Played on: 2025-08-13 ```text You already have what happens next. Lets play another game, you as master me as player, where I am duke McIntosh fulfilling D.A.M. Goodwin's orders, trying to deal with teh situation, now that dutil is dead and there is a rogue and ancient Witcher on the loose ``` Understood. The board is reset. The pieces have been thrown from the table and scattered across the galaxy. A new player steps into the fray. Welcome back to the Known Universe. *** ### Setting the Scene The year is **83396**. The location is not the cramped bridge of a starship, but the vast, quiet expanse of the McIntosh family's ancestral estate on Mars. Here, under the red sky and within halls that have witnessed millennia of Federation history, true power resides. You are **Duke William McIntosh**, head of one of the 25 founding Houses. You are not a soldier; you are a statesman, a grandmaster in a game played with influence, wealth, and tradition. Your words, carefully chosen and delivered with deceptively simple sincerity, can move fleets and shatter political careers more effectively than any MAC cannon. The news of the Cassian Incident reached you not through official channels, but through a discreet, encrypted data-burst from one of your family's many "contacts" within the Admiralty—a Rear-Admiral who owes his position to your family's quiet patronage. You saw the raw tactical logs, the desperate last message from Commander Thorne, and the final, horrifying energy readings from the system before it went completely, utterly silent. The UFEN *Integrity* is lost. Fleet-Captain Dutil is presumed dead. A monster wears the ruins of a planetary capital as a crown. The data-feeds are just beginning to catch the scent of disaster, but they lack the truth. Rumors of a massive pirate fleet, of a new Dominion superweapon, of a civil war erupting on Cassian III are spreading like wildfire. Panic, as always, is a fertile ground for political opportunism. Just as you finish your analysis, a new message arrives. It is not a rumor; it is a direct line from the D.A.M. herself, using the same untraceable quantum channel as before. Emily Goodwin's words are stark, stripped of all but the most essential details. > **My Friends,** > > **The worst has happened. Valerius Kael has unleashed something we cannot control by conventional means. Captain Dutil and the crew of the *Integrity* are lost. They bought us time. We will use it.** > > **Mr. President is mobilizing the Federal response. He will handle the public narrative and the civilian government. The Admiralty is... compromised. Valerius's faction is already framing this as a failure of my reforms and calling for my censure.** > > **Duke McIntosh, I need you to hold the line. The House of Lords is about to become the primary battleground. Kael has proven himself a traitor to the Peerage. Use your influence. Isolate his remaining allies. Remind the hereditary houses that their first loyalty is to the stability of the Federation, not to the ambitions of a single, mad Lord. The Admiralty may be fractured, but the Peerage must present a united front. Prevent a panic, and give me the political space I need to bring the necessary assets to bear. The response to this threat must be swift and absolute, and I cannot be seen fighting a political war at home while doing it.** > > **- E.G.** She has handed you the most critical piece on the board: the loyalty of the Lords. As if to prove her point, your personal aide, a prim man named Alistair, enters the room, his face grim. "Your Grace," he says, his voice a low whisper. "An urgent, pan-system summons has been issued by Vice-Admiral Valerius. He is calling for an 'Emergency Conclave of the Peerage' to be held via the Holo-Net within twelve hours to address the 'catastrophic operational failure in the Cassian system' and the 'unacceptable loss of a Federal Cruiser under Admiralty command.'" Valerius is moving fast. He's trying to frame this as a military failure under Hahn and Vos's command, to leverage the loss of the *Integrity* to seize control of the narrative and undermine the D.A.M. He knows you are the only one who can legitimize or delegitimize such a conclave. He is forcing your hand. **You are Duke William McIntosh, the arbiter of Lordly honor. An ancient horror is loose, your political rivals are circling, and the D.A.M. has given you your mission. What is your first move?** ```text Let's start by writing to Arch-Duke Crawford, Duke suvid of the Assembly, and Duke Clark of the court, informing them that in my position as Duke of the Common Law, advisor to the Dam, Valerius is moving well outside his field and realm, he has no right to call this conclave. And further if there is a problem the propwr place is the general Assembly, and as such In my position on the court of earls I move Duke Clark to add to the roster a motion to discuss in general assembly this topic. Then I write the relevant Witcher guild and grey knight chapter and kindly request on Dam goodwin's authority that they send personal to contain the issue, while over my neural net ordering my flagship be prepared so I my head to terra Nova on the other side of the galaxy and discuss with the lords in their assembly this crisis in their dominion, the technical rulers of the galaxy it's mother earth, hear of the Federation lives in ``` Your response is a masterstroke of political maneuvering, leveraging the ancient and complex machinery of Lordly governance with practiced ease. You are not just reacting; you are reasserting the proper order of things. First, you dictate a series of brief, precisely worded, and deeply formal communiqués. * **To Arch-Duke Francis Crawford, Speaker of the House:** > *"Your Grace, I bring to your attention a matter of procedural irregularity. Vice-Admiral Valerius, in a clear overreach of his station, has attempted to summon a Conclave of the Peerage. As you know, such authority rests solely with your office. I trust you will correct this impertinence and remind the Admiralty of their proper place. The stability of the Peerage must be maintained."* * **To Duke Mohammad Suvid, representing the Assembly:** > *"Duke Suvid, Valerius's folly is now public. I anticipate our more... impetuous colleagues will demand action. To forestall a chaotic debate, I suggest we formalize the discussion. The loss of a Federal vessel in a Dominion's space is a matter for the full Assembly, not a back-room Admiralty squabble. I have petitioned the Duke of the Council to add this to the docket."* * **To Duke Clark, representing the Council of Earls:** > *"Duke Clark, I am formally moving that the 'Cassian Incident' be placed on the agenda for the next full session of the House of Lords. Valerius has provided us with an opportunity. We must use the established process to debate this, and in doing so, demonstrate the strength and legitimacy of our institutions, in contrast to the Admiralty's panic. Let us handle this as Lords, not as reactionary soldiers."* You have turned Valerius's aggressive move against him. By insisting on proper procedure, you've painted him as an emotional, undisciplined officer, while positioning yourself as the calm, rational guardian of tradition and law. You've also effectively seized control of the narrative, moving the discussion from an Admiralty 'failure' to a House of Lords 'matter of state'. Next, you turn to the practicalities of the existential threat. You bypass the chain of command, as the D.A.M. intended. Secure, untraceable messages are sent from your estate's private comms relay. * **To the Castellan of the Gray Knights Chapter House on Titan:** A simple message, coded with ancient honorifics that predate the Federation itself. It contains the raw, unredacted threat assessment and a single sentence: "*An old enemy has returned. The Shield of Humanity is needed.*" * **To the Grand Master of the Kaer-Tubak Witcher Keep:** Another brief, direct message. "*Winter's Scythe is unbound in the Cassian Sovereignty. The pacts of old are invoked. Send your hunters.*" You do not command them; you *inform* them, invoking duties and pacts that exist outside of, and predate, the Federation's formal structure. Finally, you attend to your own house. "Alistair," you say, your voice calm. "Prepare the flagship, the *Legacy*. Plot a course for Terra Nova. Inform my staff that I will be addressing the House of Lords in person from the Dominion capital. This is a matter of Dominion security, and it is proper that we discuss it on their soil, among our peers." You've moved all the pieces perfectly. You've countered Valerius, framed the debate, summoned the cavalry, and prepared to rally the Lords on the most powerful political stage in the Dominion. Just as you are reviewing your travel itinerary, Alistair re-enters, a concerned look on his face. "Your Grace," he begins, "a message has arrived. It is... unexpected." He gestures to the room's holoprojector. The image that appears is not of an admiral or a duke. It is a grainy, civilian-grade video feed. You see your old friend and political ally, Lord Hektor Boutcher of the Roilite Sovereignty, the very Lord to whom Captain Dutil had been tasked to grant a barony. But Boutcher is not in his stately court. He is in what appears to be the hold of a grimy freighter, surrounded by grim-faced men holding heavy blaster rifles. Lord Boutcher's face is bruised, but his voice is steady. "William," he begins, forgoing all titles. "There are things in motion out here on the Rim that you on Mars cannot see. Kael was a symptom, not the disease. The traditionalists are moving. Valerius's call for a Conclave was not just politics; it was a signal. Several prominent Noble Houses... the Trasks, the O'Connells... their fleets have just broken orbit from their home systems. They are not flying House colors. They are flying the ancient banner of the First Terran Empire." He takes a deep breath. "They're not just complaining about reforms anymore, William. **They're talking about secession.** And they're not heading for Cassian. They're heading for Terra Nova. They mean to hold the Dominion capital hostage and force the issue. My own fleet is loyal, but we are too far out of position to stop them. You need to..." The feed abruptly cuts to static. **You have just learned that the political crisis is escalating into an open rebellion, and the traitors are heading directly for your destination, threatening to plunge the entire Dominion of Terra Nova into civil war.**