Not terribly much new going on since last report, largely due to the sheer amount of startup paperwork to be done and the DM noticing the faction page was entirely missing from the player homepage area. Fair enough though as Kala is busy finding the right people to finish start up plans, so be sure to check the hiring roster for his new finds, he wasn’t able to meet all requests as it hasn’t been long and his isn’t the easiest job.

You’ll also find the overall financials of Gauntlet available from the player homepage or click here.

Yenneiros Whitetalon

Due to lack of input, the faceless suits have opted to accept the deals on SR1 Alpha and deployed a lot of the available employees to the conflict on the side of the natives against Shetou. This puts them against the heavier hitting offense though as Shetou has tanks. Until the job is completed, financial projections indicate an upcoming increase in profit followed by a sharp spike downward. Since mercenaries are expected to get their own gear they will be needing to buy a lot of appropriate weapons for the job along with ammunition. Upon completion though, we’ll have to hand them all rather heavy paychecks since contracts indicate that even the dead members still have to be paid.

Future finances definitely depend on whether or not the conflict is won given that a loss is not indicative of a reliable company and a victory would be a good trophy given this is against a Shetou house with a full military presence. Staff is working overtime to try and co-ordinate this particular conflict as a result.

The smaller bodyguard gigs are easily covered by small teams and don’t impact the grand scale financial report much.

MADHAMMER profit +4 from hires and current business.

Mordekai Aberhoff

The reduce in visibility ordered out to the cult leaders for the most part results in those cells going very quiet. While its a good way to keep things low profile it does mean the cult members won’t grow any time soon until the quiet phase passes over.

For the most part research for resistance and sublety of cult agents is covered as “make the cult agents actually practice”. That is mostly a matter of the psion’s skill. Can make all the fancy tech you want but if they go do something really overt the sublety doesn’t help. However, results vary as the decentralized structure means there isn’t a standing training program and the agents are mostly operating on their own out there and their motivations to upkeep their skills vary.

Churning up investors is difficult due to the recent bombings, particularly of one of the manufacturing plants. They tend to keep asking a lot of questions as to why it was bombed. Bombings are indicative of very deep conflict, as regular old criminal drug trafficking would be more likely to just steal assets instead of destroying them. Along with hiring MADHAMMER, whose association with you is not public knowledge. While it does assure some that the company is taking necessary precautions it is worrying that it hired a full blown military company to act as security and points back to the earlier questions of the bombing. These worries will have to be smoothed over before we can expect too much more investment, though a few put their foot in a little bit at least.

Expansive Psionics profit -2 from hiring MADHAMMER

Edric Vandross

Recon suggests acquiring Richard Black is either really easy or difficult depending how you look at it. It should quite doable through financial influence though it is heavily recommended not to try and break him out by force. Given the location he is held at and his mental state (as well as other’s held there) a breakout attempt could be disastrous. The Raven is a shady facility for advanced research and humanoid experimentation, its unclear exactly what they research but they hold people with a lot of different magical capabilities. However, due to its lack of association with a larger government its financial situation cannot be perfectly secure. In depth research also finds that a lot of its people have gone missing over time.

Hightower kind of struggles with the shipyard front, unionizing them is difficult given that shipyards are already well established and a highly paid position to work given ships have to be flawless, buyers are often not concerned over an extra few hundred thousand, and a lot of construction is done in space. Though some efforts are making progress at a particular Shetou shipyard in orbit around SV-2, updates as they progress.

Sethis Tyne

Consulting with the agents who look into the prison holding Sophia Lennas, there are a few options. Getting her transported would take some political sway and favors with Alnae in order to make the transport crash and leave her presumed dead. This would involve somewhat convincing a corrupt government official or three that she needed to be moved. Alternatively outright bribing the same officials to make her disappear from records might be easier but it will leave those officials aware that she isn’t really gone and that something is going on. However, it could go towards building a relationship with the corrupt of Alnae for future deals in the future. Another way to just make her disappear could involve overtly breaking out someone else and just happening to get her presumed dead during an aggressive strike on the prison with a well crafted body double. She isn’t particularly big time and they would likely check her cybernetics to verify her identity instead of a really in depth confirmation.

Some of the stealth ship stock options in the cruiser class are now visible on the player portal page.

Investigations into the attacks is proving difficult as these tracks were covered well. A lot of the individual attacks were carried out by different groups entirely who all had a mysterious tip or payoff to do the job. Some have been “detained” for questioning, but they don’t seem to even have full knowledge of their employer. Kala suspects that if they’re this committed, and given that the attack happened before you got the job, it definitely has to do with some offense your predecessors committed. Unfortunately, there are a huge number of possibilities there given they were kind of bad people. Investigators suspect that there will be future attacks but it is unknown where or how, but the key to finding more information might be into being pre-emptively prepared to pursue leads from those. A few people have been paid off to keep an ear out for any strange offers getting made to criminals to carry out corporate warfare to see if they give any leads.

Luci Serrano

Sol Recording is off to a slow start since it only has one star to bank on for now. Aelynn is at least of moderate temperament and easy to work with. She accepted the job a bit quickly given that the advance signing bonus paid off her student debt. As Kala suspected she is a talented artist especially when put in a professional environment instead of a coffee shop though she is taking some time to adjust to the work that is a lot different then studying. Either way producing an album will take a little bit of time.

On the news team front, the already established business, Sarah Kanu proves a useful but stressed hire since they’re being sent to cover the conflict on SR1-Alpha. A conflict that notably involves a Shetou house, a factor that does not help her paranoia. Though her paranoia proves a bit useful, especially considering this is a warzone. As coverage goes on you may wish to choose which side to give more favorable air time or to maintain a neutral split.

The suits covered the attacks on corporate holdings rather blandly for lack of concept of the grand conspiracy and stuck to just reporting some bombings for easy views, people like to tune in to stuff about explosives after all. Most of the coverage was dedicated to the attacks on MADHAMMER offices which were located in a major city on Thenica. It has been painted as if to be something of a larger scale gang war. These events have led to a lot of employees of random companies throughout the system doing some fact checking on their own employers history for fear of also being bombed.

Profits are down -1 from setting up the recording label’s earlier stages, consider it an investment.