Palindrome 236-1105
On their last night in Palindrome, several of the party were invited to join no less a figure than Lady Yemar for a dinner party at er official residence as ruler (and owner!) of Palindrome, in the sole city of Astrogo.
There, they met Prince Grehai again, who probed further about what his “brother in Sindal” King Oleb was currently up to, and who talked again about the need for stronger defences against the Aslan along the border systems, and how they currently each tried to appear less provocative (and less tempting) than each other in the hope that someone else will be the next subject of an Ihatei invasion. When asked about Petyr Vallis, he said that his methods might be counter-productive but that such actions were bound to happen more often as the Aslan encroached.
A surprising member of the party was Hink Tabreja, a King, warlord and raider from Oghma who, it turned out, had been educated at the prestigious Tobia Institute of Technology. He talked of how he saw the limits on Oghman power and expansion of their dependence on raiding their neighbours, but also talked of how he was astride a tiger: his people needed income (and demanded wealth) that – however limited – only came with raiding. Maintaining their fragile space-faring tech (at TL9) required capturing technically skilled slaves.
The Minister of Trade for Salif looked somewhat askance at the piratical Tabreja’s discursions, but was very happy with the guests from the So Much For Subtlety, who were clearly somewhere between bounty hunters and Drinax’s anti-pirate representatives. He was particularly delighted that the Redthane gang were no more, given that they had only just been driven off by Salif’s navy during a raid a few months ago [there was an INN news report to this effect in a perious session]. The party were invited to visit President Tiznee Zazzle’s planet.
Lady Yemar seemed rather better informed as to the morally-grey areas in which the Drinaxian representatives might be operating. She herself had been a pirate, and now used the income from her hold on Palindrome to fund her eye-wateringly expensive medical treatment for injuries suffered following exposure to a devastating chemical attack.
Thaddeus Azad, meanwhile, had been able to recommend three new crew members to Timaeus, and the Drinaxians found themselves with a new gunner, pilot and former captain of marines.
The party then departed Palindrome for the single parsec jump to Theev with their fleet of ships: the Misery’s Company being carried by the Mercifuge while Vas, Krrsh and new member Tarsus Rhodes piloted the Janel Torsk, Mercifuge and Phlebotomist respectively. There was some nervousness about jumping into Theev with barely enough gunners for a quarter of the ships’ guns, but the flotilla was impressive enough to make any casual opportunist think twice about gambling on them having mere skeleton crews, and a Neural Activity Scanner has very short range, anyway.
Theev 245-1105
The Misery’s Company was sold to free up sufficient cash to pay the crew their shares of the prizes taken, and the various marines and hired crew went into Theev to exploit their sudden riches. Sharyl and the party visited the Phenotype-A clinic to undergo various enhancements. A uniformed representative of Admiral Darokyn arrived at the So Much For Subtlety, inspected the bodies of the Redthane gang (while Krrsh and Arnara Rrax stayed out of the way!) and the footage of the Battle of 540PD, and pronounced himself satisfied. Within an hour, the party were 2.5MCr richer.
Torpol 275-1105
There then began a victory tour of Torpol and Clarke as the party used their grisly cargo to collect their outstanding bounties. The news of their success had preceded them and at Torpol, Falx had already been promoted as a result of the affair. The delivery of the stolen chemicals and refinery unit further delighted him, and the party received a very large entertainments budget for their short stay, as well as a 24-hour party on a mega-yacht off the coast of the islands.
Clarke 287-1105
Clarke was more sedate, but no less grateful, and the pirate gang were encased in Clarke’s carbonite tombs, while Redthane was made into a space beacon, orbiting for eternity as an example to other pirates in a sci-fi form of having his head impaled on a spike at Tower Bridge.
Drinax 297-1105
Returning to Drinax, the party were feted by a delighted Oleb, who took time away from his latest hobby to announce several days of celebrations and feasting.
The party expressed an interest to Chieftain Galx and to Princess Rao in recruiting more Vespexers. Three constraints on this were explained to them:
- most of the major Vespexer tribes had at-best reserved views of the Drinaxian monarchy
- the high mortality rate amongst Vespexers (due to the hazards of the surface) meant little excess population
- there were not many qualified spacers amongst the population in any case
The party threw themselves into influencing the Vespexers through lending technical and organisation know-how, capital spending and active intervention. Over the following months, five additional Vespexer tribes were brought into coalition with the Crown: the Romanovs, Seafarers, Ironspine Kin, Cauldron Line, Tianan Covenant and Greystar Collective. This improved taxation revenue for Oleb while improving the availability of a pool of untrained candidates for the party’s spacing and military plans.
This was done with a series of tasks, requests and the like where the party engaged with each of the tribes, discovered what they wanted, needed, feared, hated etc, and did what they could to win them over with this information.
Drinax 365-1105
While Prince Harrick was sceptical and Admiral Wrax was no happier as result, Rao was quietly delighted with the wooing of the Vespexers, while Oleb was further delighted. The political situation was stabilised as the Vespexer tribes recognised Oleb as King; tax receipts were up (in game terms, the Efficiency rating of the Drinax economy rose, while the additional population of the Vespexer tribes was added). As a result of their achievements thus far, the crew of the So Much For Subtlety were knighted in the Most Exalted Order of the Eclipsed Black Star on the last day of 1105. For this ancient Sindalian order, tthe knight’s oath is sworn in shadow, by starlight alone, facing outward from the palace ramparts. The regalia includes a midnight cloak stitched with starmaps, and a ceremonial blade of iridium blackglass, said to be modeled on weapons recovered from Sindalian tombships. All knights of the order are entitled to stand in the King’s presence without first kneeling, a rare honour in Drinax.
And that’s the end of 1105. The adventures started on 101-1105, on Marduk, and in the following nine months the party have begun to strengthen the foundations of the Drinaxian state on their home planet while tentatively improving the Drinaxian Crown’s reputation on neighbouring Torpol and Clarke. From their start with a simple, 200-ton Far Trader, they now have a (woefully undermanned) flotilla of six ships, three of them (the Mercifuge, Phlebotomist and the Janel [INSERT BETTER NAME HERE] Torsk) seized from pirates.
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