Session: #1 Date: 5/1/09 Modules: The Main Rules, Book 1: Mercenary, Book 2: High Guard, Book 3: Scout, Supplement 1: 760 Patrons, The Spinward Marches
In July or so we're going to be starting a new campaign, as an Eberron campaign that Donald is running comes to its natural end. We've decided to go with Mongoose Traveller, pretty much because of my enthusiasm for the same. Because of a hole in our gaming calendar (where I expected to be down several group members while moving into a crucial session in Savage Tide ... which turned out not to be the case today) we decided to make characters a couple of months early.
About the Books
I brought 6(!) books with me to facilitate the creation of characters.
First there was the Core Rulebook, of course; we fortunately had 2 copies of it, plus 2 Pocket rulebooks. To go with that I had the three supplementary rule books: Mercenary slightly expands Army & Marines careers and offers a new Merc profession; High Guard replaces the Navy career with a much expanded system; and Scout replaces the Scout career with another much expanded system.
I'll admit, I was intimated by this pile of books. I find the content of Mercenary particularly dirty because it just replaces part of the chargen rules for Army and Navy. Beyond that, juggling four books seemed a bit much. Fortunately, it worked out fine.
That's in part because I took the time to figure out what was in all the books last night and in part because Mongoose has done a good job of layout and organization on these rules. Depending on the choices a character makes everything is always accessible on a 2 or 4 page spread and the way that the different expanded careers work is mostly parallel. (There's some differences in how you qualify for careers and the likelihood of switching among subsections of the same career which I wish wasn't the case, but wasn't too big a deal.) Some tables which cross-reference required rolls and listed page numbers also helped out a lot.
So, thumbs up for the chargen rules in general, though I did find them a bit confusing the first time I read them over.
The fifth book I brought was 760 Patrons, which is a thick supplement just listing people that you can use in a game, with adventure hooks for them. I liked it when I first saw it, and I liked it even more when people suggested that you could use it to generate contacts, allies, enemies, and rivals during character generation. I did just that, listing the patron # so that I can refer back to it for adventure ideas later. The random generation tables and page references were all well done and made the use of this book quick.
The last book I brought was The Spinward Marches. This is where the campaign is going to be set and so I needed it to generate homeworlds for people. It was the least successful book for two reasons.
First, there's no way to randomly select worlds. It'd be easy enough to do, but you'd have to be careful, creating tables that would have people coming only from the most likely planets, and not (say) the Zhodani planets unless you were playing one of them.
Second, its TOC isn't very good. I always had to dig for the sector map (which should have been upfront or even better printed on the inside cover) and then I had to hunt around upon selecting a subsector to actual find it, because they weren't listed in the TOC (although I now see I could have looked in the index for the subsector pages, though the TOC still would have been the proper place). I also think the book is hurt by the lack of a true sectorwide map. The old Traveller books would have a super-small map of a sector which would at least show you how it all connected up. Here's there's just a lettered sector map that doesn't show the contents.
(Fortunately I can just copy out the thumbnail sector map from the old GDW Spinward Marches book.)
I should note that my complaints about The Spinward Marches are purely cosmetic. And, maybe I wasn't using it for its intended purpose, but I think it's a fair purpose nonetheless. In any case, I mean to say that the book is by Martin Dougherty who's generally quite a good Traveller writer, and though I've just started actually reading the book, I expect it to be well-written and full of plot books.
So that's my general impression of the books we used for character creation. For the most part their use went more smoothly than I expected and I was pleased.
More about the actual process of character creation in the next post.
Traveller has what is surely one of the most mechanical character creation systems around. So, I decided to try something different today. I decided to treat the character generation like a true play session, rather than an multiplayer solitaire session. I told everyone that we were going to do the character generation together, as a group, that we were going to talk about storytelling elements as we went, and that we were going to build cross-character connections as we went, and that though people would have downtime, I hoped it would be no more than in a typical battle.
Part of this decision to push for storytelling from the get-go came from the Mongoose Rules. I think their character-connection rules are great. Basically, when you roll an event, you can use it to connect to another character, and if you do, you each get a bonus skill(!). You can do this up to two times per character. So characters are offered a genuine reward for roleplaying, which gets big kudos in my book.
(The other part was because after years of D&D, I wanted a game with more heart to it, and character creation seemed a good place to get that ball rolling.)
The players were really supportive, so we pushed forward. We talked about what sort of campaign people wanted to play (and ended up with a freelance campaign which will have some military elements), we generated initial stats, decided homeworlds, and wrote down basic skills. Then we got into the meat of the session.
I continuously ran around the table, just like I would in a combat session. When I got to each player, we ran through a term aloud, and after all the skills and events were in place, I then asked them to tell the story of that four years. Everyone gave a good effort every time. Most of the players gave a great effort every time, and for those who didn't, it was only because of lack of practice not enthusiasm. Because we were doing everything aloud, it was easy for people to jump in and see how their characters connected up, and that helped to keep everyone together.
I ended up having 7 players generating characters where I'd expected 5 when I decided up this methodology. So, there was a bit more downtime than I wanted, but still most players stayed in the game most of the time, which is probably better than most sessions we play, especially with that many people.
I also felt like by the end of the session we'd created seven real human beings that I know more about already than I know about the D&D characters people have been playing for two years. The players and I are going to kick back and forth a couple of paragraphs of bios for all the characters to sort of lock this in place over the next several days.
(I'll post them here when we're done.)
I'll also note that this was the most exhausting game session I've run since last time I ran Paranoia. I was "on" for about 5 hours straight, constantly talking: asking questions, giving results, eliciting character descriptions, etc. I hadn't realized that I hadn't moved from my seat for five hours until I was pulling my stuff together at the end, nor had I realized how hoarse my voice had gotten.
(It's better now.)
In any case, hopefully other folks are as connected to their characters now as I am.
About the Campaign
Due to some changes in our group dynamics lately, we're going to be running this game as a Troupe-style game, which means shifting GMs. We haven't talked much beyond that yet, but I expect to share the duties initially with Eric F., who's just returning to the fold. I've got the background information on the Third Imperium cold and he's happier running things off the cuff. I'm planning to run at least some of the published adventures, but I hope to get more comfortable about off-the-cuff running too.
(I never have been; when I had more time, I used to painstakingly prepare my own adventures rather than painstakingly reading and rereading existing ones, but there's always pain involved.)
Mary has already indicated that she might like to run some too, once she gets comfortable with the game. I hope that comes about, as some of my favorite games ever (Ars Magica in particular, but we've also tried out the style with Pendragon) have been troupe-style games. I'd thought their time was over as the people who were my co-GMs in days past are all gone, but now I've got people who weren't around (or were less involved then) ready to jump in. Cool.
I also think the book is hurt by the lack of a true sectorwide map. The old Traveller books would have a super-small map of a sector which would at least show you how it all connected up. Here's there's just a lettered sector map that doesn't show the contents.
Turns out there is one of these, back on page 122, which I hadn't seen because it's not with the overview of the Marches. Kinda hard to read, unfortunately; I'm still going to need to go with my GDW map to give us all something really clear to read.
Session: #2 Date: 5/16/09 Modules: The Main Rules, Supplement 1: 760 Patrons, The Spinward Marches
Did a second day of character creation ... well, OK, it was just an hour spent helping Dave P. make his new character, amidst some D&D gaming.
I had one more book than I did last time I did character creation, Traveller Book Four: Psion, but I decided not to offer it as an option for character creation. Unfortunately, I think the book shows off a potential weakness in the current Mongoose line.
Theoretically, most of the books in the Mongoose line are generic, usable for any universe. But, even if that's the case, things like the Merc, Navy, and Scout books work entirely fine for the Original Traveller Universe (OTU). I've heard some hardcore grognards complain that maybe there's one item in a book that doesn't match the assumptions of the Imperium, but GMs can get around that.
However, Psion, which gives lots of rules for creating psionic characters, is sooo far from the Imperium norm, that I'm not even sure how to incorporate it into the game. Doubtless, some of the classes would be OK, even in the world of the Imperium where psionics are illegal, but I wasn't ready to go through the book and figure out case by case which classes they were, so instead I kept the book on my shelf (and flagged it for future use with the Zhodani).
In any case, that's a long aside not really about the AP. The point today was to make Dave P. a character, and I used the same technique as last time, talking about the story behind the character creation as we went ... and learned that it worked a lot better in a group. It was harder for Dave to come out with the story, without everyone else being around, showing off their stories too. I think the previous session grew by momentum.
Nonetheless, we persevered. He came up with an interesting character from the Sword Worlds which I think will add a lot to the campaign, and we got him linked into the web of connections through two of the existing characters.
I also found that the character creation went a lot smoother this time. After pushing through 7(?) characters last time, I knew the rules and the order in which things worked cold.
So, we've now got 8 characters down on character sheets.
We're all still working out character details through email. After the first session I wrote up 4 back stories for players, which were later embellished and corrected, and 3 other players wrote up there own. I need to sit down and put something similar together for Dave today. I'm expecting to post all of those here soon, along with some introductory notes I'm going to write about the Imperium and the Spinward Marches, as many (all?) of the players have very little familiarity with the Traveller universe.
I look forward to future postings. I have always been a fan of Traveller, even though I'm not familiar with the Mongoose edition. I really like the idea of a group chargen session and look forward to seeing what everyone came up with. Keep the postings coming.
So after the character generation, we had some very nicely detailed characters. I wanted to get everyone's history written up so that we didn't lose the richness before we got into the actual games. Thus, I took copious notes as each character was created, and when I was done asked if anyone would like to write up their character histories, and volunteered to write up all the rest.
Donald, Kevin, and Chris all opted to write their own character histories up. I wrote up the rest and sent them out to players for corrections. Most came back with few or no changes, but Dave W. opted to rewrite his more or less from scratch.
(I was entirely happy to have my work used, expanded, or totally revised, as players saw fit. If anything, it was probably better for the player to rewrite it, as Dave W. did, as that gave them more investment and understanding about their new character.)
I'm going to be posting all of the extant character writeups (which is for everyone but Dave S., and potentially me, if we really do end up running troupe style) over the next couple of days. You'll see lots of fun life events and lots of fun character connections, almost all of which were thanks to Mongoose's character creation system (and the manner in which we used it). I think there's a lot of great material there to kick off a campaign, which is terrific.
When I post the characters they're going to be grouped roughly by the interconnections that showed up during character creation.
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The military is an ever-popular choice in Traveller gaming. However, it can also have high turn-over, as shown by these characters who moved in and out of army, marine, and mercenary carers, encountering each other in the process.
ELIZABETH CAROLYN HARRIS (Kevin)
Soldier & Merc
Elizabeth was born in the second half of the Vilani occupation of Earth after its conquest in 1002. Most resistance movements had been wiped out or close to it, but there was still enough that rebuilding was stunted, leaving many large urban areas still devastated.
She grew up in the slums of London. An orphan, she was at times a street urchin, petty thief, beggar and messenger, surviving to her early teens when she was found and adopted by a Vilani missionary couple [Skill: Streetwise, Carousing].
The missionaries gave her a stable home. By the time Elizabeth came of age she had come to see the Solomani independence movement as the only thing keeping Earth from full recovery. The Third Imperium represented enlightened civilization and it was Good.
On reaching her majority Elizabeth enlisted in the Solomani Army. Her views of an enlightened Vilani society were battered when she encountered discrimination because she was Solomani. She was posted to the 8453th Border Infantry guarding one backwater world after another. She was also “volunteered” for various scientific experiments conducted by Dr Mordecai Lambert [Connection: Mordecai Lambert]. Dr Lambert always meant well but often forgot to administer analgesics before his more painful tests.
Wanting to make a greater contribution and yearning for a challenge Elizabeth transferred to the newly formed 60th Royal Solomani Rifles, an Imperial unit made up of Solomani royalists and officered by Vilani. There she quickly improved her skills and formed strong bonds with fellow Solomani.
Unfortunately the Rifles were doomed. For his own reasons or perhaps just incompetence, Colonel Gadeshmii Lirpaakika led the Rifles against a pirate stronghold and into a trap. An EMP explosion knocked out almost all of the 2nd-rate laser weapons the unit employed and they were slaughtered.
As one of the scouts who went in first Elizabeth and her team missed out on the carnage. Without functional weapons she was captured by pirate Cale Tucker and spent a few weeks as prisoner of the pirates [Connection: Cale Tucker]. But Cale was kind to her and the other prisoners and the two became grudging friends.
On being repatriated Elizabeth was told that she and her scout team had been Court Martialed in absentia for failing to warn the Rifles about the pirate trap. Elizabeth realized that they were sacrificial scapegoats thrown under the wheels of military justice in order to save Colonel Lirpaakika’s career. But instead of taking it lying down she caused a stir by accusing Colonel Lirpaakika [Enemy: Colonel Lirpaakika]. It didn’t really affect him but it caused her to be blackballed from all Imperial Armed Forces.
With no other useful skills and few employment options, Elizabeth joined Lindon’s Company, a mercenary group led by Sarah Lindon. A very informal setting where all service branches mixed and lived together.
Elizabeth found herself bunking with Emilee X, or “Em” as she liked to be called [Connection: Emilee]. Em was a former Marine who didn’t talk about her past. Their relationship was the usual friendly rivalry between space-based and ground-based troops. Later on Em was discharged in order to save the unit from a wrathful employer.
An early mission involved fighting Solomani separatists. Being a junior member she was placed in charge of some prisoners. Not being able to help herself Elizabeth abused her prisoners and looted them [Enemy: Two Solomani militia, Army Local Criminal, p.30 and Army Militiaman, p.31].
Ironically, a few years later Elizabeth found herself working side by side with the pirates that destroyed the 60th Rifles. An anonymous patron hired Lindon’s Company and the pirates to attack a SuSAG [JTAS #16] research facility and retrieve some information.
Captain Lindon assigned Elizabeth to the liaison team with the pirates and she worked closely with Pirate Captain “Rogers”. In the ensuing mission Elizabeth impressed Captain “Rogers” who offered her a commission if she joined his pirates but Elizabeth politely declined [Contact: Captain “Rogers”, Rogue Pirate Captain, pp.108-109].
Elizabeth spent another half decade with Lindon’s Company, rising to the rank of Strike Leader. But Captain Lindon was repositioning the Company from a mercenary strike force to corporate executive security. Not being interested in wasting her time coddling corporate muckity-mucks Elizabeth decided to leave the Company and make her own way.
Character Quirks:
Calls Terra “Earth”
Shuns “High-Tech” weapons, “they’re undependable”
Quote: “Do it or else!” --> Nickname “Elz”
Loves Sol and fellow Solomani, but never wants to return to Earth.
“It’s a pig sty”.
Hates Solomani resistance and the Solomani Confederation
CALE TUCKER (Dave W.)
Rogue & Soldier
Cale's parents were part of a mining group, consisting of 5 families, sent to La'Belle (Lanth 0806, C564112-4) by the Spinward Development Corp. to mine a rather rare, though not widely used metal. Cale grew up with few playmates, and soon became bored with the menial labors to which he was assigned. Craving excitement, Cale joined a pirate crew who arrived on Lanth, thinking to plunder the world, only to be disappointed by the crude mining equipment, useless ore, and the ramshackle houses.
The first few years with the pirates were exciting for Cale: visiting new planets (then plundering them), meeting new people and races (then robbing them), and discovering new technologies (then stealing them). One notable battle during his tenure with the pirates was an attack on the pirate stronghold by the 60th Royal Solomani Rifles, led by Colonel Gadeshmii Lirpaakika. It was a foolhardy attempt, and the Rifles were slaughtered. Cale was a capable fighter, and was a standout during the skirmish, for which he was promoted. A few riflemen were captured and tortured by the pirates. Though he spent many years in the pirate corp, Cale was not a cruel person, and he secretly loosed the prisoners [Connection: Elizabeth Carolyn Harris].
After 8 years of service with the pirates, Cale grew increasingly weary of the corsair life. Wanting to leave his pirating days behind, Cale opted for the army. In an ironic turn of events, Cale was drafted by the 60th Royal Solomani Rifles. The same Colonel Gadeshmii Lirpaakika, perhaps for personal vengeance reasons, later decided to attack the pirate stronghold that he had tried years before, when Cale was fighting for the opposition. Cale was able to contact a Sword Worlder [Connection: Paul Brandt], who knew Cale from his pirating days, for current information on the pirates. Owing to his knowledge of the pirate fortress, Cale escaped the battle relatively unscathed, but otherwise the entire unit was wiped out (again). Colonel Lirpaakika disappeared, presumably killed in action.
After the dissolution of the 60th Royal Solomani Rifles, Cale decided that he'd strike out on his own, and see what his luck would bring in this big galaxy.
EMILEE "EM" (Mary)
Marine, Merc & Diplomat
Em was born into a purebred Vlani family on Sketola (Core / Bunkeria 0602, A647789-E), the capitol of the old Interstellar Confederacy. She was offered all the advantages of her breeding ... and she hated it. When she came of age she ran far away from everything: from the Vlani, from Sketola's Navy, and from her privileges. Coming to the end of the Imperium, in the Spinward Marches, Em joined the Marines, as she'd always dreamed she would.
Unfortunately, Em was still young and innocent, and thus her time with the Marines would be short. She was stationed in one of the worst backwaters of the Marches, as a peace-keeping force for the Imperial embassy on Laberv (Darrian 0305, B354443-7), one of the members of the Darrian Confederation. There she ran afoul of the Laberv Syndicate, a large organization of criminals who terrorizes the planets. One of Em's fellow recruits was smuggling goods through the Syndicate for ultimate use by a corrupt Darrian scientist [Connection: Mordecai Lambert], and after that fellow marine was caught, Em also took the fall.
Her dreams of a marine career dashed, Em turned to Lindon’s Company, a sector-wide mercenary operation where she'd spend her next eight years. Here she met among others, Elizabeth Carolyn Harris [Connection: Elizabeth Carolyn Harris], a fellow merc who had also been ousted from her service of choice. Em travelled the Marches in these years, but also found more corruption, just like she'd seen on Laberv. Just a few years into her new service, Em discovered her unit had been infiltrated by a Zhodani spy; though she revealed the spy, and was knighted by the Imperium for her loyalty, it was not before her first unit was destroyed.
Several years later, Em discovered that her new unit was extorting money from the local populace in a protection scheme. When she turned them in, Lindon's Company decided that she was no longer good for unit morale, and thus reluctantly let her go. However, her former commander and one of Sarah Lindon's right-hand men, Lt. Jephron Ansalom [Ally: Lt. Jephron Ansalom, Mercenary Surveillance Contact, p.143], told Em that if she ever needed help, she just had to ask.
Bitter over her two failed careers, Em decided to take up the mantle of nobility that she'd earned, far different than the one she might have inherited in Core. For the next eight years, she acted as a diplomat, settling on Trin (Trin's Veil 0805, A894A96-F) where she met fellow diplomat Phoebe Bell [Connection: Phoebe Bell]. After years spent trying to remain honest and upright, Em found her old morals slipping when she was approached by The Second Sons, a conspiracy of Vlani nobles [Connection: Elain Bailee]. She spent many days carousing with them, and when the conspiracy collapsed in 1103, Em's final career collapsed with it.
Em's knighthood was taken away from her, but some mysterious benefactor remembered the good that Em had done, for not long afterward she found a membership in the Traveller's Aid Society registered to her travel account.
A surprising number of people decided to take scout as a late career, but only one player was a scout from start to end. I don't actually expect her to be around very often, so the fact that she has her own scout ship, and can come and go as she pleases, is great. It allows her to drop in (and maybe even provide an adventure seed) in a Galen-from-B5-type way.
ELAIN BAILEE (Corina)
Scout
Elain Bailee never liked people, so when she came of age, she decided to become a scout. Unfortunately, life had other plans for her and soon her enrollment in the Scouts' covert surveillance division turned into an open-ended advisory role with a local corporation, Spinward Development. Bailee did her best to screw over everyone working with the corporation, but it turned out that that's exactly what they wanted.
Because of her success in this initial outing, Bailee was transferred to Trin (Trin's Veil 0805, A894A96-F). Here she was given a cover role as a courier, a position through which she met Phoebe Bell, a diplomatic courier [Connection: Phoebe Bell]. Under that cover she continued to surveil the citizens of Trin and nearby planets. Her dreams of scouting out planets--in space, far away from other people--were dust, for she was too good at what she did.
For 12 years, Bailee was stationed in Trin's Veil. However, her situation quickly became unstable when her surveillance turned up the plans of The Second Sons, a noble conspiracy among would-be purebred Vilani [Connection: Em]. They were so aloof and standoffish from the rest of the people of Trin that Bailee lost her objectivity and was sucked into the conspiracy. When the conspiracy collapsed in 1103, Bailee's career quickly collapsed with it. She was offered transfer to another branch of the Scouts, but instead resigned.
And perhaps this is what Bailee should have done long before, for the Scout service gave her a Type-S ship on permanent loan, allowing her to finally fulfill her dreams. Bailee has not yet considered who in the service might have wanted her to receive a scout ship.
Zachary Fischer was born into noble power on Trin (Trin's Veil 0805, A894A96-F). In school, there were two friends that represented his two options in life. Phoebe Bell [Connection: Phoebe Bell] showed the good that Fischer could do with his power while Scot Evans [Ally: Scot Evans, Noble Free Soul, pp.68-69] offered an example of a great life wasted in dilettantism. Sadly, Fischer took the latter course. Over the next several years, Fischer wasted everything he was given. His only accomplishment was the perfection of his physical body, a task aided by Tarek Wain [Ally later turned Enemy: Tarek Wain, Noble Personal Trainer, pp.64-65].
However, the way of the dilettante is to do whatever interests him at the time. When Spinward Development [Rival: Corporation, Spinward Development] got caught up in a trade war with Ling Standard Products Spinward, that occasionally went hot in the outer system (to the regret of many belters in the area), Fischer worked with local politicians to get them banned from the entire system. Trin is still now realizing the harm that Spinward Development's many machinations had done before Fischer led the charge against them. At least one citizen was thankful enough to Trin to anonymously award him a membership in the Traveller's Aid Society.
Fischer realized that he could no longer waste his life, and needed to get away from everything that he had been a part of before. He signed up with the Scouts, and took a ship out into the stars. This was when Wain turned against Fischer, for reasons still unknown.
By the time Fischer's first four-year stint was done, Fischer had become pilot of that ship. In Fischer's second term, he used his piloting expertise to suggest some modifications to how scouts jumped in and out of system which had the potential to save the service billions of credits. However, Fischer was not himself credited with this new process. He became bitter, was forced to change out of the Exploration division, and when he became even more angry over this possibility, he was forced out of the scouts all together.
However, it seems that Fischer still has a guardian angel somewhere. For his two terms of service, he was given a Type-S ship on permanent loan, with the note that his services might be required again at some time.
PHOEBE BELL (Donald)
Noble Diplomat
Phoebe Bell is the only child of Annette and Ryne Bell, 17th Baron Crestasee on the planet Trin (Trin's Veil 0805, A894A96-F). One of the oldest families on Trin, the Bells had declined in importance over the last several generations. Phoebe proved a precocious child, and her parents promptly started grooming her for service to the Imperium in the hopes of reversing the family fortunes.
Although Phoebe made friends easily at school, the strong sense of duty ingrained by her parents weighed heavily upon her, and prevented her from becoming truly popular. She tried in particular to steer her friend Zachary Fischer [Connection: Zachary Fischer] away from the wastrel life espoused by Scot Evans, but to no avail. Her efforts, however, did not go unnoticed by the faculty. Upon graduation she was fast-tracked into the Diplomatic Corps as a 3rd Secretary, and her father was elevated to the rank of Marquis; her parent's plans were beginning to bear fruit.
Rapidly rising to the rank of 2nd Secretary, Phoebe spent some time working in the communications bureau. While there she made a grudging friend of Elain Bailee [Connection: Elain Bailee], one of the newer diplomatic couriers recently arrived from offworld.
Achieving the rank of 1st Secretary, Phoebe was assigned to a legal team working a political action against Spinward Development [Rival: Corporation, Spinward Development]. There, she was startled to discover herself working with her old schoolmate Zachary Fischer. The case was difficult to build and took years of careful investigation, litigation, and negotiation. Eventually, they were able to swing public opinion sufficiently to convince the megacorp to withdraw from the system. Phoebe was then further startled by Zachary's prompt disappearance at the case's successful conclusion.
Phoebe was promoted to Counselor as a result of the case, but soon found herself at loose ends. With no new assignment forthcoming she busied herself helping some of the new members of the Diplomatic Corps, particularly Emilee [Connection: Emilee].
She also found herself attending many society events with, or on behalf of, her parents. At on such event, her life changed dramatically. Wandering away from the main body of the party in search of a brief respite, she discovered Sir Grison Laax [Rival: Grison Laax, Social Casualty, pp.66-67] drunkenly assaulting one of the serving girls. Finding her diplomatic skills insufficient, she had to resort to violence, which drew a crowd. Disgraced, Laax was stripped of his knighthood and shunned by high society.
This had two unforseen consequences.
Firstly, Laax had been a member of the Second Sons - a nascent Vilani conspiracy. The sudden loss of his support became one of the early cracks in the facade, leading to the eventual collapse of the conspiracy.
Secondly, the serving girl Phoebe rescued turned out to be the niece of Wilfred Tuppence [Ally: Wilfred Tuppence, Butler/Maid, p.65], her own father's long-term valet. In gratitude, Wilfred revealed to her the reason for her lack of new assignments. It seems her father had discovered that he was soon to be elevated to the rank of Duke. In an effort to consolidate their new power her parents had pulled strings to keep her close to home so they could shop her around for suitable match. Giddy with results, they had abandoned all pretense of caring for anyone other than themselves.
Disillusioned, Phoebe resolved to start living for herself. She quietly mustered out of the Diplomatic Corps with the rank of Minister after 20 years of service, and set out to see the world beyond Trin.
Linear Mode
