Slave States
Nameless wishes to destroy them, but will he accept any ally to do so? Some allies are even worse than others. The Guild is a multi-faceted organization with many goals, not all parts talk to each other. The Guild is interested in the slave states as a place to sell their drugs, but a different faction has other goals.
One state was contacted after a troubling rebellion with a proposition to rid itself of the trouble making population. The regional Governor jumped at the chance and sold off the trouble makers, instantly lowering the chance of future rebellions, quelling future decent. The new slave traders, received the slaves at a reduced rate and took them out of country. They took them to a local Fair Folk community where they sold them for Glamour products. The Fair folk drained the rebellious slaves of all emotion and personality, it nourished them. The zombie like slaves were returned to the slavers who in turn sold them as new docile slaves to new markets.
But the regional Governor requested replacement slaves because the productivity of the region had dropped and quotas were being missed. He repurchased some of the drained slaves, placing them among former friends and co-slaves, as a warning of what happens to rebels. The new slaves worked as well as the drugged populous, but without the need of drugs, so they were much more profitable, even though they cost more to buy back.
The Governor meticulously went through the records looking for villages where more dissent was coming from as opposed to the background population and rebellious slaves from those regions were removed sold to be processed and repurchased back and placed with their original populations. Those populations he noticed had much lower than baseline rebelliousness and much higher production rates. His successes in increasing production and decreasing rebelliousness were noted and he received an immediate promotion to the office of the Satrap, which afforded him more comforts and luxuries, but also more pressure to succeed too.
He bribed members of the Guild to find out how the slaves were being processed and tried to recreate it on his own, so that he could get all the profit himself. The Guild used a distant Fair Folk Holding, so that the source of the slave meals would not be easily found by the Fair Folk, the process of greeting the Entities in question was ritualized to prevent accidents in a story like motif, the acquisition of Glamour goods was made to seem as inconsequential to the Fair Folk and the reacquisition of the hulled out slaves had other additional ritual story elements. None of which the Satrapy Official ever learned of. His initial dealings were with a local Entity, when he brought the slaves he bargained directly with the Fair Folk Noble and in addition to the Slaves, most of the guards and his personal retainers were hulled out as well. The Fair Folk noble sent his warriors into the surrounding area to gather up more "food" and the Official had to call in the Wyld Hunt to repel the incursion, still he found it most profitable.
…
The story as it relates to The Nameless is that he unknowingly got in contact with the secretive arm of the guild that started the trade in hulled out people. That is he contacted a group that unknowingly works for a group that reports to the Guild department that deals in Glamour objects. The group he contacted is seeking information on slave rebellions in his Satrapy. It works quite closely with the slave hunters and is quite interested infiltrating the Realm's bureaucracy in the three Satrapies where they do not have an unofficial presence. Looking for contacts who might be interested in selling rebellious slaves. As per the original contact, they are not really interested in repeating the mistakes of the first Satrapy by reselling the hulled out slaves back to the Realm.
The entire setup of this group has a deep story that they are funded by a former slave turned trader who became fabulously wealthy, but then used his wealth to buy slaves to recruit them into his organization where they could toil for their freedom. He sees the Slave States as a blight on the landscape that needs to be purged and before his death sought to undermine it.
This story is utter garbage. The information funneled through these shell companies filters to the Guild through a few backward channels. The shell companies are funded by a portion of the proceeds of drug sales by the Guild, whose department leader is reimbursed double by the Guild leaders. This allows some plausible deniability should the secret motivations be discovered by anyone. The Guild as a company has survived hundreds of years by being very careful.
When the motivation of the group is scrutinized by the Nameless, there will appear to be something worth digging into, the deeper motivations of the people involved should come under scrutiny, but eventually under this intense scrutiny, the "Truth" of the organization will be revealed. The players will then be working with the Nameless to free the slaves from the Realm. The freed slaves will be sent to colonies where they will work off the expense of freeing them and then their labour will be their own. That is what this group is told, so they believe it. When the strength of his true power is discovered, actual colonies will be set up for visiting if he desires, but most of the freed slaves are destined to be hulled out by Fair Folk and resold in distant markets.
If he should get suspicious, he will be lead to the official who is selling off slaves directly to the Fae. The records, his own records were doctored by him to appear to be his own idea, and thus all his credit. The Guild knows the value of having loose ends to feed to the wolves.
The beauty of this story line is that it feeds into his own goals, has the appearance of meeting his personal desires. It exposes some troubling bumps that makes it all the more believable and delivers the ultimate 'Fuck-You' statement of the tragedy that he consigned thousands to be hulled out personally, that not every enemy of my enemy is my friend.
This plot is overarching and if played right could have a year or more of role-playing before the tragedy plays out to the end.
Subplots: The Satrap Official selling people to the Fae.
The Fae itself enlisting the Solar for story play excitement
The other Satrapies enlisting the slaves for freedom
Encounters with the various Deathlords attempting to persuade him
Encounters in Marsama's Fell.
The other Bloody Hands, inspired by him other slave rebellions
Destroying the Jackals trying to disrupt his plans
The Wyld Hunt
The hulled out slaves
The colonies
The colonies destroyed by pirates and raiders, Lintha?
A Fae attack on a colony leaving the population hulled out.
Into the Realm
More and more and more
lunar mate add in
Now I just need to get a couple hundred names with personalities and motivations with short exploitable histories
No comments:
Post a Comment