Crown’s official representative for the ceremony along with his company. The ceremony went quite well and many pierogies and glasses of harsh but still very tasty vodka were consumed.

Jeremy swears he never got drunk, and to be fair it seems he did a sterling job of holding his liquor. Although joining in questionable drinking songs with the young Home Army troops was possibly not the best for decorum, it did do wonders for helping ties of comradeship.

New settlement’s have opened up on Pollux, increasing food production and driving prices even lower for the common citizens. The planetary government will be taking over further development of the continents, however.

New infrastructure has been built on Nowy Gdansk, specifically an underground freight rail line that connects the settlement to a small mining area nearby. The mine itself has been covered by an armor-grade weather dome to permit year round mining, and with the rail line now protected from the ravages of weather there is finally something for the planet to export back to Griffin’s Roost.

There is a truly massive amount of orbital activity, both around Griffin’s Roost and Nowy Gdansk. The Ferro-Aluminium forge has been expanded, and new Double Heat Sink and Ferro-Fibrous forges have been built. Production of both has been boosted to the point that you can support purchasing over a companies worth of vehicles that use both Ferro and Double Heat Sinks.

The Benefit Concert and cultural festival is very successful, this year it features Ancient African Music as the centerpiece.

Jake completely bypasses and ignores the bloviating of the leadership in the Chamber of Delegates, instead focusing on the backbenchers and junior elected delegates who are most at risk from electoral backlash in the upcoming elections. To the fury of leadership, his approach appears to be working quite well.

You personally meet with a number of leading Senators and spend several surprisingly cordial evenings discussing affairs of Empire over drinks.

You had to discard a few of the leading vote getters for the Imperial Name contest, as they were far too silly and one of which was obviously from the Department of Periphery Studies (although you, Sekhmet, Willis, Isoroku, and Jake all pretty much last it at the submission for Clan Dire Penguin). There are a number of finalists.

[] Star Empire of Griffin’s Roost
[] Empire of the Griffin
[] Griffin Empire
[] Imperial Griffin Federation
[] write-in (reserve the right to reject out of hand)

Your scientists are able to clinically test and roll out a working cure for nearly every major and most minor forms of cancer. Unfortunately the final development was a bit too late for Dr Palmer, who died in her sleep at age 86 from metastasizing bladder cancer.

The ultimate generation of Industrial Exoskeletons have been developed and released to the market. The new systems completely dispense with power cables and are totally self-contained. This has led to many in the Infantry, yourself included, looking at the new systems with very speculative eyes indeed.

Work on Materials Research has concluded, with general improvements to a number of alloys used in industrial and commercial fields. However, the increased mastery of the minutiae of these materials has spurred more specialized fields of research to open up to focus on more narrow areas of the overall field.

Larger Aerodyne dropships are now available for design, although the design staff at the Aerie is still working on their initial concept.

The debrief of the Home Army has gone, if anything, just a little bit too well. The graphic detail of the Thousand And One Best Ways To Castrate A Drac Rapist Bastard With Power Tools will probably cause generations of men to reflexively clench their legs together in horror. There is a great deal of details learned, however, which will hopefully permit better war planning in the future.

And a number of very strong reminders why it would be a bad idea to piss these people off.

 

[LordSunhawk]

Turn 32 - Hey Kids, Shake It Loose Together

You get a call in early January from Janet. A bunch of teenagers had evidently decided to, well, be teenagers and snuck past the checkpoints guarding the old ruins. This wasn’t all that uncommon, and rescues had to happen at least once a month as the ruins were quite dangerous.

This particular bunch had managed to fall through the floor in the building they had decided to have a party in and found themselves in an old server room. Luckily there were only broken bones, bruised egos, and one extremely embarrassed couple who’d been in flagrante delicto in the room next door when the floor collapsed and had gotten stuck there until rescue services picked them up.

The rescue party managed to extract a couple mostly intact data drives from the wreckage. If the room had been found in a properly equipped exploration there would have been far more found. But there is just enough data to piece together the very rudiments of orbital shipbuilding. There are also fragments of code and a few surviving actuators that came from an enhanced targeting system which have the researchers quite excited indeed.

Normally entering the ruins without a permit is a misdemeanor offense, a small fine, and a stern talking to by a judge. But considering the amount of damage done the prosecutors are pressing more serious charges. It’s a complicated situation made even more so by the fact that the building in question was the ‘ordinary’ hangout for teenagers sneaking into the ruins for centuries as it was deep enough in to be ‘private’ while close enough to the edge that help was a quick call away if somebody got hurt.

Hell, as a teenager you’d spent a night in that very building on a dare, although you’d not held a party in it. You’d not been caught, though.

You’d normally keep out of such things, however the pair of teenagers who’d been… amorously engaged… when the accident happened just happened to be related to two of your few full-throated supporters in the Chamber of Delegates. The parents have not contacted you for any favors and, although they are paying for a full defense, appear to be quite annoyed with their offspring's conduct, at least judging by the rather public dressing down the two had gotten.

It would be a pretty minor thing for you to have Jane whisper in the prosecutor's ear that the Crown would appreciate a bit of leniency for the pair, sticking with the more common misdemeanor prosecution rather than full felony charges.

[] Do it, the teens will still be punished in the same way that every other teenager who’s snuck in to do the same thing has been in the past. +1 support in the Chamber of Delegates

[] Let the prosecutor have his head on this and let the courts do their thing

[] Perhaps it is time for a major effort to fully survey and clear out the ruins and make the area completely safe. Will open up actions for Interior, Research, and Justice to fully sweep and secure the area, will remove the Expedition action. +1 support in the Chamber of Delegates.

Alita is pregnant again, which leads to much joy in the family. Grandbabies! More grandbabies! Your unmarried sons and daughters are looking positively hunted by mom’s grandbaby fever.

Good, might encourage them to settle down, get married, and start providing you with more grandbabies to spoil.

The new racing season is only 2 races in, and Smirky has been wrecked in both races and is furious in interviews. Race officials have so far suspended one of the drivers for a flagrant hit, but the other was ruled a ‘racing incident’. Smirky himself was fined heavily after getting into a fight with one of the driver’s who wrecked him right on the track.

Neither of the twins were involved in either wreck, but in post-race interviews Quan earned a small fine for unsportsmanlike conduct for pretending to play the world’s smallest violin when asked to comment on the situation.

Thanh is top of her class and appears set to graduate Summa Cum Laude as class Valedictorian. She still hasn’t introduced you to whoever she’s dating, and unless you want to force the issue you’ll just have to be patient.

[] Force the issue
[] Wait her out

Sarah is now double majoring in History and Philosophy and is actually in advance of her putative year in terms of credit hours. She’s actually already taking graduate level history courses.

Your astronomers have detected some rather spectacular ion storms around Griffin VI. There are records of a planetary storm cycle on Griffin VI, about once a century the upper atmospheric storms on the supergiant become even more intense and spectacular, with massive electric arcs forming between the innermost moons and the ring system. There’s no actual threat, but the imagery is amazing.

Sarah postulates that these storms may be the reason for the failure of her sensor platforms around Griffin VI.

The planetary government on Griffin’s Roost has been working on industrial infrastructure which has improved economic growth and, thanks to the better transportation links, increased food availability.

On Nowy Gdansk a full-sized fusion power station is now in service, meaning that the Buccaneer is no longer required for power generation and is available for study in situ. Engineers do not believe that the dropship can be made space worthy due to extensive stress fractures in the spaceframe.

 

[LordSunhawk]

Turn 32 - We’ll Kill The Fatted Calf Tonight

The astronomers are really enjoying all the lovely data gathered from the storm on Griffin VI. A few have been bugging you to have USS Enterprise break off her survey of Griffin IV to get a real up close look at the storms, however Sarah advises strongly against it. A full up Warship would be able to survive in that environment, anything less would very likely wind up dead in space.

Jeremy and the Trooper company he is XO of is deployed to Nowy Gdansk for training exercises with the Home Army. The main focus of the exercise series is to develop anti-mech tactics for foot infantry as well as counters to the same for Mech forces. Quite a bit is learned, primarily that foot infantry require heavier support weapons than SRMs if they are going to be expected to deal with Mechs.

One of the proposals to solve this is to develop and field carriage-mounted autocannons that can be operated by foot infantry. Doing so would significantly increase the cost of fielding and maintaining foot infantry forces, but would boost their firepower very nicely indeed. The current concept is for field-carriage mounted AC/5 cannons taken from old stocks.

General Potter is opposed to the idea, on the grounds that it will make Foot Infantry even more cumbersome logistics wise and that in actual combat Foot Infantry formations are meant to operate from fixed fortifications, rendering the carriage mounted ACs superfluous to the artillery of the defensive lines.

[] Agree - Increases Defense value of Foot and Motorized Infantry by +1. Increases cost by +50 per unit.
[] Disagree - Foot infantry isn’t meant to fight outside of fortifications with substantial fixed defenses already.

Parliament is debating a proposal to open up the inner Asteroid Field to private exploration and exploitation, with any space mining operations staging out of Nowy Gdansk. The Sejm has come out cautiously in favor of the plan, with the Integrationists being especially enthusiastic but even the more reticent members seeming to be willing to give it a try. The plan would obligate the Empire to build a series of 5 space stations orbiting major asteroids and planetoids in the field to provide security and rescue services, but would permit the building of a potentially extremely lucrative economic sector that would help grow not only Nowy Gdansk but Griffin’s Roost as well.

Critics of the plan argue that the asteroid belt hasn’t been fully surveyed yet by the Empire, and as such there may be hidden threats within it. Therefore they urge caution and restraint, raising specters of hidden Kuritan forces lurking within the Asteroid Belt just waiting to swarm.

[] Support - Within 5 turns 5 space stations will need to be built and provided with ASF complements within the Inner Asteroid Belt. +25 Economic Rating Nowy Gdansk, +10 Economic Rating Griffin’s Roost, +2 Economy Events, Unlocks 5 station building slots within the Inner Asteroid Belt for Space Station and Orbital Factories. Unlocks Inner Asteroid Field as a colonized zone, with initial population of 1000, GDP of 100,000, Economic and Health rating of 65, Rating Change of 60. There will be NO POP growth unless DoME projects are completed. +5 Support Chamber of Delegates, +5 Support Senate, +1 Influence Chamber of Delegates.

[] Oppose - No effect

It is quite nice to see Parliament actually doing their jobs for a change and not being a bunch of petulant power-hungry jerks. Who knew that was even possible?

Thanh has graduated, Summa Cum Laude and Valedictorian as expected. She’s still keeping any romantic relationship under wraps, although you are quite certain she’s having one considering her reactions whenever you bring up the topic. You’ll wait her out, she has a habit of trying to be secretive sometimes when she really doesn’t need to be.

The racing season continues, and so far Smirky has yet to successfully finish a single race. He’s been wrecked, when he hasn’t been wrecked he’s suffered mechanical failures that forced a DNF, and he then got DQed from a race when, in a rage, he deliberately rammed another racer off the track during a caution period.

The twins still haven’t been directly involved in a single one of the incidents. There’s a great deal of laughter when they piously declare that ‘Mom would be very disappointed in us’ as their reason for not getting involved. Smirky, of course, has been blaming them for every single bit of misfortune and has been cooking up some wild conspiracy theory about being targeted by the Empress.

You find that absolutely hilarious, as you’d not done a single thing of the sort. If Smirky had an ounce of brains he’d realize who his nemesis was. After all, Tyler had to do SOMETHING to get back in your good graces and be permitted to visit his great-great-grandkids!

Then Janet, Michelle and Jane come to your office and thoroughly wreck your good mood.

There’s a new player in the organized crime community, one which is violent, very well organized, and extremely good at the critical skill of not getting caught. None of the existing groups know anything useful about this new group, only that all of them have taken severe losses to them both from defections of street level thugs to a series of still unsolved homicides targeting more senior members.

These people have even targeted law enforcement directly, two police officers have so far been murdered by a sniper. A single Grifftiger from the Mounted Police has also been killed by a stolen infantry SRM. And there are precious few leads. The underworld is in a state of terror from this group.

The local authorities are working with the garrison to form a task force to hunt these people down, and have asked for support from the Special Branch.

[] Agree - starts event chain
[] Disagree - starts event chain

QM NOTE - The main quest google spreadsheet is located HERE. You will find links in the Rules (which are a little outdated, I need to work on that) to the Unit Record Sheets and Technical Readout.

 

[LordSunhawk]

Turn 32 - Where We Fight Our Parents Out In The Streets

Alita has given birth to a daughter, who is absolutely lovely. Jeremy has managed to return from Nowy Gdansk in time for the birth but he’ll have to go back to his unit in a few days.

Your grandson seems utterly fascinated with his new little sister, which is how it should be in your opinion. Your family is continuing to grow as you now have two grandbabies. You like grandbabies.

Smirky is still having a bad season, although the overt targeting has pretty much ended and he has managed to finish races. He’s been black flagged a few times for over aggressive driving as he gets revenge on driver’s who’d wrecked him in the past. He’s also tried to punt the twins, but Quan has so far managed to ‘return the favor’ everytime he punts James, and vice versa.

You finally meet Thanh’s boyfriend… who’s not a boy. You’d never really cared if any of your kids turned out to be homosexual, but it appears Thanh had been misinterpreting your love of grandbabies as an indirect disapproval of the fact that she’s a lesbian. During her teenage years when she’d have been most likely to have confided in you about that you and her had been clashing constantly over her desire to enter the Aerie early in order to become a pilot or her wanting her pilot license early.

You still didn’t mind, and Petra Dreyson is a perfectly lovely young woman who’s a civilian junior lab assistant in the Aerie’s labs.

Thanh had been very nervous about introducing Petra to you and had been quite surprised when your reaction had been completely positive. Later there was much tearful hugging as the miscommunication and misunderstandings were cleared up. You love your daughter no matter what… and then you realize… Iron Wombs… you might get grandbabies out of her yet!

The anguished wail of ‘MOM!’ that follows that observation is accompanied by giggles on both of your parts.

All is right once more.

At least within the family.

The crime wave has intensified, with the police outgunned by heavily armed thugs who are wielding full up military-grade hardware. Hardware that was once issued to your own infantry.

Michelle and Jane have managed to track some of the hardware, and discovered that it originated from several of the caches that had been established a quarter century earlier to support resistance militia in the event of a Drac conquest of the planet.

Three caches, to be precise, all of which had shared the same supply sergeant who conveniently disappeared hours before the Special Branch could call him in for questioning.

Almost an entire battalion set of infantry gear, albeit mostly obsolete, has walked with Jesus into the hands of these thugs.

Two more grifftiger members of the Mounted Police have fallen in the line of duty to heavy weapons from the caches, there have been brazen robberies of armored cars and banks. These thugs seem to be reveling in the firepower that they are bringing to bear and killing for the sake of killing.

You manage to get an early, if incomplete, picture of what is happening. The Bratva, Russian origin organized crime, had never been a problem on Griffin’s Roost, being very minor at best players in the criminal underworld. The old leaders had, however, recently disappeared and it appears that they were purged by a new generation of ‘thief in law’ types who are far more brutal and aggressive.

Several options are laid out, none of them particularly attractive. Completely shutting down the militia caches, securing them, and removing all the equipment from circulation is one possibility. Would actually save you some money but would eliminate the militia in the event of a disaster resulting in the planet being conquered by an enemy. Another possibility is an intensive audit of the equipment and installing far stricter oversight of the militia, perhaps along similar lines to the Home Army. This would maintain the militia, but would increase costs and the realization that all of this chaos was being fueled, inadvertently, by the government would cause quite a bit of instability for a time no matter which option is selected.

The Special Branch is badly outnumbered and outgunned, and the police are hopelessly out of their depth. Expanding the Special Branch with special forces troops specially trained in law enforcement and deputized to serve in that role would permit the Special Branch to face the Bratva on an even footing.

Finally, initiating intensive investigations using all of the resources and capabilities of the government would have the effect of calming the situation and eventually driving the Bratva back underground.

QM NOTE - Until there is progress in dealing with the problem the following modifiers are in effect. -10 Approval, -50 Approval Change, -50 Politics, -10% GDP Griffin’s Roost. Until the problem is dealt with successfully the following modifiers are in effect. -50 Approval Change, -25 Politics, -5% GDP Griffin’s Roost.

Under the circumstances you don’t waste any time whining about budget time.

General Swanson has stepped down as Ground Forces representative and has been replaced by General Jackson of the 1st Armored. “Your Majesty, there are a few items from us. First of all, we would like to establish a proper special operations unit to permit us to go toe to toe with DEST in the future. In addition we should procure as many Jaguar tanks as possible. I would also recommend completing the Winged Hussar unit on Nowy Gdansk.”

General Reyes takes over. “We should continue procurement of ASFs at a reasonable rate, especially for the new space stations we will be building. That being said, we are still working on upgrades to the Goshawk.”

Admiral Benjamin then steps up. “Your Majesty, HMS Valiant and HMS Zeilin will be going into commission this year, thus leaving the yards open for the next vessels in the series. However I would recommend redesignating the Harris class yard for the new Haskells or even Confederates.”

General Potter then takes the podium. “Your Majesty, needless to say I endorse my subordinates' recommendations. In regards to the situation with the Bratva. The militia concept is a good idea in theory, we simply implemented it with too few safeguards in place. I accept full responsibility for not considering the risk of criminal elements in the planning and stockpiling of the caches and if you desire a resignation over this affair, mine will be on your desk immediately.”

[] Accept (Unknown Effects)
[] Reject (Unknown Effects)

Bridget is surprisingly subdued… for Bridget. “Your Majesty. Interior is ready to continue the growth of our Empire as required. We recommend a combination of constructing the first of the requested Space Stations along with expanding our Orbital Factories. I would recommend against starting to clear the ruins yet, we want the knowledge that is inside them after all. I would also strongly recommend continuing infrastructure development on Nowy Gdansk.”

Wow… that is subdued for Bridget, not a single run on sentence.

Isoroku is as he ever is. Zen as heck. “Your Majesty, it may seem callous but I would recommend building a monument to the fallen of the Mounted Police, it would offset some of the unrest that is occurring due to the massive crime wave at least.”

Jake isn’t bothering to conceal how angry he is at the situation, then again two of his cousins were killed in an armed robbery. “I wish I could recommend anything that would directly deal with those Bratva animals, Your Majesty, but that’s not my remit. All I can recommend is mitigation, either the title or anthem would restore a little of the momentum that this outbreak of barbarism has caused us to lose.”

Mary is businesslike and brisk. “Your Majesty, I’m not going to waste your time repeating my analysis from last year, instead I will do the same for the new projects that are now available and give my recommendations.” She operates the Powerpoint like a true professional.

• New Military Technologies
  • Power Armor (Light) - Basic
    • Appears to answer the question of what the Star League Quartermaster Corps were thinking when they greenlit the Mauser 960
    • These suits are simply enclosed and armored variants of existing industrial exoskeletons
  • Targeting Computer
    • Significantly improves the accuracy of vehicle, ASF, and Mech mounted weapons
    • A combination of fine-lay actuators and advanced computer support
• New Non-Military Technologies
  • Lostech - Orbital Construction Yard
    • Extremely fragmentary starting point
    • Would permit orbital construction of dropships
      • Current techniques are highly fragile and unsuited for combat units
  • Thermal Dissipation (advanced) Tier 1
    • Leverages our knowledge of advanced metallurgy and physics to fine tune the heat dissipation properties of our heat sinks.
    • Initially this will be simply mastering the physics and chemistry involved
    • Basic research, do not expect usable hardware right away
  • Structural Materials (advanced) Tier 1
    • Leverages metallurgy, chemistry, and physics to produce materials that are both stronger and more resilient, reducing the bulk of many strategic materials.
    • Basic research, do not expect usable hardware right away
• Recommendations
  • Military Research
    • Power Armor (Light) - Basic
      • This is a significant game changer for the Infantry, small units equipped with this would be more mobile and deadlier than much larger conventional formations
    • Streak SRM-2
      • Same reasoning as last year. This will provide the single most ‘bang’ for a relatively small price
    • Advanced Ultra Autocannons
      • By completing the trifecta of advanced ballistic weapons we should be able to progress towards mastery of them, permitting more compact and capable designs
  • Non-Military Research
    • Improved Agriculture
      • Relatively inexpensive with a decent return in regards to population growth
    • Thermal Dissipation (advanced) Tier 1
      • A basic research that could yield exceptional results down the road
    • Structural Materials (advanced) Tier 1
      • A basic research that could yield exceptional results down the road

Harry is… there. His wife had died in one of the attacks that was apparently targeting him personally. “Your Majesty, Intel is normally of little use when dealing with domestic threats like this. However, I would like to continue debriefing the Home Army to see if they have any insights into how to deal with the Bratva.”

Janet is looking positively furious. “Your Majesty, we dropped the ball and got complacent. Luckily our SWAT teams are barely holding their own, when we have sufficient warning to get them deployed. We need to beef up the Special Branch and release them from the leash on these monsters. And Your Majesty.” she gives you a level look. “I would recommend that any instructions to the Special Branch include the phrase ‘dead or alive’.”

[] Include it
[] Don’t include it

 

[LordSunhawk]

Turn 32 - B-B-B-Bennie And The Jets

Spoiler: Event, Luck, Rating Rolls

Meta-Event Roll - 1 - unlocks Targeting Computer and Orbital Shipyard research
Dynasty Luck - 20 - New grandbaby

Imperial Approval - 5
Approval Change - 9
Political - -2

Economy Rating - -1
Economy Event - 4
Research Event - -1

Griffin’s Roost Econ - 1
Griffin’s Roost Health - 10
Griffin’s Roost Change - 4

Nowy Gdansk Econ - -2
Nowy Gdansk Health - 6
Nowy Gdansk Change - 5

Spoiler: Action Results

Inventory and Secure Militias [85]
Target - 85
Roll - 64
Result - SUCCESS

Harden Factory 10 (Gyrfalcon)
Target - 65
Roll - 64
Result - SUCCESS

Harden Factory 11 (Enterprise)
Target - 65
Roll - 59
Result - SUCCESS

Lay Down Major Unit
-Defiant [75]
Target - 75
Roll - 18
Result - SUCCESS

Purchase New Units
-1 Flight of Rocs [70]
Target - 70
Roll - 35
Result - SUCCESS

-2 Flight of Goshawks [70]
Target - 70
Roll - 48
Result - SUCCESS

-1 Flight of Gyrfalcons [70]
Target - 70
Roll - 52
Result - SUCCESS

-1 Lance of Trooper Battlemechs [70]
Target - 70
Roll - 64
Result - SUCCESS

-2 Lances Winged Hussar [70]
Target - 70
Roll - 57
Result - SUCCESS

-9 Platoons Special Ops [70]
Target - 70
Roll - 39
Result - SUCCESS

-3 Platoons Jaguar MBT [70]
Target - 70
Roll - 2
Result - SUCCESS

Expand Orbital Factory 8 [80]
Target - 80
Roll - 68
Result - SUCCESS

Expand Orbital Factory 9 [80]
Target - 80
Roll - 37
Result - SUCCESS

Expand Orbital Factory 10 [80]
Target - 80
Roll - 38
Result - SUCCESS

Build Space Station Asteroid 1 [80]
Target - 80
Roll - 59
Result - SUCCESS

Build Space Station Asteroid 2 [80]
Target - 80
Roll - 41
Result - SUCCESS

Infrastructure Development on Nowy Gdansk [75]
Target - 75
Roll - 62
Result - SUCCESS

CULTURE - Monuments Ho! [75]
Target - 75
Roll - 11
Result - SUCCESS

Build Relations with House of Commons [60]
Target - 60
Roll - 52
Result - SUCCESS

Build Relations with House of Lords [60]
Target - 60
Roll - 34
Result - SUCCESS

Conduct Referendum on Imperial Title [95]
Target - 95
Roll - 11
Result - SUCCESS

Industrial Mechs Tier 2* [80]
Target - 80
Roll - 91, Kelgar03 Reroll - 90, Kelgar03 Reroll - 47
Result - SUCCESS

Orbital Infrastructure lvl 4 [65]
Target - 65
Roll - 18
Result - SUCCESS

Orbital Survey [105]
Target - 105
Roll - 22
Result - SUCCESS

Advanced Ultra Autocannons [70]
Target - 70
Roll - 71
Result - Bare FAILURE (auto next turn)

Streak SRM-2 [80]
Target - 80
Roll - 16
Result - SUCCESS

Power Armor (Light) - Basic [65]
Target - 65
Roll - 94, Reroll Jarow - 18
Result - SUCCESS

Debrief Home Army [95]
Target - 95
Roll - 17
Result - SUCCESS

Expand the Special Branch [85]
Target - 85
Roll - 34
Result - SUCCESS

-----

News of the massive crime wave and underworld war dominates every channel and outlet. Hardly a day goes by without double digit shootings, most fatal, dozens of rapes, assaults, arson attacks, brazen burglaries and home invasions. The Bratva have effectively declared war on law-abiding society.

Law-abiding society is fighting back. The Royal Grifftiger Mounted Police scored a victory against the Bratva in conjunction with SWAT and an assist from the Special Branch by taking out an entire cell of ‘soldiers’ in the organization. A dozen cops and a grifftiger were killed in the operation, but almost 50 Bratva ‘soldiers’, including several ‘thief in law’ types, were killed, and a further two dozen captured.

Griffsport PD has officially requested military assistance in the form of the Scout Battalion, 1st Regiment, 1st Brigade, 1st Armored. With the new SH-1B VTOLs and trained Jump Infantry, that unit would provide overwatch and rapid response to back the police up.

[]	Accept	Cost - 1000, Political +1, Approval Change +1, 1d6 Progress
[]	Reject	No change

There is also the question of how to handle those Bratva thugs captured. On one side there are arguments that they should be handled by the regular justice system, they are criminals who have been engaging in criminal behavior that the justice system is already equipped to handle. Others are saying that this crime wave goes beyond simple ‘crime’ and constitutes an armed insurrectionist movement, and thus the prisoners should be handled as illegal combatants. Still others are advocating a mixture of the two, with the regular justice system for the common ‘soldiers’ of the Bratva and Military/Intel for the leadership.

[]	Justice System	+5 Approval Change, +5 Political
[]	Military/Intel	1d12 Progress
[]	Mix	+1 Approval Change, +1 Political, 1d4 Progress

News that you had rejected General Potter’s offer to resign over this is quite well received, with most commentators taking the stance that it shows you aren’t going to seek scapegoats but rather work to actually solve the issue.

You have issued the ‘dead or alive’ orders, but on further consideration are thinking of limiting this remit to the Special Squad, Royal Grifftiger Mounted Police, and SWAT. The smaller pool might limit effectiveness, but it would also prevent the police from becoming excessively accustomed to simply killing suspects.

[]	Limit	+1d2 Progress, Prevents Future Issues
[]	Don’t Limit	+1d4 Progress

The comprehensive audit and inventory of the hidden caches laid down for a potential Drac invasion reveals a systemic failure to properly secure and account for all of the hardware. Most of this is due to the fact of the sheer scale of the effort, the comparatively low number of qualified personnel available at the time this was organized and the fact that it ran well under the radar. The AFGR didn’t even have all the data on where the oldest of these caches were. Those that were properly documented were overseen properly, but too many were poorly documented, either because of people failing to do the paperwork properly or slipping through the cracks.

Luckily out of over five hundred caches, only 3 have any serious discrepancies between what’s supposed to be there and what’s actually there, and all three were ones handled by one particular missing supply sergeant with their contents in the hands of the Bratva. There are some indications that the individual may have been under duress, the last several official check-ins from him were all remote and while they originated from his office the office itself shows signs of not being used for several weeks if not months and Sarah detects a great deal of malware and remote access software on the office computer.

The Special Branch has been augmented with an entire company of Special Operations personnel, just in time for several raids in which their firepower and skill proved vital in preventing loss of life. Michelle and Jane both insist they had nothing to do with the minor detail that every single member of this company is either female or a particularly ‘delicious’ (Jane’s words) male.

In other news, some serious work has been accomplished hardening factories against potential attack.

HMS Daring, the next Defiant-class dropship, has been laid down, while the Harris-class yard has switched to the more flexible Haskell design.

Procurement is a significant bright spot, with new weapon systems rolling off the line and into the hands of the military bulking up your defenses. The crews of the Jaguar tanks are particularly enthusiastic, with the maintenance teams singing their praises to the skies. The modular nature of all of the systems on those tanks is impressing everybody.

A large amount of orbital construction coincides with massive improvements to basic space infrastructure techniques and procedures. The new techniques, in fact, are almost revolutionary as they’ve allowed for significant boosts in production efficiency in orbital factories without requiring more mass or volume for the equipment. Work crews have installed the new systems on both the existing and the new orbital factories with great fanfare.

Working during periods of thaw, both natural and expedited by fusion torches, crews have been able to construct a network of underground transportation tunnels criss-crossing the settlement on Nowy Gdansk, facilitating daily life even during harsh winter conditions.

A large monument to first-responders, law enforcement, and the like is unveiled to much applause. An attempt by the Bratva to disrupt the ceremony is dealt with… harshly.

After the elections relations with the Imperial House of Delegates have improved considerably, as many of the old fossils who’d begun causing you so much trouble have been voted out of office. Relations with the Senate, meanwhile, have become positively convivial.

You get the list of proposed ‘titles’ for yourself as the leader of the Griffin Empire. Some of them make you snort, one makes you check to make sure the Periphery Studies Department wasn’t involved, but in general they are pretty interesting.

[]	Title	Commentary
[]	Empress	Simple, easy, what I’m already stuck with, so whatever
[]	Holy Griffin Empress	Not Periphery Studies… but rather my daughter who’s been studying the Holy Roman Empire too much
[]	Imperatrix	For when you have a taste for the Latin, I guess
[]	Great Packleader	I like it, until I read the description of the formal attire. I don’t care how much the Eldest thinks it is appropriate, I am not dressing up in a fur bikini and carrying a spear. I’m sure the big cat is trolling me

The orbital survey finds a fairly well defined submerged impact crater off the coast of Capricorn, evidently from the same impact event that formed the harbor at Hue Moi. The planetary government is planning extensive survey work to see if there is anything interesting down there.

The first suits of Power Armor are in the hands of test crews at the Aerie. So far the suits have proven quite reliable. Initial attempts to equip them with arm mounted small lasers were abandoned when it was determined that the weapons were drawing too much power for the power systems to handle on top of the movement profile planned. Instead they are equipped with old-fashioned M2 Browning machine guns that are still ubiquitous in your inventory. They also have the full version of the Mauser 960 as an anti-personnel weapon, which is proving to be very effective indeed.

The development work for the Streak SRM-2 has concluded successfully, with a testbed Weasel equipped with the new system proving quite capable. Plans are in place to develop a proper Weasel upgrade by next year.

Unfortunately not all are coming up roses in the research area. The work on expanded variants of the Ultra autocannon technology has run into a bit of a snag. Somebody forgot to carry a one when calculating the recoil loads of the UAC/20 variant and it rather wrecked the test stand when it was test fired at full rate. The rather embarrassing math error has been found and corrected, and a very red faced graduate student is never going to live this down until the day he dies.

Discussions with the Home Army on Nowy Gdansk reveals that a number of them have… experience… dealing with organized crime back home, and are quite willing and eager to apply their skills to the problem of breaking the Bratva.

[]	Approve	+1 Integration Nowy Gdansk, Cost 1000, +1d6 Progress
[]	Disapprove	No change