2023/05/10

Last time in the Iron Kingdoms: Uncivil Unrest.

A month had passed since the training exercise with the Sixth Fingers, and since then tensions had escalated with Cygnar. The source of the tension was the settlement of South Shore, the town on the Cygnarian shore of the Dragon's Tongue River. South Shore traditionally was home to a lot of day laborers that came into Five Fingers to work, though since Five Finger's independence traveling between the two places has become more difficult. Adding to that stress was the fact that Cygnar was building up the ports in South Shore to attempt to rival those in Five Fingers, which was placing a strain on those who relied on those ports for fishing vessels or transportation. Recently a group of self appointed citizens from South Shore had come to the high captains asking for Five Fingers to annex them. The high captains, were split on the matter though eventually decided that they were not going to make any action as of right now.

The party had been spending their month working on personal projects and the like. Charlotte decided to try and cash in on some of the favors she had done for Lady Ashcroft and went to her with a list of fellow warcasters that she had trained with. Charlotte wanted to know the fate of the closest thing she had to family, and while she didn't expect all of them to be alive, knowing their status is better than wondering. Lady Ashcroft took the list and said that she would make some inquiries and she'd get back to Charlotte. Abe was working on his attempts to develop farming barges to supplement Five Finger's food. His current attempt was using magic in place of mechanical solutions, though he ran into the problem that while he has a solid intuitive grasp of magic, he wasn't trained in the design of runeplates and the like. So he went to Kita in the hope that she could point him in the right direction. Abe hadn't seen Kita for a little over a month, when she took him to Abigail's grave out in the desert of the lands of the protectorate. Since then she had been working on a project for Five Fingers with Gavin Baskin, attempting to develop a warjack design for Five Fingers. Kita's role in the project was to take the magical joints that she had bodged Notus with and refine them into primary parts for a new jack. Abe had some concerns that Kita was overworking herself, though Kita brushed it off, saying that she was used to long hours from her time on the road. At Abe's insistence, Charlotte talked to Laryana about both Kita and the other projects being worked on. Laryana was sorry to say that she was only nominally overseeing the warjack project, as much of her time was involved wrangling Alexandr Padorin and working to attempt to perform a safe second attempt at his experiment. Laryana seemed to have little patience for Alexandr, and referred to him as a lucky idiot who it's a miracle that he hadn't blown himself up long before he came to Five Fingers.

As the situation in South Shore continued to progress, Five Fingers received word that in response to a number of protests in the town, Cygnar had dispatched the Silver Line Stormguard to maintain order in the town. That unit in particular was known to Xavier and Charlotte, who recognized it as an elite unit of Stormguard that primarily served a defensive role. Regardless of the prestige of the unit that was sent to South Shore, sending the military was not likely to calm things down any. So the party went to Lady Ashcroft to see what was going on behind the curtain, as well as see if there was some sort of common ground that could be found. Ashcroft told the party that as of currently Cygnar seemed to be unwilling to part with South Shore and that, high command had suspicions about Five Fingers and the current events. The party asked Ashcroft to inquire as to what it would take to purchase South Shore, as that would be the cleanest solution to the problem at hand. Lady Ashcroft said that she would try and get an answer, though she wasn't at liberty to make decisions like that by herself. The party understood and left her to do her diplomatic magic. As the situation was tenuous, Hector asked his hand as to who was going to provoke hostilities, from which he got the answer that “The aristocratic second daughter will take action.”

Two days later, Xavier was surprised by a knock on his door. When he opened it, standing there was Lady Ashcroft who told him that she had a letter addressed to him. After Xavier took the letter she left him to his mail and told him that hopefully she would be in contact soon. The letter was from Xavier's mother, Sophia and apparently after he had deserted, she was transferred to the Silver Line Stormguard. The letter then asked if he would be willing to meet up to see each other for the first time since Xavier left. As Sophia was currently serving in South Shore, she asked if Xavier would be willing to come there so that they could catch up. The letter provided the location of a cafe near the docks that Sophia would be having lunch at for her time in South Shore. Xavier was split on the letter and its request, so he took it to the rest of the party for their opinion. The general consensus was that while the letter was unlikely to be a trap, Xavier still shouldn't go alone. Shakes was elected to provide support for Xavier while abroad and the two of them chartered a private ferry for them to go to South Shore and meet with Xavier's mother.

At the cafe, there was a heartfelt reunion as mother and son met for the first time in close to five years. As the two of them caught up on their family and respective positions, Shakes kept a eye out for any sort of deception or the like. Things seemed above board however, and the lunch proceeded as normally as it could, given the circumstances. When talk turned to South Shore, Sophia expressed the belief that someone was fanning the flames when nobody was looking, as that was the only thing that made any sense. As thing continued, eventually everyone began to hear the sounds of unrest not far from the cafe. Sophia's face grimaced as everyone came to the conclusion that there was another protest that was taking place. As she was quickly paying for the meal she told Xavier and Shakes that they couldn't be here any longer. As two known Five Fingers operatives being in South Shore during a protest wouldn't look good for anyone. With a brief hug the two groups went their separate ways: Sophia deeper into South Shore, and Xavier and Shakes heading back to Five Fingers.

Back in Five Fingers, the party reconvened in Undertow and mulled over Sophia's suspicions. The idea wasn't that far out there and the most likely suspect would be Captain Kendrick who seemed to have been all too quiet during the lead up to this situation. The party was briefly joined by the Sixth Fingers, who had been doing their part to make sure that the situation didn't get any worse. Apparently some Five Fingers residents sympathized with South Shore and decided that attempting to bomb South Shore was the correct route forward. They stopped the plot though had to fight a sorcerer who focused their magic inward to increase their strength. As they left Lady Ashcroft entered Undertow, looking far less dignified than she usually did.

Ashcroft told the party that they needed to talk at the soonest possible convenience. As the party was leading her to the back rooms for a private discussion, Charlotte asked if this was a Coffee, Tea or, Moonshine discussion, which got the answer of “yes” As Lady Ashcroft mixed the three offered drinks, she told the party that Captain Kendrick had gone insane and was trying to start a war to get a shot at Charlotte. This wasn't too surprising to the party, who had been working over Sophia's suspicions. Though the confirmation wasn't too reassuring. Lady Ashcroft then continued by saying that she didn't want war and for the sake of both Five Fingers and Cygnar, Kendrick needed to be stopped, and quickly as if things escalated too much war might not be possible to stop. With treason being the talk of the night the party and Ashcroft began hatching a plan to lure Kendrick to South Shore with talks between the party and Xavier's mother being the bait for the trap. Ashcroft would be applying diplomatic pressure to prevent Kendrick just rolling up with his ship and bombarding the party. From there the party was to capture or kill Kendrick and hopefully that would be the end of it.