MechWarrior: Periphery Lord Quest (Archive)

[Lord Of Flames]

A Foreword.


The description of this story is the original sales pitch for Mechwarrior: Periphery Lord Quest, and the initial summary of its plot. It has since grown far from that premise, but the same characters at the beginning continue to grow and develop as people and leaders to this day on the world of Freirehalt and its new Periphery state.

This is the archive thread for a quest taking place every weekend at Fiction(dot)Live, and can be easily reached through the link if you wish to participate in the live writing of the quest. There is no voting in this thread, and exists so that if Akun goes down, as the site grows increasingly unstable, Periphery Lord is not lost.

Fair warning to you, reader, most of the quest is written in the second person, and so the prose will overly-frequently cite 'You', Sir Elric Gawain, or 'Your', our Protagonist's, thoughts or feelings. I've done my best to edit the quest as it was written, but as I create this archive I find that many small errors have slipped in over the last three years, and I'm working slowly to correct them. Given the almost 815,000 words of the original Story on Akun, you'll forgive me if detailed editing doesn't rank high on my list of priorities.

This will not be a massive dump of scraped chapters that are tens of thousands of words long on their own, but broken up into more manageable threadmarks as best I can.

Still, if you can bear with that, I thank you for your time, and hope you enjoy the story of Elric Gawain, Freirehalt, and the Jaeger Protectorate as it unfolded over the last few years.

Prologue

It is the year 3029, and war ravages the myriad nations of man once more. For over two hundred years, mankind has existed in a state of perpetual war and technological downheaval, a course of events only mitigated by the need to repair, rearm, refit their machines of war, and grow the next generation of soldiers as they battle over the same planets as their ancestors did. The rare find of Lostech, advanced technology that cannot be produced any more, occasionally tips the scales in the favor of one great house or another, or merely allows the all too common mercenary a better weapon to do their bloody work.

Across the vast space known as the Inner Sphere, war is fought with infantry, tanks, advanced fighters, but they are often lost in dust of the favorite toy of the Successor Lords, massive robotic machines known as BattleMechs. Ranging in height from as short as a two-story house or as tall as a midrise apartment building, clad in enough armor to shrug off blows that would level a skyscraper, they make up the focus of the Great Houses war efforts.

These five Great Houses have fought three Succession Wars over the past few centuries, the first coming right after the collapse of the Star League, and the end to the War that saw the mad tyrant Amaris dead, and Kerensky flee with the Star Leage Defense Force into the unknown of the distant periphery, far beyond where anyone could track them.

Industry was the first thing to be destroyed in the dire arithmetic of war, where if you could not capture a thing, you destroyed it to deny your enemy any slight advantage. Attrition saw the death of the War-ship, as many were lost in combat, or simply ruinously expensive to upkeep as the decline of technology was spirited on with the loss of so much infrastructure. Today, Individual BattleMechs chassis are produced in design runs of a few dozen in a year, less than three thousand across the entire inner sphere, managing to just overcome the losses that their militaries suffer. Only the most rugged, most wide spread, and most guarded designs have survived the centuries of war, with many designs simply falling apart as replacement parts become impossible to source with the destruction of their only factories.

Despite the constantly threatened nature of continued service, the BattleMech is one of the finest tools of war ever devised, and its pilots are no different. Inside these machines, they are piloted by some of humanities finest warriors, trained from a young age to work the intricate controls and manage the overwhelming amount of data fed into their senses by their neurohelmets, the true tool that takes a BattleMech from just a walking tank, and turns it into a weapon unmatched in its theatre of war in human history.

They are called Mechwarriors and stand heads and shoulders above the other forces of the battlefield.

Centuries of war have taken their toll, as machines that once faced each other from across the plains of a world now fight with inferior means in desperate knife fight ranges, Phased Particle Cannons replaced with heavier autocannons as attrition destroyed and damaged almost irreplaceable parts, Engines downsized to fit heavier weapons at the cost of speed, the very skeletons of the 'Mechs cannibalized to repair their less damaged brethren, or replaced with heavier, easier sourced bones.

It is a time of violence, where the Succession Wars have brought humanity to the brink time and time again. The Great Houses stand just at the end of the Third Succession War, and the call for a lasting peace has gone out to the other great houses, Archon Katrina Steiner of the Lyran Commonwealth having offered a blanket peace to any other house that was interested. Politics has resulted in interesting bed fellows, and the following years will be a time of great interest for many in the Inner Sphere.

However, that is not your story.

The prologue to your tale begins eight decades before you were born, when the Mercenary company of your Great-Grandfather landed on the world of Freierhalt, located Anti-spinward of the Lyran Commonwealth and more than three months travel by Jumpship to the edge of the Inner Sphere and further to reach actual civilization.

What brought the Round Table to Freierhalt is not exactly clear, but the legends that your ancestors spawned certainly paint a picture of tired warriors turned gallant rescuers and eventually, the new leaders of the planet.

The Mercenaries of the Round Table had seen enough of their hazardous lifestyle, too many friends left behind or literally sprayed out of their cockpits after a contract gone wrong, too many debts that had been engineered to strip a Mechwarrior of his machine and leave him dispossessed unless he could find a company with a spare Mech and not the pilot to crew it.

Too many employers that were just as likely to turn their guns on the 'Mechs that had arrived to save them, as pay them their due. Even with Comstar and its Mercenary Review Board, there were too many times where a simple refusal of further service and a black mark on a record had felt like too little for the bloodshed.

The company had made its choice with a vote, and those that had wanted to stay in the business were given their severance, a handshake, and left to find a new outfit, while the rest took their chances in the Periphery, the space past the Inner-Sphere that was lawless by default, where minor nations and independent planets were as common as the pirates that would try and raid them.

Your twice-great grandfather and the rest of his company had the misfortune to land during the tail end of the largest pirate raid the planet had seen in its history, with almost a myriad of ground pounders joining nearly a reinforced company worth of metal as they took almost everything the people of Freierhalt had to offer and when that wasn't enough, they started collecting slaves for their cruel sadism.

To the people that saw them, the Table's dropship appeared to come from nowhere, and from its spherical body, tall war machines painted in the livery of the Round Table marched to war, striking crimson crossed over with black and white, a Lion rampant proud on the panels of every 'Mech.

They fell on the pirates with the wrath of the gods, as giant guns slammed shells the size of a person into the armor of the ramshackle 'Mechs, lightning appeared to tear through their internals, vaporizing the mynomer bundles that made up the muscles of the enemy, and lasers and missiles tore through the vulnerable structure of the savaged sections, laying them low.

When the pirates fled, the mercenaries were hailed as heroes, and all but begged to stay as the protectors of the world, with much that the pirates had failed to take offered up as a kind of down payment for a contract. Your forefathers had refused, and instead took up the protection of the planet for free, settling among the peoples of its distant shores with towering giants of steel as the spears bristled against the pirates.

It was fitting they had been called the Round Table, for the Mechwarriors, many of whom had been the lead officers of the company, found themselves settling down across the world as feudal lords, their BattleMechs turned into shields against further raids, and for a time, they ruled in peace.

But people change, and times turn tough. On a world where farming is the primary occupation, where technology is limited to a sub-20th​ century standard by and large, something as common place as the Internal Combustion Engine is rare and modern medicine may as well be a magical hope just out of reach for the terminally ill, conflict is inevitable.

With time, the mercenaries that had first arrived started to die out, leaving behind families that had fewer connections with the people around them, and small resentments started to grow. The 'Mechs that had been the salvation of the people of Freierhalt took to the fields of battle once more, this time against each other.

The first wars saw them clash like champions of ancient antiquity, while all around them their peasant levies armed with everything from spears to bolt guns and automatics tried to turn the tide in the favor of their lord. Crude rocket launchers could distract a Mechwarrior in a critical moment, costing him the battle and the prize that lay at the end, or just as like just earn that brave fool a burst from the 'Mech-sized machine guns that were mounted on the enemy 'Mech.

This lasted until the first time that one of the ancestral machines was crippled beyond repair, in a conflict over which lord rightfully ruled over a dozen acres of fertile soil with grain ready to harvest. Of similar size, the two BattleMechs surged to the front, finding each other in a forest clearing, and in the ensuing combat, it was not a limb or the cockpit, but the burning fusion engine at the heart of every 'Mech that was destroyed.

The house that lost its 'Mech lost much in the way of land and resources during the years that followed, before they eventually bought out another house's salvage claims, and replaced the destroyed engine with one taken from a legged Pirate 'Mech, finally restoring their honor and prestige in the eyes of the other houses.

Quickly, it was accepted by everyone that total war was unacceptable, as was the destruction of a machine as prized and unique as a BattleMech on the surface of Freierhalt. This simple realization allowed a code of chivalry to be written, the Lords of the most powerful houses bending the might of their own machines to make the lesser houses abide by the terms.

It would be treated as a duel between Knights, the matter settled when the opposing machine was rendered unarmed, or the MechWarrior within yielded, ending the conflict then and there in the favor of the victor. Forces would be determined in advance, as it was with ancient heralds, a third party to see the matter resolved properly was suggested, but not enforced.

It would be all too easy for such to side with one or the other, and as a whole it was not without its drawbacks.

This 'better' form of war could only take place when a Mech stood on either side, preventing the knightly houses that rose as retainers under the MechWarriors of the still teething noble houses from exercising a similiar principal, and should a 'Mech be in repairs from a pirate raid or a previous fight, well, to the bold go the spoils if they can capitalize on such a moment of weakness.

Any chance that the more powerful houses would see these problems resolved died in its cradle, as the alliance that had spawned the terms of war splintered rapidly under the weight of the members ambitions.

After all, no one likes to be just one of the big fish in a small pond.

Among the Nobility of Freierhalt, your Family stands at an odd point between the Mech-owning families and the Knightly houses, having owned a Mech at your founding, even if it has been lost in the interim.

What is your Family Name and Crest?

> A White Longsword, set on a Navy field.
>+House Gawain.

When your great-great-grandfather founded House Gawain, he took for his banner a silver-white longsword on a field of navy blue and rose as one of the major players on the planet now that the Round Table had officially retired its mercenary license.

He had piloted the same BattleMech that his father and grand-mother, and a long line of Gawains back to their service in the Star League Defense Force, had; a Heavy 'Mech at the limit of its class-tonnage, with a layout of weapons that would make any 'Mech its tonnage or lower think twice about facing it in a prolonged fight.

Between the long-range cannon, and range closing lasers, massive guns mean little when you can't get into the range to use them, and the few that outranged its arm-mounted cannon wouldn't be able to do damage fast enough to matter before it could close the distance and start cutting like it was salvaging space debris.

The Black Knight was a command platform once, its enhanced sensors and targeting systems coupled with its weapons to make a 'Mech that demanded and required your respect on the field. Its energy-only loadout provided it a degree of survivability not seen by many of its tonnage-sharing compatriots, and the thirteen tons of armor gave it almost the maximum degree of protection afforded to its chassis.

Admittedly, its division of armaments made it a jack of all trades, forgoing the doubled up long range punch of a Marauder or a Warhammer for a lack of ammo-explosions and a greater focus on up close Mech-vs-Mech combat.

And of course, that same 'Mech caused your family no end of trouble.

After Kerensky's exodus, the original pilot turned Merc, along with a few other disillusioned MechWarriors. Offers by Inner Sphere noble houses for it were soundly rejected, their attempts to confiscate it to make up 'Contract Deficiencies' responded to with violence-backed threats, damage usually patched up as best it could with dwindling spare parts.

Early on, there was the salvaging of the rare Star League supply post, little more than piles of lasers and internal components, found operating on the border of the Sphere and the Southern Periphery during long term contracts. Some of the lostech inside the 'Mech had been irreparably damaged over time and stripped out for more useful components, taking its heat curve that little closer to neutral. The simple fact of life and combat use has seen lasers replaced when they burned out, or were burned out, the PPC it was said to mount had been stripped off a pirate Warhammer during a contract, after the same 'Mech had slagged the original's capacitor with a lucky shot, only to have the useless barrel of the thing slammed into the cockpit until the lack of neuro-feedback saw the engine shutdown.

But for all that the design has become Lostech with the destruction of its factories at the end of the First Succession War, it has served faithfully despite its issues. Mechs are durable, but not invincible, and even though many 'Mechs will see a dozen owners and operators over the course of their use, they wear like people. A hitch in the hip from a heavy blow and a poorly replaced actuator, a grind in the waist ring that no one could fix, a laser emitter an inch off center no matter how you banged and pushed on it.

The idiosyncrasies that set it apart, the scars of use, the legacies of those that came before. No 'Mech is identical to others of its chassis after a few years, and with inferior copies roaming about, the gap between them is ever growing.

Your family held a position of power in the region you settled, Laoricia on the northern coast, the informal rule of it shared with House Knightway, a virtually unique arrangement considering that the hierarchy of the new nobility had been established based on the tonnage and power of the 'Mech they'd taken as their own. Assault 'Mechs are slow and cumbersome, but overwhelmingly powerful in general, putting them at the very top, with the smaller weight classes that followed taking their place in proper order.

It's a common belief in the Inner Sphere that only the new and the knowing pilot Light 'Mechs, owing to their fragility, made up for only by their sheer speed, and as a MechWarrior became more experienced he would move up in tonnage, class, rank, culminating in ascension to a command lance, usually made up of the heaviest 'Mechs a formation had, and if they survived long enough, and served well enough in a House Military, they might end up with their own command.

Mercenaries have no such clear lines of advancement. Ranks are often a matter of payroll, command taken by the most competent, or the most belligerent depending on the circumstances. Nepotism is as much a part of the trade as it is in the House Armies, and it isn't uncommon for mercenary bands to find themselves being led by successive generations of a family, for good and ill.

This naturally led to the original mercs that had worked together well to settle in the same area or in nearby regions, making their homes across the single continent that Freierhalt sported, otherwise surrounded by island dotted ocean in every direction. Even the poles simply froze over in icy sheets that bobbed in the water, the south barely anchored by a tiny spot of real land that grew many times its size in the chill winters.

House Sanmon had sported easily the heaviest 'Mech in the company, in the form of a King Crab, one of the few dozen that existed still in the Inner Sphere, and settled with a pair of vassal Houses in the Region of Kedia, one of the largest and most wealthy on the continent.

House Summermere and its Awesome went north, and took the region of Corum as its holding, two more houses joining it in the dense forests there.

House Armmore headed south, Its Highlander giving it a powerful tool to keep its vassals in line inside of mountainous Meleutia.

House Andercher sported the lowest tonnage of a ruling machine, its Catapult only just outmassing the medium 'Mechs that made up its vassal lords' rides, in boggy Alylia.

House Gladwell and its well named Victor settled to the Northeast in Mulstadia, where its titanic class-20 autocannon could spell doom in a single volley in the tight ravines and mesa paths. They and their vassal houses are your nearest neighbors, just east of your home.

House Ruxhall rounded out the southern stretch, along with House Godsfield in Mapon and Doponaria respectively. They had clashed many times with their Grasshopper and Archer, never to a decisive conclusion, leading to the smaller regions remaining separate.

And You and your family were settled in the rolling hills and forests of Laoricia, a larger region controlled by the power of the machines of both House Gawain and House Knightway. When the original pilot had joined the company, no one knew where or how he'd gotten his hands on a Hammerhands 'Mech, and he'd never said, keeping the origins of the 75-ton predecessor of the Warhammer a mystery unto his death, his son taking over the 'Mech and becoming the first Lord Knightway when they arrived on Freierhalt.

Despite the conflicts between them, and the distrust it fostered, when the next raid came, the MechWarriors honored their oaths.

The wording was never exact, and some were taken at the deathbeds of their fathers and mothers, taken before the machine that they were destined to pilot, or in a ceremony in their place of worship. Regardless, all were sworn to protect the people of Freierhalt from all who would predate upon them, and to come together as a mighty force to repel the invaders. The selflessness of the old guard fading in time for the enlightened self-interest of the noble class to protect their main source of wealth. Even if it came with a yoke of loyalty, it was a welcome change for the nearly defenseless people of Freierhalt.

Raids were an almost yearly occurrence despite the presence of the planet's new BattleMech-riding overlords, and came as a conflict with no few prizes to be won.

The first new house to be uplifted in the decades since they settled was a knight of House Gladwell, who using his pair of tanks managed to lure a pirate Warhammer into a waiting mine field, crippling its legs and dousing the thing in crude Inferno gel, taking potshots at the overheated 'Mech until the pirate surrendered. The knight took the 'Mech, and using spare parts purchased from other houses, restored it to working condition.

Your family had maintained the BattleMech that had been your Great-Grandfather's dutifully, with lessons of repair and maintenance passed down from father to son and master to apprentice. Its paintjob was updated to sport your family's heraldry on a jouster's shield, but little else had changed in the decades that passed, a blue shield on a skin of red. When the call to war came, your grandfather answered, leaving behind his only son to rule in his absence.

It was far from the first time he had gone to face a raid, and it shouldn't have been the last.

~~~

March 3008, Southern Forests of Laoricia.

Arthur gave a grunt as the Black Knight forced its way past another tree, sending wooden shrapnel and a broken branch harmlessly to the forest floor. He had neglected these paths in the last year, hoping optimistically that the last raid would be the last.

It was a foolish hope.

His eyes flicked up, his neurohelmet clamped tight around his head, as the familiar voice of the Black Knight's onboard computer pinged an alert on his Neurohelmet's HUD.

"Warning, Fusion engine signatures detected. Heading, -6 degrees off current course. Nearest Engine Signature, 300 Yards ahead."

Possibilities went through the mind of the lord, before he switched his sensors from passive to full burst, and watched as a wave seemed to ripple from his machine, and when the information return ran its course through the system, he had a new set of three glowing cores hovering in the air just out of sight.

"Landed Scattered, or purposely wide to avoid our counter attack? Doesn't matter." He muttered to himself, adjusting the switches on his console to cycle full power to his weapons, the temperature in his cockpit spiking momentarily as the lines charged.

"You're all going to hell anyway."

~~~

Arthur engaged at least three BattleMechs that day, a forward Locust, which was crippled quickly, then two more Medium-weight BattleMechs.

He would destroy them all.

~~~

Seeing the Gladiator approach and level its large laser at Arthur, he watched as his heat gauges fell all too slowly for him to easily avoid it, his 'Mech's legs sluggish after unleashing so much firepower against the soft armor of the Griffin. It won't be critical damage by any means, but anything Arthur takes here is something that he'll have to deal with until he can return home after driving off the main band.

The image freezes in his mind's eye for a moment, as his gaze falls to the fish bowl like ferro-glass of the 'Mech before him.

The Griffin.

With both arms, and his paint job the only thing damaged in this scuffle, Arthur hoisted the oversized poptart of a 'Mech into the air, just a few feet, and put it directly into the sights of the enemy just as they pull the trigger.

Blue energy beams across the clearing, and he watched as the armor slagged under its fire, before you catch a small glow from inside. With a push he threw the 'Mech forward, and watched as the right torso exploded, sending the arm spiraling to the ground- the rest of the 'Mech a ruined mess- and the ejection seat of the pilot flying at a bad angle towards the woods.

He doesn't need to be psychic to know that's going to hurt.

But that does leave him alone with the Gladiator, and not a scratch on his armor.

Arthur raised his PPC like a knight leveling a sword, and the fight is on.

~~~

As Arthur watches his lasers dance across the hull of the Gladiator, his PPC bolt slams home straight into the head assembly, right between the oversized pauldrons, and he can almost imagine the whiplash that bouncing in your restraining straps, if the pirate had any, would have given the poor bastard.

He waits a few seconds, dumping heat and walking in a fast circle to keep his enemy guessing, only for the Gladiator to unceremoniously slump over. Arthur wondered if he hadn't managed a nigh perfect kill, considering the lack of damage done to most of the enemy 'Mech, but that seemed unlikely.

Still, this 'Mech was his and his alone to claim when he got back to the castle, and with a second 'Mech in his roster, he knew a few knights that he'd trust to have his back through anything. It would be a fitting reward for their loyal service.

Suddenly, his sensors screamed at him of an incoming attack, something that saw him just barely twist out of the way as a crackling bolt of lightning tore across the side of his Black Knight's head, slagging the communications array and radio antennae. He couldn't call for help, but despite the bruises forming under his straps, he was in a virtually fresh Black Knight, even as the visor smoldered on one side.

He turned to face his new opponent, which only leveled it's paired PPC's at him in challenge, and-

~~~

That was the last anyone ever saw your grandfather, as he would be ambushed on the way to the rally point by a lance of pirate metal, the only sign of the battle the three totally-wrecked machines found in a burned-out section of forest, only some fifty miles from your family keep, and no sign of the old man, or the proud 'Mech when neither arrived at the rally point to see off the enemy.

Searches were conducted, but aside from some unidentifiable 'Mech components, nothing was ever clearly found to indicate his death, or the fate of your family machine. The Mechs themselves had clearly put up a fight, two dead from ammo explosions that reduced the salvage from at worst half a 'Mech to a limb thrown clear, while the third had been, for lack of a better term, melted, like someone, likely your grandfather, had emptied his PPC into it for several minutes.

At least, that's how you'd like to think it went down.

Your family was not the first to lose their 'Mech to the attrition of the raids, but it did serious damage to the prestige of your House, and despite the salvage left behind in the wake of the pirate attack, there wasn't enough to even attempt to bring one back to service as a family machine.

Attempts would be made in the future, but none ever held the interest of your father for long, and he would not abide a substandard replacement for a machine that had once served in the armies of the long lost Star League, a machine that had seen your family through centuries of warfare as soldier and mercenary among the black of space, and so your position in the hierarchy of nobles fell, even if you were still welcomed as an original house.

The loss of your Grandfather's 'Mech saw the martial tradition of your House fall aside, as your father found success instead in business and mercantile affairs, his first acts as Lord seeing him auction off the remnants of the pirate 'Mechs to the lords around you that had similar-sized machines, where the parts could be best used to repair and refurbish their own in the future, earning him a not small amount of funds.

It would be with these funds that he would start to trade across the planet, acting as an intermediary for many delicate deals, his given word and a large contingency enough to see some especially lucrative contracts to completion for a small share of the profit, and his personal dealings rapidly fill the family coffers. A find of profitable minerals, what he'd never quite explained, also did its part, and kept you from becoming irrelevant in the day to day dealings of the world.

So it was that even on the technology starved and money-poor world of Feierhalt that your family came to own a majority stake in a Jumpship, an outrageously expensive proposition, if not for the many issues with it, chief among them the single working collar left on the Tramp-class Jumpship, as well as the downgraded weapons, and generally poor repair that the last crew had left it in.

In all honesty, your father had been amazed that it had been still jump-worthy by the time it came into his possession, but it quickly became a source of great wealth for your family, becoming the sole connection back to the Inner Sphere, ferrying rare goods and only-slightly-used parts to repair the machines and salvage of the houses willing to pay through your family's import company for spaces at the top of the requisition list, leading to a yearly surge in available funds, before much was reinvested and it headed back with a new list of requested items and surging commodities.

This was the lifestyle you were born into. Your playmates were the children of loyal vassals and important business partners. Tutoring was the basis for your education in most matters, your father too busy with his many investments to see to your everyday studying or hobbies, and your mother was trying her best to manage the politics of the hold and surrounding region, all the while they both tried to strengthen your house in both the short and long term.

 

[Lord Of Flames]

You were born in the winter of 3009, a year notable for little more than the Wedding of future Lyran Archon Katrina Steiner to her husband, Arthur Luvon, inside the inner sphere.

On the world of Freirehalt, it was a year to be celebrated, a year of births and happy days as more than half the noble families welcomed heirs and spares into the world. Grandchildren graced the world, securing lines of succession that were strong, but could be strengthened, solidifying alliances that would otherwise have lasted only as long as the marriages.

The bells tolled in joy week after week, only a little less often than the clang of the sabbath, and the people enjoyed their overlord's happiness and the generosity that came with those times of peace.

George Gawain, a Man gifted in making Money.

Spoiler: George Gawain Portrait

Your father, Lord George Gawain, had married the sister of a loyal knight, the new Lady Valeria, only a few years previous, and your birth was a bright spot in a downturn in the fortune of the family, happening only a few months after the loss of your grandfather.

With your successful birth and good health, your father felt comfortable enough to leave the holding under the control of his wife, and headed off to establish a position of strength before the other nobles capitalized on the evident weakness of your house, forming alliances with promises of trade and protection.

The mounted knights sworn directly to your house were nothing to scoff at, numbering between six and seven at any one time, bringing with them powerful vehicles that were akin to the mail and horse of ancient cavalry in the eyes of Freirehalt. By no means mercenary work, they were still a welcome factor to bring into the deadly games of chicken played by the lesser nobility, when all it would take was an imagined error and suddenly all-out battle would break out.

You grew fast and became a devil for some of the help around the keep, startling some and making a nuisance of yourself in the course of play for others. You felt your mother's wrath more often than not, and the firm resolve of your father only once.

"I know you're in there." He had said, after you led a particularly daring raid of the pantry, through the heavy wood of your bedroom door. The other children had realized the error of their ways and hidden as best they could in your comfortable room, hoping to evade your father's ire.

"So by the time I count to three, I expect this door to be open. Do you understand,-"

>-Elric?"

His tone left no room for negotiation, and in hindsight was the exact tone of voice when he was as much dictating something as asking a question.

You swallowed your last bite of the pastry with difficulty, your throat suddenly dry, before you squared your shoulders like your father always told you to, and opened the door, stepping through it before he had the chance.

You're not quite sure what went through your brain when you did that, but you can only imagine it wasn't something as sophisticated as 'Punishment shared is Punishment multiplied', and more like the earnest wish of a child to spare his friends trouble.

Despite your good posture, you couldn't find it in yourself to look your father in the eye, and the man's voice betrayed nothing. "I see you're willing to listen. Now, the Head Cook told me that a group of gremlins stole into his stores and made off with a great many sweets. Is that true, Elric?"

There was no point in lying about that; "Yes, Father." You mumbled, face downcast.

"And if I went in that room, I wouldn't find the other gremlins, would I, Elric?"

You worked over his words in your brain, hoping to find a way out for them, before you settle on a truth. "I'd rather you didn't, Father."

The man claps a hand on your shoulder, a firm weight to keep you in place as he lifts your chin with his other hand. His eyes are stern, but he's not blazingly angry, but the frown on his face is at odds with the raised brow. "And why is that?"

Call it loyalty, or naivete, you answered as only the leader of a pantry raid could. "Because I- I made them do it, so I should be the only one punished."

Your father just looked down at you, disappointed, but satisfied.

"Very well. You know you are banned from the Kitchens, but that was already in place." He thinks for a moment, before he pulls you away from the door, walking the two of you forward down the hall. He spares a glance at your door, still closed, and speaks in a slightly raised voice. "I think a day in the yard with Sir Christoph will do you some good, maybe he'll beat some discipline into you, lighter than he would any other pantry thieves he came across because you confessed, Elric."

You wince as you head down the hall with your father, but you think it worth it anyway. The others would feel bad about your fate, but better you than them.

The day would end with a few bruises, tired arms and aching muscles, but you paid the price, and come the next luncheon there was still a small plate of honey-cookies waiting at the table.

~~~

The duties of a lord often seem simple and straightforward.

Protect your people, advance your family, honor your oaths, and rule justly as sole judge over the matters of your court.

The requirements of an Heir are a little less simple.

For an Adult, it is representing their family in all matters, and a reminder of their lord's reach in distant matters or when they are away from court. For a young child, it is mainly a matter of education.

As you grew a little older, your time became more scheduled, and learning became your primary duty to the house.

In your case, tutors taught you maths and history, showcasing parallels as patterns emerged in the coincidence of time. They taught you about how science makes itself clear with examples of evolutionary trees, how different chemicals can make a pain-addling drug or a gas toxic enough to need industrial respirators. Your good judgement was questioned with probes of philosophy and rhetoric. Your days were exhausting between these lessons, with only a short time to stretch your legs and play in the sun each afternoon.

You were never a poor student, but occasionally a disinterested one.

Your education was fit for a princeling of a ducal house in the Inner Sphere proper, but you found a niche that you thrived in. What was it?

> (Martial) -Despite your father's skill at making money, you found yourself training with your family's small group of household guards, and the knights that you had attracted to your banner. Not MechWarriors themselves, these knights instead are often the commanders of armored vehicles, and for the very rich, aerospace pilots.



As a young man your mind was full of tales of War and Glory, the climactic duels of family ancestors, retold and exaggerated for the glee of a dozen generations of sons and daughters. You never knew your grandfather, and your father said little of the man aside that he was a just lord and a skilled MechWarrior. The few pieces that you'd managed to gather in your early years painted you a picture of a beloved lord, a man of strength and bearing, but one that did not consider himself so high above his people that he wouldn't lend a helping hand.

There was a particular story, based in fond exasperation, that some of the older servants told you, and you listened intently as they talked about how during a blazing-hot summer, the crop was being hauled in at a snail's pace because the animals and the laborers were too exhausted and drained by the heat to work, only being able to do their jobs before the sun rose and after it set. Your grandfather heard about this, and rather than issue reprimands, perhaps demand they worked harder despite the heat and the dangers it provoked, ordered his resident Mechtech to ready the Black Knight.

When they first arrived at the farms, it scared the workers and the landholders, until their lord asked them how he could help, having come with a machine that did not tire, and a will to see the work done.

For two weeks, the man toiled within his family-machine, using chains to pull half a dozen harvesting plows at once behind him, finishing one plot before moving on to the next.

It was a struggle, they told you, because even the coolant circulating through his vest was only keeping him from passing out from the heat, and every night he would climb down from that 'Mech, as exhausted and sweaty as any farmhand, and have dinner with the stead-holders, sharing drink and tales, and sleeping it off until morning, where he'd climb back inside his BattleMech, and keep going.

When he'd finished, he returned home, the sabatons of his 'Mech covered in dirt and grain, and a mountain of paperwork for him to chore through, but Grandfather bore it with all the grace of a man who longed for a proper scrap but knew his obligations.

He was a proud man, who loved his people, and had gone to battle for them a half dozen times against his neighbors. That he'd won them was a forgone conclusion in your mind, but against his equals the Black Knight had come back covered in fresh scars, like a lighter taken to a wax figure in places, but walking, which was usually more than his opponents could say.

It filled you with wonder, and come the next year, you would become an older brother, as your sister, Natasha, was born into the world full of life and screaming.

~~~

Your father had slowly been bringing materials back to Freirehalt from the Inner Sphere thanks to the jumpship, trying to better the quality of life for the people in his holding, and selling the excess to his neighbors for a small profit. It was one of his few purely philanthropic endeavors, but he reaped the benefits of it today as the guard escorted you to a newer building in the castle complex.

When you entered the clinic, the first thing to catch your attention was the cloying smell of antiseptics, the sort of smell that sticks in your nose so overpowering that you can smell little else. The second was the haggard gaze of your father, leaning forward in his seat, and the small smile he gave you as you hurried over. The guard that had found and guided you here took his place beside the door, and you could hardly contain your excitement.

"Are they here yet?" You asked, bouncing in your nice boots with the golden clasps, the usual cape your tutor insisted you learn to wear absently discarded in your room right before the guard found you.

"Not quite, but soon enough, Elric. Your mother's doctor has exiled me, saying I was only making her as nervous as I am." He chuckles at his own retelling, giving you a ruffle atop your head and lifts you into the seat beside him. You didn't always understand why your father spent money how he did, or why he would have certain shipments brought straight to the keep, but this clinic was as much your mother's idea as your father's creation.

You spent hours in that waiting room, fidgeting as you sat, toying with the clasps of your collar and the buttons of your shirt, while your father absently twirled an unlit cigar around his fingers. He'd gotten a dirty look from one of the nurses when he'd pulled it out, before he'd mournfully handed you his lighter, and you'd instantly started playing with it, making a racket as you worked the top up and down, over and over.

As annoying as the sound was, you imagine it gave your father something to focus on as life took its course without your input, and soon you heard a muffled cry from a distant room, and a worn-out nurse peaked their head out, waving a hand for you and your father to approach.

The man rapidly reclaimed his lighter from your hands, tucking it back into his pocket before he took you by the hand and lead you through the door, into a room that is the definition of pale, and to the small smattering of color on your mother's chest, a pink blanket wrapped around something that she's holding close. Your mother has the beginnings of bags under her eyes, and when she gives the two of you an exhausted smile, she sounds out of breath.

"Look, George, we have a little girl." Your father leans over the edge of the bed, pressing his forehead to hers as he looks down at the little bundle.

Spoiler: Valeria Gawain Portrait

"And what a fine job you've done, Val. She looks just like you." Your father gave his wife a gentle kiss, before he stood back up, and lifted you up and over the railing of the bed. "Now be very careful, El. She's still so new to the world, so you're going to have to be gentle." He sets you beside your mother, your head leaning on her shoulder and letting you look right at the gently sleeping face of your brand-new sister.

"You're going to have to protect her," he says, a giant hand gently brushing against the blanket covering her little head. "And to do that she's going to need a name for you to shout."

Your mother looks at him with a raised brow, before she presses a kiss to the baby's nose, breathing deep as she pulls away. "Natasha. Little Natasha of House Gawain."

Perhaps you were too young to realize the true depth of what crossed your mind, but almost instantly the idea of Knights sprang to mind, protecting the pretty princess in her castle against all the evils of the world.

You watched her for a while, before you started to think she had the right idea, and closed your eyes, the thought of shining armor and gallant heroes in your dreams, cuddling your mother and new sister as your father stood close.

---

For the next several months, the thought that you needed to protect your sister hung in your head, and the stories of your grandfather made it clear that to protect your people, you needed to be strong. So, despite how much it grated at your sense of self preservation, you sought out the strongest person you knew.

Spoiler: Sir Christoph, Master-at-Arms and Marshal

It was with that imagine in your head that you first approached Sir Christoph, one of a dozen knights in the employ of your family and Master-at-Arms for your father. You had only been eight years old, and it took several attempts before the man humored you. You knew the knight was a skilled fighter with almost every weapon, but he just handed you an oversized training sword and telling you to swing. He didn't say how, and he didn't say for how long, just to 'Do it.'

So, you did.

Initially, you brought it down hard from above and only succeeded in jarring your grip and sending a shock up your shoulders. Intuitively, you realized that swinging a heavy sword down hard at a target taller than you were was only going to result in something bad, so you switched to side slashes, haphazardly striking with poorly thought-out movements and terrible footwork. Your hands didn't hurt as much as you did this, and so you continued.

He watched as you strained your small arms, lost your breath, and sweated up a storm just swinging it against the dummy he'd planted you in front of, watching it all with the slight frown of a man judging something and finding it wanting.

Eventually, he demonstrated a handul of swings, and you adapted quickly. You would never be quite sure how long you repeated the simple set of swings he'd shown you, but eventually you dropped the sword from chaffing fingers, and looked at the man.

Though his frown didn't disappear, the look in his eyes was a little more thoughtful as he nodded his head.

"We'll work on that." Was all he said before he sent you on your way with a winded recruit to make sure you got back to your room. That was the first time you'd 'train' properly under his supervision, rather than as a punishment, and come the next week, as fixed a part of your schedule as your tutors.

Christoph came across as a hard man, unrelenting in his demands for perfection, and easy to dislike with his ever-present frown, but over the years that followed, you'd see the way he double checks the men during the drills, yelling at them mercilessly over careless mistakes.

You'd sit there beside him and help him when he took the time to check over the House armory for defective or damaged weapons. He is a man that comes across as sadistic, ordering men to swing until their arms shake, and then some, but he stands with them, swinging just as hard. He issues laps of running for every score in marksmanship training that falls below the average but is quick to provide corrections to the recruits that risk falling below that mark. He trains the men in the heat and chill, standing there as indomitable a presence despite being in the same heavy gear in the heat, and the uninsulated uniform in the chill.

He cares, because these are the men that must go out and fight with nothing more than their bodies and their equipment. They can only rely on the training that has been drilled into them and the men beside them. Christoph himself is a knight not just for his martial skill, but also the modified Pike-Tank he commands, the weapon taken as his sigil on the shield he hangs in his office.

You found that once the pattern was built up, the training came easily, even if you didn't do as much of the physically intensive work as the older recruits and soldiers did, instead helping the good knight to prepare for them.

For all your success in the yard, You couldn't be good at everything, and naturally an area of your education suffered even as others thrived. What was it?

>-(Diplomacy) You found it difficult to open up to new people. Those in your household, or that you had come to know well were easy enough, but at the few parties and get-togethers that you had attended with your family, you felt isolated, and despite the attempts of a few other scions of distant houses, you were typically left alone.

As you grew older yet, it became expected that you would start to attend a few parties, get-togethers, and deal with the feelers now moving between families as to betrothals and the like.

To say you had no desire to is an understatement. To say your mother would hear nothing of your protests just as so.

You were ordered to behave, packed away with as nice a suit as could be tailored quickly and with little notice, and sent off with a guard of trusted guards and Sir Christoph for a small party in Mapon, held by the honorable House Ruxhall.

The journey itself was unremarkable, but fascinating all the same for a young boy on his first journey out of the keep and surrounding lands, once the miasma of being forced into it had drained away, your family lands stretching far further than you had ever imagined.

Forests made from old oaks gave way to grasslands, and eventually large clumps of maple and birch trees, their leaves turning a brilliant orange as the fall season arrived.

Even the lands of Mapon were amazing to see, as you crossed the border into their lands and entered into a far more vibrant forest than any you'd seen before, where the trees were a brilliant array of yellows, reds and lighter greens, the colder temperatures seeming to stay away for a few weeks more the further south you went.

When you arrived at House Ruxhall's keep it was to little fanfare, your invitation accepted with formality by one of the family's yeomen, and you were shown to a small parlor where you could freshen up.

The keep itself was well furnished and warmly lit by small slits in the stony walls, the tapestries and the paintings on the wall done in bright colors to break up the monotony of grey stone and dark wood.

With a few days' ride behind you, and clean clothes, you were sent into a dining room, where you found many other noble guests, many of them wearing the colors of their families, much to the annoyance of those with similar heraldries. Young Ladies dominated the room, a sign of just skewed the births of '09 had been, and you found many an older face in the crowd, even if that just meant they were more than twice your age.

You recognized people from the lands of Houses Summermere and Andercher, a few from House Gladwell and his vassals, but a conspicuous lack from the Godsfield lands.

Whatever musings you had were interrupted by the host rising from his seat at the high table, a glass and spoon in his hands.

"I thank my honored guests for arriving for this dinner of friends and family, and I would ask you take your seats so that we may dine before the enjoyment of the night begins." His voice is steady, even if the old man has styled his hair to hide the burn marks that crawl up from under his right eye.

You quickly find your seat, clearly marked with your family crest on the cloth in front of it, and find yourself beside a man you've never met before, a girl old enough to be a much younger sister or his daughter beside him.

Trying to remember your courtesies, you offered your hand to man, introducing yourself.

"I am Elric of House Gawain."

"Olin of House Ginenet." He returned, his voice flat. His eyes were uninterested in you, instead scanning the ladies at the table. He seemed a severe man, and his companion had to sneakily kick his leg under the table to remind him of his own courtesies. "This is my Lord's daughter, Serina Gladwell. It is… pleasant, to make your acquaintance, Master Elric."

You give the lady a small bow of respect, one she returns with a smile.

The dinner itself is pleasant and flavorful, featuring several courses of soups, well roasted meats, pleasant breads, and sweet puddings and pies. The conversation around it is stilted, as Olin wants nothing to do with you, giving curt and single word answers, and you find yourself a touch shy to try speaking with the Lady Serina around him, lest he take offense.

When the dinner concludes, the tables are cleared off and pulled aside to create a square for dancing, as musicians switch the songs for ones better suited for the act.

You had thought Master Olin as Lady Serina's escort for the evening, but the man seems to vanish almost as soon as the tables do, and you find yourself at last able to talk with her. Just what do you say to a young woman that is more than a little attractive? Your mind swings to something you heard a few guardsmen talking about and try to apply it here.

>May I have this dance?

You honestly can't think of anything clever or suave to say, so instead you offer the lady your hand, an awkward smile on your face. "May I have this dance, my lady?"

"You may, Master Elric." She returns your smile with far greater ease, older than you by… You don't know how many years, but surely less than ten.

The two of you take to the floor, and to your surprise, you are able to dance with the lady without stepping on her feet or messing up the movements too much. It is honestly a great deal of fun for a while, and you and her dance to a number of songs, just enjoying the moment.

And then Olin returns, and not in a good mood.

"Lady Serina, I believe that is enough of leading the boy on." His voice is chiding, as if he was speaking to a child rather than the grown and pretty woman in front of you.

"You may have my father's trust, Master Ginenet, but I have the final word. Beside, the boy is having his moment of fun, and I'm not eager to see it end." You watch this exchange confused, mostly because you could never imagine another lord speaking to your sister in such a way, not without consequences, but that would be inside your own home. Here, it would be only natural for Master Olin to safeguard his lady's reputation, but you've not crossed any lines.

You hope.

"If you are to be my wife, then you will obey me. Let the little boy go and find another pretty thing." His tone is bordering on anger, and you don't know what to do about it.

"When your father warned you could be jealous, I didn't think it meant you'd be so insecure to think that this young boy would sweep me off my feet and see the agreement broken with a flick of his wrist and a twirl on the floor."

Oh.

You may lack in diplomatic senses, but you can tell a scene is about to take place, and you are stuck right in the middle of it.

>You need an adult. Christoph by preference before this gets too heated. Attempt a graceful exit without causing offence.

>Olin rolls a natural 20, critically failing his Etiquette check, and causing a major scene.

Well, this wasn't covered in your classes on etiquette. You try to speak up, and raise your hands palms out to try and placate the rapidly reddening man.

"I can clearly see that I have caused some offense, Master Olin, and I apologize. I was merely trying to entertain Lady Serina, and with your return, and mood, I will be on my way. Good day to you both."

You try to speak as formally, and inoffensively as you can, but despite your best efforts, the man's temper gets the better of him, and he grabs you by the shoulder before you can pass him, his voice rising.

"Oh, you wait there boy, I will have words with you in a moment. Wouldn't want you to disappear like your grandfather." Vitriol covers every syllable, and you can only imagine that the Heir has gotten to deep into his cups for such boorish behavior. "Now you listen here, Serina, your father gave you to me to protect on this trip, and I refuse to let you make a mockery of me without paying for it. We are leaving, so call your maids and get ready."

"No." Is the simple reply of the lady, quieter in comparison but not by much, as she stares down the man as he grows redder still. "I believe that I can prevail on our host to give me an escort home, or send a message to my father about your behavior."

"If I have to ask you again, I am going to drag you out of here." He all but growls through grit teeth.

"And I said no, Master Olin of House Ginenet, and as the Daughter of the Lord Gladwell, I order you to leave me be. Beg our host for his forgiveness and depart for home, before you do something you'll regret."

Without a doubt, you think Olin was halfway between digging himself deeper with his words or doing something far worse judging by the twitch you see in his hand.

Thankfully, Sir Christoph is not so distant as to be useless in this situation. He strides up towards the three of you from the growing circle of curious onlookers. He bows as he reaches you, putting on a show for the crowd.

"Master Gawain, a messenger from your father is outside and requires your immediate attention. I trust that the good Sir and Lady will permit this, it is after all House business." He gives them a glib smile, even as his eyes linger on Olin, a hand near his belt.

It took a moment for the knight and the heir to break off from their staring contest, the man waving a hand in dismissal. "Take the boy." He finally says, releasing his hold on your shoulder.

"Thank you, Master Ginenet." Christoph says as he places his own hand on your back, and guides you away from the scene, just as one of the Yeoman approaches, saying something about Lord Ruxhall and the young Lady.

It's only as you step into the open air that you let out the breath you were holding, almost doubling over. That was, something, and you appreciate Christoph's presence as he pats your back. A glance at his waist, and you spy the small dagger he keeps hidden there, usually for peeling apples, but sharp enough. If you think about it, a knight of House Gawain harming the Heir to House Ginenet is only a little better than The Heir of one harming the Other.

Bloody hell.

You think you should avoid parties for the near future, if your very first prompted that sort of show.

---

The return was much faster than the trip to Mapon, with Christopher sending one of the guardsman along first to ready replacement horses on the way there before you left, and you return home just in time for the leaves to fall.

Your Mother is far from pleased with your performance but is willing to admit it is not your fault entirely. After all, it had not been announced that Master Olin was betrothed to Lady Selina, in so far as your mother knew, and your father was equally as clueless, though he mostly lamented that House Ginenet was unlikely to do business with you for the next little while, despite sharing a border.

"Gregor won't hold us personally accountable for that cluster-" He cut himself off, before giving you a pat on the head. "But he has to be seen as annoyed with us. It will pass, just takes time." He had said.

Still, with your attendance and invitation to future events in question for the next while, you returned to your regularly scheduled tutoring and training, spending some time when you got back with your sister as she starts to walk around, getting into some of the same trouble you did when you were her age.

You had found your niche early it seems, still succeeding in your lessons, but where you thrived was under the vigilant gaze of Sir Christoph.

When you began you were little better than a page, an assistant who was mostly running about to deliver papers to your father, clean the training grounds, or help to move training gear around before an exercise. Not exactly exhausting work, but it gave you a goal to strive for as you watched the older man easily hoist twice what you were carrying and move it into position or finish his section of the field far faster than you did your own.

You became familiar, and eventually friends, with the man's eldest son, Alistair, as the two of you spent many hours in the yard, drilling under his father's gaze.

Spoiler: Alistair, one of your best friends down the road.

Where his father comes across as stone-hearted, Alistair is merely intense, clearly hoping to match his father's expectation of men twice his age.

He works hard, fights hard, and pays the price for his exuberance in time spent with a sling or an ice pack pressed to his bruises. You've never seen Sir Christoph raise a hand to his son that wasn't part of training, but you had seen him stop the boy from hurting himself by trying to keep going when he should stop.

Still, growing boys need to be worked or they get bored, and Christoph is nothing if not a good task master. Strength was built by moving sandbags and targets for the range-day, endurance was built by running the course with the other lads, toughness by getting in the ring with the youngest recruits, padded sticks and armor to turn stunning blows into bruising ones.

When you turned Fourteen, Alistair a year older at Fifteen, Christoph gifted you both an airgun and a box of ammunition to use with it, and a warning to start practicing. He gave you three blessed days to work on it, and when next you entered his field, you were made to join the recruits at the line during accuracy drills.

The drill is simple, fire at the distant target, with one of his assistants marking your score as you fired. Points would be given for accuracy and speed, deducted for inaccuracy and poor pacing. The Knight would change things up on occasion, leading to the unit heading outside to practice in less controlled conditions, but that was typically to really test the men with ranges set at the extremes, to the point where you or Alistair would need binoculars to score their shots.

Interspaced with your other duties, those were days full of running, sore legs, and blurry eyes, but with time you climbed the board, and started to place in the upper quarter. Sir Christoph started to challenge you during those tests, ordering you to stop and reload at random intervals, a test to see if you could keep your cool under pressure, before saying to drop to one knee, to stand up, to place your weapon on the table and spin three times before resuming the drill.

With repetition comes excellence, and you quickly became a crack shot, and when he had you move onto a real rifle, it became all the more impressive.

Some days, you were sure you had rendered Christopher speechless, only for the knight to find something about your performance to critique. It was to be expected, but still.

Honestly, the range drills could be good fun despite the punishment for failing to live up to his standards, something that was becoming rarer and rarer, and he let you take the paper target set at the end of the range as a trophy for your efforts, much to your glee and the exasperation of your parents as they covered your walls.

That was not to say you did not train for the melee like the rest, just that you didn't focus on it as hard as you could have. Alistair became your usual partner for the circle, owing to your similar sizes, though Christoph was quick to kill your egos by throwing you against veterans that had been putting up with him for years.

It was an effective reminder that you were learning, and far from the best.

It was shortly after that when Christoph started treating you like an unofficial squire, a young man learning the tricks and means of war from an experienced soldier like the good knight.

It was a far from unheard-of arrangement on Freierhalt, but it was rare for the heir of a major house to squire at all, considering that for most, it would be in a BattleMech they'd make war from inside of—most knights not having their own to use as an example—leading many to believe it was a waste of time. You can't say you planned for the knight to teach you about his tank or the tactics that would best suit it in the field, but you welcomed the instruction all the same.

But your day could not be training all the time, and your father insisted you learn a trade, along with your other studies, to familiarize you with what your people go through.

The last true MechTech of the holding was a man named Charles Burrel, and he had been honing his craft when your grandfather disappeared, having been one of the main MechTech's that worked on the machine.

Most of the others had left over the years after the Black Knight was lost, but not Charles.

Spoiler: Master Charles Burrel, Expert MechTech

It was a prestigious thing to give up, being a MechTech, a position that had more openings than hands to fill them these days, and dangerous too, but Charles survived being the new guy and learned at the side of many an experienced tech, until he was himself called a master. Charles found other work, other things that needed fixing, and put his mind to it to keep his hands busy, whether it was the rare automobile, or the slightly more common bike, He could fix it, though he preferred the complicated over the simple.

He worked in the town just down the road from the castle, and it was there that you found your trade. When he had learned who you were, and what you wanted to learn, he was surprised, but he agreed to teach you.

Charles had little time for people that didn't respect their machines, and you were quick to learn that, what with how he yelled at a customer that kept chewing up components in their engine by not taking care of the thing.

"I get that you want to fix this up yourself, but I hate having to repeat myself, Tom. It may weigh two-hundred kilos and be made of milled aluminum, but all it takes is a little bit of water, you turn this thing over and you'll bend the pistons, break them if you're unlucky, and you'll be back in here complaining to me that it doesn't work." He was looking under the hood of a truck of some kind and walking the owner through why driving through high waters was a piss poor idea at the best of times.

"Fine, leave it here, and I'll get it cleaned out and buttoned up, so you don't encounter this again, but I swear to god, Tommy…"

There was something calming about working with metal and oil, the work of a Tech of any kind apparently half mechanic, half blacksmith, and a quarter scrounger. Parts were rare on the planet, and so whatever a Tech couldn't find and purchase, he had to make himself, or acquire somehow.

It made for a good skill to learn, in your eyes, and it seemed prudent for a Lord to learn how to fix his equipment, like a squire learning how to clean armor, hammer out dents, and take care of weapons.

Which led you to meeting Charle's son, Fred.

Spoiler: Fred Burrel, Apprentice MechTech and Mechanic.

The two of you should have got along like oil and water, Fred being a down-to-earth young man while you were blue-blooded nobility, but the moment one of you started talking shop, that difference disappeared.

It made for an odd friendship, but you were glad to have one more.

---

There was an almost meditative sense that settled over you as you helped strip an engine, diagnose a problem, and engage a solution that was best suited for the individual that had brought the damaged component in.

The contentment that filled you as you rounded the truck and heard the engine turn over all the smoother than how it had arrived. The low rumble as cylinders rode up and down smoothly, the sound of power as you revved it up and the slowing thunder as you let off the gas, giving Master Burrel a thumbs up, one he returned as he fiddled with something on his end of a line.

Automobiles are rare of Freierhalt, but not nearly to the same degree as fusion engines, and you have little doubt that your father's lands are where most of them are located, owing to the fact that he's willing to import them for the better off farmers, especially considering it can help with their harvests or simply expand the market their goods could reach.

It bought him a great deal of good will with his folk, and with so much space available on a Tramp, it made for decent return on the tonnage needed for a few dozen or so every other year.

It was one such vehicle that was now halfway in one of your family's storehouses, not far from the keep at all.

It was hooked up to one of the few bits of inventory left over from your grandfather's day, an old 6cm laser, Medium-class by most of the Inner Sphere's reckoning.

It had taken your word, Master Burrel's past good service, and a promise from the engineer to take a look at one of the loading crane's when he got the chance, but you got permission to use the building and made your way into the storehouse. An afternoon spent checking the thing over, making sure that none of the capacitors had blown in the past, or that the lenses had rotted in poor storage conditions, had resulted in the presentation the MechTech had arranged for you.

He wanted you to understand just why the Battlemech were considered the be-all-end-all of War on Freierhalt, and considering his expertise was in the unique position to demonstrate.

It had taken all three of you, along with a nice draft-horse the stable was kind enough to loan you, to move a section of armor plating until it was firmly set against the wall of the storehouse, ready for use. Both you and Fred had wailed on it with a sledgehammer until your hands were sore, only doing a superficial amount of damage to the dusty old paintjob that decorated the titanium alloy like lacquer.

When the two of you had tired yourselves out, Charles had ordered you to go borrow a truck from the storehouses parking lot, leaving you to your own discretion as he ran his fingers across the half ton of diamond laced steel, ceramic, and polymer with a sense of reverence you'd not seen him show anything else, save for the memory of your grandfather and his current lord.

With your side done, you just watched as the old MechTech put the finishing touches on his end of the junction, carefully fitting the linkage to the laser's power systems.

"When I was an apprentice, the old hands used to mention that you needed a Power-Amplifier to make this work, owing to the sheer amount of energy you need to make an ICE engine fire any energy weapon at full power." You weren't sure what the old engineer had fitted to the coupling between engine and laser, and from his words it wasn't a power amplifier, but it seemed to be working if his pleased hums and haws were any indication. "I don't have one, so the point is moot. On the other hand, this little baby should hold just enough charge to make the point if we give it a few minutes, even if it won't be perfect."

While the three of you waited, the MechTech walked you through the various systems, lenses and the ports around the laser where a tech like himself would have linked it into the heat-sinking system of the BattleMech. In theory, how the laser would work when properly mounted and linked into a BattleMech would see it maintain an internal capacitor of power drawn from the Fusion Engine, allowing a charge to sit ready for use until the weapon was fired, generating the heat from such an act and firing the beam of charged particles that would cause armor to heat, melt, ultimately ablate the distorted layers to prevent further damage to the underlying plate and fragile structure below.

But it was one thing to listen to a tech give you the technical details about how something like that works, and another to see it happen in real time, or so Master Burrel had said.

"Alright now, everybody got their eyes on?" It was hardly the first time he had reminded the two of you to mind your safety equipment, but with such a jury rigged set up, it was simply prudent, and the welding goggles would protect your eyes from the intense brightness of a laser so close. When the two of you gave the man a thumbs up, he moved his hands to the side of his head, and the muffs covering his ears. "Ears On?" Another affirmative from you two, and He gave a stiff nod in return, hunkering down behind a steel crate as he turned towards your target.

"Alright Boys, watch closely. You're about to watch just over a quarter ton of that slab turn into slag and vapor. In 3. 2. 1. Firing!"

The moment he said the word, Master Burrel hit the button, and you watched as an emerald beam of oscillating energy cut a clean cylinder of laser-based damage through the air, almost instantly impacting the test slab of armor. For a moment, only a few heart beats, nothing happened aside from the impact zone starting to glow almost red hot, and then you were given a firsthand opportunity to see just how the standard armor plating of the Inner Sphere worked in action.

As the laser superheated the material and caused the first layers to deform, snaps, crackles and pops filled the storehouse as a wave of heat rushed from the emitter to turn the room into a sauna. Where the paint burns away almost instantly, purely for show, the material under it is made up of harder stuff, but even the crystalline lattice that makes up the outermost chunks starts to peel and shrink like the plastic-protectives on a new vidscreen under a torch, before it reaches its critical point.

Designed to ablate under force and heat, the carefully engineered connection point between those layers give way as it warps, sending hunks of burned out half-melted material to the floor in an attempt to save the remainder, the lost material taking the hit for a few extra milliseconds until they fall out of the way.

Titanium-laced alloys could be reduced to splattered slag on the concrete, still spitting as they cooled, and revealing a scorched layer of unlacquered material ready for another hit, and it keeps going. You watch as more material sloughs off like snow off a bank, sending more molten metal to the floor in a shower of sparks as the laser burns on into the material.

The firing timer on a medium laser is set to less than two seconds of full power, and sure enough just after that the laser dies out with an audible beeping, the jury-rigged amplifier-capacitor burned out and smoking, while the test plate is less than half its original size. A meter-square section of armor was reduced to only a few square feet of steaming material half the thickness it started the day with.

Master Burrel emerged from behind the crate where he'd hid with a satisfied smile on his face, even with the heat making his sweat slicked hair stick where it fell.

"Damn hot, isn't it? A single Medium laser isn't all that impressive if you consider that your average 50-tonner carries 9 tons of armor spread over its frame, but your grandfather's Black Knight mounted four of the things, meaning just over a ton of armor sloughed off every time he fired, let alone the ton that followed every time he fired those Large lasers right under the 'Mech's ribcage.

Two tons of armor would be gone in only a few seconds, and you don't need to burn through much to do some real damage to a 'Mech. Autocannons will do through force what the lasers do through heat, and a PPC will do both at ranges too far out for most to respond, other than to run for cover."

Just seeing over six hundred pounds of hard-to-manufacture armor disappear under a few seconds of pure heat, and energy, and scientific advancement lost to Freierhalt, it puts into perspective what the BattleMech truly symbolizes for the people here.

At first, it sounded like something out of a cheesy tri-vid movie, where an impassioned soldier goes on a killing spree of bad men and those that have wronged them, only picking up the most superficial of injuries on the way, because of training or technique or dumb chance, but to the people of Freierhalt?

Those titans of metal and mynomer that were clad in this armor might as well have been invulnerable to whatever meager arms they could muster until just under a century ago, and that made it little wonder why the pirate bands had raided the planet with little concern that they'd truly be stopped or harmed.

So far out from the Inner Sphere, down to personal arms and jury-rigged anti-armor against such a force, it would have been easy sport for the damned pirates to take what they wanted from this world.

The thought makes a smirk perk up on your face as you consider what they must of thought when a full company of veteran-piloted BattleMechs suddenly showed up behind their mongrel lines. Not other pirate BattleMechs, made up of scrap and whatever components they could steal to repair their rides over the years, but rather well-maintained mercenary 'Mechs, that had just spent months making jump after jump with nothing to do but fix their metal.

What a sight that must have been.

 

[Molder]

And here we are. Akun is so bad right now lord is being forced to archive his stuff here.

 

[Lone Courier 6]

It's a fantastic ride this quest, I'd warn anybody coming in that the anons are fucking vicious to new people from forums, but read the FAQ and don't go asking for powerups that would break the setting completely over our knee and you should be fine.

 

[Lord Of Flames]

With your secondary education complete, your schedule opened up for a brief window, before working with Master Burrel and Fred in their shop rapidly consumed your time, leaving you with only a brief window of leisure between shifts at the shop and training with the soldiery under Sir Christoph's gaze. It was in one of these scattered moments that you hatched a plan of utmost cunning.

The amount of time you'd spent with your sister had dwindled over the years, mostly as a result of your hobbies and vocation, but you still dropped in her from time to time, sometimes watching her with a smile from the door as she works through her tutor's lessons, other times taking her on a small adventure, earning the ire of your mother for a day in return for hearing your sister's laughter as you race with her through the woods on horseback.

So it is that as summer comes to your family's holding in 3029, you head down familiar hallways, the walls painted in vibrant colors, lamps lighting the least exposed sections in artificial light, your family's affluence shown in a lack of flame-licking guides. The cost to maintain the castle generators a small price to pay compared to having to regularly buy fresh wax, kerosene, and cleaners to knock off the soot that forms in the most unventilated sections from lesser lamps and torches.

The paintings that had captivated you as a child were faded with time, but lovingly upkept, your grandfather's 'Mech at the point of a charge of the houses, with the multi-colored mechs breaking up the green back drop of a forest with their yellows and blues, a titanic mass with a brass top like a turtle marking the King Crab of House Sanmon, while mirrored Red fired beams of blue and brackets of trailing smoke, as an Awesome and Catapult attack at range. In the foreground, shaded over and blurry, mechs are damaged and destroyed by the onslaught of your ancestors.

Just the reminder of what you'd lost, even if it was before you were born, spurred a sprout of envy in your soul. You'd met peers your own age that had already taken their first steps in the use of their family machine, that great and mighty power at their fingertips, but denied to your own. It was an old argument between you and your father, but you could no sooner get him to bend than turn water into wine with a snap of your fingers.

There was something in his eyes when he refused, an old pride that he refused to let die. You wondered if he simply refused to lower himself to buying a new machine, or if he hoped that one day you'd accidently bang into a forgotten wall in the keep, and knock it down to reveal the ancient machine, damaged and bruised, but intact and restored to you and yours.

As the years grow long, it seems a foolish hope, but you are only the heir, and your Lord Father's will may as well be law for how it is obeyed.

Ornate baskets and rugs decorate some sections of the halls, yet more shocks of color and interest among cold greys and painted whites, but you step past them all, until you reach the study room door, the voice of the tutor just beyond.

You open the door quietly, and inside you see your sister sitting at a fine wooden desk, stacks of paper, books, and box of writing utensils in ready reach as she listened to her teacher finish their lecture on, old Terran history if you're not mistaken. You don't think you were quite there by the time that you were fourteen, but you'll admit, you were not so focused a student as your sister was, seeming to absorb the smallest details like sponge.

The Tutor was an older woman, a highly respected educator before a scandal involving some second cousin of hers and a noble that sponsored the institution had caused her school to offer her a generous severance and retirement package, lest they get caught in some feud that had nothing to do with either party. Your father's agents had found her while searching for people willing to come so far out, and in return for proper accommodations and compensation, she left behind the Inner Sphere for a little world further up the Orion Spur.

"-And that is how Admiral Mckenna was able to cow the surviving states of Terra into submission in the wake of the Civil War that had engulfed the planet and created the Terran Hegemony as we knew it until shortly before the first succession war. Any questions?"

Young as she was, Natasha had an analytical mind, and as long as you'd known her, she always had a question at the forefront of her mind. Were she born anywhere else, you imagine she would have become a teacher, a researcher, anything that would keep her in the halls of some University just so she could devour its library over the course of her life.

"If Admiral Mckenna had the means to enforce his will anywhere in the Hegemony, and with his warships the only examples in the Inner Sphere at the time, why didn't he just assume power by right of conquest instead of risking it with an election?"

Mrs. Young nodded her head as she considered the question, giving her answer its due thought before explaining. "The exact answer to that is varied depending on the historian cited, but in general, it was assumed the Mckenna wanted to give the people a chance to voice their thoughts against the old regime, and by giving the common man a sense that he had a voice in the new government, even if small, helped to reduce unrest in the wake of his displays of power.

I would also remind you that right of conquest had not been recognized for hundreds of years by the time that Director General Mckenna assumed power.

Still, though we've not covered it yet, it might help your image of the man to know that he did not die in office, but rather resigned after a disastrous military campaign." A glance at her watch causes another nod, as she consults her charge's schedule in her head. "Now, we've a half hour left before your time with the dancing instructor, so we will go over the events that followed- Oh, Master Elric. How many we help you?"

>Lie.

"I'm afraid there's been a change in my sister's schedule, Mrs. Young. I'm sorry about the short notice, but I just came from a talk with my father, and he asked that I find my sister and send her to see him before I headed to the training grounds." You answer her question.

"Lord Gawain wanted to see her?" The tutor's brow furrows as she looks at you, but you've long mastered the look of earnestness that saw the kitchen staff believe that you hadn't taken that extra cookie, or Sir Christoph that you had not, in fact, thrown dust into the eyes of Alistair to trip him up for once in the sparring circle. That only worked the one time, and your jaw had smarted for a day after Alistair got his revenge. "Very well, Master Elric. If you would be so kind, see her to her next meeting if she and your father should finish before your next task. Natasha, make sure to take 'History of the Hegemony, vol 1' with you and make sure to read up on the first few years of Mckenna's rule before we see each other again. Pleasant day, Master Elric, lady Natasha."

Spoiler: Natasha Gawain, Elric's Sister.

Your sister gave you a glance as she put away her pencils and organized her papers, slipping them into her bag once they were correctly bundled, and gave her teacher a polite curtsey, passing you into the wall, while you gave Mrs. Young a thankful dip of your head, turning to follow.

You were only a dozen steps or so down the hall, just out of eachshot of the classroom when your sister voiced the obvious. "Father doesn't actually want to see me, does he?"

"I'm sure he'd be pleased to see you, not every day that his little girl drops in to his office after all, but not specifically." You reply, nodding to yourself as you led her not towards your father's study in the center of the keep, but towards one of the outer courtyards, where the family stable was kept.

"So, another adventure brother. Will I end up with my arms up to my elbows covered in grease, one of my spring dresses ruined again, or will I listen to you laugh as I miss a target barely a dozen paces away with one of the armory's revolvers?" Her words are scathing, but her tone is polite, and a glance at her face shows the teasing lilt of her mouth's corners.

"I will have you know that dress was Fred's fault, he told me he had emptied the Oil pan before I brought you in," And in hindsight, that was probably a prank intended for yourself. "And I apologized profusely for laughing. I should have corrected you, but you were so sure of yourself…" You feel composure start to crack, and by the time you finish you're all but laughing again in memory of that day.

Three reloads, a dozen paces, and only two shots in that target, one just off the bull, one at the very edge of the 2 o'clock black. If you hadn't drilled safety into her mind, you imagine that she would have clocked you with that revolver when she declared that the sights must be off or some other excuse, only for you to take it and put that shot almost dead center.

"Oh, laugh it up, Elric. We're almost to the stable, and if you plan to race, I'll have Starlight leave you in the dust again, just like I did Easter weekend." Your sister raises her nose at you as she speaks, every bit the haughty lady that she had been educated to be, but even she can't keep up the act before a snicker leaves her, your own soon joining her.

"I wasn't thinking of a race, just an afternoon in the pleasant air, a ride along the forests and fields."

It's all too soon that you reach the stable, and with the help of a free stablehand have both your mares saddled and ready to ride. Your own was a nice pinto, that you had been talked out of naming Cow when you were a young boy, her black spots covering much of her white coat like the other animal, while your sister's was a dark black, little speckles of white in their coat earning them a similarly creative name, though your parents had called in acceptable compared to your own.

Lifting her into her saddle by the middle, your sister sat side saddle owing to the skirt she wore, and you were quickly mounted on your own, kicking off to a swift trot out of the keep.

You were tempted to say that it wasn't a race, as you lead the charge, the gallop of hooves under you and the bite of the wind on your smiling cheeks, but you were a proud soul, and right now your sister was stuck trying to get around you as you led her through the path.

Long cut by loggers that were heading into the hills, it was a perfect route to the lone tree on the hill, an old growth apple tree that had survived two hundred years of human habitation.

"I'm starting to think you've misled me, Elric!" You turned at your sister's shout, and let out a small groan as she overtook you in the moment of distraction. "Yah! Try and overtake me, El!"

For all your sister was poor with a gun, and you didn't trust her with anything larger than her steak knife, she was a natural equestrian, taking to horseback with the same ease you took to shooting. But raw talent does not always overcome years of hard earned skill, and so you give your mare a squeeze and a click of your tongue, leaning in close to her mane as she thundered down the path after your wayward sister.

Over pounded dirt you rode, jumping over log and weaving around cut stump, your grunts of effort and her lilting laughter lifting into the air as you ride on, a few of the loggers working in the shade of the trees lifting their hands in greeting as you go racing past.

Ten minutes gone, your sister's mare is fast but lacks the same stamina that your Pinto has built, and so you finally catch up to her, just in time to reach the edge of the forest you'd been riding through, and the tall clearing that broke up the wall of wood, your goal clear and tall.

That old growth apple tree, fresh orbs of yellow and red hanging in the canopy, had seen time tick on by, and survived centuries unknown. Its bark was pitted and worn, but strong and healthy. You'd run your fingers across it many times, finding hearts and letters carved all over its trunk, some fresher than others, but all equally deep and their cutters in love.

You waved to your sister as you pass her, your own mare moving at a steady trot. "Come on, Nat, just a little further."

With the horses tied off to a low hanging branch, you leave them to graze themselves with a pat on the neck, your sister takes a seat neat the base of the tree, a nice little collection of roots making a good spot to sit.

For your part, you pluck down a couple of apples, tossing one to your sister as you break out your pocket knife to take chunks off it. Sweet sugar pops in your mouth as you enjoy your apple, a tinge of sour chasing it down, and leaving you wanting more.

"So, how's your schooling going these days? Annoyed a tutor again by reading half the curriculum they'd set out?"

"No, I have managed to restrain myself, and only ask questions that are pertinent to the lesson at hand." Her answer is prim and proper, and it only takes a few seconds of you looking at her to crack. "I swear, I've not managed to chase another one off. I think he thought the job was going to be easy, and that he could just read off a lecture from one of his old classes for some easy money and free accommodations. He shouldn't have made it just one book if he wanted to keep me invested."

"Not like Mrs. Young has, giving you enough paper to stop an Autocannon shell and expecting a third of that back in essays, huh?"

"I will have you know that Mrs. Young is a brilliant teacher." So defensive about her tutor? Teasing material for later. "And she only asks for a page and a half if I can clearly show that I understand the lesson. What about your own studies? I understand that one of the storehouses required a fair bit of clean up with a… jackhammer, was it?"

You dip your head, embarrassed about that. "It had escaped our attention that the slag off the armor would cool so quickly," or eat into the concrete as it did.

After the sledgehammer, and the heat from moving the laser, your hands had smarted for a good while after you and Fred had taken turns breaking up the debris with that hopping and striking contraption. "But If I had the chance, I would show you exactly what I saw in the moments that caused it. Imagine a meter-square sheet of metal, over half a foot thick, and that between rooster calls it shrank by more than half. It was terrifying and glorious at the same time."

Your sister has never been one for military matters, and so she only nods her head, likely struggling to picture that as you would have just a few weeks ago. "I think I would have liked to see that. You retell the stories that Father told you, and some of the staff have told me about this duel over land, or this fight about a valley, or a very stupid battle over an acre of forest, but it lacks perspective."

You smile, leaning into the tree, as you lounge in the breeze at the base of the tree. "Well, Master Burrel's work aside, have you picked up any new hobbies? I know you were trying to convince Father to let you use the ranch for horse breeding."

A munching nod is her reply, your sister enjoying her apple, before she swallows. "He says that as well as it might work, I should give it some more thought and throw together an investment scheme and probable profits. He wants numbers." You can commiserate with that, but your father had at least told you that he was investing in alternate solutions to military matters. "But you know, I have been seeing Alistair around more often."

Oh? "Seeing him around where? He lives in the keep with his father if I'm not mistaken." Probing question deployed.

Your sister shrugs, and at her prompting you grab her another apple. Between munches, she explains. "He's been visiting the library more, and I caught him speaking with some of the stable hands. I think he might be trying to help me, gathering information about how to manage and finance a homestead that focuses on it. I only mentioned it in passing to him, but if he's so rigorous in his investigation, I can only welcome the help."

"Hm. Alistair is a good friend, and he hadn't mentioned it to me. I know Father was thinking of expanding some of the Sheriffs, perhaps he's hoping for a spot and making a good impression on Father will help him?" If he wanted the spot, you knew it was his if he'd but ask. Your father was a good friend to Sir Christoph and Alistair was one of the hardest workers you knew. On the other hand, if he was looking for a chance to… "I'll ask him when I get back to the keep, after I take my lashings from Father for this."

"He won't lash you." Your sister says, confident. "He'll likely dock your allowance for a while, restrict you from extracurricular yard time, and spend a while walking you through why my education is more important that your wanting to spend time with me, but I expect it will be light enough. Father enjoys your bursts of rebellion, it gives him a distraction from the managing of budgets, feuds, and worrying about another pirate attack."

"If you're so sure." You reply, enjoying the sun on your face, the apply in your hands, and the light conversation with your sister.

You'd get back to the keep soon enough, but for now you'd stay.

---

"God be good, Elric. It would be one thing if you just grabbed your sister between lessons for a trip into the woods, but invoking my name to do it?" As predicted, your father was not pleased with your actions, your sister allowed to leave and finish out her day, while you were detained within his office. "I know I've been pushing you, Elric, but really?"

"It seemed expedient at the time," was your simple answer, and when it came to your father, you preferred the truth against lying to his face. "And I've seen so little of Nat despite living in the same keep in the last several months. I wake up early and have breakfast with the staff before I head off into town for my shift at Master Burrel's, she wakes up and has breakfast with you and mother. I come home at the end of my shift for a late lunch, and she's in the middle of her lessons. By the time she's free, I'm putting shots downrange under Sir Christoph's watch, or crossing blades with Alistair in the circle. I see her in passing at dinner, when I'm more wrung out than talkative, and the next day sees much the same pattern."

Your father paces around his desk, a firm block of mahogany he'd had imported from the western provinces. He comes to a stop in front of you, the two of you easily able to look each other in the eye with your almost identical heights. You had joked in the past that you'd be taller than your father, considering you had a few years left to grow, but by the look in his eye, that'd get you a smack rather than a laugh.

His grim look softens as he looks at you, before he nods, letting out a sigh as he sits in one of the chairs on your side.

"I know, and I have no one to blame but myself." At his gesture you join him, taking the seat just across. "You've been working hard, El, and I'm proud of your work. Charles tells me that you're a sure hand with machines, Christoph tells me he's never trained a better shot, and even the Help say you're always ready to give them a hand, whether to move something, or clear a table." You nod as he speaks, until he cracks a grin at you. "Though, the head chef does request I bar you from the kitchens again. He doesn't know how you managed to set oatmeal on fire, but he's not eager to find out."

You both break out laughing at that, but it ends quickly. There is gravity to your father's next words.

"I can't let your little adventure go unpunished, however. You've done the crime, and I know you'll do the time." He stands up and leads you over to a map of the continent, the singular large landmass on the surface of Freierhalt. "I'm half tempted to give you a mission and send you on the next convoy to the Inner Sphere, let you see the universe beyond Freierhalt. but somehow I half expect you'd leave them, roll the dice, and come home a hardened merc with a 'Mech and a will to change the galaxy." You hear the joke, but your father's tone isn't quite jovial. "Or be left for dead in a Lyran alley for trying to protect someone."

He takes a breath, before he taps on the map, east of the keep. "Instead, I'm going to make a bit of a show of it. Visitors are coming tomorrow, discussing business. You won't be here. Take another man, Alistair perhaps, and ride for the eastern border. Some of the Sheriffs have been reporting excess hunting, poaching, that sort of thing. I want you to head over there, conduct a search, and either tell the hunters they need to stop, or tell Gladwell's people to get back on their side of the border before I have to send a detachment to guard it.

Ride there, and if I don't see you for a few days, I'll consider the matter settled, Fair?" He offers his hand, as he had at the end of every transaction you'd seen him argue.

You nod your head, taking the hand. "When do you want me to head out?"

"Tomorrow morning. Spend the night in your own bed, and then get some equipment from the armory, rations, and get on your way. Good night, Elric."

You take the dismissal for what it is and give your father a deeper bow before you leave the room.

Dinner was soon, and if you had dehydrated soup, hardtack, and jerky to look forward to, you'd better eat your fill tonight.

~~~

Come the morning, you enjoy a hearty breakfast, then seek out your old friend, Alistair.

A tall young man, he's got the same intense eyes as his father, and a tightness to his jaw that comes from trying to match him in the yard. He's a good man, brave, strong, and apparently eager to help young women with their projects.

You'd give him shit for that on the ride to the border.

You had briefly considered Fred in his stead, but with the shop growing only busier as the summer kicks in and more vehicles experience small failures that require a tech's attention, it would be better to leave him and his father be.

You find Alistair exactly where you expect to, in the yard, a blunted tourney sword in his hand, and judging by the chalk marks on the dummy and the wet paint on the edge of his sword, he's working on his precision today. You almost feel bad enlisting him without notice, but your father had told you to take a man, and named Alistair by name.

Still, you are not without pity, and let him go through his routine at least once, watching as he leaves clean red lines across his chalk marks as he swings, save for a blow that would have broken someone's neck if it didn't open it like a waterfall, where his edge alignment fails him, and he ends up with a broad swath of red where he wanted a firm line.

"Alistair." You say from behind him, before he reapplies his paint, and he turns to look at you, brow raised.

"Elric. You don't train in the mornings." Factual, and you're not surprised he noticed it. "Do you need something of me?"

"I do. I've been ordered to ride for the Eastern Border to deal with a poaching situation and to help the Sheriffs there. My father told me to pick a man, and that's you." He considers your words for a moment, and then nods, as serious at rest as his father was marching between rows of drill-practicing soldiers.

"Very well, I will get my kit from my room. Any specifics?" Always mission oriented. You hoped you'd break him from that in a few years, lest he go too far down the public perception of his father.

"I'll be grabbing my rifle, standard rations for a week trip. Grab what you think you need, use my father's name if you have to, but I expect we'll be gone as soon as you get back and we can get the horses ready."

"I'll see you at the stables then, Master Elric." He dips his head in request, and you return it, the dismissal seeing him hurry away, an oiled rag cleaning off his tourney blade before he sets it on a rack, heading for his room.

For your part, you head into the armory, and grab a familiar bolt-action rifle from where it sits, the action smooth as you pop it and pull it back, the chamber clean and the action smooth.

When the Air-gun had gotten too small, this had been put into your hands, and whenever you took to the range, was never far from your reach. You grabbed a few other things, including a small buckler and a single edged long-knife, just in case, and filled out the ledger that the trooper manning the desk handed you.

Your father had insisted that well kept books were at the forefront of modern living, and you had to agree. It was a lot easier to find something if you knew who to go harass ask about it.

With the rifle slung over the back of your long coat, and your knife and buckler tied to your belt. You felt properly equipped and made for the stables to ready the horses.

It would be a long ride, but you'd be there well before sunset if you rode well.

---

When you arrive at the border, the first thing you do is go looking for one of your Father's sheriffs, trusted men-at-arms that enforce his will in the distant reaches of the territory.

You find the first of them at their depot, clearly broadcasting who they are with the common five-pointed star and painted word on the pale sign. You might be concerned about the man carrying a repeater so casually, but you've been told that Sheriffs become interesting people if they've been at it long enough.

"'Lo there! I see you're coming from the Keep way." His accent is odd, but no stranger than those you've heard from around the continent. "I'm Sheriff Rutlige, sworn to lord Gawain. How can I help you, sirs?"

You dip your head to the man, out of respect for his long service, and introduce yourself. "I am Elric of House Gawain, and this is Alistair, my bodyman. My father sent me to see about some poaching that's been going on. Could you explain anything more about that?"

The mustached man nods slowly, letting the repeater droop a little straighter towards the forest floor. "Yes, sir. Me and my fellow sheriffs have been finding a spot of damaged skins around the place, too clean to have been done by an animal and left behind too, and enough organs and bones to make a mighty number of stews if you know how. There's no doubt about it, someone's poaching the Lord Gawain's forests, and I don't like it one bit."

"Well, my father appreciates your zeal. Could you lead us to the freshest one of these kills you've found, just to make sure that everything is as you say." You don't want to offend the man, and between clean cuts and leaving the organs behind, you don't doubt something is afoot here, so even if it just takes you a few days, you'll see it corrected.

"Mhm hm, right this way, Master Elric." The lawman mounts his own horse, an old grey gelding, and the three of you start for the forest.

You follow the sheriff into the woods, having to dismount about halfway to the site due to how thick the brush gets above head height, and you spend a fair bit of the journey cursing your height as your hair snags on little branches and brambles a time or two, but eventually you do reach the small clearing.

Almost instantly you see what the Sheriff meant, where the heads of three deer, antlers still attached, have been left to rot, a small pit having been dug and the organs, heart, liver, and guts, had been dumped into.

"After the meat, and not much else as far as I can tell." Comes the commentary from the sheriff, and you dutifully log it away, looking over the marks around the spot. Crimson mud near the edge gives away where they bled the animals rather recently, but it's begun to dry, and there are still a few short lengths of rope hanging from the overhead branch.

You wonder if a hunter wouldn't have just bagged the entire buck and brought it home to do all this work, rather than have to do it in the dim light and mud of this small clearing.

Your father disliked poachers, but he was maybe more than fair with hunters that claimed they had gotten a little lost and hunted where they shouldn't. The meat, a blow upside the head, and the warning were the price of that in most cases.

Hell, the reason why your father didn't allow hunting this close to the border was because of how severe Gladwell and Ginenet were with poachers. Hands were lost across the border, and that was a messy business.

"Elric, come here." Alistair's quiet voice was laconic, and you were quick to join your friend as he pushed aside the broad leaves of an ankle high plant. There, imprinted in the mud, was a boot print, and judging by its depth, under heavy load. "Reminds me of the marches in the rain, back home, when we had to wear full kit and our rucksacks."

You nod, seeing the same signs. "And if I'm not mistaken, it's pointing away from here, towards the Gladwell border." You mull it over for a moment, your gaze shifting back towards the haphazard butcher block made of a rotting stump. "This man was leaving, likely with the meat, but three bucks worth is a lot of weight. Look further afield for a moment."

It doesn't take long to find more tracks, and Alistair finds another set, parallel and also heading away. "More than two, three I think."

"Three men, crude butchery. Heavy step." You recount the details the two of you had found, and you didn't like the picture it painted. You imagine you can see more bootprints into the distance and can only see them heading further east into unfamiliar lands. "Sheriff, the border is cut away properly, correct?"

"Yes, Sir. Every Spring we go in and cull any saplings in that twenty-foot span. We try to clear any fallen logs or anything, and we make sure it's real clear where the border between Laoricia and Mulstadia is."

You don't like this, and something in your head says it's more than just poaching.

The three of you return to your horses, and start to circle around the forest, until you reach a line back along your imagined path for the poachers. You and Alistair search again, the Sheriff staying horsebound with his repeater watching your backs, and soon enough you find the trail again.

It heads deeper into the woods, and as you follow it, periodically dismounting to reacquire the trail, you're forced to come to a complete stop when you hit the River Gibson, only a short way off from where it joins up with the River Selinus.

You have to make the call, the river is in your lands, you know that, but if you follow these tracks, you don't know whether it'll be a band of robbers, deserters, or the beginnings of something worse.

You choose to…

>Throw the die.

>+Send the Sheriff back to muster the Militia and contact your father, just in case.

"Sheriff Rutlige, I want you to ride back to your depot and send a man to the local towns and another to my father. Rally the Militia just in case and tell my father that we've found signs that this is more than just poachers." Your voice is steady, your command heard.

"I'll see it done, Master Elric. You be careful now, son, and you make sure he gets back in one piece." He turns to leave with a jangle of his spurs. "Ride hard, boys."

You give him a small wave, before you and Alistair pick your feet, and your horses cross the river.

The tracks continue further inland than you expected, or perhaps the river had simply washed away those closer to it, and you continue your hunt.

You head further north, the tracks veering that way very suddenly, and you are well aware that you are nearing the border into the Ginenet lands. Perhaps you have a chance if you are found by claiming to hunt poachers that have strayed from your own lands, but if they remember that old slight you'd never intended, they might take more than a little offense.

Either way, your duo moves along the tracks, taking care not to move too fast and lose the trail.

Soon enough you find a tall hill, trees studding the top of it, that should overlook a fair bit of the nearby area. You leave your horses at the bottom of it, the mounts well trained enough to not wander far even as you leave them untied.

You and Alistair creep to the top of the hill, keeping to the shadows of the trees just in case, and go silent as you reach the top, and spy the source of the foot prints below.

Spoiler: A foreign military, on your lands?

A Military camp and judging from the quality of the tents and horses, either wealthy deserters, or house-backed troops. There must be a hundred here, and you can just make out the smell of fresh meat cooking over fires, where soldiers turn over hocks or stir pots full of soup or something.

If you're not wrong, you haven't hit the border quite yet, even if it feels like you traveled farther because of the sudden change in direction, so these bastards are on your land.

You share a glance with Alistair, and he returns your look, face tight. Quietly the two of you back down the hill, and you lean in close to whisper.

"I need you to ride for the Sheriff and our fathers. Tell them what we've found, and make sure they are ready. An invasion has already begun, and we didn't even know. I'll stay for a little while longer, see what I can see, but I need you to go, now."

"Elric." He says just your name, plainly trying to dissuade you, but at your stare, he relents. "I will see you again."

Your friend takes off, and you are soon left alone at the top of the hill, with an enemy army at your fore.

Is this how you felt, Grandfather?

You think about that for a moment, before you pull a spyglass from your bag, keeping your rifle close and ready, and start to examine the camp in more detail.

~

The sentries on the camp are blissfully unaware as you look through your glass, careful to keep back from the sun as it slowly shifts the light to keep it from glinting too strongly off your spyglass.

You spy a number of mounted riders, lighter armored compared to the footmen, so they must be scouts, but you can't quite make out any sigils or banners of who these soldiers belong to.

~

You look through your glass for another pass, and this time, you see a man in better armor, a knight if you had to guess, and the coat he wears features a most interesting banner. A white lizard on a field of red, his own sigil you imagine, but quartered on it is one you recognize fairly well.

That white bird on yellow belongs to House Ginenet, and with that knowledge safely in hand, you have a name, a number, and a direction. You collapse your scope, tucking it back into your bag, and start down the hill, and notice that one of the sentries is moving towards his horse, glancing back at your hill as he goes.

You've been spotted but not yet found.

> You've got a small chunk of the armor you tested, you can leave it behind and make him think it was just a trick of the light off the metal.

You find a good angle for the chuck of armor, putting it just where the sun had passed over it to sell the effect and make for your horse. You decide that speed is the better part of stealth, and despite that you are just getting in your saddle as you hear the sentry reach the top of the hill.

The man is loud as he dismounts, the metal plates of his armor banging against each other as he reaches where you were a minute earlier, and for a moment you hope that's the end of his search.

You'd almost made it back to the treeline, safe from searching eyes, when the man stumbles over the last branch, and goes from annoyed that he came over here for a shiny rock, to suddenly very, very alert.

"We got a spy!" He shouts, and you hear the ruckus as a few of his fellows hear his call, going for their own horses even from the opposite side of the hill.

> Ride hard boy!

With a kick to your Pinto's flanks, you are off like lightning, even as you hear the sentries start to form up behind you.

It's a near thing, but you do manage to stay ahead of them, knowing the terrain better than they do thanks to your long search for their damned bootsteps, and start heading back towards the sheriff's depot.

Your memory fails you as to where the nearest town is, but you think it was further south along the border, serving as a spot where trade between Gladwell and your family's people could be done.

~

As you continue your spirited gallop through the woods, you hear cries of alarm and direction behind you, and then you hear a horse scream as it falls for a rotten log, its hoof slamming straight through the top and the ragged surface sticking in its skin like a damned punji trap as it falls.

That's one of your pursuers down, and you know the last one is probably going to break off to help his fellow, so that leaves you with two.

~

You wrap around a tree, using it to break line of sight, and give a kick to make your horse run that touch faster, your Pinto running for both your lives, even as you hear the thunder of more hooves behind you.

You turn an eye behind just in time to flatten yourself to your horses back, as a revolver cracks into the trees ahead of you, sending your ears ringing and your flight flighting.

Damned sentries, you just need to keep going.

---

You lead those sentries on a merry chase, bobbing and weaving through the forest, sure you're heading south but not quite how, and even as you thunder across a river you just keep on running.

You're damn near out of breath yourself as you hear the sound of their hooves die away behind you, their shouts lost as you open the distance between you. You keep up the pace for a few more minutes, before your horse starts to slow of her own volition, exhausted by your wild ride. You lean down, pressing your forehead against her neck, and give her a pat on the side of it, whispering your thanks, even as you start to look around.

It takes you a moment, even looking at the forest around you as you are, but between broken trees and vine-sheets that conceal much, you spy a structure lost to time. An old warehouse, clearly overgrown now.

You don't recognize the sigil that's on it off the top of your head, but you can't think of any family around here, or ever on Freierhalt that used a shark or fish. Either way, its a good place to hide out of sight until you catch your breath and can make your way back to the depot, and your father. Slipping from your saddle you move to investigate.

The bigger door itself is tall, very tall, and barely hanging on the hinges with a good dent right about the people's door, but its been almost wedged shut in return. You head on over to the personnel door, and all it takes is a good pull of your arm to see you holding the rusted-out handle of the door, while a firm push on the door itself sees it drift open.

You creep on inside, where nothing but pitch black remains except where the suns beam cut through torn holes in the roof. In that contrarian light, you can just make out boxes of somekind, and all it takes is a stubbed toe and a muffled curse to realize they're made of metal. The pain makes you remember your bag, and in a moment you pull a lantern from it, and all it takes is a twist of the power selector to see a gentle blue light emit from it, giving you a decent means of seeing whats in-

What.

Sitting like a noble king on his throne, you see a titan of Metal and Myomer collapsed unto a mountain of the steel boxes.

That's a 'Mech.

And as you get closer, you start to realize that it's not just any 'Mech.

You recognize that lion emblem, half burned away on its white chest. You know that gun, even blasted clean apart like a shot had ripped down its barrel in a perfect sniper-scope fashion.

Spoiler: It was damaged, it was maimed, but you knew this machine.

You know that white and blue sigil, almost burned from the shield over its shoulder.

And you see a figure, wearing a bulky vest and a full helmet, laying on their belly at its feet, a circle of rusty red long dried around them.

000

As the Black Knight stumbled through the woods, the pain was starting to get to him, even as a chill ran across his skin despite the heat that should have him sweating up a storm under his cooling vest. The only source of heat he felt was steadily dripping down his leg, and he didn't care for how it had started to pool just under the plate covering his stomach. He tried to ignore that iron-rich smell of blood cooking around him, but the smoke from the burned out comm-array was doing him no favors as his breathing grew heavier despite the filters in his helmet working as hard as they could.

The ambush had been unexpected, and purely an attack of convenience. Arthur had been a fool, taking only the family 'Mech without an escort of his knights because of how far the rally point was for the southern hemisphere, and he'd paid for it.

A half dozen tanks had felt his wrath, and he'd crippled that fucking Warhammer, It would take months for their techs to put it back together, but all it took was a jolt running up the leg of the Black Knight to send a phantom twitch through his body and shift the shard of blue tinted canopy that had peppered him in its dying breath- machinegun rounds sending razor sharp ferroglass ripping into his thighs and stomach- to make him reconsider the trade.

Worse still, a pyrrhic victory was no victory at all, and the bastards that had attacked him would be sure to sweep away the Black Knight if they got the chance. He broke through another thick canopy, and in a moment's clarity, spotted a building large enough to house his 'Mech when it was standing. A fish or something on the front of it, but Arthur had to blink away spots that were forming in his vision, phantom burned hand pulling back from the stick to press hard against his vest.

He'd get inside, find a spot to place it down and get out of this coffin. Focus was getting harder as he ripped open the metal door, his metal fingers leaving an indent the size of a man as he pulled it aside, slamming it back closed hard enough to jolt the door off its rails. He tried to walk forward, but his neuroactivity was starting to spike and he felt the Knight obey him all too readily, its own hand falling to its abdomen in a sympathetic expression, turning his walk into a limping stumble, the careful curation of thought and movement lost in the haze of blood loss and pain.

He saved himself from the jolt of impact by smashing a half dozen crates, metal by how they deformed under his left arm as he braced himself, before lurching upright to swing around on the balls of his feet, like his old fencing teacher had taught him, the move unbalancing the Knight but his skill holding just long enough to let him brace against his chair as the back hit metal, a shriek of distorting and tearing steel echoing off the walls of the warehouse and back through the holes in his cockpit.

His vision was starting to blur, he realized as he reached forward, trying to keep the torso of the Knight steady as he went through the shutdown procedures as fast as he could, and the tips of his fingers had gone numb at some point.

He'd get down, and he'd get himself patched up, and then he'd get home.

This was the mantra that he repeated as he opened the hatch, kicking down the rope ladder, and using the ping of the bars off of his neurohelmet to keep his focus in the now.

000

For a long moment, all you can do is stare, eyes darting between the body of your grandfather, and the damaged and wrecked 'Mech that felt as if it was looking down at you, regal and dismissive in equal measure, despite the fact it was all but collapsed on to a pile of steel crates, the exposed contents of which were equal parts old dirt and dust, and exposed metal covered in rust.

What do you do when you find your father's greatest wish? What do you do when you learn the final fate of your grandfather, the location of your family 'Mech?

Whatever the right answer to that was, you found your feet moving on their own, taking you closer to that armored corpse, the need to know how overriding your sense of shock.

He was little more than a skeleton under the synthetic cloth and armored plates of his equipment, but you note the sun kissed medkit, half open and with several items missing from it, either used in the distant past or stolen by the forest's creatures. The slot for a cauterization torch and the suture gun were both empty, while the remnants of the packaging for compression bandages lie scattered in the dirt covering the floor.

When you rolled your grandfather unto his back, you suppressed the gag and merely recoiled back as his forearms were left behind gloves and all. The flesh holding everything together had long rotted away, taking with it much of the clothes he had worn under his armored cooling vest, itself hinged open on one side. The armored plates of it had clearly seen better days, the faded green covered in scratches, burns, and patches, while around his gut, several deep punctures that led away with dark flows signal bad wounds.

With a hand covering your mouth, you grab the plate and pull it aside and find almost exactly what you expected. His skeleton had already started to fossilize, leaving bone under the tattered remains of clothing, leaving it hard to tell what exactly had killed your grandfather, save for the shards of blue glass that dotted the floor around him, and a chunk long as your thumb that was stuck in right under his ribs.

You spared a glance at the cooling tubes that ran under the armored plates, and were relieved to find them all intact. Master Burrel had warned you of what happened if you mingled blood and coolant, and you were sure it wasn't a pretty sight, exaggerated or not.

You may not have known this man half as well as you should have, but he didn't deserve to die like that.

With grit teeth and pursed lips, you reached down around the seal of his neurohelmet and, with surprising ease, found a small latch that connected it to the vests' spinal support. You carefully pulled it away, leaving behind the dirt worn skull that you helped to softly rest against the ground. It made a morbid sight, staring into the very face of death, and you find yourself with head bowed and making the sign of the cross almost automatically.

Helmet in hand, you started to stand, your intention to investigate the machine your father could never let go, when you noticed something you had missed in your initial look over of his body.

Carefully pulling aside the glove that covered it, you picked up a small device, little more than a screen and a few buttons on the side. You press each button in sequence, watching as first nothing happens despite the affirmative clicks, until you press one much further than the others, the small screen coming to life, and a voice filling the empty warehouse like a ghost's echo.

"I'm recording this-" A wet cough sounds from the minicorder but clears away quickly. "-eh, as I flee from an ambush, I-I got quite a few of their tanks, and I disabled the enemy 'Mech, but- hah, that hurts. I may be done for." You hear plinking, like liquid hitting metal, along with wet swallows in the background of the recording.

"The first PPC shot fried my comms, so I couldn't call for help even if I wanted to. That damn Warhammer, but I got him back, blew out his SRM bins, but his last shots were with his Machine Guns. Started blowing holes in my Ferroglass, and now I've got a shard of the stuff stuck where a kidney is supposed to be." His breathing is getting heavier, but the man is pushing through even as you listen in horror. "I hope that George finds this, but God if I know how. You'll already be lord if I don't somehow make it back, so I won't tell you to do a good job, 'cause I know you'll do it, son."

You listen in entranced silence for several minutes, your Grandfather's muttering curses for the enemy that attacked him breaking up as you hear trees crack, and then the sound of metal giving way.

"I've found a warehouse, sh-shark on the door." His words come in short bursts, his breath shallow. "I'm going to try and put the Knight down gently, but I need out of this cockpit, the smoke is making it hard to breathe even with my helmet's filters. I'll grab my medkit, try to patch myself up in the fresh air.

If you find this, George, look under my chair, there's a pad there. The white bar, give it a drink, and you'll know what to do next." A heavy swallow, and a hiss of air, are followed by what may be your grandfather's last words. "This is Arthur, Lord Gawain, signing off."

You sit there for a moment longer, the recording device dead in your hands, your thoughts racing over the exact words of your grandfather.

A Warhammer.

 

[Lord Of Flames]

Despite their commonality in the Inner Sphere, a Warhammer was rarely spotted in pirate bands, owing mostly to the popularity of the 'Mech, and how many Mercs and Militia commanders would love to find themselves with one of Starcorp's most successful products.

That was not to say that the Pirates that often-raided Freirehalt did not field heavier mechs, but the raid that your grandfather fell in lacked another key part of his testimony. From the reports and the boasts of the other houses that fought off the raiders, there was no armor fielded by the pirate band during that attack, meaning that it couldn't have been them that brought low the Black Knight.

But with the image of their silver eagle on yellow fresh on your mind, and the invasion taking place in your own lands at this moment, it wasn't difficult for your thoughts to stray to foes far closer to home.

House Ginenet had been an upcoming house in the day of your grandfather, newly minted with a Warhammer that they'd claimed as salvage from a scout force before the main raider group had been thrown back into the black by the Nobles of the planet. They had been given honors and a land grant by their overlord House Gladwell, but with only their own skill and few sworn knights, it would have taken decades for them to reach greater heights, as well as the connections to truly thrive.

So then, why had Lord Gladwell tentatively betrothed his only daughter into the still new house all those years ago, if not as a reward for deeds unknown?

You didn't like the thought, but the more you twisted it in your mind, the more it made sense.

A newly minted vassal house cripples one of your nearby rivals, a thing due worthy reward, and a sure fire way to start a slow decline that may allow a less-bloody annexation of either land or vassalhood in a few years, especially when the loss of a heavy machine would also damage House Knightway's ability to resist such an action.

Only, your father proved a better lord in the aftermath than either may have expected.

You rouse yourself from your trance, and leaving behind your grandfather's body, start up towards the family 'Mech. The climb up the broken and smashed boxes strikes you as the opposite of your grandfather, many of these holds and panels likely the same he had thundered down from the cockpit rope ladder, that thin set of paired lines hidden in the dark until you finally strafe it with your lantern.

A glance from below had told you that this 'Mech was damaged, but the climb up only drove that home, as man-sized sections of armor were hanging on by a thread in places, the shape of the armor doing more to hold it on than the bonds of material, with the climb taking you far from the heat-scorched and razor sharp remnants of the PPC and its capacitor. You couldn't resist the urge to let your hand trail across the silver sword that still shone faintly on the blue plate set like a jousting shield over the left side shoulder, before pulling it back to finish your ascent.

There is a sense of scale to the machine that was almost impossible to visualize, the dozens of rungs below swaying in the stifled air of the warehouse as you carefully moved from bar to bar, pushing off of unmarked armor and joints to give you a little clearer path upwards, until you reach the arching collar of the Knight, your feet finally finding the embarkation steps painted over in the same color as the armor.

From there you can cautiously move around the panels, careful not to slip and fall the eight or nine meters that were sure to break bones, or worse still with the torn boxes down there. You finally reach the hatch hidden just behind the laser assembly, the door is still open from when the last pilot had evacuated.

The cockpit is a mess, but aside from the burned-out wreckage on the opposite side of the head, almost entirely intact. The ferroglass had been smashed, enough left standing to provide some protection, but more than one hole that let the light of your lamp beam on through.

You ignored the stain on the metal flooring that headed for the door, looking over the damaged section for a moment, but only long enough to acknowledge that you knew almost nothing about how to repair that. You hope to God that Master Charles survives so he could bring this priceless artifact returned to its proper condition.

'Smashed' would be another word you'd use to describe the cockpit, but at a glance and with a little knowledge, you're pretty sure that anything important to the control of the 'Mech is perfectly intact, if stained.

But you also know that your grandfather's placement of the 'Mech was anything but smooth, so you start to search in the area around his chair, under the dashboard and its dozens of switches and gauges, towards the back where smoke from burned out plastics and metals has turned into an acrid layer of grease on some of the metal.

The open exhausted, finally, you try the simple places, and you reached under the lone chair in the cockpit, patting around while being careful for any more shards of ferroglass that would open your gloves like a razor if you snagged them wrong.

At first nothing, then a rounded corner, then a blunted edge.

Adjusting your grip on what could only be the datapad, you tightened it slightly so you could pull it free, only to yank your hand back suddenly, a bead of blood leaking through the thumb of your glove and sending the pad skittering across the floor. You glanced at your hand, the sudden spike of pain already fading, and then at the datapad, where you watched a red stain spread over a white bar of felt set over the screen, before with a low blue light, the screen flashes on.

You see it flash with a series of words, numbers, and numerical codes you don't recognize, before it ends, leaving just a list of commands, or directories if you had to guess. With due concern, you carefully grab the datapad, glancing over the list, before you decide to start with the first item.

As it happens, your grandfather wasn't wrong when he said you'd know what to do, as the pad reveals itself to be the user manual for the Black Knight BL-6-KNT series BattleMech for use by the SLDF 25th Jaeger Battalion BattleMech Unit, assigned to one Captain Robert Gawain. It detailed the standard operating procedures of the 'Mech, with a warning that deviations due to attrition from stock or recommended components may result in reduced effectiveness, a variety of trivia and recommendations for the use of the BattleMech, and finally, a very simple checklist for standard power-up and system check operations.

Evidently, the engineers did not think highly of the Pilots that would control their machines.

The following entries went into greater detail about the armor composite, the effective heat-sinking ratio for weapon grouping, a firm warning to avoid firing the PPC at point-blank due to a tendency for a 'Particle Feedback Loop' to heavily damage not only the PPC, but the section of the BattleMech where it was located, and a reminder to have the comm unit and the sensor package of the Beagle Active Probe serviced together due to their linked nature.

You're not sure what that was exactly, but you imagine it was important a few hundred years ago.

It was a comprehensive package, but your eyes kept drifting towards the list of a dozen actions that would reignite the heart of this BattleMech, as well as bring its other systems online.

You decide that caution is the better part of valor, and an important part of preparing for valor. It is a squire's sworn duty to see the equipment of his knight is kept in good repair, so that he may be ready to use it in a moment's notice.

And your sense of duty tells you that even if the right is your father's, this machine needs a pilot, now, to stave off disaster.

So it is that you start to cross reference the datapad's worksheet and what the battery powered readouts are telling you, flipping them on for a moment to check and then flicking them back off. You don't know how much power the reservoir in this machine has left, but unless you can get the fusion engine working, you'll need every volt.

It doesn't take you long, feeding just drops of energy into the system to get the information, and when you conclude, you have the following.

The torsos took a beating, but the damage is spread out, a testament to your grandfather's skill and his opponent's lack of. There is some internal damage, stressed components, ruptured hydraulic lines, pinched myomer. The worst damage is easily to the right arm, where you don't need the readouts to tell that the PPC is destroyed.

Thankfully, the laser mounted under the Capacitor was left intact, but you imagine its point of aim has been jolted, but without the 'Mech online it's impossible to tell.

You are a moment away from sitting in the chair, when you suddenly hear a muffled shout through the broken glass of the cockpit, and looking down at the ground you can see shadows dancing at the door you came through and jarred back shut.

"There's the bastard's horse. He must be inside! We'll wait for the others, Two of us will stay out here just in case, but the other four will go in and gut the spy before he can get back to his lord."

Through the cracks in the ferroglass canopy you can see more shadows move, but the barrier the door posed wouldn't last long, and would be as much a deterrent as a beagle against a hungry bear.

BattleMechs run hot, you knew that from the demonstration with Charles, but the Black Knight by its specs should run cool enough to fire any single weapon comfortably, even without a cooling vest to keep you from baking like a chicken in an oven. You cursed yourself for not grabbing it, before you told yourself it was a promise to come back for him, rather than leave his bones in this damned ruined shack.

With only minutes before their assault was sure to come, you stripped off your long jacket, throwing it over the pilot seat, rolled up your sleeves, and got to work.

Flip this switch, check over those gauges, thumb the heatsink purge and give it a quick press to stir them to life, flip on the battery power for the targeting system and comm array on, torso weapon capacitors open, skip the PPC and ready the laser on the right arm, prime the left.

Your head is spinning as you dart around panels for the right switches in the right order, and you hear a low thrum fill the cockpit as you hit the switch for the head-mounted medium laser, the heat shooting up to a hot summer day inside the metal box that surrounded you.

The startup sequence has you start the activation of the engine before you connect to the machine, but without a proper link it will automatically disengage after just a few minutes.

But it should be enough time to finish the procedure.

You spare a glance at the neurohelmet you'd taken off the body below, and with desperation rip out the lining from inside, turned a muddy black and smelling like a great deal of terrible things as you throw it back through the hatch, sealing it shut as the cloth and foam fall. You pull the helmet over your head, nose still stifled by the lingering odor, and look through the tinted glass as you grab the connector from the back of the pilot seat, plugging it into the port at the back.

A few more buttons, a few more switches, and as you hit the final button, you hear the butting of a shoulder against the door just under the spool of the fusion engine, and you know you are out of time.

In the small screen set in the middle of the cockpit, a question flashes, asking for the code phrase for final neural handshake. This wasn't in the user manual, and you rack your memory as you hear the banging get louder, trying to think of what it wants.

Perhaps a code, or a phrase in the book that you missed, or something closer to home?

"25th Jaegers." You try, wondering if the engineers thought so little they'd just put the unit name as the password to be changed later, and when nothing happens, you move on.

"Black Knight." No, not its name.

"1,2,3,4." You feel stupid even trying.

The clock ticks slower as you try password after password, the shutdown for the engine growing ever closer as the banging on the door has started to yield fresh holes for light to come through. Did they grab axes?

Running out of ideas, you try a phrase your father said once, after you asked him about some of the old equipment in the armory. His eyes had grown distant for a moment, remembering something, and he'd said…

"Old Iron Never Rusts." You say the old, twisted proverb, hoping you've gotten it right at last. The screen blinks one last time and then dims.

For a moment, you think you've failed.

But then you hear the voice that every MechWarrior has heard, in one language or another.

"Reactor Online, Sensors Online, Weapons Online, all systems nominal."

And then you still as feedback runs through the neurohelmet, your skin feeling cold as a shiver runs up your spine, phantom pains running through you where the armor has been heavily damaged, while power thrums in your chest, the fusion engine pulsing under you like the beat of a heart.

You feel mighty.

You brace yourself in the chair, feeling too small for its oversized frame, and a glance down at the center readout is flashing an alarm about your lack of cooling vest and not being connected into the flush circuit.

You give a shake of your head as you try and reconcile the information, eye's screwed tight, and like a ringing in your ears, it starts to vanish. When next you open them, your senses feel expanded, but not so savagely crushed under new previously unexperienced data.

Master Burrel had said that the first time you connect to a 'Mech was the roughest, your senses overwhelmed with the feedback of data and visual feeds that the sensor system tries to inform you all at once. He would be one of the few left in the holding that knew, having been there when your father had first tried piloting the Knight, but while the jolt was there, you don't feel nauseated, and you think hard of lifting your right arm, your muscles flexing under your sleeves as you keep it in place.

Sure enough, you see the right arm of the Black Knight rise from where its rested for twenty years, slowly turning it over as the door at the wall's base finally collapses in on itself.

You watch as four of the Ginenet outriders storm into the room, axes and guns in hand, and they quickly start to fan out, looking for you, before one of them turns and notices the body on the floor. How they miss the thrum and the sound of cooling fans echoing in the warehouse, you'll chalk up to anger and adrenaline, but that one scout is bothering you.

He makes a gesture to his coat to the others, one of his buddies shaking their heads in disgust, and you feel anger rise in you as he gets closer to your grandfather's remains.

No, they have taken enough.

You slowly brace the hands of the black knight against the steel crates they've rested against, and start to rise, trying to give a forward lean to the torso and head as you make your attempt to stand.

For a moment, you think it's going to work.

And then the pile of crates your left hand is on starts to crush and deform, causing you to lose your balance and sending you forward much faster than you intended. Your panicked movement sees your right hand, and the shattered barrel of the PPC slam into the ground next to your Grandfather's body, thankfully not directly on top, leaving his skeleton jarred, but intact.

The same cannot be said of the outrider that had wandered too close to the 'Mech, a stack of crates falling almost on top of him with a crunch that tells you something is broken.

"Oh Fuck!" You hear from below, where the other outriders have started to back up in fear, some of them literally scrambling back on their hands and asses to get away after you've shocked them. In your mind's eye, you find that the 'Mech has settled into a pose not unlike a sprinter preparing for a race, your feet braced back while your hands keep you looming over the bastards.

You tilt the head of the Black Knight up, just enough to get them a good glint of the broken blue ferroglass, and the ready-to-fire lens of your head-mounted laser.

That makes them freeze, and you slowly start to rise, flashing the floodlights that sit where your collar bones would be in warning, sending the three running for their lives.

With difficulty you hadn't expected, you start to rise properly, slowly dragging your feet under you and feeling like a toddler all over again as you stand shakily, before the gyroscope starts to function properly, and you feel a tension set in your legs to keep them mostly upright.

You hope that was the hard-part, because now you have to walk.

~

What the outriders see, and what you see, are two very different things.

They see a titan of crimson metal with an undaunted Lion on the chestplate burst through the warehouse door, an angry revenant that will kill them for violating the resting place of its master, like something out of a fairy tale or a horror story that mercs tell each other around campfires.

You go forward way too fast, and use the door to try and catch yourself, your fingers trying desperately to stay on the sticks even as you try to splay fingers to keep from ramming your fists into the soft dirt. It works, and you even stay standing after a moment, quickly rising back up to the tallest thing in a league, and seeing your targets gobs wide open and fear in their eyes.

These men would have killed you if they caught you. They would have killed you if you hadn't found this warehouse. They would have killed you if you hadn't found this Mech.

So, with that in mind, You'll return the favor.

The targeting system of the Black Knight is simple enough, a downward V is squashed to make up your torso firing arcs, little circles filling the hollow letter to show where each is intended to hit, while your arms are two separate circles, marked on the proper side with a triangle to make sure you know which trigger to pull, a third in the same style for the head.

You line up two of the lasers, Your head glaring down at the party of three desperately trying to mount their horses, and your right arm's medium pointed at the stunned pair of riders that had waited outside.

And then you fire.

In a moment, you can feel the difference between what Charles had shown you, and what a proper laser powered by something like a miniature star does to a target. In a moment, Man, Horse, armor, everything in a meter-wide swath of space is reduced to ashes, the grass at the edge of the strike zone bristling in the heat before it catches fire. On the opposite side, the other riders realize the peril and turn their horses quickly, working them into a lather to try and escape you, but you are faster on the draw.

A pull of the trigger has a burst of emerald light spring from under your right forearm, off target by a yard up and left, but you drag the beam of light back onto your target, leaving a long line of burnt ash and forestation as you cleave the horsemen in two, before their bodies are consumed by the burst of power and heat.

That makes six men dead by your hand today, but you feel nothing, aside from a sense of accomplishment, joy even. This was how you were meant to fight.

Still, your gaze turns back to the warehouse.

~

You make your decision, turning back through the savaged door you'd broken open, and come to a halt some distance away from the body of your grandfather. It's more difficult than you expect to make the Black Knight kneel, but you manage it, bracing a hand spread wide to stabilize it, and kill your link to the machine.

It feels like you've dipped your skin in ice for a moment, a numb sensation that quickly fades as you get to your feet. You grab your long coat off the pilot's chair, pulling it over one shoulder, and head below.

You descend the rope ladder with a weariness, and come to one knee beside your grandfather once more, this time your head bowed in prayer.

You can almost imagine the life you'd have had with this man, from the stories you've heard, the genuine love his people seemed to have for him, even the rare glimpse of the young man your father had been before disaster had taken his father from him.

It would have been a life of laughs and love, of hearing stories while you were bounced on his knee, of joy rides on his lap as he took you around in the Black Knight.

You look at the pile of bones and fond hopes and wishes, and you feel your triumphant joy turn bitter in your mouth.

"I know what I must do, and I am sorry Grandfather. I will bring you home, but right now, Home needs me, and it needs the Knight." You are whispering your plea to a dead man, but it doesn't matter, it needs to be said. "I wish I didn't have to… desecrate you like this, but the Warhammer that killed you, might well be burning our home right now."

You shake your head, the image painful. "So, I ask your forgiveness, as the grandson you never knew. God keep you, Arthur Gawain, and know that I will bring your bones to the family yard myself when I have finished my task."

There is no response, but you feel something shift in the air, and as you carefully pull bone and cloth from the cooling vest, you place them on to your long coat, laid out for this very purpose. It is no burial shawl, but when you finish, you run out to your horse, finding it having moved just around the corner from where you left it, your supplies untouched by the scouts, and pull free a thick blanket intended for wilderness camping.

Your unease vanishes as you lay it over Arthur's remains, his bones protected from the elements, ready for you to come back for them.

You spare a glance around the warehouse one last time, looking at the damaged boxes, and the several dozen that remain intact, their seals whole. You would be back, for your grandfather, and whatever this place held in its prime.

The vest is heavy and broad, intended for a strong man to wear it. You may not be that yet, but you will change with time, and the straps that tighten it are enough to make it fit almost properly. Your ascent to the cockpit is different than before, thanks to you not having to kick off the 'Mech every few feet, and soon you're back in the cockpit, the hatch sealing tight behind you, and back in the pilot seat.

It's a moment's additional work to attach the hoses that lead from the chair directly to the vest, the larger tubes around the shoulders the main reservoir for the network that crosses your chest, and as you stir the 'Mech back to life, the connection reforming, you feel a shot of cold wrap around your ribs, pressed down by the heavy armor overtop.

Now, you were ready.

> Raise hell as you move west, attack their columns, shatter their tanks, and make your challenge clear.

Your hunt for the enemy troops was not going as well as you would have hoped. You found a great deal of infantry, rearguard forces that vanished quickly in the face of a BattleMech, either through force or fear, but none of the enemy combat vehicles.

It was driving you mad, until you started to hear the repetitious crack of a repeater in the distance, soon joined by automatic fire. The sensor system on a BattleMech is impressive, and with a constant supply of data, the computer is able to isolate a source vector for it, or at least a general idea.

It is not the only sound you pick up as you close the distance, your earlier stumbling giving way to a walking pace that is stilted but effective, not quite as fluid as a sporty teenager perhaps but better than a toddler drunkenly wobbling from table to table.

You slow your pace slightly as you near, picking up a sound that your computer helpfully identifies as missile fire, sounding like a hoard of angry bees being launched out of an automatic rifle to your ears, but the repeater continues to fire, soon joined by other personal arms as whoever is giving the Ginenet invaders a right fight.

You circle around to where you believe the missile fire is coming from, and start to approach it through a small break in the woods just big enough to fit your 'Mech, and find yourself in perfect position.

You have outflanked the Combat Vehicles, consisting of two Long-Ranged-Missle carriers, and a trio of Scorpion tanks. The Infantry support is largely meaningless, considering that you don't identify a single short-ranged-missile launcher or similiar weapon among them.

They had not come loaded for BattleMech, and now you'd show them the consequences of that.

---

What you didn't expect was to blindly miss the first LRM carrier, your momentum carrying you into a punting kick of the opposite carrier, sending the LRM flying into the middle of its tank group.

Which, incidentally, is where it starts to cook off its ammo, as the cheap Quikscell ammunition bins prove more hazardous than your lasers could have.

Infantry dive for cover as their own fire support seems to start landing among them, while the Scorpions are confused for a moment, before you enlighten them to the cause of their grief, via copious lasers into their rear armor.

The first tank stops dead, something in its engine just dying, while the second tank experiences a far more final death, your medium lasers burning deep into the hold of it and setting off volatile ammo, sending the turret sky high.

The Infantry, once the shower of LRMs has stopped, take one moment to look at you, before deciding that life is the better part of service, and running away.

The crew of the other LRM carrier opens a hatch to see what's going on, notices your giant boot beside it, and the gunner just closes the hatch.

The pair of Scorpions are stopped dead in their tracks, only one intentionally -the other through your lasers- and you can only imagine that their commanders are dithering over which dead-man gets to poke his head out to see what the hell is going on outside.

You wish they'd hurry up, you have places to be.

"I am feeling merciful. Abandon your vehicles, throw down your arms, and get in an orderly line, before I finish what I began." Your voice comes out as a distorted growl through the speakers, recognizably words but all the more sinister for the damage to the head.

It takes all of five seconds for them to make up their minds, as the Commanders of both Scorpions, one looking like he's just been inside a sauna for far too long, emerge waving white flags, while the LRM Carrier merely dismounts its crew, walking with their hands up as they pass under your smoking arm-laser.

You get them organized with a few barked commands, your authority unquestionable considering you are in a battlemech, and they are very much not.

It doesn't take long for your family's militia to return, still mounted on horseback, with a familiar sheriff leading them.

"I don't suppose it's Lord Arthur under there, is it?" The man's question is rhetorical, but it adds to the mystery of how long he's served if he recognizes this machine as his. "Would Master Elric happen to be piloting that mighty fine machine?"

You make the Knight nod its head. "I am, Sheriff Rutlige. I suggest you have some of your militia secure these vehicles. Their crews have surrendered and will need to be moved to the nearest town or lodge, lest they become prey to wild animals, the elements, or me." You lay on the growl for the prisoners, some of them paling further on your threat, and they all but help the Sheriff's deputies to get them sorted out.

"Well, I don't mind the additional weight, but you've got a long run ahead of you, son. I just got a message from the keep, and they say the enemy's got a BattleMech of their own in the field, and we don't got near enough to keep it back."

Well then.

The knowledge that the enemy had deployed a Battlemech, whether it was the Warhammer or not, did not fill you with confidence.

"Was it your scouts or lucky survivors that reported its presence?" You opted to ask instead, an eye straying to the display of your weapon's capacitors. All green, save for the blacked out PPC.

The Sheriff nodded his head towards a few of the riders he'd brought with him, now circling the bound tank crews. "Woodsmen finishing out their day, Master Elric. They managed to slip away unnoticed and get a pair of horses under them before they were spotted, but the Battlemech was accompanied by a few tanks, and they were heavy by their description of size and arms."

The follow up was obvious. "And the Battlemech itself?"

"Tall, though not as much as the Black Knight, and it lacked hands on either arm." And suddenly your fears are confirmed.

"Ginenet's Warhammer, then." You voiced, your mind trailing over what you knew of such a machine, which wasn't much.

A heavy 'Mech, set solidly in the middle range for its tonnage, with a pair of PPCs divided between the arms. Some kind of missile launcher on the shoulder, and machine guns for bloody fools caught in the open. You'd always heard they were only moderately armored, owing to the sheer number of weapons they mounted, and the spare heatsinks they needed to even approach managing both cannons at the same time.

With the heavy damage to your own armor, it took you a moment to cycle through the computer readouts, taking a worrying glance at the number of internal components that were flashing a citrus yellow, and the few that were shining a much deeper orange, before you found what you were looking for.

Going by the readout, over 3 tons of armor had been sheared off your 'Mech, the shroud over the basic doll a dull yellow virtually everywhere, leaving the playing field far more level than you liked to think.

Against a fresh Warhammer, its PPCs could strip off a ton and a half for every moment you spent under its irons, and by the time you got close enough to make it matter, you'd almost certainly have more than enough holes in your armor for its up-close weapons to exploit.

A problem for later, you think, your gaze wondering back to the captive tankers.

"Do you have the men to man these Vehicles, Sheriff?"

"I know a few far boys that can work a manual truck, Young Master." Nodding as he spoke, Rutlige called out a few names, a few of his riders coming forward for orders, where he quickly told them to gather specific men, and whatever volunteers they could find to make up the rest of the crews.

Two tanks were few, especially with one as light as a scorpion, and prone to issues as a Quikscell carrier, but you were pressed for options and you needed to blunt this invasion, find and kill the Warhammer, and keep too much damage from being done to the holding.

It was only an hour or two after noon, but you still had so much left to do.

> Head for Home, likely the destination of the enemy Warhammer, and force the issue now. If you manage to crack that nut, the rest should fall quickly.

It was becoming clearer to you that what Ginenet really needed to win this short war was your father's surrender, the inscrutable House Gawain capitulating would provide no end of prestige, and with such a vast wealth of territory controlled by your family, it would almost double the reach of Mulstadia and House Gladwell's power with it.

The family keep was fitted with stout walls, and protected by a large garrison kept in fighting shape by Sir Christoph's drills, and your father's investments, whatever they may be.

A traditional siege could last months, during which your forces would no doubt make them bleed for every inch of ground they took outside the walls, and countless amounts for every footstep if they ever managed to get over them.

Even modern tanks would only serve to annoy the walls for the most part, a dedicated assault needed to bring down a section and open up a large enough breach for their men, an assault that would be attacked at every step.

But with a BattleMech? Stone walls are mighty, but when they can simply be kicked down, they become less impressive, let alone be blasted apart at the extreme range of any weapon poised to defend them.

The ability to sortie would be useless against such a ranged foe, pumping lightning bolts into the gates and garages as they opened.

That left a simple arithmetic.

You were the only equal you had to the damned Warhammer. You had no chance to catch it, but that didn't mean you should leave it to stomp around your home and behave like a poor house guest.

"Marshal your riders and whatever crews you can assemble, Sheriff. Harass the enemy as much as you can and make them wish they had never crossed from their gods-forsaken homeland." You begin to order, the growling voice echoing from damaged speakers driving his men to obey a touch faster. You raise your right arm, the spiky remnants of the PPC running parallel to your pointing finger, leveled at the distant high hill, disguised as it was by the trees that rose to your mechs collarbone.

"I will bring the fight to the Warhammer and cut the head from this snake." You declare, confidence giving your voice a lighter touch. You angle the head of your 'Mech back down at your father's loyal man, dipping the chin-plate. "Fight well, Sheriff, and see that these bastards learn what happens when they press House Gawain."

Rutlige gives you a stiff nod, pressing a fist over his heart. "Fight well, Young Master, and show them that the Knight may be hurt, but that it's got plenty of bite left."

You straighten up before moving, starting off with a quick walk that turned into a stilted jog as you passed the burned out wrecks of the Scorpions, the Black Knight heading west for home.

---

Alistair's warning had come at a perfect time, your family's nearest knights rallying just before the enemy attack, leaving them ready to meet them with steel and shot.

The enemy attack is mostly infantry at first, bringing with them improvised siege engines and the rare tank, but they are matched step for step by your family's soldiers, meeting them at range with crisp, accurate rifle fire, and up close with well trained discipline.

Still, it is merely a stalemate, as House Ginenet's forces are slowly pushing your own back to the walls of the Keep, damage starting to mark the walls.

But a reprieve is bought by years of preparation, your father's investments showing as stony plinths set out in the clearings opened up to reveal car-sized turrets, machine guns cutting out into the enemy formations and sending them to the ground in bloody chunks or scared shivering.

~

Atop the walls of the keep, Alistair ducked as he saw the glint of a sniper scope, the shot cutting through the air where his head had been a moment before. He quickly leaned back up, his own long-gun fitting into the slot in the wall as he pointed it back to where he'd seen the light, eye searching for the bastard to give it a second try.

Beside him, his ears rang with the crack of rifles, a dozen other men on this section of wall, firing at targets as they poked their heads out, or just to keep them honest by punching a fist sized chunk out of whatever tree or stump they were using for cover.

He pulled the trigger as he brought his sights over that distant rock, just a blink after the scope had caught the light again, and gave a grunted curse as he dipped down to work the action, his bullet turned into a shower of lead and copper as it hit just below where he was aiming.

Where was Elric when you needed him?

He had hurried back as fast as he could ride at the Heir's instruction, his race through the gate causing a minor stir, even as he shouted that he needed to get to Lord Gawain.

He'd found the man silently fuming in his study, upset about something and with a glass of whiskey in his hand, and stopped with his hands on the man's desk, taking just a moment to catch his breath before he'd explained what they'd found out on the eastern border, and the men that were clearly assembling for war.

No notice had been given, no offer for capitulation sent, this was to be bloody was the quiet realization. Without declared cause, the rules of war between the houses were called into question and going by the sound of mortars firing into the courtyard and buildings behind him, the enemy weren't terribly worried about them either.

He grit his teeth as he dipped his head back down, a shower of rubble and rocks bouncing off of his helmet as a shell hit the tower a dozen feet away from him, anger making him pop up faster and send a man seizing his chance to get closer to the grave, limp body sent rolling back into his fellows even as bullets raked across the stone parapet that Alistair was crouched behind.

Somehow, over the hail of bullets, an echoing bang seemed to reach over the battlefield before he could even give it a thought, and he had only a moment to glance at the sky before something moved faster than he could track, the walls shaking as it impacted them, and throwing out a shower of rocks the size of melons, crude building materials giving way like the armor off a BattleMech, only to reveal fresh stone and concrete.

Was that Artillery?

Gods be good, all Alistair could do when he heard the second bang was to dig deeper into his cover, the thunderous clap of the shells hitting sending even his teeth to shaking, but he risked a glance at the sky just in time to see a silver shape dart from the distance, small black specs falling from it as it pulled away, a distant flash and rising smoke the only sign of whatever that was.

Pulling himself together, he rose from his cover, and rejoined the fight, hoping that his friend was alright and safe, or would soon arrive with an army at his back.

A close call with a spattering of lead against his stony shelf made him reconsider.

An army would be nice.

~

If the enemy had expected the current order of events to continue, they were fools, even as the turrets that had popped up behind and in front of them started to click empty, and they resumed their charge to get ladders up the walls and their tanks into position to start putting holes in the gate.

Your father is a man who was taught war at the knee of his own father, a Mechwarrior that fought in dozens of raids over his life, each time seeing what the pirates could bring to bear and thinking how he could defend against it.

Massed infantry? Machine gun turrets and prepared defenses, better training, superior armament.

Tanks? Outflank them, bomb them, do everything in your power to not give them a straight fight.

BattleMechs? Be bigger than they were, and if that failed, deny them as many advantages as possible as you wore them down.

In this case, your defenders waited until the enemy had cleared the forest, crude shields banded over with heavy metal slowing their advance but also giving them some protection from their bullets, to switch to better tools.

Namely, homemade grenades filled with a thinned down version of Inferno Gel.

The enemy advance was halted in its tracks as a moat of Fire rose in front of them, catching the eager souls in its jaws and sending them rolling back down the hill with terrible burns and screams of pain.

~

The first sign that something was wrong was when the enemy infantry stopped their advance, falling back to the better cover of the forest and away from the stifling heat of the defender's fiery moat.

The second was as the scent of ozone started to fill the air, the older men feeling a twinge in their knees as their brains instantly associated the smell with a thunderstorm.

And then more than one man was blinded for a moment as a bolt of plasma, arcing with lightning across its surface slammed into the wall, sending a shower of stones matched only by the brief barrage of the enemy artillery, suddenly shot from deep in the woods, followed by another, and then another.

There was no stopping its barrage, and even a brief strafing run from your family's sky-knight did little to dissuade it, only drawing its fire for a moment as it sent twinned bolts skyward to ward off the pesky fighter.

More grenades were thrown, trying to keep the infantry back, even as more lightning slammed into the wall, shaking it with a deathly force, the men slowly drawing away from that section, taking up new positions as they faced the weakened section.

The minutes ran by with a desperate silence, hoping for something that would turn the tide, but even the knight's tanks had started to withdraw, recognizing that if they stayed, they would merely be picked off by the distant BattleMech. If they reorganized, lead a proper charge with enough numbers, they'd have a chance, but alone and isolated they were sitting ducks.

And then the wall started to crack, started to rumble.

It was with a sickening sound that the wall blew open, a narrow crack working its way open as blue-white projectiles slammed into it bright enough for the defenders to see through the widening breach, until it finally gave way with a shower of rocks and mortar, the defenders letting it bounce off their armor and helmets as they prepared for a desperate fight to hold the courtyard.



You race up the tamped down roadway that leads up to your family keep, the very same that you had raced with your sister down just the other day. Men are dead on the side of the road, soldier and civilian alike by the lack of metal on many of them, their lives ended with callous disregard, likely by the very bastard who's footsteps you now follow, the wide two-toed feet of the Warhammer leaving a distinctive trail for you to follow.

There are burned out wrecks out here as well, almost entirely trucks, save for the rare motorbike that you see lying in a crisp pile, rubber turned to tar beneath it.

You were never a cruel child, never picking the wings off of butterflies or catching small animals to watch them panic in too small jars, and despite being inside the cockpit of a battlemech, you felt a similar connection with the people you carefully treaded around. These were your people, to protect and serve, just as they were to give you honest council and the taxes you'd use to protect and improve their lives. Surely even Ginenet was able to see that massacring civilians was just going to make any attempt to control this place harder.

There was a time for an iron fist, and a velvet glove, but this?

This was madness, cruelty in its simplest form.

It's a thought that lingers as you knock trees out of the way, continuing down the path even as you start to see distant smoke rise in the direction you're heading, your pace only growing faster as you push the aged components of the Black Knight as hard as your skill will allow, your stilted jog becoming a run in good measure.

Tree branches broke under your charge, deep footfalls leaving imprints like a giant boot as you kicked up dirt and mud as you moved with a fevered pace. You had to get to the keep before it was too late.

You come to a skidding stop only a few miles from the keep, the smoke growing thicker yet in the air as you started to see signs of enemy movement, but what truly caught your eye was the watcher at the crossroads.

The stone statue was an old construction, commissioned by your great-grandfather if you weren't mistaken, in a pique of chivalric idolization.

It stood the better part of ten meters tall, bringing its helm almost level with the lasers set where ribs should be on your Battlemech. Its sword was equally ridiculous, easily large enough it fit in the hand of your Black Knight, and with enough length to actually hit something with it.

You spare it a glance, and then the sky above where the keep was, where the glow of a fire started to creep into the sky.

With a thought, you raise the hand of the Black Knight, covering the hilt as if it was an arming sword, and with a wrench pull it free from the statue, the stony fingers that had been laid over it falling to the ground in a shower of dust.

You hoist the blade up right, the tip breaking off and blunting as the rod holding it in place snaps, leaving you holding what the arm sensors are telling you is another six tons of rocks and steel, within the tolerances that the manual had stated for carrying. Hopefully it would work out for the near future, even if you could already hear Master Burrel yelling at you for tearing myomers that had no business being stressed like this.

With fresh weapon in hand, you continue your march, and only a few minutes later, you breach the tree line and finally have a good look at your home for the first time.

Hundreds of men were streaming forward from the forests in front of you, and you could see their fellows littering the field as the torches glinted off their mud and blood covered armor, while the walls are awash with scorches and missing patches, a large breach carved into a section of the curtain wall, where you can just make out a tall blocky figure through the smoke.

You couldn't count the number of torches you see approaching the walls, which had men still fighting from the burning pitch sent down at the damned attackers. You could see horsemen directing the infantry, and damaged tanks that were still moving creeping forward with careful lurches, mindful of the mud that had been churned up.

In the distance, you can see a stretch of land, trampled not by men or horses, but by massive footsteps, all too similar to the ones you'd followed in the forest.

The Warhammer is here, and it is inside your home.

 

[Lord Of Flames]

George Gawain gave a stifled groan as he leaned against the stone pillar, once part of an exterior facing hallway, now the last barrier between him and the outside world. His home was old by human standards, built over sixty years ago, when George hadn't even been born yet, back when his own Grandfather was still Lord of their family, his father the untested heir. Now his own son was somewhere in the wilderness of their holding, thankfully far from home when this attack happened.

It had been meant as a light punishment, but now he considered that it may have just saved his son's life.

The reverbing crackle of a PPC firing made him press his back into the stone, and listen as more men yelled out in terror and pain as a section atop the outer wall collapsed. It defied logic that they had managed to bring their machine here so quickly, but he could almost see the ploy as it stood.

Why had House Ginenet chosen to attack? Well, that was obvious, but how had they gathered the forces they'd need to break this fortress? They had a battlemech true, but it was reinforced with the finest materials George could find on this world, and a few he couldn't, had new turrets that popped up from within the walls to protect what was his, and a lance of heavy combat vehicles belonging to his knights.

He knew that some of those knights were still fighting, but against an unrivaled Mech in the Warhammer, it was a matter of time before they were forced to run, surrender, or just be destroyed.

The attack had begun less than a day after he had turned away that Blackguard Gregor Ginenet, and his shameful request.

---

A Day Ago.

They had known each other for years, being neighbors, but when Gregor had requested a meeting as soon as he arrived, it had peaked his interest. That the man had almost instantly set into buttering him up, building off the base of good business and the good relations they'd build off the years, set George on edge.

They had gone over a few contracts that were either in dispute or just needed clarification, sharing a drink as they worked out the fine details, details where Ginenet was entirely too willing to give up minor concessions for no apparent reason, when the man decided to get down to the real reason he was here.

He ran around the exact issue for a while, talking about the good service that house Gladwell had rewarded, the boons to being under their aegis, painting a rather idyllic picture. It wasn't until George told him to get to the point that he finally stopped prancing, and looked him in the eye.

"You are the lynch pin that keeps Laoricia from collapsing, George. You know that Meric is a good warrior, but he's not got the vision to use and advance you or your family as they should be, or to reward you for your able service.

Twenty years since you lost your machine, and has he made any attempt to help you acquire one, or gifted you the salvage to rebuild one yourself?"

He had dropped his tone to a conspirator's whisper, trying to lure George into making a commitment. "House Gladwell has secured the neutrality of House Ruxhall, and if this scheme of theirs works out, then they'll buy the acceptance of the war from the others with territory. Mark my words, George, Knightway has few friends, and his days are numbered. See reason, join the winning side."

It was a blatant violation of the Code of Conduct that every house had agreed, forcibly or not, to abide by.

His words and whispered plans bode ill for Laoricia, and with their neighbors bought off, House Knightway was in danger of being marginalized, but not destroyed. With 2 BattleMechs against 3 it would be hard fought, even if House Gawain stayed true to their oaths of friendship, harder still for their old friends if they did as Lord Ginenet asked.

Knightway's Hammerhand would be outranged by Ginenet's Warhammer, Abombert's Hunchback would stand little chance against Gladwell's Victor, while the various tanks and infantry would never be safe from the harassment of Cobster's locust. Even with the martial support of the Knightly houses sworn to the Lord Gawain, it would be very difficult to win, arrayed as they'd be against the Enemy Houses' own.

But in a little less than a century of existence, House Gawain has never once broken faith and stated as such.

"I refuse to break an oath stretching back two decades, Gregor. Maric has been not but fair to me and my people. He's offered me scrap to build something to fill the shoes left absent, but I refused his kind offer.

That machine, my machine, is somewhere on this planet, and I refuse to replace what I can instead find." He had swallowed the last of his drink, the glass clinking heavily onto his desk.

"Begone from my keep, Lord Ginenet, and take my words back to your master. I am a lord just your equal, and if you seek to take my land, destroy my family, and reap my people, then bring an army, for I shall not go quietly."

His fellow lord had risen from his seat and bowed his head only slightly, his lips pursed tight, but a fresh anger set in his eyes. "Very well, Lord Gawain. I will bear him your message, and you will reap whatever hell follows."

---

The Present.

His musings were interrupted as the Warhammer's warhorn blew, deafening anyone close enough to it, but just sending George's ears ringing. "Come out, Gawain. This battle is over, and I will have your surrender, even if I have to bring this place down brick by brick, on top of you as need be." It wasn't Gregor's voice that boomed from the cockpit of their family Mech, but that of his eldest son, Olin, who was easily ten years older than Elric.

"I refuse to surrender to a man so blatantly breaking every rule of conduct and chivalry our families have ever written or agreed to!" George shouted from behind his quaking pillar, his eyes scanning for anything he could use. It was a fool's hope, but he intended to make good his promise.

"The rules of conduct in war only apply to Mechs, as we both have seen over the years, Gawain." He could hear that sneering smile on the bastard's face. "And without your machine, you and your family are as valid a target as you make yourself."

"Well, then, Heir Ginenet, if you are so sure of your victory then humor an old man soon to die by your words. Why?"

He risked a glance around the stony brick and saw the Warhammer stomp into the courtyard just beyond the curtain wall, on the other side of the debris from George. The 'Mech had a smattering of damage, a few sections of armor blown loose to reveal fresher layers beneath them, but nothing internal. The defenses had done as little as could be expected against a 'Mech that outranged them by a third.

"You want me to gloat, Gawain? To tell you that we've been planning this for decades, that it was us that broke your family's pride in the past, that we were the ones who have taken and hidden your 'Mech, until we could bring you to our side?" The smarmy cunt was mocking him, but George kept his mouth shut. "I don't see you surviving the day, you have that much right at least. As to your family machine…"

The crack of a PPC tore through the wall a dozen feet down from where George was hiding, and he could feel the electric wave that rolled off the impact site as a ton of stone collapsed and added a new hole to the family keep. The falling patter of stone barely covered the sound of something breaking in the distance, something metal.

"My father told me a story, just before we arrived. A story about how he, Gregor Ginenet, was heading to the muster, when he found the Lord Gawain's 'Mech disabled in a field, surrounded by pirates. He told me how he destroyed them, saving your machine at great cost to himself, and had it dragged back as salvage. We intended to return- Ah, I can't even spout that line with a straight face.

My Father found yours, pirates dead at his feet, and had an opportunity land in his lap." Olin couldn't have sounded smugger if he was bragging to his newest whore. "He told me the fight was hard, that your Father was the best MechWarrior he had ever seen, but all it took was one lucky shot to the cockpit, and it was over."

Another PPC shot thundered into the section of wall closer to George than the last, sending more shocks over him in an uncomfortable wave along with the shrapnel of exploding stones. There was the sound of heavy metal feet crunching over stony blocks, and George was sure that the Warhammer was getting closer.

"He had to slag the pirate machines, just to make sure that no one discovered the treachery, and he headed home, just in time to hear that the pirates had been fought off, his alibi that he was too far to get there in time. Now, surrender Gawain, I know where you are, and I know just how close to get these cannons to do terrible things to a living person before they die."

George considered his options, and briefly his mind turned to his wife and daughter. They were in the most distant part of the keep, the most heavily defended room with the finest soldiers of his guard. It would mean little if Olin's Warhammer decided to simple level the place. With a groan of pain, George staggered up right, sharking loose the debris that had pelted him, and stepped out from behind the pillar.

"Well, come on then Ginenet, Here I am. I refuse to offer, and you wouldn't accept, so do as you will. I know that I'll have the time to prepare a spot in hell just for you." George's words were brave, but he felt anything but in that moment.

Olin said nothing, adjusting his torso slightly, and fired a burst from the machine guns under his 'Mech's shoulders. They skipped across the ground like the strafing rounds of an aerospace fighter, and George all but flew back as one massive round slammed into his stomach. He hit the back wall, showered with dust as the other rounds punched through painted plaster and wallpaper, and clutched his hands tight around the wound in his gut.

This was it.

All the time he'd spent bartering, trading, helping others and hoping to get this planet off the ground was wasted by a single bastard's greed and his vassal's stupidity. George refused to scream in pain as he felt his blood seep through his fingers, if only to deny the bastard the satisfaction he clearly wanted.

Instead, George just opened his eyes, hoping to glare at the damned 'Mech until he couldn't anymore.

Which is when he watched his father's 'Mech come up behind it, scorched paintjob and all, and slam a massive sword into the rear armor.

---

You slam your stony sword into the back of the Warhammer, sending it tumbling forward before the pilot inside regains its balance, but their speed is just enough to make them take a step to the side, your lasers strafing not soft rear armor or internals, but the stone wall of the courtyard.

The enemy Warhammer reacts quickly, and turns to face you, the lasers on its torsos lighting up as they are filled with power.

The Battle is on.

~

You stumble as your shots track across the stonework, and watch as he brings his chest weapons to bare, the focus lenses for his lasers gleaming as they charge beneath, before they spit out beams of crimson and emerald light just as you feel something click.

You sidestep the shots, the bracket of SRM fire punching into a crumbling wall behind you as you bring the sword around for another swing. You feel in tune with the Black Knight as you bring both hands together, taking a firm hold on the hilt of the stone sword, and send it crashing into the shoulder of the Warhammer.

With synthetic muscle, a will to do it, and the expensive vanity project of your great-grandfather, you feel the armor you're hitting peel, split, shatter.

And then you force it deeper still, driving the blade through the shoulder joint of the right arm, and sending the arm straight to the ground. The PPC gives off a choked arc of electricity as the connection dies, and you drive the sword straight through it, cleaving into the torso.

When you pull back, the armor on that side is so badly dented, if anything, moving would make the damage worse.

And now it's your turn to fire, you capacitors chiming ready.

~

You watch your heat gauge fall, the glowing edges of where you'd hit the Warhammer's torsos fading in the summer air, before the 'Mech simple topples backwards, landing heavily on its back. You simply step forward, planting your boot on the chest of the Warhammer, the tip of your sword drawing up until the blunted edge, still plenty sharp, is level with the glass of the cockpit.

You can't see through it, the ferroglass left perfectly intact, but this BattleMech is going nowhere, and you can only imagine that he'd jump on the chance to surrender if you offered it.

So you don't.

"Bandits are those that wage war and reap the spoils of honest people for no reason or cause but their own selfish wants. Oath Breakers are cursed for breaking freely given oaths, their honor tarnished. The Traitor is reviled for putting himself before the people he is supposed to protect. Do you know what these three things have in common?" You ask the open air, the rhetorical question hanging as you drag the sharp edge of your stony sword over the glass of his cockpit.

"You happen to be all three, and all three get no quarter."

You drive the stony blade down, hearing the scream of metal and the shatter of ferroglass as you dig it in deep, utterly destroying the cockpit and head assembly of the Warhammer.

You let the sword slip from your fingers, leaving it standing dug half way into the head of the BattleMech, reach down, and turn back towards the breach, ignoring the men wearing your family colors as you do.

When you reach the breach, you look over the enemy troops, many of whom are fleeing after you destroyed another of their tanks during your dash for the castle, and give the ones not yet running good cause, by brandishing the broken arm of the Warhammer in the air.

You open the speakers and roar. "RUN! RUN FROM MY LANDS YOU WHORESONS!" Your voice deepened and laced with static from what you hear through the cracks. "GO BACK TO YOUR MASTER AND TELL HIM THAT GAWAIN STANDS TRIUMPHANT!"

When you see those brave few turn pale and run, you turn back, heading into the courtyard once more, and come to one knee as quickly as you can. Dismounting from the Black Knight is just as quick as it was in the warehouse, and your grandfather's medical kit rattles in your hand as you try to climb down as fast as you can.

You'd spotted the figure early in the fight, slumped against the stony wall of the broken open hall, but its only as you get closer that you realized just who it was, and your hands move faster still as you kneel at his side, clearing bits of rock and stone from around his bloody hands, a compression bandage quickly wrapped around his gut.

"Father, is that you?" Your gut turns as you hear your father's voice, usually so commanding, now sound so weak and fragile. "I tried hard, father. I tried…"

"Someone, I need help!" You shout, looking at the rubble and doorways leading out of the courtyard. "I need a doctor! Come out, damn it!" It takes a moment, a moment you hate, but soon you see the infantry emerge from their hiding places, and when you see a familiar shock of black hair appear from under a helmet, you send Alistair running for the castle infirmary.

You would not lose your father just as you reclaim the family honor, something he'd worked so hard for.

You refused.

Call it a son's love, or a green boy's dread, but either way, your patience with your friend does not last, and you order another man to help you, the man's long coat tied taut around your father's gut, blue-grey fabric turning a pudgy red as the two of you carry him to the clinic, the only place you imagine your father could actually get the care to save his life.

Half-way there you are met by Alistair, tired and exhausted for the second time today as he lowers one of the doctors, a short woman that you knew was a common topic of discussion among the men of the yard.

More than one man had been accused by his fellows of getting hurt on purpose to see her more often, but as far as you knew she was happily married, and better with a knife than most men-at-arms.

That skill had come with her experience as a surgeon and general practitioner, skilled in healing the most common and the deadliest combat wounds in equal measure, saw her rush to your father's side, a glance at your hasty bandages and a sniff of the wound giving you a burst of hope as she starts to bark orders. The woman's glare at you is severe, but she maintains her composure, and her matter-of-fact manner.

"You are a fool for moving him, my lord, especially when he's lost as much blood as he has. But lucky for him, his bowels are not perforated. I can't speak to the other trauma, but I don't believe sepsis will be his end. Now get your men to take him to the clinic and a clean room as fast as you can, I need to operate to repair the damaged veins and arteries before we lose him to blood loss."

"Yes, Doctor. You heard her, get our lord to the clinic, and obey her as you would myself or my father!" You bark the order, and years of training see the men hurry to the task, the doctor jogging to keep up with them as they go off into the distance.

You and Alistair remain in that bright corridor, your concern warring with your duty as your eyes drift to the trail of crimson teardrops that litter the polished stone floor.

"He'll make it, Elric." Your man says, a comforting hand coming to rest on your shoulder. "Your father has always been a bull of a man, with a cunning mind. He's strong, and too damned willful to die, just trust in the good doctor's hands."

You know he can't see your face in the neurohelmet, but you imagine he can still see your appreciation of the gesture. "And what of Sir Christoph? I didn't see any wreckage I'd be able to call his tank with any confidence."

"My father rallied his household and last I hear was running a delaying action to the north, but that was some hours ago." You give him a nod, confident that the old warhorse, one who had fought at your father's behest in many a skirmish, would yet survive this one.

---

"Bring the Turret to point 2-4-0, and fire Lasers 1 and 3 on my mark." A moment's delay. "Mark."

Sir Christoph's voice was level as he gave the order, the crew following his command without hesitation or question, and were rewarded with a grim nod as a wave of heat and sound washed over the back of the tank.

That was the last of the Anti-Tank guns, little more than hammer-hardened barrels meant to lob a shell 3 inches thick into the heavy armor of his Pike, the concussive force more than enough to shave off a half ton of armor if they hit square, unless the bastards got creative, using specialized rounds that were almost impossible to manufacture in great number on Frierehalt.

In over two decades of fighting on this world, born here as he was, Christoph had seen the result of people getting creative in warfare.

Anti-tank cannons that fired shells not intended to penetrate armor, but instead to shower an area in shrapnel and shot, or saturate an area or a tank with flammable liquids, sending infantry running in terror as they tried to put out their burning uniforms, while the tanks would be forced to stop, either to put out the fires, or simply to try and weather out the heat to keep from damaging the internal systems.

Hell, a tank on fire was a danger to everything around it, as one of the Ginenet's had learned the hard way, their AC/5-equipped tank backpedaling rapidly after the Inferno SRMs of Christoph's pike had doused the thing in long-lasting gel. The doomed fools made it another three hundred yards before their ammo stocks cooked off, sending a rain of half-fired munitions and shrapnel into the nearby brush where their friendly infantry was hiding.

That had been the lucky break that sent the enemy retreating, but they had not been the Ginenet's best, and Christoph knew it.

That was not to say that the knight and his retinue had gotten off untouched either, as a quarter of his infantry force was either dead, or maimed in the field where they had been outmaneuvered. Enemy shock-troops had burst from the woods with shotguns and handaxes at the ready.

Caught off guard entrenching, with only their uniforms and waist-deep fox holes to protect them, those trench-clearers had been deadly against his lightly armored soldiers, the spread enough to hit multiple men with a lucky shot, but once the distance was closed and the melee joined, it had been the better training of his own men that had seen them overcome the enemy numbers with pick and trench knife, taking up the enemy shotguns to fend off the second wave with far better results.

As it stood, his delaying action had turned into a full-blown skirmish, numbers on both sides unimportant in the face of the greater invasion, but with a stalwart rock to anchor the rest of the line on, it wouldn't be long before they stemmed the bleeding and started to push the Ginenet back.

That, at least, had been Christoph's thought before his radio operator, the device one of a handful in the service of House Gawain, had suddenly pressed his earphone into place, his hands snatching up his workpad as he started to scrawl, translating a combination of phrases, morse pings, and other parts of the cipher as they came in, the message's complexity belying its brevity.

"Transmission from the Keep, Sir. Message states 'Siege Broken, Lord Gawain injured. Heir Gawain returned; Hammer broken, Knight restored.' Do you know what they mean, Sir Christoph?"

Christoph felt his breath catch in his chest as he pondered the words of the message, hope flaring as he all but trips over the last two words. He remembered watching a titan of crimson and black march from its hangar, leading his own father, and himself a time or two, into war time after time, until the day it left alone for the front, and did not return.

"It means that this will be a far different war than the Ginenet believed, Simon."

---

Inside the keep, your father is under surgery, the breach in the wall now having several machine guns pointed at it as a security measure, while the Black Knight is still kneeling where you left it, impossible to move except for your own will.

With this lull in the fighting, and the siege broken, you begin the journey to the safe room, a reinforced bunker that the keep has been all but rebuilt around, the defensible structure updated and encircling the high hill that the safe room was recessed within.

Concrete a full foot thick, layered with BattleMech-grade armor-plating half way through, and then another layer of steel on the interior wall, covered up with pretty wooden paneling if your memory serves.

It would be well stocked in food and munitions, and the hallway there well defended as the last line of defense for the lord's family.

Finding your mother and sister was a priority in the face of your father's terrible injuries, and if you were to return to the field encased in the Knight, then you'd rather leave the castle in the capable hands of your mother much more than the hands of any random Man-at-arms, even if they may be Alistair.

You make your way through the winding halls of your home, knowing them like the back of your hand, your gaze flicking from the barren walls where the most delicate ornaments had been stripped from, to prevent damage in the siege, to the painted walls you still marveled at, a smile perking up under your helmet when you caught the Knight at the fore, its armories worth of weapons unleashed on some poor bastard.

You came to a halt just outside your father's study, looking at the framed face of your grandfather, one you had seen for years as a boy, and the only portrait of the man you'd ever known. You bow your head to him in respect, fingers tracing over the burnished gold of the frame.

"Soon." You say, remembering your oath to him, before you open the door and step into the familiar wooden hall your father called an office.

It takes you a moment to scour your memories, thinking back to when you were a younger boy, and your father had let you wander around his office while he worked over the last few paragraphs of a memo or contract that required his attention.

He had been surprised when he heard the clank of a door opening, and when he looked up, you were half way up the hidden door, having spied a nice royal blue book three tiers up that you wanted to look at. You had not expected to accidentally trigger the releases on said door, but evidently your childish climbing had succeeded.

Your father hadn't yelled at you, though from what you remember, he was caught between a parent's sudden shock and horrible laughter as he all but leapt over his desk to get to you, pulling you off the shelf, but leaving your desired book behind.

That had been the first time you had found that passage, and your father had decided to lead you down it, past the smooth concrete walls that made up the tunnel, with firing slits set at angles that would make it easy enough for the defenders to adjust their fire as needed while making it as difficult as possible for any breachers to return fire, and a steel door set at the end of it.

With a pull of your arm, that same royal blue book rocked forward in its cradle, and you heard the same clicks and clanks as the mechanism opened.

Now all you had to do was identify yourself to the soldiers, and tell them that the siege had been broken.

~

As you advance down the hall, you take off the neurohelmet, sweat slicked hair swept back with a gloved hand as you walk, coming to a stop just before the first set of defensive slits.

They were far from the only defenses, and you were sure that if you lingered silently then someone at the far end would pop out and start laying down a blister of fire, so instead you spoke.

"I am Elric Gawain, Heir to House Gawain. The siege is broken, and the traitor Ginenet is dead. My father was hurt but is receiving care." These are the words you project into the stony silence, before you talk on with an afterthought. "Old Iron never Rusts."

You let your words linger for a moment, letting them pass undisturbed, before you slowly start to walk forward, your hands held up and empty, the helmet clipped to your belt.

You trusted your father's men to be zealous, especially when trusted with the protection of your mother and sister, but you also expected them to trust their own eyes if you gave them time to see.

With that in mind, you did your best not to flinch as three men, equipped with shotguns and the heavier armor of the household guard, stood up just behind a set of sandbags, leveling their weapons at you.

"Halt!" They called, and you obeyed, feet snapping to a stop. "Twice you were truthful, Twice I left no scar." The sentence is a Call, an attempt to establish true allies from enemies pretending.

"And on the Third, you strayed and felt my axe to pay the price." You respond, your hands still held high. It was a passage, changed on purpose from a story of your family's namesake, where the brave and foolhardy Sir Gawain had accepted a challenge from a mysterious knight, where he would face the man's axe as if they were an executioner, a single strike for honor's sake. The man tried thrice, and between a feint, a miss, and a single close shave, the matter was settled, and Gawain's honor affirmed.

The lead man visibly settles as you respond properly, and he waves you forward quickly, the others lowering their weapons even as they keep their eyes peeled on the passage behind you. The lead man steps back, snapping up a salute as he comes to attention.

"It's good to see you, Master Elric. You said the siege above is broken?" His voice is muffled through the helm, but you remember the man's voice, ever close to your father's side.

You give the sergeant, his rank a thin strip of red running around the cuffs of his uniforms, a nod in return. "I broke it personally and killed the Ginenet BattleMech in single combat. It should be safe enough for my mother and sister to return to the castle proper, though I'd keep up the guard just in case."

"In single combat, sire? How did you manage that?"

You merely tap the nuerohelmet at your hip, a smile pulling at your lips. "I found something lost a long time ago, now open the door, and let me see my mother and sister."

"At once."

~

When the door opens, from the inside of course, the last thing you expected was your mother holding a small automatic, the length of the thing no longer than your forearm, or for your sister to come rocketing out and wrapping her arms around you, her face pressed into the hard metal of your grandfather's cooling vest.

"I was so scared when Father sent us down here, and I knew you were gone because you angered father and then I saw the guns and I realized that something was happening and-" You cut her off by wrapping your arms around her.

"Everything is going to be all right. I sent them running." You give her a squeeze, and she relents, pulling away from you long enough to let your mother hug you in turn, a far shorter affair.

"It's good to see you safe, though I don't see your father. Is he still up above?" Her questions are pertinent, and then she looks down at your vest, armor plating and all. "And where did you find that?"

"It's a long story mother, but the quick version is that I found grandfather's 'Mech, and I managed to repel the attackers with it. Father was hurt, but I need to press the attack before they reform or reach out to their allies for aid. I need you to manage the keep in my absence, while father recovers."

Your mother's kind eyes widen at your words, before they set sternly as you tell her what you need. The worried wife and fearful mother is replaced with the Lady of the Keep, and she is quick to start giving advice and orders.

"Pressing the attack is good, but I don't imagine that BattleMech was in good shape when you found it. Send for Master Burrel and his son, they may be some of the only souls left in our lands that know how to repair a BattleMech, and we'll need to get the guard reorganized, figure out what the garrison should be before you leave." You nod along as she speaks, before she abruptly halts, giving you a look. "I know you didn't inherit your father's mastery of numbers Elric, but it takes more than a passion and a commanding voice to direct a military. Let's go where I can get some information, instead of this narrow corridor."

And back up to the keep proper you went.

---

The town of Hammer-Crest is actually in much better shape than you expected, with the walls that had marked its controls end reinforced in places, and the guard towers lining them glinting with steel barrels as the soldiers within keep an eye out.

You are met at the wall by an officer of the keep Men-at-arms, sent to keep the militia in good order, and he is more than happy to admit your party, consisting of Yourself, Alistair, and a handful of men intended to reinforce the garrison here.

It's not hard to find the Burrel's shop, centrally located and as overbuilt as it was, though you wonder if they had taken up arms with the militia when no reply came at your knock on the door.

You turn to your bodyman, and shrug. "Must not be in. We should check the pubs, the taverns, the militia barracks in case they're at one of them." His nod comes quickly, but anything he intends to say is interrupted as the shop door opens, and a familiar arm covered in stray red hairs grabs you by the collar of your cooling vest and pulls you in close.

"I know this vest, Elric." His voice is quiet, eyes locked on the battered metal, with a menace to it you've never seen the man show. "You found it, didn't you." He asks, eyes snapping up to your own.

"I did, Master Burrel, and now I need your help to fix it." The man takes one look at you, and then the helmet on your hip, before his bushy mustache settles over a determined line.

"Fred, grab your kit, and my tools from the Garage! We've got a mighty war machine to fix, and a fool to pilot it!"

You don't take being called a fool twice in one day lightly, giving the man a thump on the shoulder to release you, only for the man to return the gesture with a massive paw slamming into your back. You don't stumble, but it smarts, even as the man laughs his way back into his shop, grabbing wrenches, screwdrivers, and all manner of other things to throw into a toolbox, Fred giving you a nod in greeting as he gathers boxes eight inches deep with yet more tools in them.

You knew you'd be joining them once you got the Black Knight back to the Mech-bay, long since converted into a storehouse by your father, but you couldn't help but look forward to it.

---

To your surprise, and Charles glee, the inventory that you do before you get the Black Knight ready for its armor refitting reveals a wealth of parts, pallets of spare armor, and more than a few sections of plate already cut and fitted for rapid replacement.

The only truly unfortunate thing is that Fred can use none of it, owing to the extensive damage done to the PPC, and without the chance to strip it off or out, He's been forced to all but bend the material around it, greatly slowing him down.

On your end of things, between the preshaped sections and the wealth of armor at your disposal, you are able to get armor ready in between Charles climbing down to look over the exposed internals, replacing a component there, adjusting one there, and in the case of a particularly stubborn bundle of Mynomer, hitting it with a hammer until it went back under the casing and stopped rubbing itself ragged on the bulky Endo-steel that was the Black Knight's skeleton.

It's a time-consuming process, made slightly faster because it isn't hard to teach a strong young man like the stable boy how to work the armor shaper, especially when you leave him with the numbers and shapes you need. Other castle workers that had been pressganged into the defense, or hiding in their rooms, are similarly put to work, less important tasks given to them as you put the Black Knight back to rights for the first time in twenty years.

Men move pallets away for fresh ones as soon as you clear them, and you watch as almost five tons of armor are applied over the frame of the Knight, a swift paintjob following it up, and bringing it back to its glory, save its cannon.

Crimson arms frame in the black of the side sections, the lion on the White chest brought back with a man-sized stencil found at the back of the storehouse. You personally handle the repair of your grandfather's shield, bringing the checkerboard back to life as you replace the face section, the family sword standing out a brilliant silver from the field of blue it's laid upon.

Now in proper order, you feel far more comfortable having to break a fortress like the Ginenet are sure to have, even if you are short a powerful lightning gun.

Which is why it's good timing when your scouts return with news.

You are barely out of a much-needed shower and freshly clothed when word reaches you of the scout's return.

Your cooling vest is pulled tight around your chest, and the neurohelmet sits more comfortably now that you were able to find a padded cap that fit inside it, leaving you looking rather intimidating standing beside your mother as the scout is rushed inside.

The man's uniform is as tidy as he can manage by the time he stands before you, covered in dirt as it is, but he snaps a clean salute, and stands at ease only once you return it.

"Master Elric, my Lady, I bring news from Sir Christoph. His forces have linked up with other knights who have held, and currently hold the line to the north, and are prepared to push all the way to the border should the young Master grace them with his presence. I can also report that the enemy infantry are in general retreat towards the north, but there are stragglers trying to make passing attempts at banditry."

You nod as you hear his report, the freshly repaired Black Knight in the back of your mind, but also questions.

"What of the Ginenet Knights not destroyed by our own forces?"

"Sir Christoph reports two mission kills, and the retreat of lesser vehicles. My fellow outriders report a single massive tank making its way home, but I can't confirm that, sire."

There were a handful of tanks that could be called massive on Frierehalt and fighting any of them would be a trial. Still, it didn't change the simple reality of the situation.

House Ginenet had hit you, and hit you hard, and now their forces were in retreat, trying to get back to their homes, and likely the protection of their lord, whether that was Olin or someone else back in their territory at this point.

You had an opportunity, but you would need to move quickly.

~

> +Call on House Knightway and Abombert, they should be notified even if it would take a week to get any military aid.

>Head on charge, turn the retreat into an open rout and preserve as much war material as possible for salvage and recovery.

~

With your strategy set, you give your mother a goodbye hug, your sister a promise to return, and Master Burrel a promise to not wreck the Mech he just spent so much time to repair into good order.

The Black Knight would make good time to link back up with Sir Christoph and his forces, and then, then you would take the fight to the enemy.

A brief visit to your father in the clinic lets you see him sleeping sedated after his operation, his skin still pale, but far better than how you discovered him. The doctor was confident he would live, seeing as he was now stable, but the consequences of his injuries would only show in time.

With your goodbyes said, trusted men at your side, and a BattleMech as your weapon of choice, you set out for war.

---

The enemy infantry are running fast, especially when the giant BattleMech breaks through the tree line and starts firing beams of lasers a man across and raking them across the open field. It is an intimidating sight.

From your perspective, it's frustrating, as you sweep the medium lasers into their paths only for the infantry to slide to a halt and the cavalry to rear up and avoid it, save for the unlucky fools that try to outrun your lead aim, and merely just wonder right into it, turning rider and horse to ash in a moment.

Still, your sudden appearance has sapped any morale the men had as they retreat, and now it's up to Christopher.

Your infantry, however, see your BattleMech not as a sign of terror, but one of inspiration, as they follow their valiant lord into combat, the long bayonets of their rifles making doubly sure that whoever they bring down is dead by the time they march past them.

Your men have long experience with firing at a walking pace through uneven terrain, a drill run by Christoph over and over again, until it was as natural to shoot from the side of a steep hill as a hunter's blind.

it's a bloody toll that's wrecked on the enemy, and you can only hope it keeps up while your scouts try and narrow down where that massive tank went.

~

The tank your men reported spots your scouts as they spot it, revealing it to be a Demolisher, and quickly turns its turret to bring them into its sights.

An AC/20 may lose much of its power at long range against modern war machines, but it is still more than enough to kill a man or beast outright for quite a long while.

Thankfully, your scouts are by far the more mobile of the two forces, and so the moment they see the tank start to traverse its turret, they are on the move, kicking their horse into a hard gallop that see them back into the woods with great speed.

Still, the enemy tank fires after them, two 185mm shells hurtling through the air after them. One is inaccurate, showering the scouts with wood as it hits the trees high above them, but the other is a miracle the rider will talk about to his dying day, provided it's not twenty minutes from now.

The second round, fired a split second after the first, flies lower. It is almost perfectly in line for the rider of the lead horse, though the tankers almost certainly could not tell.

The rider knows it's coming, the shell slower than the roar of its firing, and just as the first round hits the tree behind them, He hits a small rise and a gap in the forest floor where a tree or something had fallen and rotten away into nothing.

In a fit of madness, he leaps the gap and ends up almost a meter lower than he leapt, dropping out of its deadly path, the massive shell hurtling through open air where a breath before there had been a rider, and shattering another tree.

~

When the Scouts report back to you, you move with speed through the forest, making use of the BattleMechs superior mobility and size to simply force your way through the woods.

It is little surprise that the Demolisher as it had been identified could not run from you.

What is surprising is the reason, as you break into from the tree line and find the tank spinning mud under one set of tracks, a crewmember with a hook in hand trying to find a sturdy tree to help pull the tank free of its precarious position.

That does however leave it immobile, but the turret is pointing right at you.

The tank crews are on a hair trigger, and you swear you see the combustion at the far end of the barrel before you see the flash at the end closer to you.

Thankfully, you are a very quick learner, as you fall to one knee, the two massive shells ripping through the foliage as you do, and line up your chest lasers for a snappy reply.

You fire your torso lasers in linked sets, burning a hole straight through the rear armor of the Demolisher with your large lasers, even as the mediums gouge nice claw marks down the length of the right side.

When your metalized order to surrender comes through the speakers, you've retreated a dozen yards, killing the lights in your cockpit to avoid making your head an easy target as you maneuverer in the forest, coming up more readily on the virtually nonexistent rear armor.

The Demolisher fires another pair of shells into the woods, the 200mm projectiles bringing down trees older than your civilization in their panic, but you merely burn away another ton of armor from the cover of the forest.

The enemy's loyalty proves weaker than their desire to live, and despite the yelling you hear come from the tank, the crew dismounts from it, their hands held high.

You wait for a few minutes, shaking the trees for effect as you wait for the knight inside it to come to his senses, and eventually he does, overbearing armor and sigil proud on his chest, he joins the rest.

You emerge from the forest at that point, ruined spike of a PPC and a medium laser leveled at them as you wait for Sir Christoph's infantry to catch up. With this secured, you'll either be able to raise a new knight come the war's end or ransom it back to the poor blighter for some obscene number of crowns or land.

~

With the loss of the last of their relevant armor, the Ginenet forces are fully routed, the knight and his Demolisher, for all it was ineffective considering the circumstances that you came across it, was the only thing holding the Ginenet men-at-arms and conscripts to anything resembling a fighting retreat, and your presence on the battlefield drove their flagging morale straight into the ground.

The interrogation of the knight waits until almost dusk, the running game of catch and secure taking up much of the day, with only scattered resistance requiring more than a brief display of power and might. That's if you have to show up at all, with how Sir Christopher's Pike can set a swathe of forest on fire if he's feeling particularly annoyed with the enemy holdouts.

The questioning of the knight itself is equal bits informative, and useless.

For one, the knight clears up a misconception you held, clarifying that it was Olin in the Warhammer, leaving his father Gregor still lord, but he hasn't from him or had any runner carry a message since he was told by Olin to arrive with best speed at your family fortress, the heavy guns of his Demolisher a decent substitute for any number of siege weapons.

It would certainly make a far better ram than one made of scrap wood and logs. He also tells you that as far as he knows, most of the Ginenet armor and knights had traveled along with Olin from his camp, spreading out to support their army as they tried to press over the northern section of Laoricia, but that a small reserve of knights had remained as part of the garrison of the Ginenet Keep.

The useless information came in the form of denials of oath breaking, the claim that you had violated his rights as a knight by denying him parole, other such rubbish.

He'd shut up when you suggested that if you really wanted to, you could press the war to the knife, a phrase that usually meant discarding any concept of chivalry or civility in order to utterly destroy your enemy, no matter the cost to you or yours.

In a sick way, it may even be justified, considering the lengths of dishonor that Houses Gladwell, Ginenet, and you can only imagine Cobster, had gone to, to even launch this war against your house.

Anything else the man had to say was horribly out of date, considering the number of combat vehicles, knighted or no, that you had destroyed over the past day. If his words were true, then three knights remained, their tanks well designed, but between the three of them they would only put up a marginal fight against the Black Knight.

With his usefulness exhausted, and the call of your honor stronger than the foes you fought, you remanded him into custody of a local sheriff, his town scorched and damaged, but his jails almost perfectly intact. You'd return for the knight, and the Ginenet soldiers you'd captured, after you concluded this short war.

Your lands are vast and having traveled the breadth of them a time or two for parties, dinners, disputes, you knew that well, but your family keep was in the deep north of them, not far from the border into Mulstadia at all, and with the bulk of two days under you, you were soon to the Ginenet border.

Up until this point, it would be easy to defend your actions as simply defending your home, your lands, your people, but if you crossed that imaginary line, marked by a line of salted earth six yards across, then things would change.

And yet, you found as you stomped over that ruddy ground, a column of soldiers and tanks beside you, that it was one of the easiest things you had ever done.

There was no fanfare as you crossed into Mulstadia, and while Sir Christoph deploys scouting forces, it almost feels unnecessary, as your column advances along the major roads unmolested.

It's an anti-climax, but reasonable when you consider that the bulk forces attacked as the first part of an invasion, only for your forces, and the Black Knight, to throw them back into their lands. You doubt many of the soldiers no doubt deserting from the Ginenet will hold a grudge against you or your people, owing to the fact they were the aggressors, but you also know men are rarely so rational.

All it would take is a Man whose brother died to a Gawain bullet with any degree of charisma, perhaps a few drinks shared between friends and fellow angry men, and you could easily have a mob descend on any isolated parts of your troops intent on tearing them to shreds in revenge.

It doesn't take you long, and only a few skirmishes with mounted patrols that are easily dealt with by the sheer concentration of force you have, until you reach the outskirts of the capital of the province. There is a lively town down from the hill you loom behind, and you can see the preparation going into defenses, hastily constructed in the few days or so it's taken you to march here. The Ginenet's home is very much a new addition, and clearly not as fortified as your own, resembling more of a reinforced manor than a true keep.

With a blink of your eyes and the flicking of a switch, your vision goes from a zoomed in perspective in normal light, to a wash of blues, greens, and distant yellows, as your 'Mech's computer gives you a live feed of thermal signatures down below, and with a glance at the keep-manor, the odd man taking glances out of the gatetower that stands taller than much of the house.

You can't spot any tanks from where you stand, but you wouldn't put it past them to keep their crews ready, but the tanks themselves in reserves until they are needed. Still, the preparations below are new, and clearly the result of your passage being spotted, and the manor itself could easily be deserted, but just as like still holding a great many soldiers, civilians, and likely the Lord Ginenet's family.

You've had time in the intervening days since you crossed into this place to ponder your choice, acting lord as you are with your father incapacitated, and you have come to a simple decision.

You will break the Ginenet, and if possible secure a hostage for their good behavior, leaving the matter there until the Lord Gawain can recover from his wounds and make his own choices. Yours is not a politician's mind, ripe with odds, chances, and schemes, but a knight's, and you can safely say that doing this fulfills your duty to your house and lord for the time being.

> Encircle the keep, but deal with the town below first. You don't want the enemy to try and sally for your backs while you deal with the keep.

A section of the army moves to surround the manor, as much as you can when it's situated on a steep, steep hillside that overlooks the town below, while the majority of it, yourself included, move to surround the town below.

The simple truth is you don't want this to be a long siege, sitting around doing nothing for weeks until someone decides to start trouble, either in your camp or in the town itself, and besieging a keep is little better, save that their food stocks are more centralized.

It is for that reason that you convince Sir Christoph to allow you to ask for the town's surrender, the two of you knowing full well that unless they suddenly pull out a lance of Urbanmechs from under the ground around you, that there is precious little they can do to harm you within the armored hide of the Knight.

Standing almost fourteen meters tall, your BattleMech is easily taller than the walls of the town, taller than most of the towers the townsfolk and the militia have pulled together in the years preceding your arrival, let alone the last frantic days.

You wouldn't put it past them to think that if you came abreast with the wall, you'd merely start shooting over it, bringing down the homes and barracks of the people living inside the town's protection to break their resolve.

So it is that you come to a halt well before the wall proper, any guardsman atop it still having to crane their necks up to look your BattleMech in its cerulean visor.

"I am Master Elric of the House Gawain. I come here today with an army because the people who rule over you, the Ginenet, have broken with their oaths of Chivalry and Friendship between our families.

They invaded my lands, and killed my people, but hear this! I have no wish to see any more innocents die for a feud between our two families.

Surrender peacefully, throw open your gates, and I swear on my honor, and the honor of my House, that you and yours will be allowed to continue living as you always have, without the threat of rape or pillage. You have one hour to consider this offer, before I start to plan where I will put new gates in your walls."

Your voice comes out tinted with an angry growl thanks to the still damaged external-speakers of the BattleMech, and you punctuate your words with a single blast of your large lasers, the azure beam of energy bright enough to lighten the faces of the guards watching you as it strikes a large stone perhaps a dozen yards from the wall, and reduce it to charred slag and debris less than half as large as it was.

"Consider wisely." You warn, keeping your front to the enemy until you're out of the range of most weapons that would be an actual threat to you.

Sir Christoph is waiting.

"They may choose to be stubborn." He remarks, his eyes fixed on the building overlooking the main gate.

"They may choose to live," is your simply reply. "Either way, we'll know soon."

~

The sight that greets you, come the end of your given hour, is not quite one you expected.

You expected the militia to simply open the gates, to carefully lower their weapons and allow your forces into the city, your watchful BattleMech looming against the walls in case anyone tried to spring an ambush.

What you didn't expect is for the first thing through the newly opened gate to be a burning tank, sent hurtling down the slightly slanted road to go crash into a stone wall some distance away.

It is with a great deal of caution that you send a squad of well-armored grenadiers to go investigate said tank, while you grow close to the walls, the gates still wide open. They find the crew alive, virtually unharmed except for the impact into the wall that stopped their wild escape, and a quick surrender when they notice the potato-masher patterned grenades in their hands through the open hatch.

The town itself is subdued as your soldiers march through the gates, the militia dutifully complying with their orders as their weapons are stripped away, their armories made off limits with posted guards, and the civilians are warned to avoid staying out at night, lest one of your soldiers misidentify a clerk heading home from an extra-long day as a spy.

The garrison itself puts up more of a fight, but between grenades, shotguns, and a great deal of stabbing, clubbing, and close quarters fighting, they surrender under fair terms.

The town secured, it still takes the rest of the day to confirm that fact, your men carefully scouring the town for hidden caches of weapons or ambushes set by still loyal enemy troops in the alleys. Of the first they find several, likely planted in the case that your men managed to overcome the walls, but of ambushes they find only one, and that may be a case of mistaken identity, as a group of militia try to jump one of your sergeants until they realize that he's wearing your colors, not the Ginenet's, and submit to custody until someone can hear their case.

~

With the town taken, and the time spent to shore it up from any surprise uprisings, you return to the manor, and for several long minutes, simply stare at the damned thing, in full view.

You try to think up words that would make someone bend the knee and that doesn't make someone take a potshot at you and escalate matters, but the words do not come easy.

You could make the point that you've already won? You've crushed their 'Mech, you've savaged their army, over half of their knights are not coming home, alive or dead. You could appeal to their love of their people, as if that would work.

Perhaps, you could just ask for an honest conversation and make them surrender before you have to bring their home down around them?

In the end, you decide the straightforward approach is best, squaring up the shoulders of the Black Knight, before you move. There is a sense of gravity that comes over you as you near the gatehouse, kicking up gravel and beautifully maintained grass with every step, your 'Mech's boot prints large enough to raise koi in if it pleased you.

With a single massive hand, you give the tower three hard thumps, rattling the foundations themselves as you restrain yourself from doing more than knocking loose limestone bricks, the action as smooth as if you were knocking on a door. Your voice flows from the speaker, loud enough to be heard, even if it feel like you're all but whispering into the microphone.

"I have a BattleMech. You don't. Surrender, before I level this place."

You let the threat linger, your blue visor lighting the brickwork in a pale hue as you wait. You start to count in your head, the fingers of the mechs hands working themselves open and closed into tight fists. Your temper demands you act, that you break down everything those bastards love as they tried to do to your own home, but you restrain yourself.

Yours is not to tantrum and thrash in rage, but to think, to consider, and to behave according to your own code of honor before anything else. There's an old saying that only you know who you are in the dark, and you start to wonder as you look over the walls at the deserted courtyards just past the gate, if you'd like who you found there.

Your thoughts are thankfully broken as an older woman emerges from the manor proper, flanked on either side by a Ginenet guardsman, carries a bolt of white fabric, holding it shut as she looks up at your machine.

"I am the lady Marian Ginenet, wife of Lord Gregor Ginenet. I have your word that my family will not suffer your wrath if I surrender this keep?" Her voice is steady, but there is no mistaking the fear in it as she looks at your looming form.

It had taken you a moment to consider if it was worth making the promise, but in the end, you knew that having her and her family as a guest in your keep would keep Gregor from trying anything too stupid.

You dipped the chin of the Black Knight, bowing its head slightly.

"Lady Victoria, you have my word as Heir of House Gawain that you and your family will be treated with all the respect due to your station."

With that said, she looks relieved as she lets the bolt drop, revealing stark white fabric large enough to be a flag, and curtseys up towards you.

"Then as the Lady Ginenet, I hereby surrender this keep to the honorable Mechwarrior Gawain."

And for the moment, so ended the War between Ginenet and Gawain.

 

[Lone Courier 6]

"Reactor Online, Sensors Online, Weapons Online, all systems nominal."

And then you still as feedback runs through the neurohelmet, your skin feeling cold as a shiver runs up your spine, phantom pains running through you where the armor has been heavily damaged, while power thrums in your chest, the fusion engine pulsing under you like the beat of a heart.

You feel mighty.

Click to shrink...

Still brings a tear to my eye this bit.

 

[Lord Of Flames]

Two Weeks later. The Gawain Keep, 3029.



In the Aftermath of the war between Gawain and Ginenet, you've de-facto annexed their lands for the moment, having taken their capital-holding, their keep, and now holding the ruling family as your hostages. Your military forces were spread across the new border, against the lands held by knightly families sworn more directly to House Gladwell or by the overlord themselves.

To your surprise, no further attacks came from the east, though your men remained vigilant, watching carefully for the first sign of a second attack, but after weeks of watching, none came.

For your part, you returned to the warehouse where you'd found the knight, fulfilling the promise you made to your grandfather, your thick blanket undisturbed by the wildlife that may have gotten inside, and retrieved his bones for the family crypts. You planned on having a proper funeral for him, this time with his body, as soon as your father recovered enough for it.

Back at home, repairs were proceeding apace, even if the damage to the keep could take months to repair all things being equal. The ammunition for the turrets was expensive on Freirehalt, but the stocks would replenish them well enough until the next round of imports and exports unless another invasion should strike so deep.

As for your family, in the wake of the attack, not much has changed, aside from the addition of the hostages into your household. The Lady Marian and your mother get along far better than you might like, but you know your mother is smarter than to do more than merely befriend the aging lady, while your sister is joined by the eldest Ginenet girl, Alice, who is a shy girl who your sister is trying to bring out of her shell, making slow progress.

For your part, you are kept busy, between helping your mother to manage the estates of your house, your own military training, going out on patrols along the border in the Black Knight, and helping the constables stamp out the remnants of any bandit gangs that formed from the routed Ginenet troops.

It was just as you returned from one of those expeditions that a runner found you.

Your Father was awake and cognizant, a first since the operation that had saved his life.

---

The man you see laying on the hospital bed is not quite the man who saw you off on an errand to punish you for spending time with your sister. He's leaner for one, the IV drip that has fed nutrients into his body no replacement for proper food, and his hair has started to grow wilder, his stubble more pronounced.

but all the same, you cannot mistake the grin he gives you as he catches you just outside the door, or the unlit cigar he has in his teeth.

"Elric, I see you there, come on in." He looks you up and down, his eyes lingering on the vest across your chest, and the helmet at your hip. "If I'm looking at you right, that's my father's cooling vest there." He lets his head settle back against his pillow, nodding to himself. "So, I didn't imagine that before I passed out."

You shake your head, coming to a knee beside his bed. "No, dad, you didn't. I found him, and I found the Knight. I brought his bones home a week or so back, when I had the time to head back out east and find the warehouse again."

Your father's smile dims some as he thinks about it. "Then that bastard Olin wasn't lying to me. It was them?"

"I'm pretty sure, and between the timing, claiming credit, and a recording I found from Grandfather, I think it's true."

Your father's smile dies as he hears your words, all but collapsing back into the bed, his cigar pulled from his lips and his hands working their way into fists.

"Gods damn that Gregor Ginenet, I broke bread with that motherfucker! We'd had dinner in my own fucking house, and he's why I had to learn so damn fast, why I had to beg, borrow, and steal every ounce of respect and favor that I could, why you had to grow up without a grandfather?" Your father rages for a moment, your own thoughts reflected in his shouts, and you just wave away the nurse that looks in on the commotion, closing the door after she goes with a promise to quiet down.

The two of you sit there in silence while his anger smolders, before you start to update him on the happenings of the lands, and the movements of the lords. "We've all but taken most of the Ginenet lands, and I've posted soldiers along the imagined border with Gladwell. I'll be honest, I have my suspicions, but with Gladwell not moving against us, I don't know why Ginenet would launch this invasion against us, 'Mech or no 'Mech."

"Gregor was my guest, right before all of this kicked off, and what he told me- Grab a chair, this will take a moment." At your father's command, you obeyed, and listened as he told you of a conspiracy, of promises made, and oaths already broken. It filled in much of the picture that you were worried about not having, and gave you an inkling of where Gregor had gone.

"So what next?" You ask, hand working over your own stubble, your thoughts racing.

"You sent a message to Meric, right?" You nod at your father's question, and he closes his eyes even as he speaks. "Then the Lord Knightway will be here soon enough I think, and I'd ask the men on the roads to keep an eye out for a BattleMech. I know the man, and if he hears that we've been attacked so brazenly, he'll come running as soon as he can. The lady Abombert is a good friend, but so distant she'll shore up the western border so that Meric can go unafraid." He thinks it over some more, lipping the cigar as he ponders, before he shrugs, a motion he quickly regrets as he freezes in a moment's pain.

"Either way," he says, pointing at you with his cigar. "We can't do much until Meric gets here, or sends a message. It shouldn't be long, but anyway. See if you can get your Mother and sister in here will you? I've seen my son has won a war while I was out, now I want to make sure my little girl is still little."

---

With your father restored to you, even if he remains in the clinic for the time being, there is a weight lifted off your shoulders. With any luck he would remain lord for some time, letting you learn from him in more detail now that an unexpecting passing has so narrowly been avoided.

As it stands, you head to the mechbay, the storage room renovated back to its former glory in the weeks since the ad-hoc repairs had been conducted. Master Burrel has returned to the keep, taking up residence in the old section of rooms meant for the various engineers and techs that had helped maintain the family 'Mech, and was almost always hard at work putting right some issue that you had encountered, or created, in the fighting machine.

There were new faces in the mechbay, younger boys listening to the old engineer explain how this part worked, or how it interacted with this other part in order to allow the full range of ankle pivot in the BattleMech even with anchors meant for mynomer's that would wrap around it and truly allow the 'Mech to emulate its users intentions.

You let them have their little lesson, your mind bringing up a few that you had listened to at the start of your apprenticeship, about how the various parts of an internal combustion engine worked to feed fuel into a cylinder, how it was pressurized, ignited, and turned over a series of cams and shafts to provide torque and generate power for the systems of an automobile.

It was much like listening to any old hand talk about their profession, where even if you knew almost nothing about it, you would nod your head and just listen to the men tell stories about this issue they had, or this crazy time that something happened. Perhaps it was the human idea that with age came experience, and that young men suck that up like sponges.

Either way, the lesson came to a stop soon enough, and the engineer finished cleaning his hands of grease just as he got to you.

"It's good to hear your father's awake, Young Master." His words were earnest, even if he said your title with a detectable amount of sarcasm. "He's a good man, and he was fair to me when I asked for leave after we lost the Black Knight, but you found her again, so here I am. How is the PPC working out?"

The mechanism by which BattleMech weapons are attached are still somewhat of a mystery to you, but somehow, Charles had managed to scrape the PPC out of the arm of the Warhammer, get it cleaned up and ready, and replaced the old one, the burnt and scorched remnants of the old shroud resting against the far wall with a line of tape warning of its sharpness around it.

"The test firing has gone well, and the added weight doesn't seem to throw off my balance much. Little tricky to aim though, the projections from the cannon to the display aren't quite right." You remark, the engineer nodding in thought.

"Aye, that's something we'll need to work on. Ginenet did not take good care of that thing, I had to compare half the parts we had in the stores to the other one just to make sure I had the right ones. We'll work on the alignment more on the morrow, but I figure we'll get it done quick enough, don't you worry." He gives you a pat on the back as he looks up at the Black Knight, a fond smile on his face.

"Thank you, Master Burrel."

You speak a little more before saying your goodbyes. He had some work to finish, while the call of a bed sang to you. Tomorrow would bring its own challenges, and you'd face them head on, as you always had.

~

The warehouse you'd discovered by chance is much the same as you left it just a few nights before, save for the new squad of sentries that you had set to guard it until you could return with a proper crew to investigate the remnants.

A dozen men, and the trailers and trucks to move anything you find, had followed in the wake of the Black Knight, your lasers carefully kept at a low charge to minimize the risk of a forest fire, even as you cut a new route back through the thick brush. It was a slow process, but in the end, you had managed to get to the rusting building with only minimal trouble, a flat tire needing replacement here, a stump needing to be sawed or torn up there.

The interior was just how you remembered, minus the body of the one fool too stupid to run with his fellows, the idiot given a quick burial and an unmarked grave when you'd recovered your grandfather's bones. Steel boxes lay in a mix of broken and sealed, their contents varied between long rotten foodstuffs and moth-eaten clothing, uniforms or the like at a glance.

You could say with certainty that there would be no hidden 'Mech in the columns, unless it had been literally parted out and packed away like a crate engine, but the size of the warehouse meant that even with the damaged and opened crates, there were still so many left perfectly intact. To your knowledge Freierhold had never been an industrial world, a limited number of factories that produced only the barest essentials, and almost all of them military or adjacent to that purpose, with a handful of them surviving to the modern day but requiring extensive labor to make operate correctly.

Hunting rifles turned into proper war-arms, steel-plants making thin sheets intended for long-lasting buildings, or thicker panels best suited as subpar replacement armor on tanks. Your father had wondered if there had not been an Automobile plant on the planet at some point, rusted out hunks of the vehicles found half buried in the woods, or all but swallowed up in the plains when the grass grew tall.

If nothing else, even if the contents of the boxes had not survived their centuries of laying aside in airtight containers, there was enough metal here to do quite a bit, like outfit another battalion in good armor, if you could find the manpower for it.

Still, with a little bit of patience and the guidance of the transport crew, you were able to reach deep into the factory, and carefully grasp one of the sealed boxes, bringing back down to the floor with only a short drop. Coming to a knee, you loomed over the crew as they opened the first box, peering down as the lid was lifted off.

Inside the box, your eye rakes over the contents, which seem to amount to quite a bit of infantry equipment, with the first box containing body armor, the extensive fabric already fitted with some kind of plate inside the pouches. A second opens to reveal proper battle-rifles, their magazines found in a third.

It takes time to move the boxes, and eventually you realize that it would be far more convenient to simply take the damaged boxes and eject them from the warehouse so that your crew could get to more boxes at the same time, rather than just pull them down one at a time.

This, of course, leads to its own problems, as you take up a role better given to a forklift than a BattleMech, having to carefully navigate around the group of soft humans as you move a 75-ton warmachine to throw trash into a pile of metal and dirt outside. You only get glimpses of the contents of the crates as they begin to move the contents into the trailers, seeing more weapons, more uniforms and armor, and boxes of materials and spare parts all getting loaded.

It's a pattern that continues for some time, your task finishing with one last box being added to the pile outside, a timely thing as one of the crew members waves you back inside, having found something very odd.

The box itself is easily two or three times the size of the others, and the man that opened it is shining a hand-torch down at its contents, revealing the distinctive lines of radiating coils, coolant hookups, but it doesn't look right to your eye, being entirely too large to be a standard heatsink.

If it were so simple, you'd ask the Black Knight's warbook to analyze the part, but it refuses to work on random inanimate objects, leaving you to instead peruse the user-manual for a moment, hoping that you'd see something close enough. Your luck holds out as you open a page on recommended, or you should say offered, refits which include a description of a 6b-variant of the Black Knight.

The provided information includes a brief overview of the improvements made to the different versions, ranging from LosTech pulse and Extended Range weapons, but the major component is an upgraded cooling system, a similar picture as the thing in the crate coming up when you tap on the term double heatsink, but they aren't quite identical.

Either way, it's a solid ton of LosTech, and you know that you want it more than you want the enemy to, but you have the trucks to move quite a number of goods, you just have to finish cataloging them all.

It takes you much of the day and not a few hours of night, but eventually you do load up the last of what you can feasibly carry, even if you know these men and more will be making trips back here for the next week to finish collecting everything from the warehouse. With the depth of the find there, you know you'll be suggesting that Sir Christopher deploy a far greater force to protect the transports, even if that means you'll need to stand guard over them for long days in the Knight.

Still, the idea of improving the weapons of your best soldiers with full-sized automatics, even if the ammunition is far less than you'd like, makes it a worthwhile trip. The Kit that was in the crates is also an improvement in many places over your regular, meaning they should be better protected if they can mingle it with their current equipment.

Finding double heatsinks, bulky as sin though they may be, is something out of a fairytale. The idea of refitting the Black Knight to the royal standard is appealing but also as far out of your reach as manufacturing the damn thing is. Still, you can't help but wonder if you couldn't do something with them.

Either way, you are headed home for the night, with a wealth of treasure you'll need to discuss with your Father, Mother, and Sir Christopher before much of anything can be done.

What Character would you like to spend some time with?

> Spend some more time with Dad. He's still recovering but trying to return to his duties.

With the defense of your home in good hands at the moment, you can focus on the duties that you've neglected in the sudden surprise and the counterattack against the invasion, namely your tasks as Heir to the house.

Such it was that you sat with your father in his office, the man still using a wheelchair to get around, going over the budget with him, and trying to answer the questions he poses to you.

You will freely admit, numbers and making them dance was never quite your game, but as you sit there, listening to your father and discussing it with him, the simple parts of stewardship start to make more sense.

Of course the general idea is that you want to generate a profit that exceeds your expenditures, there by letting you set some money aside for projects or to head off future problems that will be more expensive, but you also wanted to reinvest those funds where possible, balancing risk against reward, and deciding which ventures are worth that infusion of capital.

But discussing money is not the only thing you do while with your father, as you are also a spectator to watching the man rule, with much to cover and many to speak with in the aftermath of the invasion.

Farmers whose fields were burned or uprooted for trenches seeking either repayment or assistance in setting it back. Your father generally chooses to help the farmer repair what they could, a small token from your coffers usually enough to see them through to at least the next planting season with a little bit of care.

Civilians looking for their lord's order in a dispute, over land, over rent, over property. These were the ones that grated on you, and didn't seem to bother your father, as he heard their cases and dispensed his decision as even handily as he could, though it wasn't always possible.

The families of soldiers fallen in service to your family, no small number between the battles and the attrition of the siege, looking for some measure of help or some kind of pension, both of which your father was more than happy to grant, giving the families of the fallen the rewards they couldn't claim in life.

You'd like to say it's engaging to listen to petitions for hours on end, but lying to yourself is a bad thing to do. The boredom does alleviate from time to time as you do your best to listen to people who have come so far to speak with your father, the man asking your opinion in usually simple, but occasionally more nuanced matters.

You feel you made the right choices when he asked, because a farmer would pay your father back with time if a small investment was made to restore his livelihood, and a spike in rent was unpleasant, but unless it was ridiculous or targeted, was there really any grounds for the Lord to intervene?

There were times you made your thoughts known, but your father disagreed, making his own decision, before discussing it with you in the brief gap between petitioners, either saying what you missed, or in one case, agreeing with you, but going against because the laws as they'd been written prescribed a different outcome. It was something that could be fixed, the law rewritten, but not fast enough to help with an immediate issue.

"My lord, that was the last petitioner." You look up from where you'd been seated, looking every bit the noble scion you are, to the guard that had spoken up, his head bowed at your father.

"Thank you, Sergeant Harpe. Would you see if the kitchen could send up a small meal. I'm afraid I wanted to get the petitions out of the way and have missed lunch."

"Of course, my lord." The man sketched another dip of his head, passing back through the doors of your father's office, the heavy wood clicking shut behind him. With him gone, your father turns to you, his cigar much shorter than when he'd first lit it.

"Twice a month do I hear the common people or any that come to me, and do you know why, Elric?"

"Because people tend to solve their own problems if they can, compared to waiting for you to do it for them?"

The man gives you a look, a brow rising. "No. I only do it twice a month because of how bloody boring it is."

You dip your head at his words, a hand rising to cover your smile. "Noticed that, did you?"

Your father just nods his head, his trademark smirk on his face. "I sat in that same chair while I watched my father do this very thing when I was just a little younger than you. I remember how bored I was listening to some farmer drivel about how his neighbor had tried to split the river that fed between their properties, so that half would go on its way, and the diverted water would help irrigate their fields. I thought it was a decent idea at the time, until my father explained how that river fed dozens of farms, and that diverting the water so high in the chain could cause crop failures in the ones at the bottom of it, which would lead to more problems."

That certainly made sense, and knowing the stories of your grandfather fit his character. "Did he have the river put back?"

"Well yes, but he also helped the farmers, by finding someone that knew about plumbing and mechanical irrigation and helping them get the water where it needed to go on their fields without doing something as foolish as half damming it and hoping for the best. Sometimes, it's not enough to just say yes or no, there are solutions that solve problems, and then there are solutions that make everyone happy. Often, just solving a problem doesn't keep it from reoccurring, you have to put in the effort to combat the source of it directly."

"The dried-out fields." You offer, grasping his point.

"Exactly. The river would have been repaired, but the farmer's field would still be dry and not growing nearly as well as hoped, which may have led to further issues. By nipping it in the bud, and applying a weed killer, he kept it from springing back, do you understand?"

You nod, thinking over some of the cases heard today, before your thoughts wander over to the overarching issue. "Do you think we'll have to nip this issue with Gladwell in the bud, or is that out of our control?"

Your father just leans back in his chair, taking a deep puff of his cigar, and letting out the smoke as he thought. "Gladwell is a smart man, he knows that if he blusters and provocates, Lord Knightway will meet him to discuss it. and…" Your father stops speaking, his eyes looking into the distance as he thinks, before his head tilts, and he looks up. "The Council. He'll wait to bring up the Ginenet until the Council. It's only a month away and if Ginenet's words are true then he'll have more friends there than Knightway or I do, it would be almost perfect for him to call foul play on the whole issue, demand the return of the land and our hostages. With Gregor disgraced, perhaps he'll wed the daughter to a loyal knight to keep the family going under their control."

Intrigue and deception have never been your strong suits. "Can we stop him?"

Your father gives a quick nod. "We can, but Meric will need to get here soon, we don't have much time to come up with a plan. We essentially have the Ginenet by default right this second, but Gladwell could make the argument before the council that we overreached ourselves when you marched into his lands to deliver the final blow to the Ginenet attack, arguing that vengeance was satisfied when you destroyed the enemy Warhammer and routed their army."

"And if vengeance was satisfied, then I should have turned back at the border, having seen off the enemy." You chew on that for a few moments, before continuing. "But surely any reasonable commander would have assumed the enemy might reform and attack again, especially if there weren't being harried past the border."

"They may, but you-" He gestures with his cigar. "-are not a commander. Not yet at least. They will try and frame it as the over-eagerness of a young man new to war, and damn us in the same breath. But we have something they don't, the BattleROMs of both the Black Knight and the Warhammer."

That was news to you. "I thought the Black Knight's BattleROM was destroyed, just like the Warhammer's?"

"The BattleROM Recorder of the Knight was destroyed years ago when it was lost, but not before the 'Mech's warbook got a good long look at the Ginenet Warhammer and recorded it to the drive. On the opposite hand, we have the Warhammer, whose sensor system survived you driving a stone sword through the cockpit. We have evidence in our favor, but unless we can create a strategy to use it, all we can do is wait." Your father pulls his cigar from his lip, crushing out the ember of it into his ashtray, before looking back at you.

Anything he intended to say to you is interrupted by a knocking at the door, a call from your father seeing one of the kitchen assistants wheel in a small platter, rife with sandwiches and cuts of cheese, the late lunch he'd called for, and the discussion was shelved for another time as the two of you ate.

---

With a belly of food and a fond farewell to your father, you were on your way to your next stop, Master Burell wishing to speak to you about the heat sinks you'd found, Sir Christopher having given them clear preferential treatment to get them back to the keep first.

Still, it's a fair way to the mechbay, and you find yourself taking the long way around the keep, stretching your legs and letting your stomach settle. The walls are once more covered in pleasant pictures and objects, freshly cleaned and restored where they could, certain sections of wall still waiting for a mason and architect to look them over for repairs.

So focused are you on an absent painting, a hole in the wall letting in a shock of sunlight into the artificially lit hall, that you round the corner, and manage to just stop before you'd walk into a distracted red-head.

Sadly, your speedy reaction does nothing on her end, her eyes glued to a passage in her book, and you stagger as she walks right into you, her startled eep joined by the clatter of books hitting the stony floor. She blinks away the collision, and pales as she realizes just who she ran into, her gaze falling to the floor as a blush lightens her features. "Forgive me, Master Elric. I wasn't watching where I was going."

You decide to let her save a little face, giving her a smile. "The fault was mine, Lady Alice. I was myself distracted." You glance at her books, now scatter to the floor, and kneel to help her. "Please, let me help you collect your books. I'm sure whatever you were reading must have been very interesting."

If anything, your smile seems to make her curl up smaller, but she nods at your offer, the two of you quickly gathering up several thick books, and several notes, written in a pretty script so unlike you or your sister's. "I was reading about the first landing, your library has a first hand account of the Round Table's arrival written by Lord- Uh, Lord- I just read his name, why can't I remember it." Alice is your sister's age at your best guess, and is just as cute when she gets flustered.

"Lord Uther if I'm not mistaken. He was the first Lord of the house after all, and I know I read his words myself when I was a boy. I think I talked about that journal to my father for weeks while I was reading it." With the papers gathered and the books stacked once more, you give her a quick brush of her shoulders, knocking of any dust that settled in the fall. "Do take care of those books, Lady Alice, and take care of yourself."

"Thank you, Master Elric, and take care" Her piece said, the young girl, not yet a woman, takes off down the hall, her pace faster than you saw in the second or so before she hit you, still clearly embarrassed.

Well, that happened. All you can do is shrug, and continue on your walk, the 'Mechbay closer with every stride.

~

You find Charles, not in the 'Mechbay, but almost exactly where you expected to find him, working a hammer and a chisel against one of the burned out plates of the Warhammer, knocking loose another chunk of damaged, half-ablated armor.

The 'Mech was laid out on its back, looking very much like a body laid out in a morgue or on a mortician's slab, a skilled worker making sure that it is in as good shape as they can before a funeral. The metaphor falls apart when you consider that this 'Mech may end up risen from the dead, joining the Black Knight as a new 'Mech to be passed down the family.

He'd evidently been here for a good while, blackened armor joining one of a dozen small mounds for different points, the man standing on the right-side torso, using gravity to assist him in removing larger chucks without the need of a crane.

"I see you down there, Elric." Came Charles' voice, his words broken up as he drove the hammer down into a crease, a pop of metal sounding as another plate was sent sliding down. "The sheer amount of damage you've done to this 'Mech is almost criminal."

"Well, I wouldn't have had to hurt it so bad if the man piloting it hadn't stomped into my home and broke my mother's flower pots."

"You completely ruined this torso here, even the structural bearings are warped where they weren't protected by the Center's armor. That 'sword' of yours didn't cut very well, so much as bludgeon and tear. The head was so mashed I just blew the bolts on the structure joins for it. It'll be faster to just replace than try to fix that mess of smashed metal and ferroglass."

You give the man a shrug. "True enough. I heard you wanted to see me about the double heatsinks?"

"I did, just give me a moment, I've been trying to get this panel free all damned day but every time I find another layer holding it down." You watch as the mechtech circles the torso one last time, before he finds the spot he's looking for and sets the chisel before driving it down once, twice.

On the third swing you see the panel making up the side of the torso shift, and on the forth you cover your ears as you see the weight of the plate overwhelm whatever is holding it on the back, coming to the ground in almost one piece. Grabbing a rag from his belt, the older man cleans his face of sweat, and heads back to his ladder, descending it and accepting a fresh bottle of water from where you stand beside his tool kit.

"I'm sure you noticed, if you could tell what they were, that those double heatsinks weren't quite right." You nod, knowing that between the standard version included in the user manual and what you'd found, there were some differences you had chalked up to manufacturing differences, like the difference between a gun made in Doponaria and Alylia that uses the same cartridge.

"I did an examination of the heatsinks, and they won't in the engine of the Black Knight, not as it stands and I don't have the parts to adapt the sink ports to accept them." Once more, you nod along, understanding what he means. "What I didn't expect is that little difference you and I noticed, makes them compatible with the chassis cooling system, even if the sinks in the engine are still standard singles."

"So you're saying we could switch out some of the standard heatsinks in the Black Knight for the doubles?" You hadn't considered that at all, but considering that Lostech was called that for a reason, you had no reason to doubt the man.

"With the amount of space filled with filler material in the torsos of the Knight, dropping the singles in there, I figure I could maybe manage five, maybe six replaced heatsinks? It wouldn't be all of them, and I'd be real careful with them, but it would make your heatsinking a lot better."

That was something to think about.

> Yes, Install the Proto-doubles to increase your heatsinking.

> +If you install them, you should probably keep a couple as spares, like four.

You, in theory, have the parts seized from the Ginenet lands needed to fix the warhammer.

> Fix it, you can always try and put Alistair or someone in it.

You make your decision, and say as much to Master Burrel. "I'll need as much of an edge as I can get if the future turns ugly. How long will it take you to replace the heatsinks?"

"A few days at most, most of that will be uninstalling the filler material, having to strip armor panels to get to the internals. The actual installation shouldn't take too long. An extra pair of hands will make it go faster still, but Fred is busy minding the shop. It seems people are suddenly making sure that their automobiles are in good shape, just because." He gives you a cheeky smile, before his gaze wanders back to the Warhammer.

"It's a fine machine, even with what you've done to it. If the cockpit was still intact, I'd say it was still easily capable of fighting, if you shored up the armor some."

You look at it too, seeing the marks of battle he's still not knocked away quite yet, the scorch marks difficult to see on the black paint they've burned darker still. It is a mighty war machine, laid low by your own hand, but it could rise again and serve alongside the Knight.

"What if you did more than that, Master Burrel?" You ask, your eyes tracing the length of the 'Mech. You know that your soldiers had claimed everything that wasn't bolted down in the Ginenet's mechbay when you'd returned, spare parts, large 'Mech components, everything.

"If you're asking me if I can fix it…" He scrunches his brow, looking over at you after a few moments of deep thought. "It can be done, but gods know how long it'll take me alone, and even with Fred helping, Its not like we have a spare Mech bay and crane system, Elric."

That was a concern, but if you could keep the Black Knight out of trouble, you could free up its berth for the Warhammer, though getting it over there would be a trial of its own. A lot of the work would have to done in the position its in now, lying prone on its back.

"I think, that having it up and running would be worth the effort. If the council demands we return it and everything else, it will still be months of work for our enemies to repair. Time we'll have to consider our options."

The Master Mechtech gives you a nod, his eyes turning back to the machine, already thinking over what he'll need to do, what people he'll need to conscript to helm him.

Best you leave him to it.

---

The lord of house Knightway, Lord Meric, is a courageous man, taking to the field of battle against the pirate raids and the raids and attacks by his neighbors alongside his knights, clad in the 75-ton BattleMech of his house, the Hammerhands. He is defined by his martial attitude, coming across as a gregarious, if decisive man, prone to making decisions without wondering if he has all the information, thinking it better to make a bad choice early rather than delay and be forced to make a worse one.

Such is the case that when you heard that a BattleMech had been spotted making best speed through the forests and short plains that made up the shared border of your lands, you found yourself not running for the Black Knight's hangar, but instead to send a message to the kitchens to expect another guest, and a hungry one at that. It was not a short jaunt through the forest brush, even in a BattleMech, and with some 300 miles between your keep and the Knightway castle, it was possible to make in a day in a heavy BattleMech, just horridly unpleasant.

The castle is filled with a flurry of activity in the hours that stand between the first sighting and report, and the regular updates you receive from the riders you had sent out to watch its progress. Their description of a machine much like the Warhammer, painted a stark and brilliant white only broken up by streaks of dark blue and black over the shoulders and shins of the 'Mech, confirms your initial assumption. That Lord Knightway would travel alone is unexpected, but when you consider that a BattleMech will make better time than almost any tracked vehicle through uncut forest, and the attitude the man has, it makes a great deal of practical sense.

When Knightway arrives a few hours before dusk, You are there to meet him, Master Burrel having thankfully not started the arduous process of stripping out material from your machine quite yet. The snow-white Hammerhands makes no attempt to disguise its approach, breaking onto the main path some distance yet from your keep, his pale machine coming to a halt some distance from your crimson, blood red ferroglass peeking out from under the fixed cowl of his machine to meet your own.

"When I heard that you had repelled the attack on your keep, I expected to find it in ruins, the bodies of the enemy dead still littering the fields. I did not expect to find a ghost back from the dead." Meric's voice is loud and strong from the external speakers of his 'Mech, standing every bit your equal in size. Where the comparison fell apart was the array of weapons fixed about the machine, a particle cannon having replaced one of the class 10 autocannons that made up the lower arm, each framed by a medium laser overtop, and his armor being close, but not quite up to par with your own.

By any practical definition, his 'Mech's chassis was a museum piece, being a century older than the Black Knight design, but you did not doubt that it was effective in its role as a main-line fighter, something akin to the main battle tanks of distant Terra during its tumultuous 21st​ century.

"The Black Knight is no ghost, Lord Knightway, and its return came just as it was needed. Master Elric of House Gawain greets you and welcomes you to our keep. Follow me, and we can step down from our machines. Your journey has no doubt been long and tiring." It could be a foolish display of trust to show your back to another BattleMech uncontrolled by your own forces, but in this case, no fire punches into the back of your machine, no blindside that would see you whirl around to pour fire into a surrounded foe as he is bombarded with cannons and incendiaries.

The area of the keep you've set aside for this is enclosed on three sides by thick stone walls, and some of your best men guard the makeshift 'Mech plaza, hard packed dirt barely shifting under the weight of your machines as you both come to a halt. The fusion engines cycle slower as they cool under shutdown commands, the hum dying out as hatches open, ladders kicked out and descended in good order.

The Knightway family had been a late addition to the company before it landed on Frierehalt, one of the last mechwarriors to join the ranks before a string of bad jobs and disguised company stores started to whittle away at the lust for glory and gold that defined mercenary life.

The original pilot of the Hammerhands had little reason to stay with the company back then, his 'Mech his own, his debts paid, the company not withholding due payment. He could have left, but instead he stayed, proving his worth time and time again as he held the line as lighter machines used him as the anchor and heavier machines used him as the hammer to smash the enemy unto their anvil. You are reminded of this as you see the Lord Knightway descend from his ladder, a bulky vest of spiraling tubes clad over a thin shirt with a pair of thick pads on his shoulders, the only sign of his neurohelmet, left in his machine due to its weight you imagine.

You greet him with a small bow as he steps to the ground, your own helmet clipped to your belt.

Spoiler: Lord Meric Knightway, Demi-Overlord of your house.

The man is of an age with your father, even if he weathers age a touch better, his long dark hair lacks any of the gray in your fathers, damp as it is from the long trek in an oven through the brush. Well proportioned and with a body conditioned for war, he stands just an inch or so taller than yourself, making the Lord Knightway a tall man indeed for the region, if not the planet.

The man returns your gesture, holding out a hand to you as he raises his head, one you take. "My name is Meric, I knew your grandfather before he vanished, and I had my disagreements with this old bastard." He tosses his head at the Black Knight with that final comment. The relations between your houses had been good for decades, long before your father became lord, but even friends can have scraps over minor squabbles.

"Elric, and I'm glad you're here, Lord Knightway. My father has much to tell you, if you'll forgive him for not greeting you himself. He was injured when the Ginenet broke through our walls, and the doctor still insists he avoid straining himself while he heals."

If the man took any insult from being greeted by a Mech instead of a lord, he doesn't show it, instead flashing a set of pearly white teeth. "I wouldn't begrudge a man busy trying to repair his home for not seeing me, and a man hurt is doubly due for forgiveness over something so trivial." You give the man a nod at that, and he spares a look around the courtyard, fresh dirt moved over the furrows thrown up by the enemy munitions, and stone freshly mortared into place to repair the walls. "You make excellent time in repairs, Master Elric, but if I could bother you for a favor, It wouldn't do for me to see your family in this state, and the only thing I've had to eat is jerked meat and hard-bread I took from the kitchen just after I heard the news from your runner. "

You give the man a nod, and wave one of the servants forward to lead the man to a guest room where he could rest and clean himself up before dinner with your family.

The dinner itself is a lovely display of color and flavor fresh from your larders, with seared steak smoked to tender deliciousness from apple wood, creamy mashed potatoes topped with a rich brown gravy, with buttered broccoli offered alongside oven-fried asparagus tossed in oil and seasonings. Fresh rolls sit still steaming on their platter, with small bowls of savory sauced pasta tossed with herbs and fried bacon offered as appetizers before the richer foods.

Lord Meric is situated just to your father's right, a position afforded to trusted friends and honored guests when they are present, and as usual your mother sits just opposite him on her husband's left. Your sister is next, sitting beside your mother, while you are situated across from her, enjoying a cup of fresh tea as you listen to the conversation around the table. Just down from your table the Ginenet family takes its meals, their food not as nice as your own, but easily pleasant enough for their circumstances, with the other tables further down from your own filled with trusted retainers, the knights of your house garrisoning the keep, and some of the veteran staff not currently catering the evening.

Your glance around the room is interrupted as Lord Meric lowers his own cup, filled with a golden apple cider that your father brought out for the man, and gives you a tap on the arm, drawing your attention. "So tell me, master Elric, how did you find the Black Knight? Your grandfather vanished so suddenly so many years ago, I thought no sign of it was ever discovered."

"Believe it or not, I have the invasion of my family's lands to thank for it. I and another man had found one of the enemy camps, and after I sent him off to warn my father, I stayed a little while more to see if I could figure out just who the camp belonged to, which led into a merry chase as I was spotted by one of their watchmen." The man is intensely interested in your story as you tell it, asking questions here and there as you go over running from the scouts, finding the warehouse, your Grandfather's bones, cleaned and wrapped as it is now in a burial shawl in the crypts while a proper tomb for the man is carved and readied.

You tell him about your first stumbles in the Black Knight, earning a commiserating pat on the back, as he tells you how he not only stumbled when he first tried to walk in the Hammerhands, but face-planted the machine straight into the mud of the training area not a two dozen yards from the 'Mech-bay, your own father shrugging and saying that when he first tried walking he stumbled, but only ended up on one knee. Your description of your anger as you walked from the lost warehouse was a familiar one to both men, your father in the aftermath of the loss, and Lord Meric when he was doing a patrol in his machine only to find a village he had passed not a day earlier burnt to the ground. He spent much of the next week tracking the perpetrators, finding a band of brigands had sailed fishing boats around the coast, marched inland for loot and plunder, and then fled back to their boats.

It could be said that BattleMechs cannot swim, but they don't need to when you can reach the beach before the bandit band can return with their loot and prisoners. Very hard to paddle away when a AC/10 round the size of your arm suddenly punches a hole the size of your torso in your boat, and a series of missiles start sending shrapnel into anything dead or alive.

You tell them about your mad rush back home after your scuffle with the tank column you ambushed, both men sharing incredulous looks as you describe kicking a piece of quickcell trash into the middle of the line and watching its ammo cook off. Your father can only nod as you describe coming across the stone knight and borrowing his sword, Meric's opinion seeming to rise with every ridiculous thing you'd done until you reach the battle with the Warhammer. You can't help but cringe as you think of what you said before you killed the pilot of that machine, the stone sword extracted and laid to rest against one of the courtyard's walls, chipped and broken as it was after you had laid into the armor of the enemy 'Mech.

When you finish, Meric just gives you a look, before looking down at his mug and downing the half-full tankard in one long go.

"You have the Warhammer intact then?" Is lord Knightway's first question as you finish your tale, his mug refilled by your father at the man's request.

"We do, and last I told my Mechtech, it's to be repaired to the best of our ability."

Meric leans back in his chair, his plate largely clean, but a thoughtful look dawns across his face as he thinks about just what that means. "A second BattleMech, a powerful one at that, just as you find your grandfather's machine? It'll look like half a plot with the sheer coincidence of it."

It is your father that answers this time, nodding in agreement. "Politics and business are two things that are tightly connected, and I know how this may look to those looking to take advantage. I thought you'd be interested to know that I had an interesting conversation with Lord Gregor just before his invasion of my fiefdom."

Surprise sees Meric's brow rise, before he takes another long draft of his cider, putting the mug back on the table and dabbing at his mouth and beard with his napkin. "Well, I think this is something we should discuss in private, Lord Gawain. Over something stronger than this cider."

Your father could only nod, putting his own glass back on the table, and excusing himself, Lord Meric, and yourself from the table.

Inside the study, whiskey has been poured into a pair of glasses, and your father starts to describe a conspiracy against Knightway and the region of Laoricia, the sheer confidence that the Ginenet lord had spoken with not filling either man with confidence. Meric sits in one of the highbacked chairs, swirling his drink in its glass as he digests all he's been told.

"So, I am beset by all sides by indifference or supposed friends looking to take advantage." He takes a sip of the aged spirit, savoring the burn down his throat as he thinks. "And we have only the word of Lord Gawain, the Battle-ROM of their Warhammer, the warbook record of the Black Knight from twenty years ago, and not a single scrap of written proof from their keep?"

You nod. "That is the case, my Lord. The study of lord Ginenet had been well organized, but our search found nothing of this conspiracy. I believe that much of it was conveyed verbally from Lord Gladwell. Whatever master Olin said could either be the truth, or merely meant to hurt a dead man one more time."

The lord threw back his drink in a single motion, his anger at the situation loud and clear. "Damn."

Silence rules for several long moments, before the Lord Knightway speaks again. "As far as I care, the Ginenet tried to kill the Lord Gawain all that time ago, we could stretch that to trying to steal your machine, but most of the lords would call you even with the loss of the Warhammer to your son here. The invasion may have been unlawful, but damned if I think you'd win the argument before everyone that stood to benefit from your destruction and the damage done to my own house if you'd lost. You said you control the Ginenet lands at the moment?"

You give him a nod, your father expanding on that. "We control from the coast along the river Seldach until where it enters my lands. I've redeployed my forces to guard the shortened border with Gladwell, but I still have patrols keeping the peace in the Ginenet lands."

"Good, that gives you precedent for already being in control. Gregor is still missing, and Gladwell hasn't made a fuss about this yet, but we need more allies if we are going to press Gladwell to accept what has already happened. The last thing we want is for your family to have to pay for anything these bastards have brought on themselves." He ponders opportunities for a moment, before speaking again. "In the South, it's Godsfield and Ruxhall, right?"

"Aye, and from what lord Gregor said, Ruxhall was offered something."

"And what Ruxhall wants is to step out of Godsfield's shadow. Mapon has always been the smallest region settled by the Round Table, and with your house gone or diminished, he could easily offer up protection from the southern territories at their border up to the River Michael in the lowlands. Double his land, expand their incomes, and give Ruxhall a boon over the family rival."

You glance down at a map of your lands, "And with Godsfield cut off from us, his ability to trade over land vanishes, because Ruxhall won't want his new ally to be trading with his enemy."

Meric nods, continuing the thought. "Cut off, surrounded. Doponaria would make easy pickings once the dust from us settled, and who would defy Gladwell at that point?"

Your talks with the Lord Knightway continue into the night, and before long the three of you call your discussions there.

The ambitions of House Gladwell is impossible to know for certain, and any assumptions you could make about it would be just that, assumptions.

What you do know is that the council is still weeks away.

That leave you time to work on improving your BattleMech, improving the fief, improving the relations of your family with the other houses, and to see if you can even start to look for the Lord Ginenet and whatever bolthole he's currently hiding in until his Lord comes for him.

 

[Lord Of Flames]

Becoming a Superior Mechwarrior.

April 3029, Woods of Laoricia.

You'd spread yourself thin over the following weeks, with Lord Meric returning to his keep to prepare for the Council himself while you and your father work on improving your holdings and repairing the damage inflicted on them by the forces of the Ginenet.

It was easy to say that open conflict should be avoided, that if at all possible that a compromise should be reached, but the people that were so quick to proclaim that did have to visit the villages attacked during the march by the enemy to besiege your home, they did not have to look at the scorched buildings, reduced down to scorched studs and collapsed in on themselves, or look at the faces of children who's families had just lost everything in the blink of an eye because a bastard wearing that eagle had decided that their specific house must burn as a warning to the others. It sparked a zeal in your heart, and a knowledge that you were still so new to the theatre of war you'd soon find yourself embroiled within.

For that purpose, you requisitioned a team of loggers to find you the roughest ground, cutting trees as needed to create blockages, barricades, or simple obstacles that you'd have to navigate without knocking down, all to train your agility with the machine that was your birthright.

It's a time consuming exercise to simply construct the course, and that takes up much of the first week of your spare time, the logging crew being incredibly helpful in helping to move the logs, and setting up several interesting sections of the course to help train your other skills while you find your real footing in the steel-shod boots of the Black Knight.

The opening of the course was straight forward, with logs set up to block sections between tall, thick old growth trees, forcing you to dart around them at a decent speed, before the ground opened up slightly, only to be made up of loose, thick logs that you were unlikely to simply smash into oblivion by stepping on them.

That was a far trickier section, and you had to stop and reset several times before you finally managed to get across the roughhewn ground covered in slick logs without losing your balance or going head over heels into the ground or another copse of trees.

When you succeeded in that, you moved on to the next area, a narrow lane you had to move through with logs set at an angle that you would have to step over.

Which led to the truly trick of this section, as the moment you slowed to move carefully around the angled log, one of the woodcutters would release a small pully that the crew had tied down. What did that pully control you may wonder?

It controlled the two or three logs that had been tied together, side to side, and lifted up like the massive arm of a battering ram.

It may not have done enough kinetic force to truly damage the armor of the Black Knight, but that did not stop it from hurting your pride as you feel this impact to the back right quarter of your 'Mech sending you crashing back into not only the log you were trying to traverse, but also the next one, finally stopping your self from a long winded fall.

When you tried to rise, you had a moment to realize, "Oh, that's another ram." and reacted promptly, not trying to side step the hit or to square up to take it and avoid another fall, but instead to pull your arm forward and just barely time it right to knock the ram aside, jamming it in its slit so it couldn't be pulled back, and allowing you to complete that section with only a few more harassments.

Of course, you had to fix it and run it again without destroying everything, but it was a good method of refining your timing on your hits and movements. You almost wonder if you couldn't apply some of that to your shooting as well, coming to a quick stop so that you didn't have to try and time a shot with the sway and bounce of a running pace, but that would be an exercise for later.

As it stood, you ran the course over and over again when you had the time, helping to repair the damages it inflicted to your machine. By the end of it, you had started to set up targets at regular intervals, working on your aim after coming to a dead stop after running hard for several minutes in the Black Knight, its fusion engine running cooler than ever before thanks to the new heat sinks that saw twice the diffusion of heat into the air around you. The same tasks saw you finally manage to zero the damn PPC.

All in all, a productive use of your time when all was said and done.

---

Training new Mounted Knights.

A week on.

Drilling the knights is not actually something you get to direct yourself, more often acting as witness as you watch Sir Christoph take a handful of his best soldiers, men who had the ability but not the means or connections to take their own knighthoods aside from the title, and in a single fell swoop promoted them to proper knights. While this did increase the amount of armor your house could field by a full lance, it did also introduce a lot of required training to get the new knights up to snuff as Tank Commanders, which they would be in almost any other army.

It was quite interesting to sit there and watch as two dozen men, divided up between the four tanks, did their level best to figure out how maneuver around and with each other, which involved no fewer than 8 collisions that saw the two tanks have to be pried apart from each other.

They did eventually get the hang of moving their tanks together, but then the question came, could they work as a group to attack a target?

Well, that was where you came in once more, Your BattleMech's weapons modified to such a low setting that you would only give a bastard that was too close a nasty burn rather than kill them instantly, but would also scorch the paint on the recovered tanks to signify where you hit them. They did much the same, switching out live ammo for dummy rounds for the purposes of the combats, the Black Knight's computer and sensor system more than powerful enough to simulate their attacks against you, automatically killing limbs that had taken too much damage, or cycling off weapons that had been destroyed.

So it is that you went into battle against the four new tankers, and killed them a dozen times over. It wasn't just a mindless boost to your ego either, as you had to work for those kills, the strong frontal armor of the Demolisher being enough to slow down your pace, and the constant barrage of Simulated LRM's was more than enough to make you rethink trying to simply outflank the damn thing as you done the first time you crippled it. The Scorpion, while annoying, was still just a gnat in your peripherals, until the crew finally got their act together, and just before you popped the distant Carrier with your cannon, they shot the damn thing, sending an emergency signal to your computer that saw the entire right arm go limp and lock as the capacitor of the PPC overloaded taking the contents of your lower arm with it in the simulated battle.

They achieved their first victory when they managed to concoct a simple enough trap that saw you spot the LRM carrier early, and wishing to avoid as much scattered damage as possible, trying to destroy it quickly, moving into the optimal brackets of your long range weapons but not watching your surroundings as much as you should have.

So it was that the Demolisher, sat hull down behind a Hill you passed with its engine off, roared to life, twin barrels of Mechwarrior's nightmares swinging into place, and plugging two shots right into your back. You had to fight the sense of nausea that overtook you as the computer tried to knock you down, but you claimed victory as you stayed standing. Turning to face the far more deadly Demolisher, you readied a full Alpha Strike, only for the LRM carrier to turn back around!

The combination of LRM's digging into the missing armor on your back, and the repetitious fire of the Demolisher into your front saw your 'Mech quickly destroyed, and the knights congratulated on destroying it.

It could not be said that you were not also learning from the exercise, as they tried that same trick again, only for you to realize it and carefully move to outflank the Demolisher immediately, giving it a love tap with your giant boot as you came up on its rear arc. That was enough for the knight inside to mark his tank as destroyed, as between the savage kicks you could offer, the variety of lasers you had, and the capacity to simply flip the damn thing if you wished, he didn't feel like cleaning it if you did.

The rest of the exercise their devolved into a demented game of hide and seek, as the enemy tanks just kept running and hiding from you in the rolling hills that marked the border of the plains, until you finally managed to destroy the last tank and claim victory.

It was an interesting several days you spent with them, but you had other matters to attend to.

Fire-Support Armor Lance Acquired!

---

Create Shelters for your townships.

One of the greatest tragedies of a war, no matter how brief, was the damage done to civilians, their lives carelessly trampled under the booted feet of an army, whether their own or the enemies, their homes damaged and destroyed in the battles that followed those marches, and the destruction of any sense of safety they might have held in their communities. It would take a long time for them to repair what had been damaged in a few short days, and as the heir of their lord, you felt you had no small debt to pay in this matter.

These people did not ask to be dragged into the conflict of Nobles over their heads, and so you had set aside time, between practicing in your BattleMech and working with your father's agent-contacts, to see if you could not help matters.

To create a bunker fit to defend against an attack would require resources you either didn't have, or couldn't spare, but if its only purpose was to protect its occupants, rather than serve as a pillbox designed to cut down the enemy, that simplified matters.

In some ways, it is much like designing a keep, with rooms set aside for lodgings, barracks for those willing to share and the small garrison that would keep the place in good repair, thick stone walls butted with poured concrete wrapped around steel bars, metal panels unfit for armor used to make it even harder to blast your way inside.

The larders would have to be some of the deepest sections of the new bunkers, so that they would better keep whatever stores were put inside, though the volume was something you were still having trouble with. Really, what you had put together was the rough draft, only a step above being bullet points on a list of wanted features, intended to give the more dedicated architects a basis to continue to improve. One of the Knights or Garrison commanders was attached to the project to provide battle-tested military knowledge of how such a structure should be built, leaving you with the time to attend your other duties.

But even with a busy schedule you had set for yourself, you left time to revisit their progress from time to time, your sorties into the towns treated with worry at first, but the people warmed to your presence as spoke with them, your desire to see the project done right assuaging whatever rumors had started to run around the holding. It was a rare day you managed to catch a snippet of gossip undetected, but it was not so difficult a thing to borrow a workman's coat for an evening, buying dinner like so many of the same at the local tavern. You felt out of place but hid your feelings under the rough stubble that had started to grow in around your jaw, your pacing of the quarried hole in the ground giving you the right amount of dirt around your legs, and your growling stomach silenced just as well by the bowl of warm stew, heavier with vegetables than meat, and hearty brown bread.

"When I saw the lordling coming around, I thought someone was in trouble. You know they say that he killed a hundred men at the siege, finding that old 'Mech in the woods somewhere."

"Bah, How do you lose a Mech that big? You'd think they could just follow the damn footsteps it leaves, they're big enough for the ducks to pond in after a night's rain. No, I bet the Lord had it hidden somewhere, just in case, but you know how it is. You have a toy, they have a toy, and suddenly everyone wants to play with their toys against one another."

"Couldn't have been hidden. If he had it, Lord Gawain wouldn't have lost the Mitchel's farm and apiaries over east a year or two back. I heard that Gladwell came stomping up in his Mech, walked right to the front gate of the farm, and just declared that it was his, like God himself decreed it. Lord Gawain didn't even hear about it for a week until one of the farmhands slipped away and got word back to him."

"I don't know, but if he really found it out in the woods, God knows what else is hidden out there, and to be honest, I'm not too keen to find out. It's good that Lord Gawain is up and about, and his son is doing good out here helping to build that new… shelter, was it?"

"More like a bunker from what the workers tell me when they can get a glance at the plans. Big enough to hold most of the town if you don't mind sharing a room with two dozen others. The larders they're digging are the size of this room too."

"Why are they building it if the war is over? We sent those Giney bastards running home with their tails tucked, and they got the Giney's family in the Lord's keep if the rumor's true."

"Those same Giney bastards weren't too kind to a lot of the villages up north and further east. Burned half of them to the ground when they put up a scuffle, and hurt some good folk I know up there when they tried to be peaceful like. Might have liked a nice place to go wait them out. Those tinpot soldiers of theirs are black-hearted and cruel, nothing like the Lord's boys, no discipline, no loyalty."

"I heard about some bandits in the woods around the keep, before the knights sallied out and cut them down. People say that they ran from the siege after the Heir showed up and put their bastard 'Mech to the sword. Literally."

"Well, I know you're talking out your ass. You know that Mechs shoot each other to pieces, not go around swinging swords the size of power poles at one another…"

It may have been rude to eavesdrop, but it gave you a feel for how the common people feel, and you didn't mind the smile of bright teeth that the barmaid flashes you when ask for another cup of beer and a roll.

By months end, much of the preliminary work, the excavation finished and deepest foundations poured, had been completed, meaning that it will just be more work to get it close to finished. Hopefully peace holds out long enough to do so, but you know that this same process is happening in half a dozen larger towns towards the eastern border.

Bunker Building in progress.

---

Find that Bastard.

The 1st of May, 3029. Mulstadia Heartlands.

'Find the Lord Ginenet' is a difficult proposition at the start of your month of work, leaving it to the agents of your father, usually used to spy on markets instead of looking for people. They were a large part of how your father knew when to import certain goods in the next year or so, taking note of shortages, bolstered stores and the gross of certain goods that could oversaturate a given area, driving prices down sharply if other markets were not offered quickly.

It was a fine balancing act not to appear too forewarned about certain issues, taking the little hit here and there to keep the illusion that one was simply lucky or by chance had avoided the worst of a drought or sudden crop failures brought on by poor weather or improper management.

Merchants saw much in their travels, selling goods far afield from where they came from, and if a few more coins should pass into their hands to share some of what they saw, well, whose business was that but the merchant and his new friend?

Intrigue and deception are far from your game, the subtleties of politics lost and pushed to a distant corner of your mind in the scrum of melee and the buck of a rifle against your shoulder. Your mother, blessed she may be with an attitude that set even the angriest men to feeling like little boys under her glare and like they had gotten the better end of a fair arrangement she'd brokered, was the real source of political prowess in your family. She had been the one who had collected your father's many contacts into a proper network, a small sum set aside for when they returned, fresh information and rumors or no, the chance of double dealing mitigated by the sum being based on their last return of information, prompting them to find important bits and receive a greater reward for good work.

There was a story there, but not one you were quick to seek at the moment.

It was wrapped in a knight's armor that you approached the villa, The saddle under you covered in the supplies that a traveling soldier, a mercenary at that, might need. You were not alone, with a dozen men, also mounted, followed behind you. Your bolt gun was swung over your shoulder, its strap dividing the rough-polished surface of your breastplate clean in two, while a short sword bounced in its sheathe against your thigh.

Moving in Gladwell's lands was a risk at the best of times, and with your mission today, there was never any chance that being discovered would end well for you. Still, the missive, carried by the Merchant's son on a horse that had clearly been run far too long at too fast a pace required speed. The word of your father had reached the network, and their keen observational skills had been put to quick work. No rumors said that the Lord Gladwell had a new guest at his keep, but the absence of any word or shadow of the Lord Ginenet said much about how closely his location was guarded. The markets had a dour air over them in your neighbor's lands, fear that a real war was coming worrying the people that shopped, influencing their purchases towards longer lasting goods, quantity over quality if they had to manage their stores in the coming weeks and months.

So, it had been that your father's contact had noticed the one man not worrying, buying quality supplies in bulk quantities, but not just simple travel rations, but richer fare, like what the cook would send for from the markets closest to the Castle, the standing orders at butchers and the like. Being so distant from such a place, it set them to thinking, and when the man left the town with his packed purchases, he went with a shadow watching him. The boy hadn't known just how his father had discovered the intended location of the cart, just that he had confirmed that someone was staying at the winter villa of the Gladwell's, set in the lowlands with only a few thickets of trees to protect its limewashed walls from the wind, and they were spending quite a bit of money.

The villa did not look like it was hosting anyone currently, with no guards posted at the doors into its walls, no men pacing the towers in boredom as a look out for any strange band of mercenaries crossing nearby. If you had to guess, the assumption had been made that because no one stayed there in the summer months, that no one would suspect that Gladwell and company would shelter their vassal there until the council. Still, you had no real confirmation that they were even here and restocking the storerooms in summer for a villa intended to be wintered in was strange, it was by no means a fool proof declaration.

Your fist rattles the door as you banged on it, playing up the part of a gruff mercenary knight as you waited for someone to answer it. That answer came in the form of an older man, a servant by his clothing, his eyes looking at you and yours with confusion.

"This Villa belongs to Lord Gladwell. If you are looking for lodgings for the night, I suggest you continue riding, Serah. " He is a prideful man, and diligent in his duties if his first response to a group of armed soldiers at his door is to tell them to leave.

You don't bother to introduce yourself, instead putting a gauntleted hand on the door, holding it open before he can close it, saying gruffly. "I am aware of that. Lord Gladwell sends me with a message for his guest, now step aside."

"Lord Gladwell sent you?" The man is surprised, and that's really all you need as you shoulder into the door, forcing it wide to admit you and your band. "This is most unusual, surely Lord Gladwell would have sent one of his personal knight and not a common… mercenary." You ignore his confusion, instead given him a glare through the visor of your helmet.

"Quite, but the Lord is indisposed, and his knights are busy with their own duties. Now show me to the man I am to safeguard."

You see indecision war in the face of the servant, and take the choice from him by grabbing his shoulder, your hand slipping to a rondel tucked into your belt. "Show us to the lord's guest. Now."

Though you dislike using fear as a motivator, it appears to be the main impetus this man responds to, moving quickly to guide you though the halls of the villa, where you see only the occasional servant moving about their duties. This place is virtually abandoned in these warm months it would appear, the sun beating down on the clay tiles of the roofs the same way it would keep it warm in the winter.

When you are finally ushered through a door into a dining room, you find half a dozen men, all wearing the colors of Ginenet, sat around a dining table, the conversation they were having interupted by the arrival of You and yours.

And sitting at the head of the table, a severe man of dark hair, fine dress, and a silver eagle set over his heart.

"Lord Ginenet. I have been looking for you." You announce, your men sweeping into the room as you step through the door. You wait until they are almost on top of the man's companions before you continue, the flash of steel and the thuds of cudgels causing the man's face to pale. "You have much to answer for, and much more to explain."

The man goes for something on his hip when he hears your words, but by that time you are already on top of him, a hard shove knocking the chair he's in onto its back, and sending him sprawling. Your rondel is in your hand a second later, your feet eating up the short distance between you as he goes for the gun that had slipped from his grip.

He's inches away when you drive the steel into the back of his hand, the triangular narrow blade hitting cleanly between the long bones of his palm, and he chokes down a cry of pain as you grab him by his belt and yank him away from the weapon. A firm hold around his neck sees his struggle resume, but the fight leaves him as he goes limp, your hold relaxing as he falls into a oxygen-starved slumber.

The people he was dining with are in no better shape, whatever weapons they may have tried to pull rapidly pulled from their hands or otherwise useless against the armor of your companions in such a rapid ambush. Looking at the bodies lying limp on the floor and the table, you can't say you care much about their well being, your prize in your grasp.

"Find the staff and confine them to a room, when you have everyone, throw an ax inside and barricade it from without. It will take them a good while to get through a door and the obstacles, and if we cut free the horses that belong to these idiots, it will take quite a while before word can get back to Gladwell and his minions." Your command is simple and rapidly followed, the cries of confusion by the staff broken up by the shouts of your men. One of them finds a heavy dresser that needs two men to move, and that makes up the bulk of your barricade, the thwacks of the ax already echoing as the servants try to free themselves.

The stable outside is quickly emptied, seven fine horses let loose into the wild with cut bardings and a slap on the rear, leaving your thirteen riders to make best speed back towards the border, and hope that Gladwell's patrols are as incompetent as they were when you came across from your lands.

---

When you return to the keep, prisoner bound and gagged on the back of your mare, you notice that the preparations for the Council are well underway. People are bustling back and forth, carrying the supplies needed for the journey, while soldiers are taking advantage of the fading light to polish their equipment to parade ground standard, fine dress uniforms being brought out and checked for little damages and repairs that will need to be fixed before the meeting.

The Council itself is a regular event, its host changing every time but happening every three years, a time for the noble families to meet, to speak with each other, introduce their children to the court and court any interest in them, as well as raise any grievances that cannot be settled amiably, or through an observed contest of arms.

The conflict you've concluded with House Ginenet, and the ongoing hostilities with House Gladwell certainly fall under that banner.

You've only attended a single Council session, several years ago, and found that much of it was simple a get together of old friends and acquaintances, the few issues usually resolved quickly so that the peace was restored and life could go on without the looming threat of a major war.

That same event however, was the first council since the conclusion of a short war between House Sanmon and House Armmore, where both houses were, for lack of a better term, censored for their actions, considering that the two of them not only have powerful Assualt-class BattleMechs, but that the thing they were fighting over, was a section of land maybe fifty miles across.

It begged the question what the attitude towards your conflict with Gladwell would be, considering that no terms had ever been set, no rules agreed upon, and no declarations sent. Would the council simple declare that everyone will go back to their corners, or would it be more proactive in punishing whichever side it favored less.

Either way, these were questions that could wait for the morrow, as you dragged your squirming prisoner off your horse, a quartet of your House's elite standing ready to receive him, their armor reinforced and replaced with the more advanced body armor you'd found in the warehouse.

Taking him by his shoulders, they led him into the dungeon, really a small section of the keep set lower on the hill intended to house prisoners until their case could be heard by the lord. You followed them down into the darkness, before you hit the lit halls of cells, the artificial light broken up by the dimming rays of sunset that came through the narrow arrow slits at the top of the walls.

Under your watch, Gregor was quickly stripped of his finery, left only in his pants and undershirt, and secured to the wall, his fighting met only by gauntleted hands hitting hard into his gut to knock the air from him, and when he was finally secured, the men stepped back.

For your part, you righted a chair sat in the corner of the cell and sat down just a few feet in front of him. Silence floated in the air like a bad smell, the two of you staring the other down, before you spoke.

"Was it worth it?"

The man looks at you with a strange expression, before he starts to thrash against his bindings. "I am a Lord of this world, Gawain! I demand to be treated with the respect due to me!"

"My father is a Lord of Frierehalt as well, Ginenet. Was he not owed a declaration of grievance, a chance to resolve this madness before blood was shed? Was the idea that you would have to answer for this completely absent from your mind when you gave the order? Answer my question truthfully, or I will leave, and have others ask them."

"You haven't the spine for that, boy." His words are derisive, but all you can do is stare at a man still so defiant after he's lost everything. Perhaps, he simply doesn't realize that.

"I wondered if I would, but I think to what I've had to do in the past month, and I think I do." You rise from your stool, and leave the cell, your unspoken order followed in your wake.

When next you return, the Lord Ginenet is awake once more, a fresh bruise decorating the right side of his jaw, and more trailing down beneath his undershirt. The guards of your family are loyal, but you chose to station the ones least likely to kill the man as his cell's guards. They would follow almost any order you gave, and so when you said he was to be left alive, he was.

You do wonder, in a sick part of your brain, if given long enough they'd take the order to its logical extreme, and keep him alive despite increasing the damage they'd do. Best not to consider it.

Again you take your seat, looking at the man as he glares in hate at you.

"What, precisely, was the agreements you made with Gladwell and others that led to your brazen attack?"

"Fuck you."

Your men moved.

~

"I'll ask again. "What was the agreement you made with Gladwell and others that led to your invasion?"

A wet cough was followed by the sound of something hitting the floor. "Gladwell promised that Laoricia would cease to exist. He told, Ruxhall that he would help him against Godsfield, give him the land he needs to build the army he needs to push back against him. Summermere would get the western reaches, Andercher the southern holdings on their side. Mulstadia gets the rest, including control over you and Knightway."

That was an interesting picture. "And why would anyone accept that Gladwell would end up with four vassal houses, and so much territory?"

"Because we'd break up your monopoly on the Jumpship, give them a more than fair split in ownership. You were already down your machine, what right do you have to control our only lifeline to the Inner Sphere?"

You ignore his comment on control, considering the lack of control his Heir and army had displayed in the invasion. "Are any other attacks planned?"

"If House Gawain had fallen, then Gladwell and My son would be moving through Knightway's lands, while Cobster raised merry hell in his Locust putting the fear of God into his troops, but with you still standing, I don't know."

"Were any other preparations made in this conflict?"
"None that would draw the ire of the Council, if I wanted to spend my money on expanding my troops, then so be it, so long as I didn't attack one of the major players."

The answer irritates you, but you imagine its true. The Overlord houses of the planet have always seemed to be on a different tier from the rest, owing to the strength of their machine, or the capabilities they had in their chosen region. No one would care if House Lawvine and House Robinrice went at each other like savages, so long as they paid their taxes to their overlords on time, and their machines were fighting fit when the raid inevitably came in.

"I have one last question for you, Lord Ginenet, and its rather personal." You rise from your seat, grabbing the man by the jaw so you could lift his head and look him in the eye. "Did Gladwell tell you to kill Arthur Gawain, or did you do it for your own gain?" Confusion runs through his eyes for a moment, before he answers in a whisper.

"Gladwell mentioned it as an opportunity, but I did it for me. For my family. After I killed that pirate bastard and took his machine for me and mine, none of you would look at us, we were lower than the fucking Scout Mechs in the eyes of you company nobles. So I took a piece off the board, and in the next raid it was Ginenet that was strong and powerful not Gawain."

You nod, letting his head slip once more, though you could feel him keep glaring at you. "And that worked out so well. So, I'll ask again, Lord Ginenet;

Was it worth it?"

You don't bother waiting for an answer, instead walking out of the cell and back towards the surface. The guards would leave him alone this time, your questions answered in a spew of acid and anger, but truthfully as far as you could tell.

 

[Lord Of Flames]

With one of the conspirators in your custody, and convinced to testify, your odds of a favorable conclusion at the Council have improved, but the board as far as you can tell is split down the middle.

Spoiler: The Conspirator's bribery laid bare.

Mulstadia, Mapon, Alylia and Corum on one side, all having stood to benefit mightily from the destruction of your house and House Knightway. Laoricia, Doponaria, Kedia, and Meluetia on the other, if you could convince them.

A dozen BattleMechs on either side ready to war with each other if everything goes wrong. The specifics of what those 'Mechs are escape you, but you know that it would be bloody.

But the Council is still some time yet, and after a night's rest, you awake to fresh news and the arrival of a messenger, one carrying a letter bearing the sigil of House Godsfield, freshly returned from the mission he left on some weeks ago.

The letter itself is simple, a greeting, well wishes offered to your family in reply to your own for his, and concludes with paragraphs that sets you on edge.

"There will be much to talk about at the Council, to which I and my family are preparing to travel. I thank you for your warning, and I have heard whispers of BattleMechs moving along our borders, but I believe these to simply be the usual rumormongering of the working class, rather than the hostile movements of my neighbors.

Considering that House Andercher is to be the host this year, it is my hope that our families would travel together, as the nearest land path is ever so long and takes us through your lands. With your Lord's permission, we would arrive at the town of Raven's beak and cross by ferry.

I await your answer,
Lord Kay Godsfield, Marcher Lord of Doponaria."

Why do his words bother you so? It is a simple message, and a simple enough request that your father will probably accept it out of hand, given that the port is only a little ways further south than he planned for your retinue to travel.

But the movements of BattleMechs is not something so easily dismissed in your mind.

> Perhaps it would be better if you went on a Patrol of the border you share with the Lord Godsfield. In a BattleMech.

You decide that initiative is the better part of valor today, and make your best speed your father's study, finding him still at his desk, your mother beside him as they look over papers.

"Father, Mother. I have something you must see." You greet them, giving over the letter as quick as they would take it.

Their eyes scan down the page, taking in the words, and see the same passage that has you so concerned. They are confused at first, until you tell them what you learned from Gregor down below, what he had confessed to lining up with the scenario that your father and Lord Knightway had both come to, including the involvement of Mapon in the scheme.

Your father leans back in his chair, some of his color and muscle coming back as he's recovered from his wounds, while your mother stands there, eyes scanning over the letter again and again. "And you warned them about Ginenet, and therefore Gladwell?" At your nod, your mother shares a look with your father. "Then they may have their eyes to the north, but not worrying overly much to the west. Either way, I think something called for."

Your father nods, eyes looking over the papers of his desk, before they rise to you. "It is your decision. Our Garrisons are strong, our patrols vigilant. Take what forces you think fitting, but do not cross the Black Knight into their lands unless you find something that warrants that trespass."

"Yes, Father." You give a bow to your father as he gives his orders, giving your mother a nod as you turn on your heels, heading for the armory closest to the 'Mech-bay where you keep your piloting equipment.

The Black Knight itself had been settled into a sectioned off part of the courtyard, its 'Mech bay currently being used to repair the damaged Warhammer, which to your surprise had already had the damaged sections of structure cut out, leaving the 'Mech looking very lopsided in its appearance.

Either way, you were quick to ascend your machine, the start up sequence coming to you easier every time you did it, the shock of the 'Mech's mynomers coming online and the prickly feeling you felt as it crawled along your skin fading as you rose from the braced knee it had sat in, the ferroglass of your cockpit flashing an ocean blue as the internal lights came online.

You barked orders for a unit of riders to follow you, as well as issuing order for fresh horses to be readied at the rest stops that you'd pass by, your radio busy as you flipped through screens, checked gauges, and cycled the batteries of your weapons. When your system check came back green, you were off, your 'Mech picking up speed as soon as you were out of the keep proper.

As you ran you couldn't help but wonder if you were going to be the White Knight, arriving just in time to save the day, or the fool who was lured away in a moment's peak by your own arrogance.

Either way, you wouldn't know for several good hours.

000

>Scouts roll a 71, failing to meet the full threshold of 77, only making a partial success.

As you approach the border your family shares with Godsfield, you send the riders out ahead, their presence easier to explain then a Heavy BattleMech stomping around woods not its own.

What you didn't expect was for your riders to come back less than an hour later, many of them with wide eyes you could see even from so high in the Black Knight.

There words fill you with no small amount of dread.

They have found signs of BattleMechs passing through the area, and one of them, a man all but shaking in his saddle, caught a glimpse of one of the machines, a skinny, broad-shouldered thing, lacking hands, roughly 2/3rds the size of your Black Knight.

Whatever the specifics may be, the enemy 'Mech was clearly waiting for something, and some of your riders who had kept to the woods and out of sight of it reported that outriders featuring an arrowhead on their surcoats were less than an hour's travel from the border, putting them roughly twice the distance from you as you were from the enemy BattleMech.

To your ears, you understand that the Godsfield caravan was on the move, and the enemy were ready to draw first blood.

---

The distant Vulcan lies in wait, hidden in the brush, their reactor on its lowest power settings short of sitting deactivated in the shadows and of the trees it's using as cover. Thin limbed but broad shouldered, the 'Mech is only half the size of your Black Knight, covered in less armor than many of your family's combat vehicles. It is designed for infantry combat, flamers, machine guns, its only anti-'Mech weapons a bracket of medium lasers set into one of its side torsos that abut its cockpit.

Should it have detected your approach as you move carefully through the brush, your weapons powered down not to ping off the sensor system of the enemy 'Mech? Did it mistake your mass, only slightly smaller than its ally for the 'Mech of its compatriot?

You are not certain, and as you prime and aim the PPC mounted to your arm in the same movement, you don't think it matters. A bolt of lightening springs from your forearm, the barrel shroud spiking a peaky orange as the waste heat from the passing projectile sears the air itself, an imagined smell of ozone filling the inside of your cockpit as you watch the wrath of God slam into the rear armor of the small medium 'Mech, and watch as a single blow lays it out, the kneeling 'Mech sent scrambling onto its front as its right side torso explodes in a shower of slag and shattered armor, half of its weapons destroyed in a single heartbeat, before you follow up the hit. The large lasers set over your 'Mech's kidneys fire in two intense blue beams, heat warnings blare as the temperatures inside spike, with the ferroglass of your cockpit dimming them slightly to not blind you. You watch as they punch into soft armor of the Vulcan's limbs, melting away warped armor that breaks apart to protect the valuable structure it's mounted to, the tumbling 'Mech almost immobile in the muck and splinters of the shattered trees it has fallen through.

You do not get a chance to recover however, your heat gauges falling ever so slowly, before you hear that damnable voice echo in the cockpit, the head of the Knight twisting to look over its shoulder just in time to twist out of the way of the enemy 'Mech's attack, the burning sensation across your shoulder blade causes a hitch in your thoughts, but you recover quickly, bringing the full brunt of your frontal armor to bear against the Ostroc.

What follows is a knife fight. Lasers cut across a distance twice that of a football field, green mediums cut into frontal armor on both sides, large lasers blare into the distance glittering in the sky as they lose strength, while Short range missiles fire from the enemy launcher only to scatter far past you, the distance between you closing until you are all but scraping the paint off of each other in your brawl.

You hammer the firing triggers on your controls again and again, the heat in your cockpit spiking just as quickly as it dissipates, five green lasers hammering into the torso of the Ostroc over and over again, every combined hit enough to send a 'Mech onto its ass, but the pilot of the enemy Heavy 'Mech refuses to fall, catching their balance without fail every time, until you finally hit them just right.

You don't know if you manage to damage the gyro through the armor, or if the repeated strikes to its center of mass had finally managed to unsettle the pilot, but you watch it stagger, and see your chance.

Melee combat in BattleMechs is usually considered difficult, owing to the lack of direct stimulation about distances, forces, and the enemy reaction to your blows. Having slammed a stone sword into a Warhammer several times, you can agree with the former, if not the latter point. What other reaction do you need after watching the enemy's arm fall off after you cleave into it hard enough to send it to the floor in a single blow?

In this case, you lack a sword or club, and use one of the most natural of weapons in a humanoid BattleMech.

You kick the Ostroc.

With the full might of a 75-ton machine behind it, you unbalance yourself, feeling the confusing vertigo as the Knight's gyro tries to accommodate only being on one foot, and for a moment you think you've made a mistake, until you correct, overriding the gyro's computer, and send a boot large enough to call a small automobile straight into the abdomen of the Ostroc, letting your weight follow it as it slams the enemy 'Mech into the ground, the crunch of metal echoing again as you settle the full weight of your machine over the top of theirs.

Raising a scorched arm, you level the underbarrel mounted laser of your right arm towards the tinted ferroglass of the Ostroc's cockpit, your request unspoken. The Knight's sensor suite, not as advanced as it had been some centuries ago, was starting to pick up the sound of horses galloping, coming from further east of your battle site.

From within the prone 'Mech, you hear the crackle as the outbound speakers activate, a ragged voice coming from inside saying, "I yield."

At this range, even if it was false, you'd simply hit them with the full brunt of your weapons, virtually impossible as it was to miss at point blank, and with much of their armor already missing, you were sure to do terrific damage to them well before they could do more than damage yours. With that in mind, you stepped off their machine, keeping your weapons fixed to it until the reactor cycled down, and a man in a stripped-down uniform stepped out of it, a head of blonde hair sweat slicked, and a prominent scar running across his face and lip on the left side. If you were not mistaken, having only caught a glance at the man years ago, that was Lord Taurin Lawvine, vassal to Lord Ruxhall.

"I accept your surrender, Lord Lawvine." You announce for his benefit, closing the capacitors to your weapons. There was no reason to terrorize a man already defeated. "Remain here for a moment, I need to check if your compatriot is merely trapped in his machine, or unconscious."

You see the man nod up at you, before climbing the torso armor of his machine until he's sitting atop it, well clear of the cockpit. Your investigation of the Vulcan reveals that the damage you'd done was considerable, but by your war book's estimate, not enough to cripple it. Using the main benefit of having opposable fingers on a BattleMech, you pull the front of it from the mud and carefully lay it onto its back, giving the head a rapt with the knuckles of your warmachine hard enough to rouse anyone from anything short of a coma.

"I yield, Gawain." Is the annoyed response a few moments later, your acceptance of it seeing an older woman stumble back through the hatch, cradling her arm. Resignation marks her face as she looks up, an orange scarf around her neck.

"Knew I should have trusted the targeting system when it said you were too big."

~

You lead your second captive away from her machine, guiding the lady Huntingless to where the Lord Lawvine is waiting patiently.

With the two of them secured, now it was a game of waiting, your horseman having retreated back to the border to minimize the incident you were sure to have caused. Your wait is not overly long, as you see the first signs of scouts observing you, ducking back into the woods to report back.

When next you see trace of Godsfield's men, it comes in the form of infantry, heavily armored and well-armed infantry at that.

"Unknown BattleMech, by the order of Lord Godsfield, you will identify yourself!" If nothing else, the man provoked bravado in his troops, as you can't imagine how many of the poor blood infantry would try and question a BattleMech they could not identify. Either way, you were not their foe.

"I am Elric Gawain, heir to House Gawain. I arrived here to await the arrival of your lord, so that I could escort his party to the town of Raven's Beak." You're not sure the officer in charge of the infantry believes you immediately, his face hidden by his helmet failing to hide the movement that sees his gaze move from the smoking remains of the Vulcan and the fallen Ostroc at your feet. "I came across these two waiting in ambush for your Lord, inside his lands at that, just beyond the very road his party would be traveling down to reach Gawain lands."

Out of the corner of your eye, you see the redheaded pilot shake her head, clearly wanting to deny the assertion of plotting an ambush, but you see the man shake his head, and his companion quiets down.

The officer looks at the machines, their pilots sitting under your guard, and makes the decision that this is above his paygrade. "You will remain here, Master Gawain. Any aggressive movement will be seen as an attempt to escape the judgement of Lord Godsfield."

Once more, you settle in to wait, passing the time as you think about the numbers of BattleMechs on either side, and how every time you fight you seem to tip the balance of the equation a little more.

When the Lord Godsfield arrives, it is at the head of a column, dozens of riders, all heavily armored, their uniforms well-tailored under the plates, with decorations like epaulettes and wrist markings set in gold thread shining in the sun against the dim blue of the uniforms, a proud shield of yellow set over the center of their rigging, a silver arrowhead embossed on it.

Spoiler: Lord Kay Godsfield, Master of Doponaria

Older than your father by only few years, his family is known for its hair turning silver at a young age, a stark contrast to his deeply tanned skin and and scars. The Lord Kay Godsfield is a proud man, and he rides like it, his head held high, shoulders back in a smooth gait. He is a man who has ruled with power and respect for most of his life, and he knows that most everyone he meets is rarely his equal. The way he looks up at your BattleMech is not with fear or concern, but a controlled curiosity.

"My captain says that you are Elric Gawain, the young man who sent me a letter just a week or so ago. Is that true?"

"It is, Lord Godsfield. My father thought it was best if I came and escorted you to Raven's Beak, with the rumors of unknown," you give the Ostroc's limp leg a ringing tap with the barrel of your PPC. ", BattleMechs in the area giving us pause. You may have heard my family has just repelled our own mysterious attack by a BattleMech and an army."

The man cocks a brow at your machine, looking over the rounded edges, and the blue shield set over the shoulder. "You seem to have come out of it the better, Master Gawain." His interest shifts from you to the pilots you've captured, his eyes tracing over the familiar faces, the charges they wear on their cooling vests and fatigues under them. "Curious, I don't recall inviting the vassals of House Ruxhall into my lands," You see the two of them still, before his gaze shifts back up to you. ", or the son of Lord Gawain for that matter."

You can't meet his gaze directly, given you are some 14 meters in the air, but you can feel the stare all the same. He holds it for some several seconds, an uncomfortable length, before he reigns it in.

"I will send a messenger back to my keep for a crew to recover the damaged machines. I am sure that House Huntingless and Lawvine will be able to ransom them back from House Gawain at a reasonable price, but I think it best if the Lord and Lady were to accompany us to the Council, for their own safety."

It was always unlikely that you'd keep the 'Mechs you'd downed, both from being on foreign soil, and by their pilots still being alive. The situation with the Warhammer was very much an unlikely thing, with you having killed it literally in the seat of your family's power. With Gregor in your custody, it was unlikely that anyone aside from House Gladwell would press you about it, but there was still a chance. Returning to the matter at hand, you sketch a small dip of your head to the Lord Godsfield, as his men approach and take the pilots into their custody. They would not be mistreated, their station and standing well enough that they'd be given fresh clothes, a tent fit for noble personage, and decent food, though you suspect they'd find little courtesy if they leave that tent unprompted.

It is the days that follow that you find the time to dismount from the Black Knight, Gawain guardsman joined up with the Godsfield caravan protecting your family machine, while you go about the duties expected of you as heir to your father.

You speak with the Lord Godsfield, informing of some of the happenings of recent weeks, not least of which is the short war you had with the Ginenet, your family 'Mech being rediscovered on the cusp of defeat is quickly becoming an open secret among the people of your lands. You reveal some of the conspiracy you've uncovered against your family, and how it relates to his own, including the professed dealings between Ruxhall and Gladwell. It doesn't take long for the experienced lord to put the same pieces together that you did, his frown deepening with every sentence you finish.

"It is either an elaborate game you play, Gawain, or our game of politics and chivalry is about to come crashing down." He considers for a moment, likely thinking about his house's own options in the near future, the council itself even, before he waves a hand, taking a seat at his desk. "I must write a letter, you have given me much to think on, Master Elric. Leave me." You gave the man a bow at the dismissal, and left him to his thoughts.

It was not far from his tent that you found where the Mapon pilots were being kept, Lord Lawvine sitting outside the tent with a collapsible table, paper and pen left untouched as he looks at it sadly. Your approach seems to shock him from whatever was bothering him, and he gives you a dip of his head in greeting.

"I have questions for you, Lord Lawvine, and I would hope you'll answer them truthfully." The man gives you a look at that, before shrugging.

"You are my captor and my only chance at honest parole, even if this is Godsfield's camp. Ask your questions, Master Gawain, and I will consider my answers carefully." The lilt of his words bely the curtness of his expression, and so you take a seat opposite him.

"Your words are the last thing that would condemn you at this point. You and the Lady Huntingless seem the honest sort, so I'll ask the obvious question first. Did Ruxhall give the order to waylay the Godsfield caravan?"

"Lord Ruxhall gave me no such order." Is his response in its entirety, and you realize the game you'll have to play here.

"Do you know anything of the talk between Houses Gladwell and Ruxhall?"

"I was told they were talking about new trading routes, as well as tariffs based on passing through the lands of the uninvited."

"Do you know anything of the attack against House Gawain by House Ginenet?"

"No. I was told that I should double my patrols at the northern border, but nothing else."

Your questioning continues in much the same vein for the next little while, with curt answers revealing little of interest, aside from where he puts his emphasis. Words like Lord when he denies any order being given, patrol when asked about the invasion. You even ask him at one point if a member of House Ruxhall had called for the death of Lord Godsfield, and the man has the nerve to say 'Not of House Ruxhall.' Just what game does Lawvine think he's playing here?

When you get the chance to question the Lady Amelia of House Huntingless, she is a bit more clear with her answers, far less accustomed to political double talk as compared to her ally.

"I was told by a letter of House Ruxhall to watch the Northeast for activity, and that is what I did. My house has never attacked another without cause or declaration, and I wasn't about to start today."

"Gladwell and Ruxhall send messengers between one another regularly. They are major trading partners, though I think Gladwell gets the better part of the deal more often than not."

"House Gawain was attacked? I knew the people on your side were getting restless, but I didn't think there had been any combat. Was anyone seriously hurt?"

It becomes clear to you that the Lady, new as she is to her seat and title of Mechwarrior, was told far less than Lawvine, and he is too bound by his oaths of loyalty to give you straight answers.

---

Messengers depart from the camp with several letters, one penned by yourself serving as an update to your father, while the rest are written by the Lords Godsfield, a short page by Lord Lawvine, and a longer letter written by Lady Huntingless, the latter two reviewed before they were sent for any questionable information, ciphers or clues, but aside from assurance to their families that they were alive, brief orders and commands in the mean time, and that they would return soon, they were clean and sent out all the same.

It would be a few more days when a new arrival would come to join the camp. Flanked on either side by more of House Godsfield's elite, the woman is around your age at a guess, her hair already the same silver color as her father, and at dinner that night you are introduced to the Heir of the Godsfield lands, Florence.

If you had to use words to describe her, bored would be among the first, she is unsatisfied in a camp on the move, and she has almost no one to talk with that aren't guards, servants, or nobles her father may not approve of. Intelligent would follow, as she is quick to jump into any conversation, showing her own understanding and thoughts on a given situation, usually well considered, if unprompted. Curiosity seems to be a driving force in her life, as she is always trying to learn something, improve a skill, or just her understanding of an issue.

You can't say you don't see the Lord Godsfield's game here, introduce his daughter, you become a natural companion for conversation owing to your age, perhaps a rapport and respect is built in a little while you spend together, and he can approach the topic with your father when you meet them at the crossing.

You can't say it doesn't work either, as your conversation with the lady Florence are not spent talking about the goings on of politics or of the fashions of home, but rather the management of your holdings, how your father dispenses justice, the layout of the towns and their offerings. For someone that will spend so little time in your lands, she wants to know as much about them as she can.

You'd say she reminds you of your sister, but she is altogether more extroverted than Natasha has ever shown herself to be.

"And your grandfather just helped them to work their fields in a BattleMech?" Her smile is subdued, but her eyes are interested as you tell the same story you heard from the servants.

"Aye, and then he had to come straight home after he finished, and found that his desk had more paper on it than most bookshelves. The servants say he spent a week pouting, looking at his study window with longing, before he finally caught up on his work. It was how he ticked I suppose. He wanted to help anybody he could because, he could."

The way she reacts to your story, amusing as it is, makes you wonder if her father did have stories of running around the castle, making a nuisance of himself when he was young, or if she hadn't heard things about her own grandparents. "My own father has never told me any stories about his youth. To listen to him talk, he sprang out of the ground on the day he turned twenty and assumed the mantle of Lord."

She looks a little conflicted, before she shrugs. "I think it's because his father wasn't lord before him, instead it was his uncle. I've never heard anything about him. Not that he was a good lord who died without children, not that he was bad, and my Father has proven better. I don't even know how he died, just that my father assumed the throne several years before I was born."

A fairly regular occurrence, a nephew taking the seat of his uncle, but requiring that the uncle have no heirs of his own, and even then the brother would inherit over the nephew if at all possible. You admit, you don't have a good enough understanding of the Godsfield family tree, but you imagine that there is a story there. Perhaps your father would know more about it?

Either way, your discussions wind down as you grow closer to the small port town, and inside the metal hull of the Black Knight, you spy the banners of your House outside the main gate long before the caravan has even spotted Raven's Beak.

> Raven's Beak, a port town set at the narrowest point leading into the Bay of Knights. A trade hub for goods further a field, the Town is large and prosperous.

When you reach the gate, the caravan itself is met by guards bearing your family's sigil, and though they do ask the business of the caravan, they expedite the process as they watch your machine carefully walk to the gate itself. Some of the guards from your father's retinue recognize you and the Black Knight, and the others are quickly put straight when they start to turn pale, looking like they want to go sound the alarm for all the good it will do them in the face of a Heavy BattleMech.

Instead, the caravan is admitted without incident, and met not far into the town by your father and mother, though seeing the damn wheelchair still puts a pain in your gut. You had held hope that he would recover, and he still might, but it would be a long time until he could walk again on his own, the damage to his spine severe in the face of a BattleMech's standard anti-infantry round, even a glancing ricochet.

Your Father and Lord Godsfield meet each other as equals here in your lands, the impression you've made on the man and his own dealings with your father buying a great deal of leeway on curtsey and greetings. It is easy for outsiders to forget that your family controls an area almost the size of Doponaria alone, as compared to Godsfield who controls it with the might of two vassal houses. Small areas may be lost from time to time, but your father has spent his life making your house costly to cross, and difficult to attack.

"Lord Godsfield, I bid you welcome in Laoricia, and to Raven's Beak. I hope your trip was uneventful?" Your father's words are honest, but he already knows about your combat with the enemy 'Mechs.

"Your son has shown us great hospitality, Lord Gawain, and protected us from dangers before they became Apparent." He waves a hand forward, and the captured Mechwarriors approach, a guardsman behind each of them for appearances sake. "May I introduce our friend Ruxhall's vassals, Lord Lawvine and Lady Huntingless, recently dispossessed by your Son in the defense of my house. I have informed them they may seek terms with you over their machines," The corners of his mouth do not tilt up as he tacks on a term to what he'd discussed with you. ", minus of course, any dues that need be paid for my holding them until then."

Godsfield, to your understanding, had just added on a term to the usual goings on of ransom brokering, demanding what sounds like rent for not leaving the metal to sit in the woods until a deal was made. Your father just looks at the man, and in your eyes it doesn't seen like he's looking up at him, evaluating him and his position. Perhaps it was a game that Godsfield was playing, perhaps it was your father being irked at so blatant a gesture.

"And if no ransom is ever reached, should I assume that House Godsfield would lay claim to the 'Mechs as unmarked salvage?"

Lord Kay nods, his hands clasped behind his back. "It is a time of great concern throughout Frierehalt, Lord Gawain. It has been a few years since the last raid, and while some see this as a time of peace, I think it is better to thicken your doors and line your windows than see Winter sweep in and freeze you cold. With the recent unrest in your own lands, I cannot say it would not be the more prudent option to claim them entirely, the good Lord and Lady be damned, and your son's efforts on my behalf ignored."

"Prudent perhaps, but ultimately foolish. You could make a friend just as easily as create eternal enemies, Godsfield. We can discuss this in private, when you are better rested." Your father's words are clear and strong, and despite the give and take of their conversation, you think its coming to a close.

"Certainly. Now, my Daughter and I have been riding and camping for nigh on two weeks now, and I feel a good bath and fresh food would do us all some good. By your leave, Lord Gawain."

With your father's nod of dismissal, one of the Gawain guards lead the Godsfield entourage deeper into the city, where quarters had been set aside for them, in a high-class inn, or perhaps one of the manses here, but you stayed with your father, sharing a smile with your mother.

Your father shakes your hand when you offer it, before he turns to look after Godsfield's group. "That man is stubborn beyond all countenance, but I think we can negotiate terms with Ruxhall's people without upsetting either overly much. Now, tell me everything."

And so you do.

---

It is a welcome change to your circumstances that you find yourself sitting in a tavern, a fresh mug of beer in front of you, and a wonderful looking sandwich full of with lettuce, tomatoes, and crunchy bacon. Say what you would about the physicality of being a MechWarrior being less than a grunt on the ground, you try working ten hour shifts in a metal box that is already a sauna from the reactor's ambient heat, in a 'Mech too tall to be properly covered from the gaze of the sun, and occasionally needing to push that reactor to navigate obstacles or find a better path for the caravan.

It was easier than being on horseback, and needed no chaps for the effort, but it also worked up an appetite, as the demolished plate of fried fish and thick cut 'chips' next to your sandwich could attest.

The women that served as the help in the establishment had figured out who you were by now, and you were getting used to seeing a touch more skin than most of the sailors usually did. You imagined you'd still get smacked if you did more than look, but- You start to cackle with the rest of the bar as one young sailor does exactly that, giving the lady carrying a tray of drinks a pinch on the rear, only to get a mug poured over his head for his trouble. His friends take it in good cheer, and put another coin on the platter to replace the lost drink, the atmosphere lively even at midday in a port town like this.

When you finally polish off your sandwich, and leave a tip for the fine ladies of the house for their efforts to make you feel welcome, you head back for your father's commandeered office, the man busy with governance even so far from home.

He's in better health than last you saw him, the tone of his skin coming back to that healthy hue you'd left before the invasion, but you can tell his being wheelchair bound was still annoying for a man used to running a mile every morning. His mood does brighten when he sees you enter, and he waves a hand at an open chair.

"Hello Elric. What can I do for you?"

You shake your head at that. "Nothing specific, I just wanted clarification. I know the Council is soon, and I know that I will be required to attend for my part in the invasion. I suppose what I want to know is what is our move, our goal. I don't want to be isolated and damage the family's objective at the Council by saying the wrong thing or agreeing to a deal I shouldn't."

Your father smiles at that, but shakes his head in return. "I don't think you'd get into trouble that simple, you're too much like your grandfather. No, your problems will involve honor duels and the slighted ego of men you've never met before because you walk with your shoulders back and your head held high and it's not an act. As to the family stance," He reaches to the side of the desk, retrieving his cigar from where it rests against an ashtray. "I want the Ginenet's destroyed, I want their name attainted, I want their assets, their holdings and estates, and I want Gladwell to have to pay our family an exorbitant sum for the next hundred years, or your grandchildren die, whichever comes first."

You nod your head, commiserating with his feelings. "I could probably win the Honor Duels, but I don't think you'll get everything you want, father."

"I know, but a man can dream. No, what House Gawain wants is House Ginenet under our thumb. We want Gladwell to back off for five or six years, get some good peace time revenues going so we can improve our forces, get ready for the next bit of insanity that springs from his mind. We already control the lands of Ginenet, We have the Warhammer, and we have the family as our guests, so that should not be a difficult sell to the council. Getting them to take us seriously will be more difficult, but there's a provision in the compact between the Houses."

That's ominous, but your mind goes over what you know of it, and then the many multicolored machines you'd seen at the last council you attended. "The War Time Compact?"

"Exactly. In times of War, undeclared or not, a House may bring with it its BattleMech, to answer any charges in the ways agreed upon by the houses shortly after the founding. In almost any duel we'd be drawn into, the Black Knight can fight anywhere, any time, but if Summeremere for example, got upset about something, His Awesome is powerful, but you get in his face, get behind him, he can do almost nothing to shake you without damaging his own 'Mech."

A fair point, with the PPC's minimum range an Awesome would only have a minimal armament for up close work. "It's not a bad plan, but couldn't we be accused of acting in bad faith if we bring our BattleMech?"

"Perhaps, but the understanding has always been the hosting house and its vassals should bring their 'Mechs to keep order and peace outside the contests. You're shaping into a decent pilot, Elric, but I don't think you could take on veteran pilots in 3 on 1 odds and come out the victor, so we shouldn't give them cause for it."

You nod at that, leaning back into your chair a moment before you come back forward. "I've been meaning to ask, but I didn't want to bother you while you were recovering. What is the House's situation, because I understand that the Invasion was damaging?"

Your father gives you a look, taking a draw from his cigar, before he answers you. "The coffers were flush for the time of year, and so I was able to get the damage dealt with without going into the savings I've been building for years. A small expansion of the army here, a debt forgiveness there, all acts we can afford. We were in a good spot Elric, and with you piloting the Knight, we're in an even better one. We just have to get through the Council without getting killed or blamed for inciting anything that could see them 'disqualify' our actions."

You speak with your father for a while longer, the talk turning from serious matters to the less immediate on his desk, your help seeing the pile shrink before you call it an afternoon and bid him your goodbyes.

---

You don't think the guards of the Godsfield troupe are surprised when you ask if the Lady Florence has the time to walk with you today. Her rapid arrival, wearing a quite practical arrangement with trousers under a long flared jacket, makes you wonder if she wasn't anticipating your request, or perhaps she was going to go on an adventure of her own before your arrival.

Either way, the Guards let you leave with only a small note of warning, suggesting that if anything untoward were to happen to their charge, your father would need a new pilot for the Family machine. Say what you will for how her father seems to bounce between stony seriousness and political savvy, he has inspired a sense of duty in his soldiers towards his family, much like your own.

What you didn't expect was for Natasha to join you on your expedition around the town, your little sister all but melting out of the shadows as you passed the manor where your family was staying until a ship could be chartered for the opposite shore, tasking your opposite arm in as smooth a motion as you'd seen from the girl. Your look of confusion gets you a blush for her, and a giggle from your fellow heir.

"I've not got to spend almost any time with you since you found that machine, and with father being busy trying to rule and fix the damage, mother trying to keep people calm so it doesn't come to blows over loaves of bread, and Alistair busy staring at the Warhammer your teacher is fixing with less decorum than I've seen in Dogs looking at beef bones, I've become quite annoyed with you." The exasperation and deadpan delivery of it makes you laugh, which only makes your sister flush redder. You raise your hand to forestall her blow, dipping your head in an apology.

"I'm sorry, Nat. I know exactly what you mean, I've just been busy. I've had to step up, and I haven't found as much time as I'd like to do more than read a few pages of books I've wanted to read or to go and see how the new colts are doing." You see her nod her head at that, she's seen you bustling around trying to keep the world in one piece. "But I'm being rude. Natasha, may I introduce the Lady Florence Godsfield, daughter of Lord Kay."

At mentioning the woman on your other arm, your sister seems to jolt herself into proper etiquette, taking a step away from you to give her a small curtsy, dipping her shoulders and giving a small pull of the skirt about her thighs, a gesture your family's guest returns. "I've heard much about the Lord Godsfield from my father, but not so much about his family." Your sister gives an honest smile as she speaks, putting you at ease about any jealousy she might feel over your attention. "Shall we make this a social call, and trust my brother to escort us about the town while we've the time? One of my teachers says that there is a printing house not far from the docks, with a store inside to purchase novellas and the like."

That seems to get Florence's attention, and a glance at you sees only a pair of upturned corners. "Certainly. I trust Master Elric to keep us from harm, and I would enjoy talking about a few of the works I've read." With that, she pulls out of your arm, and takes your sisters instead, leaving you to walk after them, from participant to chauffeur.

Oh how the mighty have fallen.

Raven's Beak is a port town, and that naturally lends it to some level of discord, sailors getting off their ships after long voyages around the cliffs and rocky coasts of the continent, and with the shallowing that happens around the neck leading into the Bay of Knights, there is little room for error even with land and help so close at hand.

Some of the larger container ships, crude things that seemed to burn thick tar out at sea with how black the smoke was, couldn't even attempt the strait leading to them having to offload cargo to smaller ships at the ports outside the bay, but together those ships could deliver in weeks cargo that could take months to cross from one side of the continent to the other, dispersing them from their ports of call and carrying foreign trade goods back to their homes before going on another run.

Naval warships on Frierehalt are mostly nonexistent, with only a handful serving as symbols of status for the houses that gain most of their wealth through the naval trading routes. Armed with BattleMech-grade weaponry, the ships act as fleets-in-being, where a single ship can dictate the command of a situation do to its own firepower.

For your part, you've only had to have words with one young sailor, the town guards watching vigilantly for the less restrained men and making them take a different route to their favored establishments. That young lad wasn't even a bad sort, fresh off his first cruise and excited, but your sister and the lady Florence were not for him to ogle at, or try to approach.

All you had to do was play up the angry brother when you stopped him, and the boy vanished quickly under your glower.

The bookstore itself is a large, homey place, with long wooden planks for the floors, the shelves taking up two stories worth of rooms where they sat beside the windows, with well made chairs and tables sitting there for customer's use so they could watch the comings and goings of the port while they enjoyed their book.

Natasha and Florence had lit up the moment they'd entered the building, and you watched with fond exasperation as they instantly headed for the fiction section, the two of them sharing their favorite reads from the books on display, talking up the plots of this thriller or romance novel, the humor of this one or the grim nature of that one.

You won't lie, fiction was rarely where your interest lied, with much of the science fiction you'd read just falling apart in the face of established knowledge, and fantasy just looking like a warped mirror of the life you lead. That wasn't to say you couldn't enjoy a story of space wizards having it out with laser swords, or the interesting politics that would come from having dozens of space faring empires ruling over sections of the galaxy a thousand times the size of the inner sphere.

An interesting question was just how many of these books were century-long reprints of Terran novella going back to the last millennia, new reprints of House-era serials, and how many of them were Frierehalt originals, written by the people of your homeworld for a little money and fame on the side of their regular jobs. So many names decorated the spines of those books, there was an age to many of them that didn't just belong to the salted air of the port, but one of long life spent going from planet to planet, until they somehow ended up here of all places.

Either way, your musings were interrupted by your sister's voice, as she regaled her companion with a summary of a book's plot, her enthusiasm seeming to rub off on Florence.

"And so he returns to his home village, only to find the place destroyed. The main character sets about gathering the bodies of the villagers, people he'd known all his life, until he finds his father, crucified in front of their home. He swears to the gods that he would see justice done against the demons that had done this, and the magic he has sparks out of control and immolates the bodies into nothing but ash. When he finishes, he prepares to set out only for the-"

"For the deuteragonist to also arrive back at the village, being chased by the same demons that had cut down everyone. The Protagonist saves her by using his new skill at swords and combat, and sends the demons running."

Your sister's smile grows despite the interruption. "Yes! I knew if I got to that bit you'd remember. It's a wonderful read, but I think the author got bogged down in the city after too much."

"The Elves are a lot like the stiffest nobles I've ever met. They don't mean what they say, and they wrap every sentence in a net of context and allusions so that you have to know everything about a situation to actually understand what they meant. Still, I think the Siege that followed was a good return to pace in the story, with the walls constantly under attack, the switching perspectives showing us the combat and the cost of defiance in the healing tents. Even the conclusion, where the doors are shattered and the last line is flagging is well executed, with hints in the previous chapters about how the demons aren't just throwing themselves at the walls for no good reason."

There is more nodding of heads at that. "Like when the Paladin finds the damage at the end of chapter 32 and doesn't realize how intentional that one spot is until the end of chapter 35 when the port-gate is sheared off its chains by a shot through the gap. The only part I didn't like was the way the author tried to sell the relationship between the princess and the village girl. It felt so forced that they would end up friends when the court shouldn't care about this random girl. The Paladin at least had his title to rely on for respect, but his companion was just… eh. And don't get me started on the reveal about the assassin."

Natasha and Florence share look at that shared feeling, before they break into quiet laughter, trying to keep a measure of decorum while they talk about the books.

For your part, you don't bother hiding the smirk that crosses your face, and just settle in to watch them explore, talk, and share their thoughts about things. It is moments like these that make you want to take to the Black Knight, because piloting that machine is the only way you can preserve these moments, to preserve the peace that lets a pair of young women go about making friendships without any worry about tomorrow.

~

For all your sister may wish otherwise, you can not spend the day locked inside the bookstore merely perusing their inventory, reminiscing about past books, and thought about future publications.

When the three of you leave the book-store, it is well into the afternoon, and your arms carry the purchases made by the two in thick woven bags, the friendship between the two girls growing quickly as they shared not only their love of books, but also their passion for knowledge and experiences.

A major part of the conversation that follows is about your sister's wish to manage one of the family ranches, so she can get experience running an actual household. Florence had much the same wish several years ago, and learned first hand that her mother is a far busier person than she originally thought, with it being one thing for the woman to describe her schedule, and another to have to live it for the month that she was granted control over a few farmsteads.

Determining the rightful ownership of Calves was apparently an indispensable part of managing the livelihood of a half dozen farmers.

You had never had quite the same hands-on experience with ruling or control, spending far more of your time with your father watching him rule, or making decisions with his guidance. You suppose that was part of what had scared you so much in the aftermath of the siege, your father being incapacitated and near death was ripping out the safety net from under your tightrope act.

By the end of the day, spent exploring shops, glaring at young men too obvious in their infatuation, and one short fight well out of sight of your charges where a man wouldn't take no for an answer, you were quite aware of the dimming sunlight, and the sort that come out at night in a port town, for games and drink and less savory things.

Your sister you drop off first, retracing your steps back around the manor, and seeing her inside with little trouble. As you continue on walking, you stay vigilant, watching the alleys for the first signs of the troubled souls that try to spread their misery. You may not have 75-tons of BattleMech wrapped around you, or a sextet of lasers at the ready, but you are far from defenseless, the sheathed knife at your hip, or the holstered handgun under your jacket more than proof of that.

The guards outside the Godsfield's inn seem to relax as you returned with their charge in good health, a certain worry washing out as she headed back inside. For your efforts, they only give you a short nod before they resume their watch.

It was a good day, even if it wasn't quite what you had expected, your sister having gotten far more out of it than you had, but that was little surprise. She was the brighter of you, and her interests could bridge the gap of her introversion and lead to colorful conversations about things you barely understand. Her having a good relationship with a woman her own age, in a high house as Godsfield at that, was sure to please your mother, and it did your own fears some good that Natasha had a friend she could write to in the future.

Come the morning, you would board a ship bound for the opposite shore and reach the Council in only few days more.

 

[Lord Of Flames]

It had been a small difficulty to find a boat on such short notice capable of moving a 75-ton BattleMech, especially one standing fourteen meters high. The mass makes for a difficult load for even the most veteran captains to load and harness.

Thankfully, your knowledge of a 'Mech's innerworkings gave you some advantage in preparing it for travel. It was dangerous to do repairs on a 'Mech that was limp, the limbs as like to sway and cause injury as they were to stay still under their own weight. Instead, you could lock the limbs either from the cockpit, as you'd done after carefully kneeling the 'Mech where you'd been shown on the broad deck, or if its cockpit was damaged and the pilot killed, by applying a charge directly to the mynomer. Why this worked wasn't exactly clear, save that there were some interesting stories of weapons in the distant past that would literally shut down a 'Mech like blowing out a candle, leaving it perfectly intact save that its engine refused to ignite, and the bundles refused to move.

When it came time to disembark, it was as simple as disengaging the maintenance safeties and safely stepping off the boat as quickly as you could. You don't doubt your father had to pay the ship's captain a handsome fee, but you had crossed in a hundred miles of water what would take you the better part of five by land.

You and your party were met by a similar group soon after you arrive, Lord Knightway's Hammerhands taking the lead after a brief greeting shared between your father and his nominal overlord. When you see the Verdant banners of house Abombert arrive, their ruling lady is on horseback rather than inside any machine, their Hunchback remaining behind to watch the mountain passes that separate your woodlands from the Kedian plains and savannahs.

Together, the houses of Laoricia and Doponaria travel south, the temperate woods of your home giving way to striped trees like you had seen in your youth, their orange leaves bringing to mind still shots of a flame as they fluttered past your cockpit on the wind. The guardsmen you've brought with you are as vigilant as you are, mindful of their surroundings even as the caravan moves along the well worn roads. Your own watch is interrupted by a chirp of your BattleMech's sensor system, a Fusion Engine detected moving towards you at a slow pace.

To you, this is no cause for concern, even as you prime the capacitor of your PPC just in case. Your father had sent word of his intention to House Andercher while you had waited in Raven's Beak, and so to hear that a BattleMech was coming towards you was to be expected. You recognize the dome-like shape of the cockpit, bracketed as it is by armor reinforcements, and the missile launcher set over the shoulder, a PPC taking up much of the arm below it.

Spoiler: >House Bowborne's Grffin, its reinforced armor giving it a different profile over the standard -1N. Oddly, your computer says it weighs 60 tons.

The Griffin's speakers sound as your caravan comes into view, your heavy BattleMechs moving to the fore in case of violence, but the man inside is far from hostile. "Lord Andercher welcomes The Houses of Laoricia and Doponaria into his lands. He acknowledges your claim of grievance and sends his vasal, Lord Bowborne, to see you safely to his keep for the Council."

Knightway answers for your group, powering down his weapons now that hospitality has been offered. "We accept the offer of Lord Andercher, Lord Bowborne. We will follow you and offer our word of good conduct in these lands for your trust."

The Griffin, its head fixed in place at the top of its chassis, gives a small bow at his words, and your caravan follows the fast-moving 'Mech, its jump jets letting it ascend steep hills to better overlook the surroundings.

It takes another few days of trudging through forests that give way to mud and swamp in places, the pilot of the Griffin joining your party for supper at night, and worsening weather before you spy the place where your party will stay for the next week or so.

Yours are not the only 'Mechs in attendance to this event, your hosts sworn machines joined by their third, Giving them a numerical advantage against any one faction. Opposite you, both physically and politically, you see the shape of a massive Awesome, the mighty Assault 'Mech standing equal with your Black Knight but broader by far, joined by a Wolverine sporting a black crow stretched over its torsos.

Though your party is quickly met by an attendant of Lord Andercher who sees them to their lodgings for the council, you and Lord Knightway are lead first to a staging ground by the looks of it, where meter high walls have been erected in regular squares, large enough for you to kneel your BattleMech and cover all but the top of its head. Mechbays were expensive to manage on Frierehalt, with each House having at least one to maintain their machine. It was unreasonable to expect that the Host of the council would, or even could, create a dozen or so when they wouldn't even know if any BattleMechs would have to be stabled for the duration.

It would only take a word to see a set of guards from your escorts stationed at the only entrance into each square you'd claimed, and as you step outside the confines of the bay, you see a conversation between people you don't recognize, one of them wearing a cooling vest with a while bulls head over the back the vest, the horns coming to a point past his shoulders. He turns to look at you, eyes darting to the side as Knightway emerges from his own block.

"Knightway arrives armed, and with a young buck at that? I don't recognize the machine, but that was Gawain's crest on the shield." The man who you can only imagine to be the Lord Summermere is dismissive of you, his eyes locked on Meric. "I've been hearing interesting stories, Knightway, about your vassals. Is it true that you let Gawain do whatever he wants, or does he have to ask permission before he beds your wife?"

Meric scoffs, shaking his head even as he sees your fists clench at the insult. "Bel would sooner geld the man if he tried, and Valeria would help. Both are good with a knife, Trajin. Not the only ones either, something your boy learned when he tried to touch my niece. How is his hand?" You see the man's nostrils flare like his house's sigil, his face flushing too.

"Still healing, Meric. He was doing nothing when your niece attacked him, and you'll pay for that insult before this Council is over, Knightway, I can promise you that."

"With what friends, Trajin? Gladwell has his own troubles at home, as the young buck can attest, and Ruxhall is late, likely licking his wounds after the scrap he had with Godsfield."

"You've pissed off half the planet with your antics over the last few years, Knightway. Even Sanmon thinks you've gone too far at times, and with the dirt from the last war still loose over its grave, this council is going to eat you alive for breaking the peace."

You see Knightway muster to respond, but you put your hand on his shoulder, shaking your head. "He's trying to get you to hit him, and as much as I want to, it's not worth it."

Any continued conversation between the three of you is interrupted by a man wearing the coat of your hosts on his breast, clearing his throat to make himself known. "I would remind our guests that Lord Andercher has guaranteed the safety of his guests for the duration of the council. If you have a grievance, you should raise it tomorrow at the first meeting. Now, Lord Knightway, Master Gawain, if you would be so kind as to follow me, I can show you to your lodgings."

With that easy out, Knightway gives the Lord Summermere one last glare, before he turns to follow the servant, your footfalls quickly joining them.

Perhaps you should get those guards more quickly than you thought.

~

More guests arrive at the castle during the night, coming from far afield, and their banners soon stand outside similar lodgings.

You recognize a gilded eagle on green, standing beside the wolves and bears that make up the lords of Kedia, the fish and crossed spears supporting the Bull of Corum, and the red throated robin and blue-coated humming bird of Godsfield's vassals.

Gladwell's flag is joined by a pair of silver axes running back to back, the only overlord with a single vassal here. Even Ruxhall and his vassal's have finally arrived, though with your holding of their lord and lady, their presence may be for appearance sake and little else.

As far from the Kedian lords as possible, you spot the silver owl of Meleutia, the quartered shield and burning brand framed on either side of its flag.

From the corners of the world the Noble Houses have come together for this council, and what will come of it, nobody knows for certain.

Come the morning, your parties will break their fast among themselves, and then the Lords will be shown to the council room, and the real politics will begin.

~

You push the wheelchair of your father as you follow the servant sent to collect you, beside you the rulers of Laoricia, all of you dressed in your finest clothes. There are observers allowed in the council chamber, though no one may enter armed save for the host and his guards.

With a gesture, your entourage halts, and you see the servant knock on the door in a pattern. He waits a moment before he opens the door, and you can hear from inside the chamber.

"Now presenting the Lord Knightway. The Lord Gawain. The Lady Abombert."

With that, the servant steps to the side, taking the door with him as you enter in the order called. The reaction to your arrival is at first muted, then interested when they see your father so confined. His injury, however much he might wish it forgotten, was a potent reminder to the Nobles that one of their own was attacked in his own home by another of their own.

The room itself is clearly where the Andercher hear their people, two thrones set at the far end of the room, banners set beside them. High arching ceilings showed statues of knights at the far end, while a large, round table had been set in the center of the long room, dozens of chairs set around it.

You wheel your father over to one side, following Lord Knightway, and take away one of the chairs when he comes to a stop. It was basic etiquette that everyone would be seated when everyone was in the room, and so you stood as more names were read off. Sanmon, Grosseaw, Summermere, Blackphens, Ruxhall, Gladwell, Cobster, Godsfield, Armmore, each seeing another group of people enter the room, until it was starting to feel almost small despite the scope of it all.

It was only as the last of the visitors filed in that the crier spoke one last time.

"Presenting the host of this Council, the Honorable Lord Andercher and his Wife. The Lord Bowborne, the Lord Luchtomb."

Many vistors, yourself among them, bowed your heads as the Lord Andercher took his place at the table, pulling out a chair for his wife in the tradition of many caring husbands. With her seated, Lord Andercher looks to the rest of you, before he speaks.

"Some of you I have spoken to, and others arrived in the night before I had the chance, so to all I bid you welcome in my home, and under the protection of my hospitality until it comes time for you to return to yours. Please, be seated and let this council begin."

A chorus of scraping chairs sound as people take their seats, framed in a circle, but even then you can see where the lords have drawn their sympathies, with the exception of Lady Armmore and Lord Sanmon having taken almost opposite sides of the table to avoid one another.

"The first order of business of this Council in the year 3029, is…"

---

There are things that the council must cover, mostly related to the current capacity to defend the people from the pirate raids, a dose of paranoia that is well situated in your opinion. Better to be well situated to defend your people and not need to, than wish you had the means and need it now.

You'd have thought that it would be an interesting display of trust for the Lords to disclose their strength among themselves, but instead it is absent of many, or you should say any, details, with a confirmation that their 'Mechs are in ready condition and a promise that their troops are drilled enough all that is needed to move on to the next in line.

On one hand, you can understand the distrust between competitors in the broadest sense, on the other, rarely is a single 'Mech enough to fend off a pirate raid, and even the might of a region may not be enough in many cases.

Either way, you hear the different houses list their assets in a general fashion, your own father announcing that the Gawain 'Mech was "In ready condition" for the first time in decades, earning him no small amount of surprise from some of the most distant lords, while Gladwell started to simmer under his facade of calm. The same question inevitably reaches your neighbor, and he can only report that House Ginenet's 'Mech is currently 'disabled.', but that his own is in good repair.

You don't miss the looks he gives you from across the table, a dozen lords answering the question in the interim, before the Lord Andercher opens the floor for issues requiring the council's attention.

You could speak up, provide your story first, provide testimony, evidence, recordings, the very fucking injury of your father so he may never walk again, but instead, you do as you are loathe to, and stay silent.

Instead, you watch as Gladwell takes the first step into your trap.

"I raise an issue about House Gawain and its activities, the blanket murder it has committed, and the lies it has told us for twenty years! I demand the Council hear the case against it for the destruction of House Ginenet, and its trespass against House Gladwell!"

Spoiler: Lord John Gladwell, Master of Mulstadia

"The council recognizes the Lord of Mulstadia. Speak, and be heard." The words of the Lord Andercher come only after he glances at your father, a dip of his chin enough, and it seems to calm Lord Gladwell, his anger lowering to a simmer even as he fixes you and your father with a glare.

Taking a deep breath, he stands from his seat, and begins to speak, his hands gesturing for emphasis even as he lays down his crock of manure as if it was an ancient tale worthy of retelling.

"Thank you, my Lord. Council Members, Hear me! House Gawain has deceived us for many long years, ever since they claimed that their machine was lost in a pirate raid, one repelled by many of the lords of this council in their youth!

It was a tragic event, one that saw their star fall in the eyes of many, but look at them now! They stand more powerful than they have even been, their monopoly steel-clad over our only connection to the inner sphere, their military might more advanced for their wealth as tradesman and merchants than the most noble and strong of arm of their fellow lords. They field more combat vehicles than many of the great houses, their troops are better armed and armored than their overlords, and now they claim to have rediscovered their lost machine?

Nay, this is a deception blacker than their hearts! They claim to have lost their BattleMech in order for this council to give its leave for them to expand their secondary forces, to make up the disparity and provide a similar level of defense. Recent events have revealed that this was a long con that would see them stronger than Knightway or Myself when they inevitably revealed their machine once more, as they have done.

They have violated every rule that this council has ever laid down, with their overt militarization, their aggressions crossing the borders of their neighbors with nothing more than a whisper on the wind, and the flagrant disrespect they have paid me, my vassals, and the rest of us with their copper counting.

House Ginenet, its lord a good and dear friend of mine, has been destroyed in its entirety, its lands seized by these treacherous dogs, patrolled by their soldiers that would turn away my rightful tax collectors by force of arms. Their house words are as empty as the rust about their sword's scabbards!

And for what reason do the Gawain claim to have the right here? They would claim that their lands were invaded by the Ginenet, that their castle was besieged and its walls broken by their enemy, their people attacked and killed by the roving bands of Ginenet raiders. They would claim that by happenstance, their prayers were answered, the Black Knight of their history returned in their darkest hour to save them from their own destruction, but this is a blanket fabrication!

I was one of the lords to investigate the site of the Knight's loss so many years ago, alongside the lords Ginenet, Cobster, Ruxhall and others. No 'Mech, no matter how skilled Arthur Gawain might have been, could have fought four machines and come out of it unscathed, and yet what do we find today? A 'Mech looking like it walked off the factory floor yesterday, its paint barely scratched by the long journey here!

They would have us believe the Ginenet would so blatantly attack, would break their defenses and strike at their keep directly, only to be stopped at the cusp of victory by a ghost creeping out of the forest, the Ginenet's military might broken by a single damaged machine piloted by a child who knows nothing of real war, who had never stepped foot near a BattleMech before? It is nothing but lies and slander I say!

I spoke with Gregor Ginenet shortly before his disappearance, his flight from the Gawain lands coming not a day after I sent him to discuss trade agreements with Lord Gawain. He spoke of what he'd seen, the preparations for war he was witnessing, and when I hide him in my lands so he may testify here, what do I learn but that Brigands have crossed the border and shattered my hideaway, the witness that would crucify the Gawain vanished in the dimming light of sunset like the light over the horizon.

Their crimes are many, and so I ask that this council not only censor House Gawain for its treason against us all, but strike its name from the rolls, that its assets be seized and given over to the lords that have served Frierehalt loyally though their long years of rule. Let us close this chapter of our history on this sordid conspiracy."

For several long moments, you can only help but stare at the Lord Gladwell, his request so ridiculous as to be beyond merely absurd, and you are not the only one. All around the table, the noble lords of your homeworld give each other questioning glances, Gladwell's oratory performance quite impressive, but by no means enough to sign your house's death warrant without physical evidence.

You spare a quick look to your father, seemingly the only calm man in the room as quiet whispers start to break out, the different cliques trying their best to manage their response to this claim. With a gesture, your father raises his hand, and the Lord Andercher seizes the chance to bring calm back into this room of headless chickens.

Clearing his throat, the man speaks loudly over the din, his voice strong rather than shrill. "The Council recognizes the Lord Gawain. Speak, and be heard!"

Your father dips his head to the man, before sitting up in his chair stiff backed. "Forgive me, Lord Andercher, but my voice is not as it once was, and I fear my continuing injuries would make a long speech about the innocence of my house difficult. I would have my heir, Elric, begin on behalf of our House."

With a nod from the presiding lord, and a smaller one from your father, you step to the edge of the large round table and try to conjure the words that would dispute all that Gladwell has said. You work your jaw for a moment, your hand tracing over the fine knotwork that runs around the rim of the table, and you begin to speak.

Spoiler: Elric Gawain, the heir to his house. The hero of our story.

"A month ago, I was an unblooded boy, a man in age but still so very young at heart. My largest problems were the questions from my mother about young ladies that had sent me letters, whether Sir Christoph would make me run an extra lap if I showed up late for drills, or what banal assignment my father would send me on to teach me responsibility. I could look out my window, or go riding for hours, and feel like I was still prince of everything I could see.

And then, I was punished again. I had borrowed my sister from her schedule, and my father punished me to go oversee the hunt for poachers in the east. When I arrived, there was nothing odd. When I found the seen of the crime, I found strange signs and grew concerned. When I followed their tracks back to their blighted little camp, I was appalled.

Foreign banners flew on Gawain Land, their knights and their tanks kicked up Gawain dirt, and they were hunting in Gawain forests. Forgive me, my Lords, I said small, when what I saw was a party fit to raze a dozen hamlets to the ground, a raiding party by any other name.

When I sent my man back to tell my father about what we'd found, I remained to see just who was responsible for this trespass as you so politely called it, Lord Gladwell. I saw the crest of Ginenet on the breasts of those knights, and I saw the same crude armor besiege my home later.

I am the heir to House Gawain, and I was hunted like a fox in my own woods. I gave those riders a merry chase, and only by the grace of God am I still alive to tell you of it. I outrode, outwitted, and overcame their search, and by chance in my flight discovered the resting place of the Black Knight. I discovered my grandfather's body lying there undisturbed for twenty years, nothing but bones wrapped in rotten cloth, and when I realized that the enemy was not so far behind, I took up my family machine and charged as any of us would have.

I am as green as the grass in matters of war, my lords, but a dozen horsemen armed with rifles against a heavy BattleMech is arithmetic I could do any day."

You watch the wave of nods, even the pilots of lighter machines agreeing with you. Your hands are tight around the edge of the table you've grasped, your knuckles white as snow, and your voice is low but strong as you tell your tale, your anger held tight in the clench of your jaw.

"I cut my way home, I killed again and again because these monsters were hurting my people in their own homes, and I kept going until I reached my own keep.

Gladwell would say I am a liar, and he is an honorable lord, but I saw the bastard Olin Ginenet fire the shots that have crippled my father. I saw him taunt a dying man and confess to the only witness he knew of the crimes of his father. I killed Olin Ginenet in single combat in defense of my home, and before this council I proclaim this;

Twice over is the Ginenet Warhammer wergild to House Gawain. Gregor Ginenet confessed to me that he was the soul that slew my grandfather, that took from House Gawain its greatest artifact even if he could not find it himself. Olin Ginenet paid the price for his actions when he broke into my home, and I, as the victor, claimed his machine as salvage and dare any soul here to contest that.

The Lord and Heir of House Ginenet are little better than the pirates that tear at our defenses and steal from us our resources!" Your tone has risen beyond the quiet statement of fact, and so you take a breath, and calm yourself.

"But the honorable Lord Gladwell, would name me the equal of his attack dogs, would say that I trespassed in his lands and stole from him his pawn in this farce. Merely ask, and I will give proof of my words, though record and testimony and deed. Merely ask it, and I will produce the Lord Ginenet for this council to judge. Ask it, and on my honor I will produce the family that the honorable Lord Gladwell would claim I slaughtered like fish in a barrel from the cockpit of a BattleMech.

And when the Honorable Lord Gladwell refuses to heed the evidence against his words, know that I will meet him on the field of battle, and tear his bloody body from his shattered machine."

You feel your father pat your back as you step back, your part in this done, you were the aggressive heir, a young man proving himself in his own eyes through strength of arms. Now, it was your father's turn, a man of age and wisdom to nail the coffin shut.

"My son is eager to see this matter settled quickly, and I have never known him to lie in matters as important as this. He saw the conflict first hand, but while he was away, he did not witness my meeting with Gregor Ginenet. Elric was not there when Gregor tried to buy my silence, my loyalty, to forsake my oaths of friendship to Lord Knightway. Gregor told me that Gladwell would reward me well if I stepped aside, if I let him tear a pound of flesh from my overlord, to break Laoricia into a dozen pieces and given them away to satisfy the outcry of the now gathered lords.

Lord Knightway has been a leal friend in these long years, and I would never endanger him, or his family. When I refused, I cast Ginenet from my keep, and not a day past I found my holdings besiged, as my son as said. Olin was a sadist, and with my death all but certain he wanted to rub salt into the wounds, and told me that Gregor had killed my father so many years ago.

Gladwell is not the Honorable lord that he would project before this council. He is a bully and a tyrant, who's hounds leapt to my house's throat at his command, and got a belly full of steel for their trouble. Gladwell would see himself master of this world, and if he had to pave the rode to power with the bones of his enemies, he would crush us underfoot as he climbed.

We have evidence in the form of 'Mech BattleROMs, of recorded confessions, the evidence of your own eyes, and the witnesses of the Ginenet's illegal invasion." He fixes Gladwell with a stern look as he speaks, your father projecting such an air of cool authority that even sitting, he makes the other lord look small. "It is not murder to defend one's home. It is not murder to defend one's family. It is murder to extend a hand in friendship, only so you can drive the knife beneath their ribs when they take it.

Ginenet was Gladwell's pawn, and with the damage done, restitution is only right, my Lords. Gawain holds the Ginenet lands, and asks that they be formally granted to us, the fate of the family in your hands. The machine, by every law we have all agreed to follow, is ours by right, and should remain such. What would have come of Gladwell's plot if it had succeeded, I do not know, but I only ask that the favor is repaid in kind."

The two of you watch the nobles of the table as your father finishes, eyes moving from man to man around the table to watch their reactions to you and father's words.

To your eye, Ruxhall and Summermere are unphased by it, their minds clearly made up already. It was almost certainly a given considering Ruxhall's wife was a Summermere before the marriage, and Gladwell's son married a Blackphen a few years back. The Three of them, and their vassals, are a block of their own, that you know, though cut down a few members as it is by your rescue of the Godsfield's retinue and the capture of the machines.

Knightway and Lady Abombert are both moved by your words, but that was to be expected, seeing as how Knightway saw first hand the damage, as well as knew you were telling the truth about the Ginenet family.

Lady Armmore and Lord Sanmon have heard your case, and while clearly sympathetic, given their recent and historic hostility to each other, you don't know if you'll be able to get them onside on any issue, even one as important as this.

Godsfield and Andercher are both men made into almost inscrutable statues. You hope the former is more inclined to believe your words, considering your conduct and open defense of his party, but Andercher has had no such gesture of respect or concern, leaving your host's thoughts on the matter unclear. It is expected that he should avoid being biased, given he is the host of the council, but you would have hoped for a little more to go off of.

At what you can tell, that give you, maybe, three overlords against your own, six BattleMechs against your four, with four overlords undecided where they'd stand on this issue.

Thankfully, your thoughts are interrupted by Lord Andercher standing from his seat, the quiet discussion coming to an end as he raises a hand.

"Grave are the charges laid against Houses Gladwell, Ginenet, and Gawain. I think this is too large a matter to merely decide in a single afternoon. Lord Gladwell, Lord Gawain, summon your people, muster your evidence of wrongdoing, and we will revisit this matter when the Council can hear the evidence and come to a proper, informed decision. Now, if there is nothing else pressing today?" A ring of shaken heads sees the man nod, speaking up once more. "Then I declare today's session of the Council concluded. I would remind my guests, that harm to one another will see you answer to Me, so keep your conflicts to words, before fists lead to the crash of steel."

With the session ended, you and the rest of the capable nobles stand, giving your host a respectful bow, before you leave the chamber. It will take a week to get the witnesses here, and there is no reason to try and send the records of the BattleROMs alone through the wilderness. A week also gives you time to work on the undecided lords, and try and tip the balance of power more in your favor.

---

After checking on the Black Knight and discussing any thing the guards you'd posted might have noticed during the council meeting, you find your way back to the section set aside for your household, your father reading one of the provided books from his room's small shelf. He looks up at you when you enter, taking a moment to place a slip of cloth into the book to mark his place and gives you his full attention.

"How do you think the Council went?" Is how you finally break the silence, your father gesturing to the chair opposite him, which you quickly take.

"Honestly, it went as well as could be expected. Gladwell opened with an argument that played on the greed and the fears of council, trying to paint honest deeds in the darkest way to fan the flames and make them agree with him about curbing our influence. Our military is stronger now than ever before, but that has more to do with us claiming the Ginenet vehicles as salvage than some decision from a past council, and if they want to complain about Sir Mitchell, I will remind them that I am entitled to knight and land whoever I damn well please in my lands."

He pauses at that, thinking over his words as he considers the other side of the coin. "I think we presented an argument that speaks to reality. That we are so eager to present evidence will certainly stick in the minds of the lords, compared to Gladwell's baseless fearmongering, but I want to keep the conspiracy claims against Gladwell and his fellows in our back pocket for the moment. Godsfield is a proud man, and he won't forget the service you've done him so soon, but if someone were to convince him that it was in his family's best interest?" He shrugs, and you can only nod at the gesture.

Thinking over the matter of transport, you begin to speak. "The Warhammer might be repaired enough to make the journey at this point, but I know that it still needed some weeks of repair. We will need to produce the living Ginenet family, Gregor included, and if the Warhammer will walk, it gives the escort a powerful guardian as it travels south. Gladwell would find it far more difficult to contest a mostly repaired heavy 'Mech than just a heavy escort of knights and their vehicles with anything short of his own machine, and at that point he would just be admitting his fears."

Your father works his jaw a moment. "Sir Christopher is a capable commander of the keep while we are gone, and I think that we can spare some forces to make sure that our guests get here safely. You never know when a band of innocent travelers will be attacked by bandits on the road." The two of you share a knowing look, and end that topic there.

But there is another part to this council, the politicking. "Who should I approach to support us? Sanmon and Armmore hate each other, but I can't help but wonder if we can't influence them to bury the matter once and for all."

Your father nods, but he doesn't look hopeful. "The Lady Armmore's father was killed by Lord Sanmon in the last scuffle between their houses, shortly before the Council intervened and put an end to that inter-house war. Those two families have been having it out for ages, but if you could get them on the same side it would be enough to turn the tide on its own. I don't imagine that she'd settle for anything short of Sanmon's head, and I imagine he's just waiting for the latest in a long line of reprisals between them."

"The Lord Sanmon is getting older, and his heir is a man grown. Perhaps he could step down, passing the title to his son without any bloodshed and end the feud there?" You consider it for a moment, before you shake your head. "No, that would mean ending it on a Sanmon victory, and Armmore would never accept that. They need to both benefit from something that would be big enough to settle the score between them."

"Or," Your father offers. "They need a common enemy, something to unite them and push them past their rivalry. Gladwell wants power over this planet, and he wants his blood to rule it, seeing as he's not like to survive the decade at this rate. If you could show them enough circumstantial evidence, or solid proof of his motive, you may just be able to get them to point their BattleMechs at our enemies instead of eachother."

"That may be best, but what of Andercher? Our Host has been generous, and with more than a week for both sides to gather our proof, he's given us time to not only get our affairs in order, but also to court help." Your father shakes his head, and answers immediately.

"I will work on Andercher and Godsfield. I've known Kay since he was still his uncle's heir, and I had a good relationship with Andercher's father before he passed away. See what you can do for Sanmon and Armmore, but if you can only convince one, choose wisely." You heed your father, and nod at his decision. "When the escort departs from our Keep, I want you to meet them and ensure they get here safely. Between Andercher's warning and our own guards, this may be one of the safer places for me and the women at the moment."

Everyday, your father finds a little more of the Lord he was before the attack, and you are glad for it. You give your father a dip of your head as you rise and leave for a battlefield you are inexperienced in.

Diplomacy.



Who would you speak with first?

>Lady Armmore pilots a Highlander, though its configuration remains a closely guarded secret. Meleutia is not a small territory, and it would be easier to reinforce if push came to shove.



You are surprised with the ease it takes to schedule a meeting with the Lady Armmore, a word to one of her household's guards, and a whispered exchange between him and a servant, and you're asked to return in an hour, to give the Lady time to prepare.

When you are finally shown into her reading room, the subject of your interest is sat facing the door, stiff backed and looking like a queen in the fine high-backed chair.

Lady Samantha Armmore, your senior by a few short years.

Spoiler: Lady Samantha Armmore, Mistress of Meleutia

"You move faster than I expected, Master Gawain. If you come to court my aid in the Council, I do hope you have better manners than Gladwell's man." The dark-haired woman looks to her gloved hand, her imperiousness a well considered act. When she catches your gaze on her fingers, she settles them back unto the arms of her chair. "He suggested things above his station, made an insult to my character, and he was… removed for his impertinence."

Well if nothing else, you've certainly got a powerful introduction to the lady's personality. You give the lady a bow as you'd had hammered into you by your mother, rising to a straight back, your shoulders back, almost standing at attention before her. There is none of the familiarity between your father and lord Knightway here, and you cannot afford to alienate her so easily.

"I wouldn't dare to tell you your business, Lady Armmore. You've held your title in good stead for several years, and what little I've heard paints nothing but a pleasant picture of your rule." Pleasantries have never come easily to you, and so you decide to leverage the truth instead.

Few merchants make the trip from the distant lands of Kedia or Meleutia, and those that do are usually running from something; the law, debts, or something similar.

No, where most of your contact with the Silver Owl's lands is done by boat, trade heading south and west from the Knight's Bay. The same mountains that make up the home of House Abombert continuing to the southwest and creating a natural border between Kedia and northern Meleutia.

"I am a blunt man, my lady, and speak honestly. I would have your support in the council, and I hoped I would either be able to convince you, or somehow create an arrangement that would benefit both our houses. Trade tariffs, allocated space on the Jumpship when it makes its next trip to the Inner Sphere or a waive of our costs on the same, a guarantee of purchase for an amount of metal from your foundries over the next few years." Your list of ideas seems to catch her attention, but she is far from persuaded.

Her dark eyes meet your own blue, and you do your best to match her stare beat for beat.

"And If what I wanted was for your support to burn eastern Kedia to the ground, I imagine this conversation would end quickly, would it not?"

"I imagine the answer is the same if I asked you to help me raze Mulstadia from the border to the coast, and to shoot every soldier that tries to run in the back."

You had intended for your answer to be satirical, to answer her question with one framed as a statement. What you did not expect was for her eyes to narrow as you finished, her cold demeanor towards you freezing faster than water on dry ice.

For a moment, you fear she will simply call her guards, and have you thrown bodily through a window for whatever insult you might have given, but you see the deep breath she takes, her eyes opening again with a little more distaste in them, but not enough to have you suffer an 'accident'.

"I will give you that one more chance, Master Gawain. The topic of ambush and treachery is one that will earn you no support with me. My father was a man who met his killer like a man, he looked him in the eye and walked away when he won the contest. I'm sure you wonder why my family and Sanmon fought for so many years? See there the honorable lord of Kedia, who shot a man in the back after he lost and couldn't accept it."

You look to the floor on hearing that, the picture of how she came to her seat not a pretty sight by her own retelling. You dip your head once more, your hand rising to your heart, and offer a moment of silence for the departed Lord Armmore. "Forgive me, I did not know. As I said, news and details from so far are hard to come by near my home. If you'll accept it in the manner it is intended, I would say your father raised a woman strong of character and will."

She merely nods her head, accepting a compliment she has no doubt heard a hundred times over from well-wishers after her father's passing. "Let us move on from such blatant questions and answers, Master Gawain. Your speech was very moving, and I doubt a man as proud as your father would play a mummer's act from a wheelchair if he was not actually hurt. Gladwell would have us believe that your military is huge, its might uncontestable with a BattleMech behind it. I do not believe this is true, if only because Ginenet was able to directly besiege your keep and your knights were unable to stop him."

You think you can see her game here.

"Would you believe me if I told you that my house had only nine mounted knights sworn to it a year ago?" Her icy demeanor breaks a little at that admission, and you see the woman regain her composure, giving you a small dip of her chin. "I admit, I am not privy to Lord Knightway's military might, or Gladwell's for that matter, but what I do know is that a dozen Ginenet tanks were either destroyed, or captured during their invasion. Four new knights were given their spurs, and stood their vigils in the church the week after I returned from my short campaign."

"So, if not creating more knights, what did your father do with the council's permission?" You can't blame her for being confused, as you too had no idea the measures your father had gone to, to defend what was his. Having the only 'Sky Knight' should have clued you in, you suppose, that your father's plan was far from conventional.

"It would be telling, but I can tell you that the mechanical martial power my father bought to defend his home and his people cannot roll and cannot walk. Our soldiers are also better equipped than their equals in the lands of our neighbors, more skilled because we drill them to not let laxity erode their skills."

Perhaps it's a gesture of trust, or maybe you've peaked the Lady's interest, but what follows is an conversation where you lay out the strategic elements of Ginenet's invasion, the two of moving to one of the tables so you can sketch out your understanding of what occurred, from the initial force you found in the west, to the men that raced across the border with their lord's heir and reached your family keep in less than a day thanks to their superior mobility.

You think by the end of the discussion that you've earned a little forgiveness for your faux pas, your honesty and openness seeming to ameliorate the budding acquaintance between the two of you. When you finish, the two of you are standing, and you see the Lady Armmore nod to herself.

"I am satisfied that you and your father are not telling a complete lie, Master Elric, but I cannot dedicate my House to your cause until I hear more evidence. If you can bring me that, we can discuss what my house's aid in the council would be worth to your father."

"Thank you, Lady Armmore." Honestly, her willingness to hear you out was the best you could hope for, and you think she's might be more receptive to your return if you can muster hard evidence to convince her fully.

Which means that now you just have to see if Lord Sanmon is any easier of a man to convince.

---

With your encounter with Lady Armmore leaving her interest peaked, even if the discussion could have gone far better, You are led to pursue your other aim, namely courting the attention of Lord Sanmon, overlord of Kedia.

All it takes is the help of a servant to point you in the right direction, and soon you find your target, sitting at one of the tables in the dining hall, looking for all appearances as if he was holding court over a bowl of soup. Dozens of people were looking for his attention, the lord giving the appropriate grunt as he tried to enjoy his meal, with many a wealthy enough merchant, important enough to be allowed through the gates, hoping to make a deal with the man.

You imagine that your father is dealing with a similar scene, especially given his prominence in the trade routes through your area and singular import in off-world imports. So it is an annoyance you can well imagine as you watch the man just take another spoonful of his soup as a man too assured of his own importance tries to sell him on an idea of creating 'miniature BattleMechs' using ICE rather than fusion engines, cheap steels rather than the more difficult to produce 'standard' armor of the inner sphere.

To your mind it's a ridiculous thought, something that tries to be the power armor of science fiction, where a man could be genetically improved to wear a suit of armor weighing for that most luxury automobiles that would allow him to outrun Light BattleMechs over any terrain, to lift the same overhead like a superhero of ancient Terran stories. Militarily, it would redefine the face of war if it could be done, but if it could, then surely it would have?

(If only you knew then.)

Your knowledge of BattleMechs is far from encyclopedic, but even the smallest militia-'Mechs that you can think of are still in the range of 20-tons of material, making them light by any definition of a BattleMech, but invariably poorly armored, usually slow for their weight, and lightly armed due to some ancient treaty between the Great Houses.

You can see that the Lord Sanmon shares your thoughts, as he listens to the man speak for a while as he tastes his soup, before he waves a hand and one of his guards directs the man away without a word. That is not the only reaction you see the man have, as occasionally one of the seeking his attention have a good idea, a good pitch, or merely need his decision on a matter, and those are treated a little more gently, the Lord's voice making clear his thoughts over his movements.

When you finally get up to the man, his bowl is mostly finished, a scant crust of bread all that is left of his meal, and the man looks up at you with eyes that see much and say little. His hair is shock white, his skin well worn by sunlight and time. Lord Sanmon is one of the last of a generation of Lords on Frierehalt, his father one of the original mercenaries that took up the mantle of Nobles, only a decade or two removed from Lord Gladwell.

Spoiler: Lord Nikolas Sanmon, Master of Kedia

"The young knight comes to beg his case." His words are curt, and his accent heavy on them. "You long to fight against the Stag, the Ram, the Bull, and come for the Eagle's help against them, yes?"

"You see clearly, my Lord. Gladwell is playing a dangerous game, and the man would have far more than just the lands of my family or Knightway's fealty." If the man takes your meaning, you're not quite sure, but he does not reach for his spoon as he stares you down.

"You have already met with the Owl? She hates me, blames me for something I have not done." He looks down at his bowl, his brow creased as he recalls a memory. "I killed her grandfather as honor demanded after he killed my father. I considered the matter done, until her father tried to avenge him.

I refused, wergild was paid on both sides in blood, and when the man pushed the matter, my house demanded I act.

Two sons I lost to that war, leading men over a scrap of dirt and crop I couldn't care less about. When the council ended it, I was glad. Her Father's blood is not on my hands, and I don't know who did it. I hated the man who made me cradle my boys' broken bodies, but I would have killed him in his machine, not like a snake from the grass." There is a melancholy to his words, a hint of anger as he recalls the late Lord Armmore, but a great deal of resignation.

"Well, go on and make your case, Young Gawain, I want to know why I should send more children and grandchildren to die."

Taking a seat across from the lord, you consider your case fully. If you were to be honest with yourself, you certainly got more tangible benefits out of Lord Sanmon's aid than he got from helping you, but that was not to say that there weren't any.

For instance, with Summermere throwing his weight behind his fellow overlord and coconspirator, it could be argued that his lands would be culled as the price for losing a planet spanning war, and surely the greatest portion of them would go to the house that joined forces and fought bravely alongside the victors?

And the justifications you could give for their aid, the small bounds of logic needed to get from neighborly infighting to decade spanning conspiracy are not so ridiculous as you might imagine them in your head.

"Lord Sanmon, Lord Gladwell had my Grandfather killed, two decades ago. His hope was that my house would collapse, that we would die out in a few short years unable to defend ourselves or our people. Instead we thrived, and now that he's realized his plot was failing, he makes a bold strike to cut us down and get the prize he's been after for years. Consider that, my lord, if Gladwell is willing to see my house burned to the ground for his ambitions, what happens after he gets a taste for it? He'd already see Laoricia dismantled, parted out to the angriest voices to quell their upset, and then what?" You keep your voice steady, not letting your thoughts color your words.

"Would it be so hard to believe, my lord, that you would shoot a man who'd you been warring with a day before in the back?" You see his brow narrow at the insinuation, but the press on, hoping to use it to make your point. "Would it be so difficult for someone to spread word that rather than some other fool, a minor noble that he was quarreling with, it was instead the noble he had quarreled with that had done the deed? To make sure it got to his daughter's ears, to try and fan the flames of hate for another generation?

If you didn't kill the man, and his daughter, who wasn't there, says you did because that was what she was told, than anyone could be lying, and anyone could be telling the truth, but the only thing I can see is that someone wants Meleutia and Kedia at each other's throats, to keep them out of the game so that when they win, neither side has the strength, the will, or the grounds to contest them."

The man's brow narrows further, but in thought rather than anger, with a gesture, he urges you continue.

"If Gladwell gets a taste for it, he won't stop with my house, or Knightway's house, or Godsfield's house. He will keep going until he runs out of people to break, until he runs out of enemies to destroy. He will make himself, or his children, kings of this planet over the bodies of those that did not pledge their loyalty to him. He set the precedent to raise new houses, what will stop him, when he has enough power and land, to raise new overlords? Only the might of the machines already holding that land, and even then, can even your King Crab stand against a dozen machines set against it?"

The man considers you, eyes looking over the table, the two of you opposite sides of a similar coin.

You, the young heir as he had once been, too proud, too sure you knew the right course, and too headstrong to second guess a course once you had set yourself to it.

Him, the old lord, who had lived long enough to watch his children take their first and last breaths, who had held his grandchildren as they cried for their fathers to come home. A man too set in his ways to change, but in a rut too deep for himself to climb out of, even if he can see the need.

"I have heard you, Master Gawain, and you have given me much to think on." He finally says. "But much of what you say is mere talk, you speak, and suggest, and poke and prod, but I do not have evidence in front of me just yet, young Gawain. You may have stretched the truth, but I do not think you have lied to me. Give me a scrap, a tattered note or a letter saved from the fire, and I will consider it very carefully." The man stands, before he gives you another look from under his brow.

"If you can find me the man that has almost condemned my family to another war of blood and nothing else, I will kill him and whoever holds his leash. I give you my word on that."

With his peace said, the man turns away, joined by his escort of guards, and leaves you to consider your options going forward.

 

[Lord Of Flames]

Neither Sanmon or Armmore will take your side in this conflict without further evidence, and if you want both their help, you'll need to uncover the real person behind the renewed feud of their houses. With the nobles gathered here, surely one of them has some knowledge of what occurred that day, but any investigation would have to be done carefully.

Your father has been in talks with Lords Godsfield and Andercher while you spoke with the other overlords, and you can only hope he has more success than you have.

Your rider may well have ridden his horse to death come tomorrow to deliver the message to the castle, but you may be able to go out and meet the caravan carrying your guests, and your prisoner, among other evidence, and make sure they arrive safely.

> Investigate the Feud.

You decide that the simmering feud and trying to reduce the tension between Armmore and Sanmon is more important than checking on your father's progress.

If he has need of you, then he will send a runner, leaving you with a great deal of freedom, and you don't know if your father will take more time to work over the other neutral lords.

When you consider what you know about the feud, there is surprisingly little, save that it's been going on for generations, with Sanmon and Armmore shedding each other's blood fairly regularly over the past century, an odd thing considering that the original Lords would have been Lance-mates during the company's heyday.

Of Lord Armmore's death, you know that he was killed by being shot in the back not long after winning a contest against someone, Who Lady Armmore claims to be the Lord Sanmon. Lord Sanmon says he did not participate in any contest against the man, and that if he was going to kill him, he'd do it in a duel, Mech on Mech.

You have few leads on the matter, and it could be seen as overstepping to pursue them, but all the same, something about the way the Lord and Lady talk about the Lord Armmore's death seems off, but it may just be the way people on opposite sides of it see the issue.

Where should you begin?

---

>The Lady Armmore did not travel alone, and the servants of the father usually serve the son as the course goes. See if you can question them.

With a goal in mind, the first thing you do is stop by your room and exchange the well tailored, fine material clothes you've worn to see the nobles, for something a bit more rugged, something that a well off member of a keep's staff might wear if their duties involved going from place to place, where fine fabrics of rich colors would only be damaged or stained. A common cap to hide your hair some, and you look like a forgettable, if handsome anybody, and you intend to make good use of that.

The question naturally presents itself where you could find the Armmore servants, given that this wasn't their castle, and you'd rather find them alone so that you can gather accounts that are not influenced by their fellows. Even just the rumors they'd heard could be useful, if you could find someway to confirm the grain of truth that spawned them.

As it turns out, you needn't be so worried about it, as all you have to do is wonder into the Armmore section of rooms, looking a touch lost, and you find a matronly member of the Lady's staff who is more than kind enough to help you get your bearings. She is also quite eager to answer a few of the questions you had about the whole business with the late lord's death.

"Oh deary, you must be a little new if you haven't heard all about that sordid event. I wasn't there, but Nancy, one of my girls in the kitchen was, she had been taken to prepare lunch for the competitors. Bird-Hunting it was, ghastly choice, but the Lord was always proud of his aim and his hunting hounds. After the Council sat both him and Lord Sanmon down and scolded them like children caught stealing from the larder, he needed something to get his mind off the war, so in the spirit of reconciliation, he invited the lords from all around to the competition, to see who could get the most and the best birds."

You nod along with her story, even offering to carry her basket as she went about the rooms collecting the bed linens. "And I heard the Lord won? Just how many birds did they get?"

"Oh, that's a good lad, and It's true, the Lord won fair and square. Two dozen birds, plucked right of the air it looked like, and with all their feathers smooth and unrumpled despite the dogs bringing them back. He had the best showing, but I heard that the Lords Dravenkind and Grosseaw had twenty apiece when they called it."

"I hope they didn't just give them to the hounds. Six or seven dozen birds could feed a host if you cooked them into a stew or made some hearty pies for nobles tired from trudging through the forest after the birds." The maid nods her head, but her face falls a little at the thought. "That was what my Nancy was up to, when she heard the shot."

"She ran out of cooking tent, because she thought that one of the guests had tried to get another bird when she didn't need any more, and she found the Lord on his belly, a patch of red spreading over his back. She screamed, the guards ran as quick as they could, and even though they got a doctor, there wasn't anything they could do."

Well, that certainly paints a picture, but it doesn't tell you who was responsible. "Shot in the back is a nasty way to go." Your quiet words draw another nod from the maid, a sad frown finding its way to her face.

"Aye, and then the Lady became the Lady too young. She's a fine young lass, but she tries too hard, trying to live up to her memory of her father. It's cost her quite a few friends, but the ones that stayed are thick as thieves with her now."

The conversation continues in much the same way, as she tells you about the staff, the who's who of the hierarchy, and before too long, you're dropping off her tub of laundry to be washed and dried. Minerva bids you good bye as she goes about her task, leaving you to find another lead from among the Armmore's hired help.

With Minerva's instructions, it's not so hard to find your way to the small kitchen set aside for the Lady Armmore's retinue, and the small staff inside. Scullery work is not glamourous, not like the fine cooking that the Chefs are doing for the nobles they serve, but even in a small kitchen there is plenty of prep work that almost anyone could do, and gophers that substitute in to help make sure that everything is done are plentiful in any good staff, leaving your presence in the kitchen remarked upon only with a "Take off that coat, get your sleeves up, and wash your hands before you touch anything." from the man cutting potatoes near the kitchen door.

It doesn't take you long to find Nancy, Minerva's description of a mousy young girl with a fair hand at pastry enough to eliminate a few of the rounder or more developed women working in the kitchen. Taking a slot opposite her, it doesn't take you long to get into the motions, taking the dirty sheets from her as she pulled golden brown pastries from them and transferred them to slotted racks to cool.

It also turns out, that she can be quite talkative when a handsome young man shows the slightest interest.

"After the Hunters came back, I was there when the Master at Arms announced the winner. Lord Summer had fifteen birds, Lord Osway had a dozen, Lord Draken- I think that was his name, and Lord Grosse had, maybe, twenty? But the Lord had two dozen easy, and they were juicy and plump and had the most lovely feathers. There were so many, I thought that the Servant's quarters may get new pillows and the like.

I was told to get to work on the hunter's dinner, because they should enjoy the fruits of their labor, I think they said. I-I was working on the crust for the pies, because Benjamin, one of the guards was kind enough to feather the birds for me so I didn't have to try and get it all done myself, and I had just put the diced meat into a pot to cook and brown, when I heard the gunshot outside. I ran out, to tell whoever had shot that I had plenty of birds."

"And that's when you found the Lord?" She nods at your question, carefully moving the pan she's finished over to you.

"Yes, I found him face down, alone, but he wasn't dead. I got close to see if he was breathing, shock I guess, when he grabbed my ankle, and tried to say something, but I couldn't hear it, and then I screamed. I don't know what he was doing alone though, because every hunter had a minder, to make sure they were playing fair, even the Lord, and to keep them out of trouble in the camp. Hot tempers, You know?"

And now wasn't that an interesting tidbit to know about the competition. "I've some idea. Do you remember what the name of Lord Armmore's minder was? I have half a mind to ask him some pointed questions."

Nancy looks askance at that, before her expression softens a little. "Lord Armmore was a good man, and I hate to think if Reginald had anything to do with his death, but I don't know if he made the trip with us." If anything, you see more confusion wonder on to her face. "I don't know if I've seen Reginald lately, even back home."

"Is that strange?"

She nods her head, thinking it over some. "Reginald is usually one of the staff in charge of making sure the supplies are stocked, things like Larders, repair materials, that sort of thing. The rounds were always done on the first of each month, but I don't think I saw Reginald that day."

You give her a shrug, moving your scrub brush against the steel of the pan to get off what little oil has stuck to it. "Maybe the man quit or fell ill?"

"Oh no, Reginald was like a bull. I once saw him get kicked in the chest by a horse and walk it off, only needed a strong drink and an Ice Pack for the bruise. He's worked for the Lady's family for years now, so I don't know why he'd suddenly vanish on them. I heard he was in the running for the next head of staff if he kept it up for another year or two."

So a vanishing member of the help, who was supposed to watch the Lord vanishing not long before things between Lord Sanmon and Lady Armmore were going to get heated. It doesn't paint a flattering picture of his motives.

Perhaps you can find another lead by talking with one of the mentioned lords?

---

> Lord Grosseaw is also sworn to House Sanmon, and borders the Armmore Lands. If a war broke out, and his side was beat back, his lands would be in immediate danger.

You finish your task in the kitchen, before bowing out saying that Minerva would need you back soon to help her, and your excuse is accepted by Nancy, and you are kind enough to assure her you'll give the maid her best wishes when next you see her.

Of course, you do hope you avoid the maid on your way out of the Armmore section, heading back to your own room to freshen up a moment before you seek out Lord Grosseaw.

Finding a minor lord is a touch harder than finding say, Lord Ruxhall, given that the vassals usually stick close to their lords, and while they do have a separate vote from their overlords, voting against your lord's interest is a sure fire way to feel their wrath once you return home.

The Sanmon section is not so different to the Armmore section, unsurprising considering they're just opposite wings of quarters in the same castle, but the mirror effect does not last long, nor is your noble personage so inconspicuous that the guards do not ask questions, stopping you at the threshold into the section until you explain who you are looking for. The two guards exchange looks, before one heads off to ask the question, while the other holds you where you are.

For a long moment, you expect to be rebuffed, sent packing with your tail between your legs and none the wiser for the waste of time. Fortunately, you are not so unlucky, and the guard returns and escorts you to a simple chamber, not so lavishly decorated as those set aside for the Overlords of the regions, but still warm and comfortable.

Sitting at the desk, is an older man, the dark red and stray gray of his hair reminding you of Master Burrel, and the man looks as if he's been expecting this for a while. You will admit, it has taken you longer than you'd have liked to get here, but the Armmore's retinue have filled in crucial gaps in your understanding.

"Master Gawain, Lord Sanmon said I should expect you. I imagine you want to know about the Day of the Competition?"

At your nod, the man shakes his head, resigned.

"Ask your questions."

In the end, Lord Grosseaw's story is not so complicated.

He was invited, along with Lords Dravenkind, Summermere, Blackphens, and Osway to a small hunting party with the late lord Armmore, though he knew that Lord Sanmon had been invited. Sanmon had met with Armmore, but refused to participate in the game, having felt the need to make his refusal in person, before he and his party left for their keep.

The game itself was simple, alongside an Armmore servant to keep things fair, each lord was given a pair of trained hounds, and told that the man with the most birds by the end of the day would be declared the winner of the event, their collected catch cooked into a fine dinner to celebrate this period of peace.

The only unusual event that he could remember during the hunt was that Lord Armmore's bodyman seemed to disappear from time to time, but whenever he came across the Lord next, he would be beside him once more, as if he had never left. Strangely, he remembers the same thing happening with Lord Osway, who he came across as he followed a flock standing alone in a clearing, neither servant nor hound around him. Grosseaw had gathered that the lord's were mucking with the results, some of them obviously not trusting their hounds to bring back the birds intact, as that would be one of the ways that they were graded. Simply having more birds was not enough, a dozen pigeons did not defeat a wonderfully preserved duck after all in size or majesty.

The competition was itself fierce, and though the lord's were in good humor, there was still a pall over the affair, considering that less than a month before they had been trying to kill each other. Vengeance may have been a motive, if not for the fact that Grosseaw had lost nothing more than a few small landholds to the Osway lands over the course of the war, the borders restored to their pre-war state after the council stepped in.

Still of the lords present, Lord Grosseaw, along with several servants, saw Summermere depart well before dinner, having placed lower than he'd have liked in the competition, and needing to start the long journey home. He was in talks with Dravenkind when they heard the gunshot, followed by the maid's scream, and found the mortally wounded Armmore, giving them both an alibi, if you could confirm it.

When you ask if he noticed anything particularly odd, beside the case of the vanishing minders, Grosseaw's face grows thoughtful, before he nods once.

"I found shells on the eastern side of the camp not long after the attack. The eastern side was where the Armmore and their vassal staked their tents, enjoying the best shade over the course of the day. I didn't think anything of it at the time, there were many shells littering the forest, but those were the only pair I found anywhere near the camp itself."

Interesting.

---

> Dravenkind should be here, and he might recall things that Grosseaw missed, as well as confirm his alibi.

Considering you are in the area, it is not so difficult to find Lord Dravenkind, a man proudly bearing his martial upbringing, decorative armor plates hanging from the shoulders of his colorful jacket.

His shaved head allows him to show his few scars with pride, while a well kept mustache gives him an air of refinement. All in all, it tracks well with what little you know of the man, a man who longs to be in the thick of the action, even as his family machine distances him from his foes, proud of his accomplishments and his victories, and you doubt Lord Sanmon has allowed such a driven lord to go unrewarded for his leal service to his overlord.

You find him in a courtyard set aside for lords of Kedia, swinging a sword though common repetitions to help loosen up the muscles before proper training commenced, lest you hurt yourself by not stretching. A boisterous man, you doubt you'd ever try to meet with him without something pushing you to, but when he sees you, a smile lights on his face.

"Master Gawain, A pleasant surprise. I saw you head into Lord Grosseaw's study not too long ago. A good meeting?" When you nod your head, the man smiles again. "Very good. Even with this unpleasant business about Ginenet, I respect your father, and you seem a good sort." A shrug, and then he looks at you more fully "Still, I don't expect you are here for a social call."

"You were at the competition hosted by Lord Armmore the day of his death, with Lord Grosseaw. I am making inquiries on behalf of Lord Sanmon, and I have questions for you."

"Lord Sanmon requests it? I would have answered you anyway, but if he insists. I know the sun is not so high in the sky anymore, but might we spar while we talk? I have not had the chance between being on the road here and the council yesterday."

>Humor him.

You see no reason not to humor the man, and so you step to the side, taking up one of the sparring swords and a small shield with it, the lord grabbing his own from where he'd laid it down. You are by no means a small man, standing a few inches above the lord you face, but he has the advantage of experience, a decade your senior and with the skill to prove it. Similarly sized, both strong, you coming into your prime and he living through his, you put up a better showing than you might have anticipated, but you are reminded that your experience is on a drilling yard, and not in actual combat.

The first bout is simply enough, with the two of you exchanging nods, before blades flick out, finding steel and wood as you clash.

"Lord Grosseaw said that he was speaking with you when he heard the shot, and then the scream." You grunt out as you catch his steel with an odd angle of your own sword, straightening out your arm so that the crossguard carries the blade away from you, and letting you give him a solid shove with the face of your shield. His reply is just as quick, a swipe of his sword sending a jolt through your shield arm, but neither of you get a solid hit in the exchange.

"Aye, We share no borders but the sea, and he wanted to discuss expanding the wares we sent to each other, Armmore steel on his ships, Summermere clothes and leathers on mine. Lowing Tariffs, discussing family, the usual sort of thing when you meet your neighbor." He says the last word in a short roar, the two of you clashing swords again, when he uses his shield as a lever, catching the inside edge of yours to force open your arm, a jab to your gut costing you your breath as he brings him sword down on the meat of your arm, a blow that would have cost you your sword at the least.

You give him a nod as you step back, catching your breath and tightening the straps around your arm. "So you both ran to the scene, both arriving first?"

You give each other another nod, and again swords slash and stab, blunt edges finding only air and wood, before you hook your foot around his own when next you clash shields, stepping into his space and forcing him to give ground or lose his footing. He only just parries your chasing swing, his thrust forcing his sword up and out of the way as you push him harder. A blow with the pommel of his sword would hurt, but not be a point in this game, only the blunt edges of your swords matter here. "I arrived with Grosseaw just in time to see the maid faint, and some of the other help arrive to see what the matter was. Someone ran off for the doctor, and then Osway showed up, and started demanding details."

Again, he tries the shield trick, only to get a kick to his shin for his trouble, this time the exchange not won by trick but skill, his experience letting him clash with an angle that would have drawn a ragged line through your vest, and a red waterfall down your chest.

"Osway arrived after you, alone?" He nods at your question, rolling his shoulders before you salute for the next bout.

"I saw him arrive alone, unarmed. Empty as they were, Grosseaw and myself both still had our shotguns, cracked open over our shoulders. Lord Armmore said we were free to keep them, as a gift."

This time, you are patient, and let him come to you, clashing blades yes, but using the only advantage you have to let him press and press until you spring forward. With a speed belied by your size, you meet his press with a charge, your shield surging forward and slamming into his own, sword swinging wildly as you bowl him over, and lay your steel against the front of his coat. That exchange certainly sees the man's mood improve, and you see a wide smile on his face as he rises to his feet.

"Well done, but I think you've a final question for me before our spar is done, Master Gawain."

You nod. "Did you see a servant near Lord Armmore. Tall, Blonde, wearing his house's coat of arms?"

The final exchange is not long, the two of you clashing again and again, your stamina the only thing letting you keep pace with his experience, until you have to concede the round, blunt edge pressed tight against your side with your own sword inches shy of his arm. "You speak of Lord Armmore's bodyman, the one that I saw bringing him birds like a hound? No, he wasn't anywhere near the Lord when we came running, and I think I only caught a glimpse of him when we were kindly told to leave quickly."

Catching your breath, you are thankful when the man offers you a skin, of water and not wine as you might have expected. "Aye, Lord Osway suggested that we Kedians should get out of Armmore lands before we were arrested. I offered to write a letter for the Lady offering what I knew, but he said that he would explain everything he had gathered from the crowd."

"Lord Osway reported her father's death to the Lady?" At his nod, you find yourself confused. "And you know that Lord Sanmon made an appearance, and left the competition after publicly refusing Lord Armmore's invitation?"

"Aye, I can only assume the first, but I saw Lord Sanmon leave. Lady Armmore has reason to dislike my Lord, but not hate him for her father's death."

The kitchen maid didn't mention ever speaking with Lord Osway. Perhaps it slipped her mind, or maybe his investigation never happened.

With your breath back and your throat wet, you give the lord a bow. "Thank you for speaking with me, Lord Dravenkind, and for the clashes. I'm afraid I have other business to attend to, but I wish you luck in your future bouts."

"And thank you for sparing the time, Master Gawain." With that, you part ways, considering your next steps.

---

> Testimony you may have, but you lack hard proof. Perhaps the Armmore servants may be of help in that regard.

When you return to your quarters, it's to once more don your simpler jacket and slacks, and make your way back to the wing set aside for the Armmore. You are careful on your way not to make too much eye contact, giving little thank you's and apologies as you pass by other members. You step past them into the busy bustle of the servants preparing quarters for the night, cleaning being done as quickly as possible, and with a borrowed broom that was forced into your hands, you catch a glimpse of the maid Minerva, giving orders as she tries to get the guest chambers up to her own standards for preparation.

With tool and excuse in hand, it is not so difficult to step into an empty office, the crest of Osway hanging from a nail set into the door, a small stack of correspondence set aside on the desk, a bottle of wine sitting unopened beside it, when you catch a slip of paper, half scrunched up and buried beneath the others in the corner.

You take a glance at it, mulling over the letters as you make good your cover, sweeping up the day's dust, knocking down the first traces of cobwebs sitting in the high corners of the room.

"S took care of R. Rat won't sing his song anymore. Owl is getting restless, wants to rip out Mon's throat. Gawain puts a wedge in things, met with the Owl. Are- I'm- We need to meet."

The handwriting is sloppy, clearly thrown together quickly, and you can connect the dots on it readily enough. R is likely Reginald, but you have no clue who S could be. The Owl is lady Armmore, and Mon is simply Lord Sanmon. Your family making waves here is clearly disrupting whatever game Osway is trying to play here, and the letter in your eyes is damning enough.

Slipping it into a pocket of your jacket, you take a moment to look over the rest of the room, finding little else that draws your eyes, and so you return to the servant's section, sweeping as you go like everyone else cleaning out the halls. Honestly, if you were younger you might have thought yourself beneath it, and by blood you probably were, but you had spent years sweeping shop floors and scrubbing oil stains out of concrete and you learned that sometimes you simply have to do somethings.

Clean floors makes it easier to find dropped parts, and scoured floors keep you from slipping in the oil, or worse starting an accident because you were too lazy to maintain your space.

Perhaps that's why you find it easy enough to speak with the staff, commiserating over the shared duties, fake as yours are, and start to narrow a list of worthwhile witnesses. It takes you a little while to narrow down who was at the competition, with a handful of them still here, but more than a couple guards had been part of their Lord's retinue that day, including a man that had been guarding the small armory they'd brought with them, where the shotguns that Armmore, Dravenkind, and the rest had used had been stored before they arrived.

Ammunition was reserved for the competition, with only a dozen shells being given out at a time, though the contestants, as Dravenkind had said, were allowed, and expected it seemed, to keep their gifted firearms with them through the contest.

Personally, it seems like an accident waiting to happen, having a half dozen drunk lords with guns at their sides in close proximity, and he'd let you in on a little detail about the gifts.

"Each of the shotguns had come from the same set, but each had the initials of the recipient engraved behind the break action, just in front of the grip. They're not here, but I remember that Lord Sanmon's was still on the rack, locked up, when we packed up camp." When he confirmed that only he and Lord Armmore had a key, that narrowed your suspects considerably.

The other servants that were at the camp that day helped confirm a few other details, including that Lords Dravenkind and Grosseaw had arrived to find the body first after Nancy had screamed, with Osway coming from the eastern side of the camp, after the two had arrived and taken control of the situation. A handful remember being asked questions by the man, but not Nancy, who said that she had only spoken about finding the late Armmore to you and Minerva.

You finish out your act, sneaking a bit of bread and cheese from the kitchen as you left, and headed into the halls to consider your next course of action.

> Lady Armmore may have the last bits of information you need to create a rock solid case. If you share your suspicions, she'll either humor you, or have you thrown out.

With the dinner hour so near, it would be hard to get a scheduled meeting with Lady Armmore, especially when meals with your hosts are the expectation during the council. You are still the heir to your house, meaning that you can get out of it a handful of times with good reason, even if its simply 'House business', but Lady Armmore does not have that luxury anymore since she inherited her father's seat.

With that in mind, you instead choose to take a far more straight forward approach, and just knock on her door, the guards not giving you a second glance in your plain jacket, and worn slacks. They've seen you pass in this guise a number of times, and your illusion is helped that this is a different shift than when you last spoke with the lady. They give you a nod however, when you raise your jacket and let them see that nothing is hidden under it.

You stand there, awkwardly with them for a moment, waiting to either be dismissed or called in, the guards staring off into the distance or their eyes tracking the servants as they hustle past.

"Enter."

With the word given, you open the door, and shut it behind you as you step into the solar once more. The lady is sat at her desk, reading something, and you move to stand in front of her, only reaching to remove the hat that covers your short black hair.

You see confusion go through her face as she looks up, recognizing you, and a frown starts to cross it.

"Master Gawain." She greets you coldly. "Do I have to have a conversation with my guards about who is let into this wing uninvited?"

"Perhaps. I am here, however, on a matter of some urgency. What you said about your father and his passing struck me as odd, and I have been… gathering whispers for the past day or so, and I've learned a number of things." You slowly reach into your pocket, and draw the note you had gathered from Osway's study, keeping it in your hand as you continue to speak.

"Interrupt me if I say something wrong. I know the competition was to hunt birds, I know that your father invited a number of Lords, Sanmon and his vassals, Summermere and another of his, Osway but not Hutchbrand. I know that he brough a good part of his personal retinue with him, some of them servants that now serve you here. I know that the kitchen maid was the one that found your father after he'd been shot. I know that his bodyman vanished in the time shortly after. I know that the Kedian lords, minus Sanmon, fled your lands shortly after the attack."

Her grave nod does not do much to relax the stern look about her face, but you speak again, your face equally stoic. "And now I have questions for you, ones that will hopefully fill the gaps and reveal who actually killed your father. Lord Sanmon-" You raise a hand to cut off her interjection, which earns you another glare. "I have lordly witnesses that say he left after angering your father, well before the competition began. I'm sure that you wouldn't believe any man from his camp that came forth and said such, but even your own staff saw him and his bodyguards ride off in the morning. Someone else in that camp killed the Lord Armmore, and tried to frame Sanmon or his agents for it." That gets the Lady to stop, her angry gaze turning calculating.

"Ask quickly, Gawain. I have no patience for this game any longer."

>Elric rolls a 16, scoring a Critical Success against his modified Investigation of 16.

"Who told you that Sanmon had killed your father?"

"Lord Osway."

"The same Lord Osway who wrote this note. The same Lord Osway that came from the camp, arriving after the maid's scream had attracted Lords Dravenkind and Grosseaw, the same man who sent them of before you started an incident in your grief. A man who didn't bother to ask the questions I did, who didn't see it happen, claimed that someone that wasn't there shot your father in the back."

She rises from her desk, her anger sending the paper she was reviewing to the floor. "How dare you suggest that Lord Osway, a loyal friend of my father could have conspired to murder him."

"Osway lost the chance for far more than your father or Lord Hutchbrand did when the War was halted. He was half way to surrounding the Meleu Lake, half way up the coast of Grosseaw's lands. A Riflemen is a hardy support 'Mech, but against a fully loaded Archer? He would have swept the holding if the Council hadn't stopped him. So, what does Lord Osway need, a man who is victorious only to have it pulled from his hands by uncaring foreigners? He needs another war."

"By your logic, Hutchbrand is just as likely the culprit, or Summermere. Either would benefit from a war between myself and Sanmon." She points out.

You nod at her logic, ceding the general idea. "True enough, but Hutchbrand is a far easier target, controlling a narrower strip of territory. He might have gouged out some of Sanmon's holdings, but he could never keep them. An Ostroc doesn't have the firepower to fend off the King Crab forever, and sooner or later he'd find his back against a wall, and a hundred-ton Assault 'Mech digging his grave with its cannon shells.

Summermere? He'd benefit, but not directly, and I've learned he also left early, after he lost the competition and your father started to rub the noses of the foreigners in it.

So that leaves three souls with motive, and I have too much testimony that places the Kedian Lords together, arriving together, with their weapons empty and unfired. That leaves two people, only one with the pull to do it and get away with it."

You lay the letter on her desk, and she snaps it up, eyes tracing over the rapid writing. "Your man Reginald, your father's body man that day by all accounts, is dead."

"You could have written this." She says, but you can hear the doubt in her voice.

You only nod. "I could have, or I could have led you to it, and you could claim I planted it to put doubt in your mind."

You put your hands on the table, lowering your head to look up at her. "Now tell me, Samantha. If I bring everything I just said to Lord Sanmon, will you step in his way to keep him from killing the man that would cost the old lord more than even your father, or will you stand there with a knife of your own for your pound of flesh?"

You sit like that for a long moment, before she looks away from your gaze.

"I believe you," She says at last, taking her seat stiffly, her head pressed against the backboard. "But I need a day. Give me that to gather my own threads, to confirm what you've told me."

It's the best you are going to get from her at the moment, and so you accept it, dipping your head as you pull your hat back on. You're reaching for the door when her voice stops you, quite as it is.

"If Lord Sanmon had nothing to do with this, I may just give him the shotgun my father intended, so he can gut the bastard with it. You can tell him that when next you see him, Master Elric."

You give her a nod in response, not turning to look at her, and step through the door, and off towards your rooms.

Were you right, were you wrong? You don't know, but enough coincidences start to look like enemy action, and with a fragment of real proof, unremarkable on its own but damning in its entirety, you know in your bones that you are closer than you'd think.

It could all well be an illusion, one intended to make you think it was Summermere, or perhaps it's as plain as your brain tries to connect the dots; that Summermere promised Osway something beyond mere gains in territory to get him to play the riskiest part in this whole affair. Was Reginald a patsy, the gunman, or just a fool who overheard something he shouldn't, and enjoys a shallow grave for his trouble? You doubt you'll ever know the truth of that matter, but in the end, your doubts ring hollow against the soundness of your theory.

You would wait the day, pursue your family's aims in other areas, and see the result come the day after tomorrow. For now, you had clothes to change into, a dinner to suffer through, and a busy day before you.

 

[Lord Of Flames]

In the days between Council meetings, there was a great deal of pomp and niceties. A planet spanning defensive alliance naturally has issues with the sheer distance between parties, something slightly mitigated by the sheer number of BattleMechs on Frierehalt, even if they could only move around as fast as a boat or their own legs could carry them.

The loss of the Dropship that had brought the company to Frierehalt, the fate of that massive craft absent from almost all records, severly impacted the ability for the houses to respond rapidly to threats, needing to either concentrate their forces in a response that could take anywhere from days to weeks depending on where the pirate scum landed, or to rely on the local strength to delay, or in some cases, destroy the pirate forces on their own.

Though some machines, such as a Highlander, a Rifleman, even your Black Knight, might have decent success against pirate machines in poor repair, for others the chance of victory was slim. A Locust may terrorize an infantry battalion with its speed and death-dealing machine guns, but it would have little chance against a 'Mech twice its size, let alone one joined by two or three equals.

BattleMechs are well suited for fighting units smaller than them, with any such needing an overwhelming advantage in maneuverability to keep them moving fast enough to avoid the firing arcs of their prey, enough armor to weather the hits that do get through, and the firepower to make it more than an elaborate way to commit suicide. A Commando with its many missiles and fast speed will have much greater luck than a Locust against the likes of a Centurion, but a Grasshopper would eat both alive, unable to compete in raw speed, but far more mobile in rough terrain thanks to its jumpjets and completely outclassing them both in weapons and armor despite being nigh three times their size.

To fill the gaps between the defensive alliance, personal unions help to make sure that help may arrive faster than it did before, and in matters like the Council, help secure support to advance the two joined houses in matters politick. Your father had known your mother for several years, her being the daughter of one of your house's sworn knights in the days of your grandfather, though to your knowledge, you have no uncles or aunts on her side of the family, meaning that the Combat Vehicle that they claimed their knighthood with passed back into the family and to distant cousins. When they married it shored up the support of your house from its vassals, even if it made no friends with the local lords.

If it had come later, you wonder if a different marriage wouldn't have been made, something grander in scope, but there is no worth in wondering about the potentials of the past, only the possibilities of the future.

So it is that when you return to your room, you find a nicely crafted set of clothes, fashionable to the current taste of the court no doubt, no doubt your mother's doing. It had not taken much of her disappointed looks or pointed suggestions that you should try and break out of your shell and start to speak to some of the young ladies that had written to you over the years. You were, after all, twenty-one years old by Terran reckoning, and with a powerful BattleMech restored to you, that made you quite an eligible bachelor in the eyes of the nobility of Frierehalt.

You can feel a smirk growing as you think about how your sister must be managing your mother's hovering and wonder aloud if you can hide a set of knuckledusters in your pockets without ruining the lines of your jacket for any suitor that gets… overeager.

You are not prone to violence, but you find that it's often more civilized than courtly politics.

---

"-And remember, your sister needs to learn to fight her own battles. Learning how to reply to a slight is part of a lady's training just as much as learning how to swing a sword or fire a rifle is part of yours." You nod as your mother finishes giving your coat a small tug, straightening it out and making sure that the lapels on either side or properly mirrored.

To your eye, it resembles a military uniform, with the crisp color cutting off into evenly dyed black, the material of it fine enough that even its simple cut only accentuates its quality. Your sister's dress more than makes up the difference however, as the material is not only fine, but the pattern is itself impressive, and despite her youth, only accentuates how pretty she'll be when she comes into her own in a few years. Your mother gives the bow at her back a little tug, and nods satisfied as it does not move, though your sister gives her a side-eyed glance at the sudden tightness around her abdomen.

"Now, I want you to know that neither of your are expected to make a choice now, especially with this business with the Gladwells putting a sober mood over the Council, but it will be good to meet people your own age, and get an early feel for those that may be your peers in the years to come. Now," She gives you and your sister both one last look over. Your mother was always the more diplomatically inclined of your parents, your father's words usually bent to matters of business and negotiation than making friends, and so you listen intently. ", You both know what's expected of you, so go out, talk, mingle, and try to have fun. You look so much more handsome with a smile than the glower of someone walking to the gallows, Elric."

Her joke earns a chuckle from you, and the small smile that lingers is enough to please her. With a final good wishes, she departs for her own circles, where many of the married women gossip and talk about their families.

With her approval, that leaves you and your sister to enter the floor arm in arm. The room itself is quite lovely, with white plastered walls with decorative pillars set against them for variety, well lit by a combination of broad windows to let in the light and chandeliers setting above. Tables and chairs are set around the room, dining sets laid out on the tables and platters of snacks and small bites of sweet things are set to one side on a long table.

Already, dozens of people are inside the room, most of them around your age, the youngest a few years less than your sister. Who would condemn a child just past their tenth year to trying to make fiends with people almost twice their age, you do not know.

With a nod to your sister, you release her arm, and watch as she steels herself, taking a deep breath, letting out and straightening her back, before she walks forward with her head held high. Young she may be, but in her fine dress and practiced manner, she projects a confidence that will come in time.

For you part, you step into the room, thanking one of the help as he offers a platter of glasses, and look for the first of your partners for this little get together.

---

> It's easy to spot which ladies have grown up the heirs to their houses, or simply had a martial inclination from a young age. You spot one towards the wall of the room, her clothes more utilitarian than the fancy dress of most here.

You decide to approach one of the most out of place in this hall, and as you approach you see a bird set inside a drawn bow on the leather patch of her cloak, and place it as a vassal of House Andercher, your host. Your target clocks your approach quickly, scanning the party like a sentry at her post, and as you close you get a better look at her.

'If were not for the cleanliness of her clothing, you'd half expect that she had been shoved in here after returning from the field.'

You come to a stop only a few paces shy of her, and dip your head in greeting. "I am Elric Gawain, might I make your acquittance, lady?"

"Dame Pheobe Bowborne." She responds, a touch hotly at your address, earning her a second nod, but she recovers her composure quickly. "I am pleased to make your acquaintance, Master Gawain." her tone is flat, her words clearly the result of years of etiquette being drilled into her skull and little else.

Spoiler: Dame Bowborne of Alylia

A Dame is the title usually worn by a female knight, the equivalent of Sir in some regions of the planet, and apparently here in Alylia. A touch strange to find one of a Noble house, even a vassal, but you imagine there is some story there.

"My family's party was greeted by a Lord Bowborne as we arrived into Lord Andercher's lands. Your father perhaps?"

She gives a nod. "Yes, Lord Bowborne is my father." She works her jaw for a moment, eyes falling to the timepiece she keeps running her thumb over in her hands. "I will admit, I hoped to avoid him, but my resupply found itself delayed a week ago, and here we are." You share a look with her at that, recognizing the ploy for what it was, and share small nods of your heads as you think of just how convenient it would be for an estranged daughter to have to see her family at the social event of the year.

In a bizarre burst of social awareness, you decide not to press her on why she is so distant from her family, not yet at least. "How long have you been a Dame? I imagine you're sworn to House Andercher, if their castle was the best place to resupply and recover from your patrol."

If anything, the lady's face takes on a proud tilt as she looks around the fine hall. "Four years. I have ridden out in Lord Andercher's name for four years." She pauses, letting the silence settle back in, before she expands on her answer. "I command a team of five men, loyal even in the face of stupidity, inside a Bulldog. A tank just as ugly and mean as its namesake."

"Bulldog…" You rack your memory for a moment, going through the list of combat vehicles you know, and by chance remember the curious heavy tank that your father suggested in a meeting once with Sir Christopher. "That's the combustion engine with a large 8cm laser isn't it?"

The lady seems surprised that you recognize her ride of choice, and nods. "I squired under its previous owner, and when he fell seriously sick without children, he made me an offer that I couldn't refuse. I was knighted, my family was informed in a letter, and I was off into the wilderness to avoid my father's words."

Martial upbringings on a planet like Frierehalt are not so uncommon a thing, but to have the eldest daughter, if you had to guess, shirk her family responsibility and become a knight of their overlord? Well, there has to be a story there.

"I can't remember quite how big the Bulldog is, but the Pike I trained in under Sir Christoph, the Sergeant-at-arms of my family, was a sixty tonner. Not the fastest thing in the world, but the weapon package would make any medium 'Mech think twice before trying to cross the open to outflank it."

"The Bulldog's also sixty tons, but a Pike? Not a bad option, but I didn't think the AC/2's had enough punch to make heavier Mechs consider it anything but a nuisance. I know that Lord Luchtomb disliked the one on his machine enough he shelled out enough money for a light refit, replaced its only long range option for another bracket of medium lasers."

You give a chuckle as you hear that, nodding her head at her words. "You'd be right, but Sir Christoph had enough favor with my grandfather and my father that when he became lord, Christoph was able to get parts to do the same, letting him refit it from a long range fire-support to a much better brawler. The AC-2's were almost useless in the terrain of our lands, too heavily wooded for snipers to make good use of, but sixty tons still leaves you with some speed. Would that it had a fusion engine, then it would be a monster."

A small smile tugs at her lips, and you see white teeth underneath. "ICE is easy to maintain, but by God I would give my left arm for a Fusion Engine. I imagine your knight has several power-amps for the lasers he added?" At your nod, she just shakes her head. "For a set of mediums that's a lot of tonnage, but on the Bulldog, almost a third of its tonnage is just the Large Laser and the capacitors to fire the damn thing. I mean, it's good that if a shot punches through the armor there's no ammo for it to hit and turn my nice tank into a flaming coffin, but the price for a fusion engine these days is almost enough to make me cry."

You can only nod your head, glad you hadn't done such terrible damage to the machines you'd fought so far. A fusion engine was almost as much as the chassis of most 'Mechs, and if you destroyed it on a world like Frierehalt, you could be looking at years before a replacement could be found, with a hunk of damaged metal sitting in its gantry like a gibbet. The Warhammer would have been a write off at that point, worth only its value in replacement parts and weapons you could salvage.

"The price of the Succession Wars I suppose." You commiserate. "So much destroyed, so much lost. They didn't care about the consequences two hundred years ago, and they wiped every bit of progress that had been made in the past five hundred in a flurry of nukes and raids."

You let that thought settle, before turning to happier questions. "So tell me, working with a crew is an experience I've never had, and considering that I am a solo act now, I'm eager to hear stories."

You watch with amusement as surprise turns to a blush. "Stories? I supposed I have a couple. I suppose I should start with my favorite story in the Bulldog, because most of the ones with the crew were me dragging them out of bars before they'd start a fight for the 'honor of our Fair Knight' or some hogwash. So there we were, hunting for bandits, and I had hunkered the tank down in a copse of trees just big enough for us to get into, but not so heavy that we couldn't get out if trouble started. I had intended for us to sleep, and resume the search in the morning, when I see the most absurd thing."

She goes on to describe that the very bandits she and her crew were hunting just started walking down the road, almost directly in front of her tank just a hundred yards or so. They wore mismatched armor, had a variety of handheld weapons ranging from pistols to rifles, to the biggest man she'd seen until a drinking contest a year later, toting a machine gun like it was a baby.

"It was barely sunset, just enough light left for me to glance down at the papers I had been given with their descriptions and the bounties on their heads, and to look back up and confirm that all twenty of the bastards were right there, in my unintentional killing field. I just gave my driver a kick to the shoulder to wake him up, and then chaos."

You know well the feeling for ambushing a defenseless foe with overwhelming firepower, and you get a look of surprise and admiration when you describe punting a "Quickscell fireball" into a formation of enemy tanks.

You continue trading stories back and forth, talking about your experience against tanks, her own limited experience against 'Mechs, having fought just after her knighthood in a raid that landed outside one of the few industrial zones on Frierehalt and made off with half a dozen shipments worth of refined metals.

"I've never felt more afraid when I saw that Centurion level its autocannon at my tank, or more glad to lose my hearing as the scream of missiles from Lord Andercher's Catapult slammed into the thing's upper torso, and sent that head crest of its flying into the air."

For that sort of thing, you're thankful for the padding and sound proofing of your neurohelmet, a complex little program protecting your eyes and ears from things that are too bright or too loud, the computer systems of a BattleMech reducing lasers from almost blinding to easy to follow trails back to their sources through the Ferroglass of your cockpit. "I need you to be quiet for a moment, because what I'm about to say beggars belief, but I swear Idid it. The first 'Mech kill I got… was with a sword."

You get the reaction you expected out of the Dame, a look of confusion, then consternation, and finally disbelief. "How did you find a sword big enough?"

"My great grand father had something to prove." Your deadpan delivery is perfect, and the two of you lock eyes for several long seconds, before breaking down into laughter.

The conversation between the two of you continues in much the same vein, as you discuss weapons, military tactics, and your rides in greater detail. Apparently, the Bulldog was improperly repaired at some point, so whoever owned it had to jury rig the leather back of an office chair for the driver's seat, and to Pheobe's annoyance, it is easily the most comfortable seat in the entire tank.

It is a good conversation.

---

> You've had a better time than you expected, thankful as you are of that. Perhaps you can seek out a second partner for a chat?

> You've noticed the young one making a few cursory attempts to join in conversation, but she's usually rebuffed because of her age. You see no reason you can't humor her and her practiced etiquette.

When you approach the young lady, it comes after only observing her for a few minutes. She is clearly, discouraged from her lack of success, and so very young. Something you do notice however, is the bright green shine of her eyes, not glowing or anything of that ilk, but just reminding you of fine jade polished to perfection. Her dress is fine enough, but topped with a fur mantle around her shoulders that might be a touch too big for her, likely a present that she'll grow into in a few years.

Spoiler: You recognize those bright green eyes from somewhere, but it escapes you until you greet her.

You clear your throat after you close the distance, standing just a little ways from her, and you still draw a small pepe from her, her surprise showing as she whirls to face you, her pale skin flushing in embarrassment. You understand well how the young feel surrounded by adults who can't spare the time for them, and so you reach out a hand, palm upward. "I am Elric Gawain, may I know your name, young lady?"

She extends her own hand slowly, answering your question when you hold it gently. "My name is Iona Sanmon, Serah Gawain." You give her a smile, and mime a kiss to her knuckles, which draws a giggle from the girl.

"And how did you come to be here, Lady Sanmon? Did you travel with…" You look at her age and do some mental math in your head. To your knowledge, Lord Sanmon had son after son before the war, but no daughters. "Your grandfather?"

The girl lights up at the mention of the man, nodding her head. "Grandfather said that the council was always a good time for young girls to introduce themselves to each other, and so when I begged to come, my mother let me go with Grandfather." Her excitement to have anyone to talk to dies a little as she thinks about the journey here. "He got really sad when we passed into the mountains, and he wouldn't tell me stories of father and uncle like he usually did when I saw him until he got out to the other side, and a big skinny machine met us on the other side."

If you had to guess, Lord Luchtomb was also on guest escort duty, just on the other side of the region.

"Lord Sanmon is a wise lord, but a grieving one." You say. "He loved your father very much, but it must have hurt to travel through the lands of the one that hurt him."

"I know, but I miss my father too. He used to take me riding on horses, ponies really, and once he took me up the zipline of the King-Crab so I could look at the world from so high up." You smile at the image of this young blonde girl standing atop a 100-ton assault 'Mech, eyes full of awe.

You imagine you looked similar the first time you saw the Black Knight, sat on its throne of crushed boxes as it was.

Offering the little lady a hand, and step into a space set aside for dances when the band takes a moment's pause to replace the notes on their stands, have a drink of water, the like before they continue.

You will admit, dancing has never been your strong suit, your footwork more used to sword drills and navigating the nets of the obstacle courses Christoph had made you run, but for this bright young girl you'd give it your best shot.

Taking a place in the ring, you look down at the girl and ask the question that's been on the tip of your tongue. "You know, when I attended one of these soirees at your age, I almost ended up dealing with drawn steel over an imaginary insult. What made you want to attend one so badly?"

You almost miss the look of surprise in her face at how casually you say it, but you are quick to check your peripherals as you hear the first notes of a new song play, taking the first step back in the dance as you lead the young girl through it.

"You may laugh, sir." There is something quite cute as she tries to be stern with you, taking your question as a challenge. "But I thought that I would meet other children my age here. I hoped to make friends and play, because I'm the oldest child in my family. I have to be responsible, to look after my little brothers and keep them out of trouble."

You just give her an earnest smile. "There is nothing funny or absurd about wanting to make friends. I have only a handful and I treasure them deeply. Alistair is the rock that I'm tied to, steadfast and loyal. Fredrick is like a craftsman, with a toolbox fit to help solve any problem. Both are different, but I would miss both if they were to vanish." You give her another smile as you give her a little spin, a little less graceful than the others but you don't miss the glee on her face. "There is some comfort, I would think, that if one of my friends were to walk his own path, that he was still out there. True friends are rare, and it is rarer still for them to vanish forever."

You see her considering your words as you step back, her feet following you at an angle to set you a quarter turn from where you'd started. "I've been looking after my sister for as long as I can remember, because Nat is all I have beyond my parents. I lost my grandfather just before I was born."

"I'm sorry." Comes the child's reply, and all you can do is shake your head, the smile not leaving your face as you lead her through another sequence of steps and turns.

"I've a family that loved the man, and the people of his home remember their lord fondly. He was brave, and proud. Eager to help, not keen to lord. If ever there was a truth in the world, it is that people so eager for power are rarely fit to wield it. Tell me about your father, I'm sure it would do you some good to share."

And so she does. She tells you about how he used to carry her on his back, racing up and down the halls of the castle, her childish screams of joy echoing back off the walls. She tells you of the smiles he'd give each of his children before he put them to bed, creeping in from the hall to make sure their blankets were high and give them a kiss good night, and how he'd give her a finger across his lips when he caught her still awake to see him, mirth in his eyes.

You tell her some of the stories of your grandfather, the man who'd work another's field because they needed the help, who was fair in his dealings and rulings. A man who wished he could warm the world with his paperwork rather than have to go through it.

It is a good turn, and you think the lady is a little less disappointed as the song comes to an end, and you let her lead you to a table, taking a seat on one of the chairs. "I think I will ask my grandfather if I can write you. I know he doesn't like some of the men that try and speak to my mother, but you, you're a good one."

You give her another smile, and a deep theatrical bow. "High praise, little lady. I hope you enjoy the rest of the party, and if you manage to send those letters, I'll do my best to respond timely."

With that, you take your leave of the girl, and you hear one of the braver young boys try and ask her for a turn as you walk away. You wish him luck, but now you think you'll have to watch two young women while you remain.

---

> A younger man, closer to your own age, has taken a seat. You don't recognize him, and he could well be a third son or something, but in a room full of women and men playing tough, the calm might be welcome.

You take a seat beside the young man you'd spotted some time ago, and for a moment, you both enjoy the silence between you, before he extends out a hand.

Spoiler: A man your age, you were pretty sure you saw the orange bellied bird on his cloak among the shields earlier.

"Thomas Robinrice." He says, and You take his hand, giving him a firm shake.

"Elric Gawain."

With that done, the two of you settle back into a companionable silence, just watching the men try and sway the women, the women gossip about the men and eathother, but you don't miss the way his eyes keep straying off to the side, where a woman with the same black hair and grey eyes is having a stilted conversation with a gentleman. You decide to take a jab in the dark, taking into account her age, around yours if you're not mistaken and the same pattern of fabric as his cloak acting as her shawl.

"Your Sister?"

"Yes, Master Luchtomb has been talking with her for almost the entire party, and as tempted as I am to make a scene, my sister told me not to interfere unless she was actually in trouble."

"Hm. My mother told me not to interfere with women's games, said she had to learn to handle herself. The games of men on the other hand…" The two of you share a nod on that topic, returning to watching the crowds. Thomas leans in, eyes trailing over the various young women.

"Which one is yours?" You give him a look, before you shrug, finding your sister talking to a lovely blonde in green and pointing her out.

"Why, Interested?" You see him take a moment to realize your jest, before he shakes his head rapidly, almost raising his hands to ward off an attack you've not even started. He's a good sport though, and calms quickly.

"No, no, I just wanted to know which way you'd run if something got started. You'd probably go to help your sister, and god knows I'd head for mine even if there was trouble."

Again, the two of you nod at that, taking small sips of your glasses as you watch the wheels of connections spin.

Finally, you break the silence again. "If we're just going to sit here and watch them, might as well talk about something. Twenty questions?"

"Why not. Challenged goes first, Missiles or Lasers?"

"Lasers, Family 'Mech's got too many of them. Armor or speed?"

"I've got to go with Armor. Crusader is too heavy to get fast so it just has to shrug it. Skirt or track?"

"Tracks. Hovercraft can go fast, but you rip them and they fly off into the sun. You'll find them again, but just the rubble. Skirts or Pants?"

Your question makes him spit out his drink, and he gives you a glare. "You bastard." He pauses, trying to dry himself with one of the tables napkins. "Skirts. No comment on why. Hair Up or Down?"

You knew you liked this guy.

The questions continue in the same winding vein as you two keep a watch out, exchanging your glasses for empty ones as you finish them, a few more close calls but nothing to the same degree as him spraying his drink down his front.

"I'm going to have to disagree, autocannons are worthless on a BattleMech, they weigh too much, their ranges are poor, and ammo turns the most powerful machine on the battlefield into a deathtrap." You give him a look over your glass as he speaks.

"And missiles don't? With lasers, I don't have ammo issues, heat sinks are always useful, and between the pairing of them, don't need me to take out as much filler to install them. Autocannons at least pack a dedicated punch to a given area if you hit it, but with a missile attack you've got twenty odd darts that will go anywhere, and even on a light 'Mech might not do more than rattle the pilot a little. A miss with an Autocannon is a miss, but a hit with missiles can be almost as bad as a miss."

"Fuck it, we won't agree. Your turn."

"Alright. Steiner or Kurita."

"Are you sure you're alright to walk, you keep asking stupid questions. Steiner. Those wanna be samurai can go on about their "Honor" and their "Loyalty" but when all you can find about them is massacre, and ritual suicide of everyone but the guy that fucked up, it becomes a joke."

You give him a raised brow, head sitting in the palm of your hand. "You just like big 'Mechs."

"well I won't lie to you." He shrugs, leaning back into his chair. "We've got what, one more left? Fuck it, Stacked or Skinny."

You gag on your drink as he says it, and you see a look of achievement on his face. "Your mother better be a nice person, cause I almost…" You shake your head, thinking about it.

Thankfully, that answer never needs to come, as you see his eyes widen, and you turn around just in time to catch Nat and Thomas's sister get groped. The two of you share a look, throwback what's left of your drinks, and get to work.

~

You might have the start of a bruise on your ribs from a solid kick, and Thomas may be sporting a black eye, but you're both still standing, even if its in a cell, and the jackasses that had a bit too much to drink aren't. Your Sisters were brought to your respective family's custodies, and you were detained for potentially violating Lord Andercher's standing orders about violence between guests.

The Guards were kind enough to say that you'd almost certainly be released in the morning, given the number of witnesses to the cause, but that does mean you have hours left to spend in a cell beside Master Robinrice.

"Shall we do another rou-"

"No."

---

Sure enough, after a stern warning from the castle steward not to let your drink go to your head, you are released from the cells, gently escorted from the small jail and returned to your given families. Your mother calls you a fool, before praising you for protecting your sister and putting in more effort than she expected, your father gives you a pat on the back, and you just weather the hug from your sister.

With that reunion complete, your father gives you your marching orders, telling you that the caravan containing the Ginenet family, escorted by the mostly repaired Warhammer is on its way, and he wants you to meet it halfway so that you can be assured that it will get here.

This is not a suggestion from father to son, but rather a command from Lord to MechWarrior, and so you nod your head, enjoy a quick meal and a change of clothes, and head for the pseudo-Mechbay where you had left it parked.

You are the only man loading into his machine, when suddenly the radio you've fitted to your cooling-vest starts to blare.

"All Lords and Units, be aware, Orbital Sentries report unscheduled burn ins. I say again, unknown forces preparing to make landfall. Estimated landing point as follows-" You listen to the string of numbers, bringing up your data pad to plug them in almost as quickly as the man can say them. You don't like what you see. "I say again, Unknown forces making landfall in Western Laoricia. Rally Points Beta and Charlie to be used to concentrate forces."

You let the radio fade into background noise as you go through the boot up, and listen to the roar of the fusion engine as it comes to life. You give the ground crew a thumbs up, and they open the concrete doors, not enough to stop your machine if you wanted but no reason to damage your host's property.

You had pirates to kill, and a Caravan to protect.

 

[Capitalist DeeDeeDee]

Seeing the Gladiator approach and level its large laser at Arthur, he watched as his heat gauges fell all too slowly for him to easily avoid it, his 'Mech's legs sluggish after unleashing so much firepower against the soft armor of the Griffin. It won't be critical damage by any means, but anything Arthur takes here is something that he'll have to deal with until he can return home after driving off the main band.

Click to shrink...

man, after like a year of not reading the first few chapters of the quest, I have only now found out that Grandpappy Arthur fought a 505 year old mech.
maybe I should re-read things more

 

[Lone Courier 6]

man, after like a year of not reading the first few chapters of the quest, I have only now found out that Grandpappy Arthur fought a 505 year old mech.
maybe I should re-read things more

Click to shrink...

I mean it's battletech, there are some ancient mechs out there, the black knight itself was there at the beginning of the Amaris Civil War and was fresh off the line when it went to police the periphery before that

 

[JohnDoe22]

Man, I love this quest so much. Happy to see it over here. Thanks for writing!

 

[Lord Of Flames]

The trees pass quickly at the edges of your vision, the head of the Black Knight rolling smoothly as it keeps a jogging pace through the woods that the Alylian's call home. Your initial travel through their lands giving you a good idea of where the bogs and swamps were, letting you avoid getting bogged down when speed and action were a necessity. The radio on your cooling vest pipes up again as you open the gap between yourself and the Keep you'd just left.

"Gawain BattleMech, return to Keep Andercher for rallying of additional forces. A lone BattleMech against pirates is only going to be easy pickings." Your father had given you a task, and you were loath to be so easy ordered away from it. Keying the radio at your collar, you speak loudly to be heard over the crash of plants underfoot, and the muffling of your neurohelmet.

"Gawain BattleMech unable to comply. Pirates are projected to set down directly in the path of a Gawain Convoy carrying important personnel."

The man operating the radio is annoyed, but there is little he can do beside try and badger you into obeying his very limited authority. "Acknowledged, Gawain BattleMech. Local forces are rallying to Keeps Andercher, and Knightway. If you can harass the enemy, you may give them the time they need to prepare for any probing strikes by the pirates."

You send a patterned burst of static over the line, signaling your reception of the transmission, and continue your journey.

DropShips are themselves quite large, and you don't miss the orange streaks that burn across the sky as you crest a hill. One resembles an oversized plane more than anything else, an aerodyne DropShip if you can remember the classifications. The other is a spheroid, the more standard DropShips for the transport of goods or large units across the Inner Sphere, though this particular one is quite small, your warbook struggling to place it with the interference of the flames scouring over its hull, but certain that it can't be much heavier than the drop ship burning in ahead of it.

> Head straight in for their projected landing area. 'Mechs disembarking from a drop ship are at their most vulnerable, as they must either step out one at a time, or be stuck in place until the DropShip finishes deploying the lance. Risky however, and at the risk of isolating you in a 1-on-4, or worse odds.

> +radio the convoy to tell them your plan and to coordinate

Reaching for the box on your vest once more, you tweak the dial on one side, leaving the other alone to let you receive a wide band of signals, in case the Sentries had anything of import to share, and switch to the frequencies used by your family's forces. You go through a number of verifications first, using code phrases to identify yourself well before any real message is sent, and when you get the correct response phrase, you transmit your message.

"This is the Black Knight to Gawain forces, I am moving to reinforce your escort, but the Pirate's projected landing zone is directly between us." You inform, adjusting your heading slightly to keep up with the updated drop area.

"I intend to engage the pirates as they land and attempt to deploy, requesting any possible assistance you can manage."

You slow your advance as you wait for a replay, watching as the orange flames flickering across the enemy hulls starts to dissipate as they clear the upper atmosphere atmosphere, the Leopard-aerodyne banking its nose up to bleed speed, while the Manatee-Spheroid just blasts its massive fusion torches, the same that can get it up to two and half G's of acceleration in space, to slow it decent.

"Black Knight, This is the Warhammer." You smile as you hear Alistair's voice, his pride at being able to say it coming through despite the audio only connection. "Gawain Forces are situated at the border to Unicorn Lands, but escort stands ready to assist."

Knowing that you have a second Heavy 'Mech in the field makes you feel a lot more confident with the idea of hitting the pirates quickly, but you still have to hammer out the details quickly.

000

>Gawain Forces Available.

The Black Knight. 75 ton Heavy 'Mech. 100% Combat readiness.

Warhammer, 70 ton Heavy 'Mech. 85% Combat readiness.

Gawain Combat Vehicle Lance. 100% Combat readiness.

Gawain Combat Vehicle Lance. 100% Combat readiness.

Other forces may be in the area, but are not under your command.

What are your orders, Mechwarrior?

>Have the Pike and the Fire Support team secure a high ridge to bombard the Pirates as they disembark piecemeal. Lure the Pirates out to suppress the firesupport before swooping in on them with the Black Knight and Warhammer.

>>The Fire Support Lance, consisting of two LRM-Carriers, is within range to fire on one of the Enemy DropShips as they move into land, and open fire on the Manatee DropShip. Between the 120 missile tubes, they manage to do critical damage to the Manatee's maneuvering thrusters and force it to crash land south of its intended drop zone.

The Manatee is not in good condition when it does crash, with its fusion torches sputtering out before it hits the ground hard. Any units inside it are going to be damaged from the sudden impact.

But the Leopard got a good look at the ridge where all of that fire that brought down the other DropShip came from, and the Pirates inside it know where it is too.

The Leopard comes down in the landing zone quickly, going VTOL as it deploys its Lance of ''Mechs from the bottom doors in a combat drop, the ''Mechs already hot and moving.

000

You wait in the cooling cockpit of the Black Knight, your fusion engine shut off but the ignition sequence only waiting for your final confirmation. Alistair was in similar straights off to the side, the two of you hidden in the brush, your ''Mechs kneeling like they were expecting their liege to tap their shoulders with a sword, waiting for the enemy to come into view.

With the thump of heavy feet running quickly, you look through the ferroglass as a light 'Mech, its make and model indistinct with its speed and the intercepting woods, thundered past you some hundred meters to your right, before it was joined by another 'Mech, heavier but still not the size of your Heavy. That consideration was quickly dashed, however, as you watch the offset torso and cockpit of an Orion enter your frame of view, the almost triangular Missile rack set into its shoulder a dead giveaway for its make, while a trooper-'Mech, a large autocannon on its shoulder, took up the rear of the formation.

You waited several long seconds as they moved past you, their engines and heat signature blaring bright that you could see the ripple in the air from some of their radiator vents as they moved for the ridge.

With your 'Mech offline, it was difficult to detect you, and you intended to abuse that fact. You risk a single long press of your radio's transmit button, before you hit the switch to bring your family machine back to life.

000

>The Black Knight and the Warhammer both surge to life at your command, and attack the rear of the Orion as it runs past you. Your first shot is glancing, right at the edge of the range of your Large Lasers, but Alistair in the Warhammer has far better luck. His two Particle-Projection-Cannons fire lightning bolts that strike the rear arc of the Orion, burning through the thin armor, and with the first volley of his first time inside a BattleMech, he kills an Orion with an ammo detonation.

Being a Pirate 'Mech, 'Mechs are not typically well maintained, as the Pirates often end up having to act as their own techs, given that Most 'Mech Techs will probably sabotage a man holding them at gun point, or failing that, try and kill them in creative ways in the 'Mech bay and be executed for their desire to be free.

Such is the case with the Orion Pilot, as the ejection system on his chair misfires as the 'Mech detects an Ammo Explosion, and fails to pop the canopy.

The result is a cleaner death than being consumed in fire as your 'Mech literally explodes from the inside out.

>>ENEMY LEADER SLAIN. Morale check for the Pirate Lance.

The Pilot of the Light ''Mech is made of sterner stuff, something that'd be needed considering he's in a deathtrap held together with string and prayer.

The Pilot of the fore Medium ''Mech is shook but will probably fight if you press the issue.

The Pilot of the Shadow Hawk just watched his Lance Leader explode and two Heavy 'Mechs melt out of the fucking shadows. He is not in a good place right now.

>>Your Combat Vehicles pour missile fire in support of your attack from afar, only scoring glancing hits across the lance, but against lighter BattleMechs, even a little damage can be rather telling.

While the Shadowhawk avoids your medium lasers, blowing apart the dirt behind them as the lasers glance between their arms and torso, the Shadowhawk pilot attempts to answer your charge with his own, his autocannon firing close enough to rattle your cockpit as the rounds zip past your head.

You have closed to melee.

With a feral glee, you rip your right hand out of the Shadow Hawk's left torso, a ruined mass of an autocannon clutched tight in your steel fist, while your left hand strikes up, glancing off the titanium gorget of the Shadow Hawk to send a shower of golden ferroglass to the torn-up plants at your feet.

Your blow is so striking that it completely imbalances the Shadow Hawk, its gyro struggling to adjust to the loss of so much armor and weaponry in a single volley, and it falls backwards, badly rattling the pilot.

You loom over your fallen bow, his weapons nigh useless against your armor, while yours have taken a bloody toll on his BattleMech.

You stomp an armored foot into the chest of the Shadowhawk and bring the charging barrel of your PPC to the shattered head of the 'Mech, the blue glow glinting over the ragged remains of the cockpit's glass canopy.

"Power off your reactor, or I'll settle for a mostly intact 'Mech." Your threat comes out as a low growl though the speaker system of the Black Knight, and though you see the hands of the Shadow Hawk twitch as its pilot considers his options, your sensors detect the shutdown of his reactor as the limbs go limp, the blocky trooper collapsing into the churned-up mud and foliage of your boxing match.

Raising your head, you turn to look for the last standing 'Mech of the Pirate lance and watch as it sends a thunder of fire into the Warhammer, a rewelded plate sliding free as it tests the skill of Master Burrel in repairing the larger war machine.

This would be its last hurrah.

You lift your foot from the Shadow Hawk, your targeting computer feeding its exact position to the LRM Carrier on the ridge just in case, before you move off to deal with the Phoenix Hawk. Something about its armor strikes you as odd as you move, the tonnage adding up if you allow some screw job Pirate mods to explain why the Medium-scout ''Mech was carrying an autocannon of all things, but just looking at it bothers you.

You honestly couldn't say, but what you do know is that the ''Mech is going to die in the next few moments, and there is nothing it can do to stop that.

With a lazy motion, you level your PPC to the Phoenix Hawk, watching as it tries to use its Jump jets to just skim the ground, trying to flank the Warhammer. Alistair is doing his level best to keep up with the faster medium, and he's put up a good fight, but his inexperience is much like your own, and you know that sooner or later he'll be a force to reckon with inside that machine.

You count down the seconds, and the moment the blue glow of the thrusters dies away, you fire, the bolt of lightning punching across the glade, the left torso almost literally turning to slag as the bolt hits it, then the Large Lasers sitting at your kidney's fire a moment after, the waste heat turning the cockpit into a sauna as they tear into the right torso, not quite reducing it to scrap but it's a close thing. The right arm of the pirate goes limp as the connections die away, the Autocannon falling away like an oversized rifle.

You wait a heartbeat to see what the Hawk would do next, and when it burns its jets to try and retreat to the south, you give it the last of your volley, green energy beams cutting across the distance between you to sever its left leg and open a fresh wound in its torso, the smoke that billows out telling you that you hit something important. The Fusion Engine perhaps?

Either way, what lands at the end of the jump is not quite half the 'Mech that started it, and as you stalk forward, you only wait for your heat gauge to fall back to safe levels before you pull the trigger again, the right leg all but snapping at the middle of its thigh as you subject it to intense heat and force at the same time.

When you finally stand over the crumpled remains of the Phoenix Hawk, you don't both making the same threat, and instead merely level your other arm, the medium laser there more than enough to start carving holes into the cockpit. You had heard that Phoenix Hawks have impressive sensors, and you wonder if you couldn't kill the pilot without destroying that sensitive equipment.

Thankfully, you don't need to wonder, as the engine undergoes an emergency shutdown, not quite a scram, but you bet if you looked in the gap in their armor, you'd see thinner reactor shielding than either you or the pilot would like.

You stand the victor, your fellow 'Mech wounded but standing, over a lance of Pirates that thought they'd have easy sport against a lance of combat vehicles.

This salvage is almost certainly yours by right of combat, you or your family's forces having felled every member of this lance, but that doesn't mean that the forces in the Manatee were disabled or destroyed, meaning this raid isn't over yet.

000

With the pirate lance shattered at your feet, it doesn't take long for a group of infantry from the main caravan, many of whom sport the advanced armor and weapons from the cache you found months ago, to come and secure the mechwarriors.

Never have you seen a trio of individuals who were… you struggle to put it into words.

Why are the pirates all half naked except for their cooling vest and the bulky neurohelmets they seem to have as a rule?

Looking over at Alistair, your friend having popped out of his cockpit for a moment for fresh air, he's got a set of fatigues on, the cooling vest tight around his torso and a neurohelmet that bridges the gap between your own and those of the pirates on his hip.

You've never seen a foreign enemy before, even the Ginenet were your neighbors, but to look at this hodgepodge of equipment, clothes, and God knows what else, you'd have assumed Pirates that could modify a basically pristine Phoenix Hawk would have some standards to equipment.

Unless it literally fell off the back of a 'truck'.

Either way, you don't have time to interrogate the pirate scum, not when their other DropShip fell, anywhere from a few miles to a dozen away, meaning that the enemy could make good time and unload if they survived the crash intact.

With your prisoners secured by your infantry, and your prizes marked, you give your friend a wave, and return to the interior of your cockpit. the Black Knight smoothly rises from its locked position as you regain control over its systems, the Warhammer doing much the same, even if Alistair's control over his 'Mech is just a little less fluid than your own. A combination of inexperience and a worse neurohelmet you imagine.

Raising a massive hand, you wave it forward, and your unit of 'Mechs and combat vehicles start to head south towards the crash site.

> Have the Caravan follow at a distance, you'll destroy the Pirate forces and they can continue on to Andercher with a minimal delay.

You give your orders, and the soldiers manning the caravan obey, moving into position. They would follow your combat forces at a distance, allowing you to both keep an eye on them just in case, but also focus on the enemy. Hopefully you'll be able to destroy the pirates quickly and get the civilians moving on for Andercher Keep quickly.

The rest of your forces form up with you and start moving through the border marches of Knightway and Andercher, where thick woods give way to boggy swamps. For all that you prefer the woods of your home, you can't say it's not beautiful country that your fellow nobles rule over. Still, you are mindful of the bogs that are deep enough that if you slipped, you'd fall up to your hip knee actuator in clinging mud.

Your musing of the scenery goes thankfully uninterrupted, your eyes still watching your various sensor readouts like a hawk as you continue forward, the lead unit in the column, with Alistair's Warhammer pulling up the rear, its damaged armor making it a more tempting target than your virtually unscathed Black Knight.

> The Manatee is mostly upright, if at an angle and embedded in a small crater of kicked up mud that is slowly filling with water from the hip-deep swampland it had landed in.

You can see, something down there beside it, easily tall enough to be BattleMechs, but also things that are barely moving in the waist high water.

What is your plan, 'Mech Commander?

>>Open fire on the exposed Pirate forces, with PPC's, LRM's, and everything else that can reach out from the ridges.

000

As you watch the Griffin survive another wave of missiles, lasers, PPC bolts, and autocannon rounds, your own machines and tanks weathering a limp wristed response from the enemy units, you know that this is merely going to take a while, as the Griffin's reactor is visibly shedding heat after one of the last attacks cracked its shielding, and so you line up one last shot on it, only to be interrupted as three PPC's slam into its back from the forest behind it, a Bright Red Awesome striding from the woods as it closes the distance.

It is not alone, as you see a Catapult open fire with its missiles on the Hunchback, rattling its armor plating and cracking its cockpit canopy before your sensors report that its reactor has scrammed itself, the universal sign of surrender.

Of the Archer, you cannot know the mind of its pilot, but you see the same thing happen as its reactor dies down.

The Griffin doesn't get the chance to surrender, as the Awesome closes the distance with uncharacteristic speed, and slams its battle fist straight into the right torso, triggering a chain reaction that sends the two halves of the griffin splitting apart, its fishbowl like canopy bursting open as a thin figure is sent rocketing out on his chair a moment before, his parachute opening and leading him to dangle helplessly in front of a jet-black Vulcan.

With the loss of the BattleMechs, you start to order your forces to open fire on the enemy vehicles, only for their crews to remember the better part of valor, and surrender, climbing out and standing atop the dry tops of their half submerged tanks.

This was not quite a perfect battle, but for the price of scuffed paint and less than a pallet's worth of armor, you had crippled over some six BattleMechs, with only two of your own and two lances of Combat Vehicles. Already the thought of reward and honor is echoing in your head, but that would come later.

For now, you had Nobles to meet and bargain with.

000

Your Total Salvage report.

Griffin (0/5). It exploded.

Orion (0/5). Also exploded.

Archer (4/5). Believe it or not, the Archer is mostly intact, with mostly Armor Damage to speak off, and its missing right arm. The Gyro will need some care, and replacement actuators and heatsinks in some sections, but otherwise in ready to repair condition.

Hunchback (5/5 Semi-Contested). A Virtually fully intact BattleMech, with a spattering of armor damage, but no internal damage, no ammunition usage, and no Pilot that needs to be power washed out of the cockpit. Andercher secured the surrender, so expect there to be some discussion over that.

Spider (4/5). Cored out from behind, the Spider is virtually intact save for the most important components of a BattleMech, its fusion engine and its gyro system.

Manatee (3/5 Contested). The damage to the Manatee from your attack and its crash landing could be far worse, you discover, with its fusion torch bells cracked and warped under heavy load after your missile barrage, but in theory quite salvageable. Considering where it landed, and the value of the DropShip this is sure to be a hard sell to the other houses.

Wasp (4/5). You shot out its Leg, which isn't difficult to replace considering how common a 'Mech it is.

Shadowhawk (5/5). Mostly intact, but missing its main cannon.

Phoenix-hawk (2/5). Heavily damaged between the Warhammer and the Support Lance, with you finishing the job by destroying structural areas. It will need some work, but this thing is a heavily modified machine. How did Pirates get their hands on it?

Enemy Weapon Carrier (Contested). Fully intact, but the crew only surrendered after the Noble's arrived.

Brutus Heavy Tank (Contested), Similar to the Weapon Carrier, only surrendered once clearly outnumbered and out gunned.

000

Staring through the ferroglass of your cockpit canopy, the blue-tinted goggles of your Black Knight meeting the Golden hue of the Awesome's own, your fingers twitch as you look at the crimson reticle set over its head, a shot at a unmoving target well within your optimal range. Could you kill it in a single barrage or would the inherent ECM systems of a BattleMech cause some of your shots to distort? Striking ghost images that do not exist in the visual spectrum but appear readily to most military targeting systems.

You'd like to say that Summermere suddenly gave you cause, that there was some reason that you could take him and his powerful Assault 'Mech off the battlefield in a sudden attack.

Between your two BattleMechs and the lances of Combat Vehicles behind you, even an Awesome would only last so long, and while three PPC's are nothing to scoff at, if you got close enough, he'd only be able to rely on his 'Mech's singular battle fist, while you would still have the vast majority of your arsenal.

With a deep breath, you pull back from the mindset of a warrior, looking for the next opponent, the next opening that would let you gut your enemy like a pig, draining out the capacitors of your weapons and putting them on standby. Summermere may be an ass, and one that will no doubt give voice to his own complaints about the sheer amount of salvage you and your house now have claim to, a fair chunk of it field-able with only minimal repairs.

You'd not want to be in the Archer, missing an arm as it was, but as a fire-support platform capable of matching the LRM-carrier and far more durable compared to the same, it would be an excellent addition to your forces.

With your bloodlust calmed, you open a channel to the lance of noble 'Mechs, each sporting different livery like a circus of color and pattern.

"Lords Summermere, Andercher. Your arrival is well timed, though unneeded, I think. I think you've arrived on battle's end." Switching to a general channel usually left unused on Freirehalt, you hail the DropShip. "Unidentified Pirate Manatee, your forces have been disabled or destroyed, power down the fusion engine and present yourselves at the boarding ramp. My footmen have watched your pirate friends be destroyed, and if you fail to comply, I would be remiss to deny them their own chance at glory."

A DropShip is a well armored thing in a vacuum, much like an assault 'Mech, but even the most well armored 'Mech's can be brought down under the weight of sheer firepower, and with half a dozen CV's pointing autocannons and a reinforced assault lance pointing their own myriad of weaponry at the thing, their surrender is a bygone conclusion.

And if they don't, you'd simply hammer PPC's into the door if the Demolisher cannot get in range to crack it like a fortress gate with its paired Class-20 autocannons.

You keep a close eye on the brackets of lasers that sit around the DropShips crown, their gimbals enough to give them a decent lane of fire, but as you expect, this battle does not end in a roar of defiance from the pirates, but rather a whimper of surrender, with the lasers falling slack as your sensors detect the reactor shutting down. The bay door the Griffin had emerged from before it had been shot flat on its metal ass opening once more, a ragged selection of humanity making their way out slowly, hand up and visible, save for those wearing slings and the like fashioned from torn up shirts.

You hesitate to say he's wearing a uniform, but the fancy jacket he's got on clearly marks him as being in charge of this lot. When he speaks, it is with a lyran accent, thick with a germanic root even as he speaks the Star League's English.

"The Crew of the Fighting Lady surrenders to your forces. Better to die in the open air than trapped in a coffin as the walls collapse around us."

~

Your infantry clear the ship quickly, their inexperience boarding large vessels quickly made up for by the experience they have practicing attacks against fortress interiors, Sir Christoph running the men through indoor fighting regularly.

Combined with their own skill in close quarters, practice, and improved equipment, they move through the guts of the DropShip, and towards the top of the bays, they find a young woman wearing a grease streaked jacket, a hastily through together bandage covering a bruise on the side of her head, with a metal collar around her neck and a chain connecting to a cuff around her ankle.

You can't blame her for her annoyed reaction to the number of guns pointed at her, nor the pointed offers by your men's medics to give her a once over. Still, it doesn't take your men long to figure out that Daina, as she says her name is, is not here by choice.

Evidently, the Pirates had almost literally kidnapped her from her own front porch, her unit, whether Merc or House is unclear, having stopped over on a core-ward planet for supplies and to stretch their legs, when three men grabbed her, bagged her, and threw her in their vehicle. By the time her unit would have realized she was gone, the Pirates were already burning for the jump-point.

She's spent a over a year as the Pirates' guest, being made to fix and teach the more technically minded pirates how to repair their machines.

She is freed quickly, your men more than capable of breaking a chain with the picks and hammers they carry on their entrenching kits, and given a small honor guard, a prisoner of an enemy a new guest to protected until you can make arrangements.

Inside the DropShip itself, you find many things, many of them unpleasant, ranging from various stashes of drugs, immodest paraphernalia, and in a cargo bay that they have to cut the door open to access, the Pirate's stash of 'Mech parts to repair their rides.

When the final catalogue of parts from the DropShip coming much later, and with many parts being identified by a combination of Diana and Andercher's technicians, you are not quite aware of the bounty of parts within the DropShip, though from your Men's frenzied reactions, you can tell that there are many of them.

Instead your attention is drawn back to the lance of Nobles, your house's overlord among them. The white Hammerhands cuts an intimidating profile beside its larger counterpart, the Awesome, but you know that their firepower is closer than either pilot would like. As if you needed the reminder when you arrived, but Summermere and Knightway have a great deal of bad blood between them, between the many battles that Knightway has fought to maintain his western border, and the incident between Summermere's nephew and Meric's niece.

"It is good that this raid was dealt with so quickly, Master Gawain." It is not either of the feuding Overlord's that speak, but rather Andercher, his Catapult painted like a red, with claw marks across white strikes so dark they're almost black, that steps forward. "This raid has already delayed the council's deliberations, but I think that another day would hardly harm us all. There is much to speak off, and I would have the council hear your account of throwing the pirates back into the black."

You can see his game, which is to get Knightway and Summermere out of their machines as fast as possible before their feud comes to blows. The last thing the planet needs is either overlord killing the other and dragging their vassals, and their friends, into a war that would span the planet.

It would also mean that salvage can be talked about over a table, the claims managed, argued, and resolved in the comfort of a boardroom rather than the stale sweat of a 'Mech's cockpit, or the muddy woods of a forest.

You dip the head of your Black Knight slightly. "Agreed, Lord Andercher. I will have my houses forces rejoin the caravan I was sent to escort, and we can walk with them until we reach the border so they may return home, knowing their charge was safe."

"Perfect. Well then, I believe that six BattleMechs are more than enough to fend off anything that might storm from the woods, and once they set foot in my lands, they will be under my protection, and anyone that strikes at them will suffer the consequences."

You don't miss that Lord Andercher has said this on an open channel, one that Summermere was almost certainly hearing, among others. It was as much a statement of fact as warning.

Defy me, and what will be, will be.

 

[Lord Of Flames]

As you said, the moment you near the border the Knightway shares Andercher, your combat vehicles start to turn around, making their way home, the Warhammer along with them, its armor heavily scored and in need of repairs, as well as whatever work still needed to be complete on the heavy 'Mech.

With the loss of the combat vehicles, your infantry and riders become a touch more jumpy, their patrols and watches redoubling on the journey, still a day out when you find a little rest inside your cockpit, to Andercher's keep, but before too long you see the castle overlooking its swampy land once more.

You are barely out of your machine, sweat slicked hair sliding from your nuero-helmet when you hear the first complaints or suggestions of foul play.

"This is absurd, He's barely been in a 'Mech for a month, and I'm to believe that he routed a pirate raid virtually unaided? This stinks of a set up, Ronald." Summermere is a bit more put together than you are, having spent far less time inside his machine, or fighting at full tilt than you did yesterday.

"And I would expect you to know better than to suggest that a Noble house would summon pirates and backstab them for glory, Trajin. Those are grounds to see metal clash, and I almost think the boy your better. If you have complaints, voice them before the council, but do not think that I will be so easily swayed by your paranoia."

The redheaded lord longs to continue the argument, but he stills his tongue as he finally notices you, giving your host a glare as he leaves, strutting away like a peacock with his head held high and a short cape falling from one shoulder. Lord Andercher merely watches him go, a bomber's jacket on his shoulders giving you only a glimpse of his cooling vest.

"When he was a boy, he was arrogant. Now he's a man and he's as prideful as lions, and as eager to charge as his sigil." The man shakes his head as he finishes the thought, turning to face you. "Take your time to get cleaned, have a meal that isn't jerked or harder than stones, the council will reconvene at noon, to both discuss the raid, and what few claims there are on the salvage, and to hear the testimony of your witnesses. You did well, Mechwarrior." He gives you a pat on the shoulder as he passes, and leaves you to your own thoughts.

Your own return to the household is greeted by your sister rising from her seat beside a lamp, her book forgotten as she greets you with a hug, your mother entering the room as she lets go, giving you a hug of her own. When you see your father, you see him smiling, the glass of whiskey in his hand a match for the one set on your side of his desk.

---

>In your absence, Osway was confronted by Armmore, but when she laid the charge against him, he refuted it, going so far as to proclaim it a plot against her and himself by you and Sanmon.

You're not sure quite what ticked it in your favor, but the man was seen riding away from the keep, the Lady Armmore's anger palpable even under her iron-clad control.

>Godsfield is a man that can read the flow of politics, and as this council has continued, and with the latest news of your house almost single-handedly throwing back the pirate raid, yours is a rising star, but one that may threaten the balance of politics on the world.

It is a risky proposition, to hitch his cause to your own, but if you continue to push, sooner or later there will be a clash, between You and Gladwell, or some other Overlord that is afraid of change.

Still, he has known your father for years, developed a relationship with the man. Your family is quickly becoming more powerful than it ever was under your grandfather, and that is not something he can ignore.

---

Your father and you enjoy the silence between you, his good mood almost contagious as you sip at the spirit in your glass, the burn down your throat and your look of surprise earning another set of chuckles from the man. He toasts you with his glass as you recover, his smile never leaving.

"You've done a great job for the house today, and not just in winning a battle and getting some glory attached to your name. One of the footmen in charge brought me a list of everything you downed or damaged." You've never seen your father quite so happy, and were it not for his injury, you imagine he'd be pacing the room like an excited child.

"Were it just the first lance, we'd have been better off and stronger than we'd ever been. A Shadow Hawk is serviceable machine, a Wasp a capable scout. The Phoenix Hawk is in need of repairs, but its mobility and firepower is unmatched among its weight-class. There are a dozen houses that would pay for parts from any one of these machines, but to have them virtually intact is unheard off, and the rest of it…"

You sit there, taking small sips of your drink as your father builds this narrative in his head, much the same way you imagine that every half-penny singer from here to Mapon would be telling the story of the Black Knight and its pilot being guided by the ghost of his grandfather to single-handedly destroy eight 'Mechs at the same time with an ease that betrayed how the 'Mech was actually alive. Your father's version of events is actually fairly close to the reality, minus that you did not close with the pirates in the bog and instead took pot shots at them from the high ridge.

"So much on the table, and so few to argue with. Andercher will probably release his claim on the DropShip if we gift him one of the serviceable 'Mechs, the Wasp by my preference, and with the Hunchback being in good repair, Knightway has humored us for little in return, so that would be a good way to deepen the relationship between our houses without…" Your father trails off, thinking deeply about all the possibilities that could occur with the salvage.

For your part, you nod along as he speaks, the man pondering trying to get investment from other houses in the restoration of the Manatee, the impracticality of using it as a cargo ship without stripping out the 'Mech-bays for additional space. The ''Mechs are almost a forgotten concern in the face of that, but you know that having what must be almost 14 million C-bills worth of metal sitting idle can buy you much in the Inner Sphere markets.

It is a one sided discussion, but one that you can follow, and before you know it, it is time for you to clean up and get ready for the council meeting. By now, the Ginenet will have settled into rooms under the guard of your men, the lord likely thrown into the nearest closet without windows just in case.

---

"There is no way that boy is as green as all our agents say he is." Sanmon can only nod his head as Lord Grosseaw speaks, Dravenkind opposite him with much the same reaction.

"The boy is a fair hand with a sword, though not to my level. To be expected when I have twenty years on him, but he can fight. And now we know he can Fight. But he has placed himself as our friend, or at the least a neutral party. I can think of little better at the moment, now that this business with Armmore is calming down after that snake Osway rode off. The lady may be as inscrutable as a statue, but she wants to tear off his head and use it as a cup."

"I want to tear off his head, Colin." Sanmon's response is quiet. "Because I refuse to bury more of my children for a fool's ambitions. This Gawain is a good lad, earnest, naive. He is fond of my granddaughter from what she said to me of the luncheon, and quick to defend others if his arrest by the guards was anything to go by. His house rises quickly, but is it a phoenix or a firework?"

---

"DAMN HIM!" The servants in the room carefully didn't react as the Lord Gladwell throws a full goblet of wine against the wall, dousing the wallpaper in crimson liquid as the dented cup rolled on the floor.

"I make so many deals, try and be reasonable and what does Gawain do? HE REFUSES TO DIE!" The scattering papers on the floor crunch under his steps as he paces the floor, damning letters smudged to illegibility as he tramples the ink and sand. "My son would be master of this planet and instead this bastard does the impossible. He aggrandizes himself in glory and metal while Andercher glares at me like a stain on his carpet."

"And all it takes to burn the bridges I've spent decades building is for one boy to find the fucking sword in the stone, and kill the bastard attacking his home with it."

There is no calming the rage that consumes the Lord Gladwell, and the servants in the room risk trading glances in alarm as he begins to rage anew.

---

"What do you think of that young man you spoke to the other day?" This is the very conversation that Pheobe was hoping to avoid, her father silent at the head of the table as her mother asks her the question.

"Elric seems a nice enough young man, and he didn't look at me with awe or distaste, just as another… soldier, perhaps. Pleasant to talk to, but he seemed more interested in talking mechanics than politics." It's a measured reply, one that doesn't try to play up a none existent relationship, or try to damage the character of the young man. "He's a good listener." Perhaps that would be enough to get her mother to titter to herself and stop trying to manage her love life.

That she was dining with her father was almost a favor to the man, lest questions be asked about his wayward daughter.

"A handsome young man, valiant, blooded for all to see. There are worse matches you could make, like that Summermere lad. I heard he can't even hold a sword anymore after he overreached." Her mother was as always the gossip of gossips. "And the stories going around about him, oh!"

"Enough, Elise." Her father finally spoke, a heavy timbre that well fit the large man. "If the Dame had any interest, she would say as much."

"But it would be such a good match, and better to get in early before the investments start to mature."

Pheobe just reached for her glass, ignoring her mother's continued appeals to notions of family gain, or romance, or whatever tact she'd take this turn like a knight striking the quintain. She needed the fortification if she was to last this luncheon, let alone the day.

---

You enter into the throne room, pushing your father's chair as the rest of the nobles file in. There is less bickering between them this time around, nods of respect and greeting taking the place of pointed words as the Council reconvenes. The round table you stand before is as large as it was the other day, but now the energy seems drained from the trio of Gladwell, Ruxhall, and the ever restless Summermere, thinly veiled anger pulling at his lips, distaste and hate in the eyes of Gladwell as you stare him down from across the table.

Today would settle your house's debts, whether it was done in peace, or you had to pry the weregild from their cold dead hands.

Rising from his seat, Lord Andercher is the image of a noble on Freirehalt. His clothes well kept, his hair groomed and his expression unreadable.

"We have returned from our recess a day delayed, owing to the sudden attack, and lightning fast defeat of the pirate raid. A Problem that would take days to rally and weeks to root out destroyed in an afternoon by one of the Mechwarriors present today. His glory was not his alone, but his forces have returned home to tend their wounds and mend their metal. Here, Here, for the Young Gawain!"

The lord's call is taken up by many in the chamber, though the likes of Armmore and Sanmon stay silent, giving small nods as your eyes pass over them, even as their vasals and knight make enough noise for the lot.

"Still, we have grave business to hear of, and the given week has given us time to rally together the witnesses for either side. As the Accused, I would hear the case of House Gawain first." You hear the aborted attempt by Lord Gladwell to speak against this, only for the hosting lord to fix him with a glare, the old man closing his mouth and sitting back in his chair like a pouting child. His target chided, the Lord Andercher turns to your father, raising a hand in allowance.

"Summon your first Witness, Lord Gawain."

"Thank you, Lord Andercher." Your father said, then cleared his throat. "This week we spent in recess was not spent Idly, and I thank the council for its willingness to wait for proper evidence and testimony. Before anything else, I believe that it would be best to show you the things my son claimed the last time we convened. I have prepared a projector and a computer terminal to show the recordings from both his BattleMech, and that of the Ginenet's Warhammer. With your leave."

Your father dips his head to your host, and a lazy wave of his hand sees you step just outside the chambers, Fredrick waiting with a small dolly, machinery more bulky than heavy, and wave him inside. It takes only a few minutes to have it ready, and with a nod from your father, your friend inserts the first recording, that of your grandfather's battle with the pirate forces over twenty years ago.

It is not a slow battle, Arthur Gawain cutting through the pirates like a scythe through chaff, up until he is attacked from behind, the almost omnidirectional sensors of the Black Knight giving a shockingly clear look at his attacker, a yellow painted Warhammer. That is the first BattleROM seen, and easily the shortest, cut down just to the relevant portion.

The second, was pulled from the mangled mess of the Warhammer's cockpit after your duel and lasts a while longer. You can hear Olin giving orders from the cockpit, hear the computer as it keeps him updated on his weapons and cooling, and watch as he smashes apart the walls of your home. There is no contesting that he is the man inside, what with the number of times his underlings call him 'Master Ginenet' or 'Master Olin.' His attack on your father is clearly shown, and any doubt there was that you killed him in single combat is gone in moments, his panic an unknown element to you in the heat of the moment. You can't help but enjoy the touch of schadenfreude when his BattleMech's computer calmly states that his communications system has been destroyed by your attack.

Still, there is no reason to humiliate a dead man any further, and so you signal with a tap of your fingers to mute the audio, the recording ending in silence as your monologue, and the shriek of metal as you slammed stone through ferroglass is omitted, the last thing the BattleROM saw the jagged tip of your weapon.

There are other recordings presented, many of them from the turrets your father had planted past your walls, the computer system showing the advance of the enemy infantry, before the machine-guns mounted to the turrets fire into the rear of the enemy as your men on the walls through grenades full of napalm into their ranks, keeping them from raising ladders or any other siege weapons. You do not linger on it long, letting the image of Ginenet banners attacking your walls fill in the silence.

"With those complete, I would hope that no one would call my son a liar. Now, I would summon the Ginenet Family, alive and well, for all that Lord Gladwell would say otherwise."

The testimony of the Ginenet women is over fairly quickly, more to show that they are alive and well, if under watch by your men, and it doesn't take long before they are released back into your custody.

You restrain yourself as Gregor Ginenet is showed into the chamber, the man's eyes defeated as he is brought before a circle of his equals. There is no chance he can wiggle his way out of this, and even if by some devil deal the council ordered his freedom, between your Father's agents and his own failures, you don't imagine that Gregor would live to see the next Sunday, unless it was from the inside of a cage as he slowly starved.

Gibbets are terrible things, a cruel and unusual way to die, but you might make an exception.

In this case, your father is not the one to question Gregor instead, the lords go around questioning the man, Lord Andercher keeping the questions on topic, as much as discussing conspiracy can be.

"Who directed you to attack the Gawain family and their keep?"

"Lord Gladwell had me go to secure the Gawain's allegiance, and if they refused, I was ordered to remove them from the board. I told my son to prepare our forces for an attack, and if I did not return the next day, to assume that Gawain had refused our Lord's offer and to secure his surrender."

"We have heard testimony that you were the one who attacked Arthur Gawain. Speak the truth, did you attack the Gawain lord?"

"I was the one in the Warhammer that day, and I did attack Arthur Gawain. I did so under the advisement of Lord Gladwell, who told me the heading of the Black Knight. He almost cracked my 'Mech in half, so I was unable to pursue him without risking he would finish the job."

There are more questions related to his experience with the Lord Gladwell and his orders, as well as some pointed questions about his own military buildup. Your family had nominally had permission to field many Combat Vehicles, but Ginenet had not.

As it turns out, Mulstadia had been underrepresenting the number of combat vehicles it could field by a factor of two, meaning that Ginenet was not the only house not reporting its figures properly, even with the mistrust abound between ambitious neighbors.

By the time his testimony is finished, whatever fight has left the man is gone, leaving only the council's decision.

---

The deliberations take over an hour, much of that time spent between restating the readily apparent, or admitted facts, and how they relate to the code of Chivalry and laws that had been laid out by your ancestors, and the screaming match between Gladwell and the other lords. His allies join in on his side, claiming that 'almost everyone downplays their readiness, a claim that the honest lords take for an almost tacit admittance that they do the same thing, spurring another round of furious shouting.

In the middle of it, your father is silent, reminding you all too much of a storybook king as his council bickers and argues over the minutia. The power of your house has skyrocketed, and if you weren't careful, you could be accused of becoming the very tyrant that you accused Gladwell of plotting to become. Still, his analytical mind was fully at work as he listened to it all, the condemned, official or not, long escorted from the chamber for the final terms of his death.

What finally silences the angry voices is hammer of pikes into the floor, blunted ends stamping out a pattern like the drums of a marching band.

"SILENCE!" Andercher's voice is a roar, a deep shout that finally sees a moment's order in this sea of chaos. "We have heard the testimony of Ginenet, and I move that we deal with that matter presently before Lord Gladwell presents his own evidence and arguments. All for the motion, raise your hands." A wave of hands rise, some faster than others, but far more than half the nobles present agree, "And all those opposed?" A smaller group of hands, centered on Gladwell and his clique. "The Ayes have it, we will sentence the Lord Ginenet immediately."

He gives your father a look, perhaps contemplating if he should ask that your father abstain, considering he was one of Ginenet's victims, before deciding better of it.

"Our laws are clear. A Noble that commits a crime and is found guilty before this body, or any other council, is to be given the choice of exile. However, in this matter, we have a charge of Treason against the people of Freirehalt, a betrayal of his oaths of service and protection, and the variety of other crimes he has committed within the evidence presented today and at our last session. Death is the sentence."

"Hang the Bastard!" / "Give him a sword, let him die with honor he doesn't have!" / "Put him in a cage, the frost will get him!"

"I SAID SILENCE!" Andercher's voice cuts through the cacophony of voices again, and once more the nobles and knights present today are made meek as the lord of the keep stares them down. "The evidence is extensive, and his own testimony is tantamount to a confession. I move to accept that confession and declare him Guilty. All for?" Most hands. "All against." Far fewer rise for that, sealing the disgraced lord's fate.

"Then by the authority of this council I declare Lord Gregor Ginenet guilty of his crimes, and strip him of his rank and title, passing them onto his eldest surviving child," He looks to your father at that, and when he answers the unspoken question, continues. "Alice Ginenet, now Lady of her House. The status of House Ginenet will be decided shortly I imagine, but first we'll finish this sorry business. John, show in the accused."

The sergeant gives his lord a nod as he opens the door once more, Gregor being marched back into the room to be given his final sentencing.

Much of it is a repeat of what you'd just heard, covering in legalese this time, and when the sentence falls, Andercher gives the man a clean death. The man is resigned to learn he is to die, and despite the murmuring of the other lords, he accepts it with a grace you thought the man incapable of.

"Master Elric will be the witness of his death, but I refuse to make a spectacle of this. His family will be allowed to speak with him, his last confession will be taken, and the matter will end here." The warning is unneeded you think, considering you have no intention of furthering this feud with a young girl, not when her brother and father will be reunited in just a little while.

You do not relish this, no matter how in the right you may be. In a perfect world, the matter would never have gone before the council, instead ending between the two of you in your BattleMechs, God deciding who would stand at the end of the contest. Instead, you wait outside the chamber, an old storeroom that hadn't been used in years, as first the Ginenet women arrive, their meeting with their patriarch lasting several long minutes, before they leave the room, his wife's face drawn and sad, while his daughter does her best to hold in her tears.

You'd offer her your handkerchief, but you think what she really needs is privacy and a moment to cry her heart out. You'd felt much the same when you saw your father's crumpled body, but your grief was consumed by your focus, a need to keep moving lest you break down.

The next to enter the chamber was a pleasant man, his simple black clothes and white collar marking him of a priesthood. The privacy afforded to Gregor ends shortly after he leaves, allowing you and three others to enter the room.

There is only a respectful silence as Lord Gregor strips out of his clothes, leaving him bare of everything above his waist, and the Andercher guards kneel him down, his neck over a notched block. With his confession given, no one says anything, aside from the guard giving the soft commands to the condemned. The sword they bring out is heavy, and at a demonstration, razor sharp.

You watch, dutifully as the executioner brings up the blade, the others standing ready with dark clothes. When it falls, the matter is over quickly, a single swing of a sharp, heavy sword enough to part flesh and bone. They cover the head almost instantly, the other cloth put over the body. He may have been disgraced, but even he deserves a burial and his last rites, and so you leave the room, a conflicted feeling in your heart.

You ponder what truly bothered you about his death, going over the details in your head. Did it bother you that it was quick, that it was more than he deserved, or that there was no sport in it?

Should he have raged like a cornered wolf at the end or was it just pitiful to watch a resigned man bend his neck for the executioner's blade? You doubt you'd feel as emotionally exhausted if you had slammed a fist through his cockpit, or incinerated him with a PPC bolt, or even just stomped the head of the Warhammer into sheetmetal under your 12-ton boot.

When you return to the Council chamber, it is in a somber mood, and you just give Lord Andercher and your father short nods to the unspoken question. You stand behind your father as Lord Gladwell attempts an argument, trying to string together behaviors that are innocent in a vacuum, and with his own wrongdoings, begin to look like an attempt to save face, trying to stretch an argument into suggesting that if he was doing something wrong, than surely your father was too.

It might have worked, if your father had not made his bones as a merchant lord in a martial society, where contracts either be perfect or backed up with martial power. For two long decades, your father lacked the muscle to see it through, and so he became very good at creating a paper trail. Every discrepancy has an explanation, receipts and reports from the motor pool mechanics about damaged parts, suggested replacements, and any other component relating to war machines in your father's fleet of combat vehicles. Where his rebuttal is a bit patchier comes from decades ago, relating to your grandfather's stock of extra parts and components, things left in the warehouses lest your father come across a faceplate that reminded him of the family's terrible loss that wet winter.

You don't pay a great deal of attention to the argument being made, your father's words more than enough to ward it off, and before long, Lord Andercher has decided he's heard enough. Your claims against Gladwell is mostly conjecture, logically, evidence based conjecture, but just that, much like how Gladwell's claims are just words lost in the wind.

Neither you, nor your father were idle during the council, and so when the vote comes to condemn your family for Gladwell's claims, only five hands rise, Summermere looking bored with the matter, Ruxhall's poker face impeccable, while Gladwell is clearly angry at the result, as over a dozen hands rise to absolve your family of any guilt, real or imagined.

Conversely your charges against Gladwell, are a far closer matter, needing to be individually considered, especially when your requests are much reasonable compared to Gladwell's call for the extinction of your house.

What utter stupidity that was.

Again and again, the hands rise, some votes going your way, some his way, until a final matter is laid before the Council. House Gladwell would be paying a grievance fee to your family for its part in your Grandfather's death, a weregild as it were, and would be subject to scrutiny from its fellow overlords for years to come as they try and match Gladwell's hidden buildup in a far shorter amount of time.

"There is one last matter to consider. House Ginenet finds itself homeless, and without a BattleMech. Considering that operating a machine was the chief reason for their ascension, I question if they remain nobles, or should be remanded back to the knightly title they once held. There is also the question of the Land now being held by Lord Gawain and his house. I will hear your thoughts on what is to become of House Ginenet."

>Gladwell tries to contest your Father's suggestion that Ginenet should be made into a vassal house of Gawain, only for Knightway to silence his protest, bringing up the old history of your House as Co-rulers of Laoricia alongside his own.

For decades, Gawain was expected to rule and protect the people of the eastern province of Laoricia alone, while Knightway could always call on House Abombert if it needed Firepower. It is only right to balance that failing by giving House Gawain its due.

And if Gladwell would like to contest Knightway's words, he's welcome to bring his Victor to settle the matter.

The Council decides that your father, and Lord Knightway speak truthfully, and so grant to House Gawain the same rights as any other overlord, with the consent of Meric, and dispense to them House Ginenet and its lands to do with as you see fit. For the moment, they'll retain their noble status, but that might change should the Daughter foolishly decide to follow her Father and Brother into treachery.

---

With that sorry business concluded, now is a time for declarations, things that do not require the council's ascent so much as their acknowledgement, as with a nod from your father, you stand, giving a firm clap of your hands to draw the eyes to you.

"I give my thanks for your attention, My Lords. House Gawain, with the powers newly granted to us, would announce the raising of an individual to our ranks. Sir Alistair, mechwarrior of the Warhammer I turned back the Pirates with, shall be given lands and status within the Gawain holdings of Laoricia and Western Mulstadia. His shall be House Tristain, and may he honor that name as he has honored his father and his lords with his service."

There is a silence that hangs in the air at your declaration, before Lord Andercher starts to politely clap, soon joined in by more earnest clapping as your fellow lords of Laoricia and the allies you've made recognize the display of your power, newly born as it is.

"We welcome a new addition to our ranks, especially one that already shows their valor in the defense of our world. A cheer for the Lord Tristain!" Lord Andercher's word spurns servants to hurry from where they stand, refilling goblets and glasses as the council raises a toast to the absent noble.

You join them, taking a sip from your glass of sweet mead, a smile on your face as you think of the prank this will be on your old friend.

How could he get back at you, declaring you king?

~

There are other declarations, introductions of the lords and ladies of import to children new to court, the Lady Iona Sanmon among them, and you take the chance to earn a giggle as you blow a kiss on her knuckles like a proper gentleman, new knight houses being raised, and pledges of loyalty and fidelity between old friends once more.

With that business complete, you don't doubt that tomorrow will be a day of departures, as people leave for home once more, but yours is not quite done.

Not long after the Council is dismissed, to be reconvened in a few years at Knightway's keep, you find yourself with your father at a smaller table, a number of Lords sitting at it, but only those that brought their 'Mechs against the Pirates you had routed near their DropShip.

"Lord Gawain, Master Elric. I think it time we speak on the Salvage from the Attack, as well as the claims, however minor, we may hold to some of it."

>In the end, you maintain custody of the Archer, the Shadow Hawk, The Phoenix Hawk, and gain full control over the Manatee DropShip.

With your business settled with Lord Knightway and Lord Andercher, even if Lord Summeremere stormed away from the table having gotten a little less than he wanted, you consider it a good deal.

Your closest ally gets a boon to his power and projection, your host and budding ally gets a 'Mech he can do with as he wills, as well as his pick of the salvage from the DropShip, which amounts to replacement parts for the Wasp, not enough to quite fix its leg, but more than enough for him to trade for the remainder.

Your father is almost insufferable as you wheel him back to your quarters for your last night here under Andercher's protection. He wouldn't kick you out, but you've been far from your keep for weeks now, and it will still be several days back. You speak with your sister some, tell your mother about the days happenings, and come the morning, you are headed back home, your looming BattleMech a comforting presence as you march past the battlefields you've left in your wake.

You are thankful that all that remains, days after the event, are the damaged wrecks of 'Mechs and tanks. There were no bloody infantry left to rot in the sunlight after your strikes, only surrendered tanks and shattered machines, your banner flying from short flags haphazardly taped to the machines to mark them as your salvage, with a runner from Andercher and Summeremere replacing some with their own.

Say what you will about how fast the Nobility moves to attack something, they are much faster to claim their due. Still, you keep your eyes turned towards the road, mindful not to step on anyone or in front of any of the carts. It would be a pain to repair them in this bog, and You had much to do at home.

 

[Lord Of Flames]

Mid-3029.

When you return home it is as a conquering hero, and you relish the attention, until you see Alistair, standing there in possibly his nicest set of clothes, with an unreadable expression on his face.

Your Mother pushes your father through the inner gate, and your entourage follows behind him, your BattleMech sitting in its customary spot, the Warhammer occupying the 'Mech-bay sporting a fresh coat of paint over replaced armor, the scorch marks and ablated panels replaced.

When your father comes within a dozen feet, the assembled crowd kneels for their lord, Alistair among them. Your father takes in the sight, before he waves a hand.

"Stand friends, I greet you all as warmly as you do me." The smile on his face is genuine, and when they do, he continues. "There is one among you who is not as he was, and I would recognize him. Sir Alistair, you have stood as a warrior for my house, kneel and be recognized for your loyalty."

The look on your friends face doesn't change, even as he steps forward and kneels before his lord. "Sir Alistair, do you swear to be true to your oaths. To protect the people of Freirehalt, To give leal service and good advice to your liege?"

"I do, my lord." Your father nods, before he waves a hand forward, one of the guards handing him a small diadem, little more than a plain circlet of polished metal. Most nobles do not wear them, considering it tacky, but it is an important symbol, much like handing a knight their sword.

"Then take up the symbol of your status, and rise as a Vassal of House Gawain. Rise as Lord Tristain, Pilot of the Warhammer."

You see him take the diadem with shaking hands, rising to his feet, and your father clasps his hand, giving it a hearty shake, even as he pulls Alistair in to whisper something in his ear.

Whatever it is you can't tell, but you see your friend freeze a moment before he straightens fully, your mother pushing past him to take your father inside.

When you near him, You can see him restrain the urge to swing, and you do him a favor by throwing your arm over his shoulders.

"Did you think I was going to just leave you a knight, when I saw how well you did in that BattleMech? Oh no, you don't get to fight in my family's name until you drop, and not have children to watch my own's backs."

"Elric, I swear to god, I will deck you when it won't get me shot."

"Then I better stay in the common areas of the keep, unless you know, I were to end up behind the kitchen building around noon? I don't know what I'd be doing there, probably practicing a trick I got beat by or something…"

Alistair breathes a sigh and gives you a pat on the back. "I'll see you then, Master Gawain."

"And I'll see you, Lord Tristain."

Oh, you'll beat the tar out of one another, but it'll be in good spirits.

---

"Elric, it's good to see you back." Fred greets you a bit more warmly than Alistair, looking down at the journal in his hands with something approaching concern, given he's examining the burnt and crumpled remains of the Pheonix-Hawk. He checks a few more parts, noting down a long series of numbers, before he drops the journal, reaching into a blasted-out section of internal structure almost up to his waist, the click of a flashlight the only explanation you get.

"Is something wrong, Fred?" You ask, unable to see past his body as he looks for something.

"Grab my Journal!" He calls, before you hear a laugh of triumph. "I don't know what the hell I'm looking at."

The journal itself is covered in notational scribbling, most of which you understand at least in part, but it's the string of numbers that he's written down, or at a second glance you realize those are tracings. Each is a slightly different size, but each set of two dozen numbers and letters is the same.

But if those are the serials for this Pirate Phoenix Hawk, then how the hell…

"You see it too Elric?" He's backed up out of the gutted side torso, pulling his button up back down as he pulls his thick mechanic's gloves off his hands. "This thing is a Pirate 'Mech, but all the Serials for a dozen parts match, even the attachment-casing for that bastard-modded Autocannon matches the chassis."

Which is absurd, even the Black Knight doesn't match everywhere. The limbs are from three or four different batches; individual parts are even more widely spread than that.

You look down at the tracing once more, looking at the random scramble of numbers and trying to decipher them in your head, when you notice something odd.

'5PDBPZDL01043027WDYLGHGMUVbS'

Is that a date? 01, 04, 3027, the Fourth of January, 3027?

Is that when this thing was made?

You share a look with Fred, the man quickly seeing what you did.

How the fuck, did a pirate band with just a Manatee and a Leopard get their grubby mitts on a Phoenix Hawk almost fresh off the factory floor?

There are so many questions here, you scarcely know what to say.

---

The aftermath of the Council is understated, you think, within the greater walls of your family keep. The servants go about their days as much as they ever do, completing their chores, tasks, and making sure that things run smooth enough to not attract any undue attention that may result in punishment. The guards and men at arms drill a touch more than they did before, the capture of the drop ship bringing with it a number of rewards and boons for your people, not least of which a set of bullet presses and stamp sets for a variety of calibers and their casings.

That one of them was a match for the automatic rifles that you had found in the abandoned warehouse was just providence at work.

Familiarity breeds understanding, practice builds skill, and with a much-reduced risk of exhausting the stores of limited ammunition, you can begin trying to create a new doctrine to best exercise the flexibility of their new weapons. No longer would one need a precision rifle to reach across the rolling hills, a steady hand and a good gun for that indeterminate range, or a submachine gun to clear a trench, but instead all three facets were combined into a single weapon, and that itself was a powerful thing.

Master Burrel and Fred were working themselves to the bone to try and teach some of the more technically minded servants of the keep, a small raise authorized by your father helping to give them some of the manpower they desperately needed. The addition of two more BattleMechs, dragged free from the mud and bog and strapped to reinforced flatbeds before they were slowly transported back to the keep, saw the two 'Mech Tech barely able to keep up with the work needed to repair your existing 'Mechs and get the other two ready for future repairs or refitting. The Archer was a mess, its center torso stripped to the studs, leaving the Engine and Gyro, both finicky and temperamental components of every BattleMech, with only the interior plating left, itself little more than an attempt to keep dirt and moisture off the rugged, if delicate in combat, components. The Shadow Hawk, for all you had reached into it and torn out the main gun like something out of a horror novel, was in decent repair, and could have walked back if not for the other issue.

Your lack of pilots.

'Mech neural compatibility is not something that you can easily test.

Well, maybe if you had the likes of the Nagelring or a NAIS campus, even just a half decent military academy, you may have had the facilities to test and measure someone's ability to interface with a BattleMech, but you, periphery backwater noble heir that you are, do not, which means that you are really only left a single option when it comes to attempting to discern this otherwise immeasurable thing.

Sink or swim.

You were certainly an example of this, though your family line has piloted 'Mechs without error or loss for centuries, every head of the household having served inside the Black Knight kneeling in the courtyard, a fresh coat of paint drying on the few armor plates that had been replaced. A dozen men and women had donned a neurohelmet, climbed the rungs, and became more than mere flesh within that cockpit. Some were better, some were worse, but almost without fail, all had been good enough. Was there a genetic disposition to piloting a BattleMech, some quirk of a gene that otherwise did nothing until you tried to combine the sensory input of a computer scanning everything from visible wavelengths into the deep infra-red with the soul and spirit of a human being, or was it just a dice roll that saw generation after generation of soldier, pilot, MechWarrior pull on the helmet and seek glory on the battlefield?

Alistair, you know, had never expected to be the pilot of a machine, let alone one as sturdy or well known as a Warhammer. His family had been farmers, then soldiers, and in the cusp of less than a hundred years, become knights, and now he starts a fresh legacy as a MechWarrior.

Now you had two machines in good repair, and a third that was mostly scrap for all it served as an interesting oddity. That meant you needed to find loyal souls to crew the other two machines.

Your mind turns to the crew of the LRM Carrier, and the destruction it had wrecked when combined with the targeting system of your BattleMech. Already the men of that tank had been given small awards of money and land, enough to hire on people to maintain and manage their newfound farms, and given dispensation to mark the hull of their tank and your family's badge upon it, with the animal silhouette of the DropShip they'd crippled. Rewarding even one of them with a BattleMech would be seen as too soon, and scorn your vassal knights that had served your family for decades.

But you didn't just have to pluck a name from thin air as a possible pilot.

Alice Ginenet's father had piloted the very Warhammer that Lord Tristain now held in your family's name, and her brother had shown the needed neural elasticity to also pilot the same. There was something to the idea that the ability to pilot a 'Mech well had some genetic component evident in the tall family trees of Freirehalt, with generations of pilots succeeding one another.

Could you really ask her to pilot another machine, giving it away to a house that had so wronged your own in the recent past? It would serve as a good way to show that your family was not just going to condemn their new vassal to a slow death, as well as give the Ginenet a reason to become the leal and attentive vassals you know they could be.

That of course, just left you with the issue of the lady Ginenet herself.

Alice has been distant as of late, more than that, she's become almost reclusive, and you cannot blame her for that. She has stopped attending dinner with your family, and the servants report that the trays they put outside her room are often left untouched or only picked over for the smallest morsels when they return to collect them.

Natasha is little help either, busy as she is as her studies start to become more rigorous, covering the economics of managing a fiefdom, the budgeting of a household, the proper pay structure of servants and other such things that a lady must learn to better manage her home. For your part, you remember being given a similar education, though it was framed as Soldiers rather than servants, sergeants rather than managers and supervisors, captains instead of head chefs, maids, and others that demanded a word to keep their company or division running correctly.

You've often heard that the castle is a woman's siege camp, and listening to your sister complain about her lessons, you think there's a bit more truth to that than you thought.

When you make the choice to eventually approach Alice, your first hope is that she will emerge from her rooms on her own, to try and restore some sense of schedule to her life as she works through her grief. What happens is far from that, as if anything, she seems to pull herself deeper into her own solitude, as the staff comes to you concerned when every platter is left completely untouched before her door.

Your father is confident in leaving the matter in your hands, his focus lying on the preparations for the return of your Jumpship, the Artemis, and the wealth that would pour from its hold over the course of months of moving several thousand tons by drop ship, only to be refilled with raw resources, food, metals, and whatever else the lords of Freirehalt had scrounged together to make a profit.

Now, with the resources of an entire fiefdom being granted to your control, if in an overlord capacity, that meant that surveyors, geologists, and any manner of other individuals would need to be contracted and dispatched to look over the lands of the Ginenet family, to better give your Father an idea of how best to govern and manage the vast territory. On a Map, the territory of Freirehalt may not look that impressive, surrounded as it is by a vast ocean of blue, but the planet is a touch larger than old Terra, and its singular supercontinent stretches across the northern hemisphere, dipping into the equator only towards the very bottom. The length of the continent has never been fully measured, difficult as it is with your limited methods, but scholars figure the continent must span some five thousand miles as the crow flies from the highest tip of Kedia to the furthest cliff face of Doponaria. Each of the grand territories stretched over an area rivaled by empires of ancient Terra, ruled over by a handful of souls due to their blood, and the machines at their command.

You shake your head free of that tidbit of information, recognizing at an attempt to distract yourself from your task. Trying to speak to Alice is sure to try you, and her experience is something that strikes you as one you so narrowly avoided.

Your father's recovery from his wounds was never a guarantee, and for all you mourn the energetic man who would take the time every now and then to join you on the training ground, shared laughter as you rounded the course trying to outpace one another, you are glad to still have the intelligent, witty, and loving father you've known all your life still exercising his will over the world.

When you reach her door, you find it unlocked, but there is a weight hanging over it, one that would see you stop, reconsider, and leave it be if you were not so set in your goal. There is no magic, make no mistake that it is all in your mind, but all the same you have to steel yourself with the knowledge that this is your keep, you are its heir and future master, and there is no such thing as a barred door for you within its halls.

The room itself is the equal of any noble's quarters in the keep, but there is a stale air about it, the pall of grief hanging over it as thick as the summer air in the marshes, but inside you find the lady Alice sat at the desk provided to her, half a hundred papers crumpled into balls lay on the floor, the few that have unraveled revealing little more than a sentence or less, all with the look of a letter. If she heard you enter, she does not acknowledge you, her head fixed downward at another page, the pencil in her hand only the latest to suffer her, others lying broken, snapped in a loose pile beside the desk.

With a deep breath, the girl puts pen to paper and begins to write again.

"Lord Gregor- He was my father should I not just call him that?" It is in muttered whispering you begin to understand, watching silently as she struggles with so simple a thing.

You have known your father your entire life and never known him to be any different from what he is. Alice was born in the years that followed first the Ginenet's ascension to high nobility, and after her father had struck out against your grandfather. The position of her family would have surely been threatened often over the course of her life, upstarts as many may consider them, her father the iron will that kept them from being nothing but a name in the history books a generation gone. You would not be surprised if Gladwell had used that black history, that tidbit of information enough to see their family punished and censored by the others for such rank treachery, to keep Ginenet in line, or to do things that both sides would find unpalatable, only the vassal could not simply refuse.

Now, her family is reduced, her mother and three children all that remains, and for all she starts to bloom into womanhood Alice is only barely more than a child, herself, now with the weight of the world on her shoulders.

You give a sharp cough from behind her when her pen does not return to the page, the girl lost again in her thoughts.

The Girl all but whirls on you, surprise, shock, and to your own surprise, fear on her face.

"Master Elric!" She tries to rise from the desk, her chair catching on the myriad papers she's tossed away, and it's only with a swift stride and strong arm that you right it before she's sent tumbling to the floor.

The act brings you a touch closer than you'd have liked, hoping to give the girl space as you talked to her, but needs must as you settle the chair, closeness only drawing your eye to how gaunt and drawn the girls face looks.

You take a step back and come to one knee with the girl, hoping she can see your concern is genuine, looking down at you from her seat. "Lady Ginenet-" You begin and almost curse yourself as you see her flinch at the reminder, but you press forward. "-, you have been in this room for almost a week." She blinks at you blankly for a moment, before she rouses herself from her malaise again.

"I've been trying to write a letter to, well, my father. I know he's gone, but I had much I wanted to say to him and I-" You raise a hand, cutting off her rambling. You can only imagine how you would have been in the wake of your father's death, how many sleepless nights you'd spend standing vigil at his grave, hoping to glean some wisdom or solace from the silence, and so you take one of her hands in your own.

"I can well imagine," you say as much, looking her in the eye. ", and If I was in your place I can't say I would be doing much different. However, you need to eat and take care of yourself, if for no other reason than to spare your mother, and siblings any worry.

Your father, for all we faced each other on opposite sides of politics, did not seem to be an awful man, just one stuck doing terrible deeds for people that had abused his loyalty in the past. He cared deeply for you and your siblings from what I understand, and in a way, his confession was a way to make sure that any feud died with him, rather than bleed your family for more than you could pay in the future.

I think, that if you wrote him, you should write of them, write of his family and how they may be saddened by his death, but that they continue on. That the name Ginenet will not just flare brightly before it burns out, but stand as bright and bold as any other torch that our people look to, to guide them in an uncertain and hostile galaxy." You let your words sink in, before you continue. "If it is too much to write, speak instead. Think of me as a training dummy in the yard. I will not judge, but I will listen."

She seems to sink into herself some at your words, nodding her head as a child does when faced with something that must happen, no matter how they wish it wouldn't. "I just can't find the words to put to paper. I loved my father, and hated Lord Ginenet if that makes any sense.

I adored the man that would bounce me on his knee and tell me stories of knights in shining 'Mechs beating back the evil men in their twisted, spiked machines. I hated the man that reminded me that I was to marry, to secure the family some benefit or alliance without regard to me own wishes or happiness.

I loved the man that would take the time to help me with my numbers, who would spare the time to play, and scorn the one that would say what I was doing was never good enough. When my siblings came into the world, his smile was so wide and bright, it was like the moon at half tilt, the keep was so happy, and not a year later he stopped smiling, and he became… distant from us all, even mother." Her voice is a mix of gladness and melancholy, her relationship with her father a complicated one by any measure.

"He went to court that day, summoned by Lord Gladwell, and then he was so busy, I think I saw the Warhammer march away in a month more than I had in years, and the one time I disobeyed my mother and stayed awake long enough to see him come home, I ran up to him, only for him to all but tear me away from his leg. He was angry and upset, and I didn't know why. He was never cruel, but he could come so close. Never violent, but never loving after that, never soft, his attitude became nothing but sharp edges."

Your father had rarely mentioned his worries about new knights; ones raised from the soldiery rather than those that inherited their vehicles. He kept a closer eye on them in his youth, mindful that men that make good soldiers do not always make good leaders, or for that matter, good husbands and fathers. He never said what he'd do if he found out the latter conventions were false, but you imagine he found new knights rather quickly, or a child would become a squire after an unfortunate accident.

Say what you will for a Merchant-Lord, your father was not a man above ruthless action.

All the same, you nod at her words, listening as she continues, telling you, much as if you were her father, of her fears of governance, of her desire to prove herself more than the little girl her father left behind, of her almost gladness that the Warhammer will never darken her home again, but also the longing that it spawns in her breast for something to take its place. The Warhammer was part of a dark chapter in her family's history, and to start a new one, without the shadow it cast like a pall, she would need to find a replacement.

You listen as the sun beams through her window, and before too long, you hear the knock on the door, and for the first time in days share a meal with the young lady, one of the maid staff standing at the door as you enjoy your half sandwich, Alice devouring far more than her share of the platter as her hunger finally catches up to her.

"If I may, Lady Alice." You open, the lady's eyes meeting your own as she cleans away the crumbs with a napkin. "Write your letter to the man you loved, the father that was a good man. Bury the lord that took him from you, and if you have any luck, you'll live to see the other buried too."

The lady gives you a small smile, but rather than return to her desk with its sheets and pens, she stands and moves around the table to the entrance of her room, cocking her arm for you to take.

"I think that's a good idea, Master Elric, now if you'd be so kind, I believe I should see my mother and siblings. I am sure my brother has mourned the loss of his favorite step stool, and my sister her drawing companion."

Alice is not wrong, as her brother and sister spring from lethargy as you walk through the door with their sister, her mother looking up from her reading in surprise, before a wan smile pulls at her lips.

With that image, you excuse yourself from the scene, letting the family reunite.

000

> You will order the Shadow Hawk readied. You're not sure if she'll have the knack for piloting, but if not, maybe one of her siblings?

You decide in the end, to restore to House Ginenet a BattleMech, though one far weaker than that they had lost, in the form of the Shadow Hawk. You would keep this from them until you had finished refitting the thing, which led you to your next task, namely convincing a former-pirate prisoner 'Mech Tech that had been abducted to work with your teams.

You wish that it was as easy as saying it.

"You want me to work on BattleMechs for you?" Diana's voice is laced with a questioning tone, and the look of confusion on her face is little better. "After I just spent eight months being ferried around by pirates, chained to a fucking workbench and afraid that one of them wouldn't take no or my wrench for a fucking answer, and now you want me to keep doing the same job? Or what, you'll throw me to your troops to raise morale or something, oh noble lord?"

You are willing to humor quite a bit but not being accused of having more ulterior motives than you've already made clear.

"I am many things, Miss Diana, but not a rapist, or an enabler of one. I want to hire you to work on BattleMechs alongside my family's current stable of technicians, until such time as you choose to leave us. My family JumpShip is due back in system in a matter of days, a week at most. If at that time you decide to conclude your service with us, we will pay you in C-bills or valuable raw materials as you like, and pay your way back to the Inner Sphere, though only as far as Lyran space." You are firm with her, and you see the calculation in her eyes as she hears your offer.

"And you swear on, I don't know, your 'Mech, that this JumpShip is real, you're not just making it up trying to convince me to stay on?"

"I swear on the Black Knight that my family has piloted for three centuries that the Artemis is real and is due back soon." You see a flash of recognition in her eyes as you drop the name of your BattleMech, before surprise settles into her face.

"How on God's green- How does a periphery backwater have a Black Knight on it?" You just chuckle at her question, shaking your head as you turn away from her.

You've baited the hook.

As you expected, the Merc Tech follows you as you walk through the halls, having finally taken the time to actually look at the walls, covered in depictions of BattleMechs, many of them heavier than this planet has any right to field, that she starts to ask questions.

"How did you get so many?" "Where are they?" "Are you the secret trip wire of Kerensky's exodus fleet?"

That last comment makes you stop and consider your ancestor's words on the subject. Captain Robert Gawain had not been happy to learn of Kerensky's decision and did not worship the man as many in the SLDF had by the end of the Amaris Civil War. Watching the bulk of the SLDF, the only force in the Inner Sphere that could have kept the fighting to an accepted standard, leave for parts unknown had infuriated him. He had not been kind in this respect to Kerensky's tactics or his use of force, the governance of the southern periphery in the year leading up to the Civil War was disastrous for all sides, as it destroyed civilian infrastructure as a response to insurgents, leveled a city for the act of madmen, and saw the morale of the SLDF shaken as they were harassed without end.

"Wherever Kerensky's fleet went, I hope it stays there. The Inner Sphere has enough problems without the children of madmen in LosTech coming back to haunt a grave they abandoned centuries ago. Now, I want you to speak your mind if you see something wrong. We've not the facilities to work on more than a 'Mech at a time, and our recent catch suffered some damage when we liberated you and others from the pirates."

Walking into the Mechbay is an experience, as from the moment the heavy doors open, the noise hits you immediately, as well as the shouted orders from Fred or Master Burrel, the latter of whom is still on the ground, watching as the astechs, a group of skilled but unspecialized labor for engineering tasks, carefully hook a support beam in the damaged side torso of the Shadow Hawk using one of 'Mech bay's integrated cranes, and then cut free the malformed metal. With a few switches and a gentle hand, the crane operator carefully moves it to join a pile of similar scrap. The Torso itself is all but stripped, a good thing considering that much of the wiring will have to be replaced after your inelegant scrapping of the main gun.

"Good Job up there, Tom, but make sure you cinch those tight, or the next one might slip out when it comes free. The last thing any of us need is four hundred pounds of metal to come falling at us from above!"

Your new tech, if she'll agree to your terms, leans into you as she watches as another section is cut free. "What did you do to that poor thing? I know its pilot was a jack ass that got handsy, but what did he do, try to box a heavy 'Mech?"

"As a matter of fact." You say simply, the episode fresh in your mind. "I had to do some creative restructuring of his armament in the heat of the moment."

"Well, ripping out the main gun of a BattleMech that relies on it is a surefire way to basically keep the 'Mech."

You give a nod to the woman and watch as Charles Burrel orchestrates the last damaged beam free of the side torso, before approaching.

"Master Burrel, may I introduce Miss Diana, the MechTech so recently recovered from the pirates by our troops. She has agreed," You spare her a look and get a nod, her eyes drifting across the bay before they land on your smashed PPC from when you first recovered the Black Knight. ", to work with you and your crew in getting some of the Metal we recovered back into action. I leave her to you."

With that, you take a step back, watching as the two 'Mech tech's meet eyes.

It is the elder of the two that breaks the silence. "Large Laser, or PPC?"

Diana almost seems to have expected the question. "With the cannon ripped out and its mount already slagged, it's a question of how many heat sinks do you want to slap in that deathtrap. But knowing that that's the 2H variant, I figure you can slap the Large in there with no problems, just rip out the ammo boxes and make room for the sinks. It'll run a touch hot, but unless the idiot piloting it wants to throw metal darts at point blank, it shouldn't be an issue."

"See, that's what I thought, but Fred up there, he's my son, he thought that the range of the PPC would tie into the movement, and let us strip out the LRM rack on the other shoulder…"

You leave the two to their discussion, and head for your next set of duties.

---

When you finally make the time to deal with the prisoners of the Pirate raid, most of them the crew of the Manatee that had surrendered upon your threat of collapsing their metal egg on top of them, it is after you've done a fresh run through of the Black Knight in your obstacle course, the Loggers happy to see you stomp past their camp, and more than willing to operate the pulleys for you as you run through the course, smoother than before, your connection to the Black Knight is getting better, more refined, and as you manage to clear the course with only a single glancing hit, you know you're nearing the limit of what you can reach through sheer training.

Only combat, or sheer will, can see you rise beyond that in the future.

It is in your combat dress, the heavy metal of your cooling vest once a weight on your chest now a comfortable pressure, the armored helmet around your head a valuable tool for intimidation.

You enter the holding cells with your head held high, and look over the misfits lying in their cells from behind the opaque visor, finding the older man with the bushy beard, his combat vest taken from him and replaced with a set of clean clothes. You can't say he looks much better, but there is no gauntness to his cheeks or a look of desperation in his eyes as he watches you near his cell.

You open the door, sliding it along the tracks, and gesture for the man to follow you. There is no reason to think he might attack you, not as unarmed as he is, or as armored as you are. The guards standing in pairs at either end of the block also serve as ample deterrent.

You lead him to a small room, a pair of chairs, a waiting carafe of tea and glasses sitting on a table.

"Sit." You say, and the man moves to the opposite side of the table, taking his seat, and you join him, taking off your helmet. He accepts when you offer him a drink, and you make the usual show of filling his glass, and taking a drink from it. You doubt he'd think it was poisoned, but there's always a chance, and better to but that fear to rest.

"You have me at a disadvantage, MechWarrior." He breaks the silence of your little starring contest. "I am Captain Meyer, formerly of the Fighting Lady. I believe it is only polite to introduce yourself to your captive, young man."

"I am Elric Gawain, heir to my father, whose Overlord's land you landed your DropShip in. I apologize for the rough decent, but needs must when pirates come knocking."

"Eh, fickle luck that, I wanted to go further west, land on the plains where we'd see anyone coming for miles, the 'Mech Commander wanted to go East, said something about divisions and the like. He seemed to know this planet, though it's my first time here. I am at your mercy, Commander?"

"I would be a Knight if I hadn't claimed my 'Mech. Sir will suffice."

"Ah, Sir Gawain. Ask your questions, though I warn you I am an honest man with my business partners, I have problems with strangers."

>The questions you ask are simple, and you quickly grasp the pirate's answers are less than truthful.

"Are you operating as a lone pirate band, or as part of a greater whole?"

"I was just the captain of a lone DropShip, and I got together with the captain of another for a quick raid. Three months there, a month raiding, three months back, be home in time for Christmas, ja?"

"How many of your crew were transferred to you, or joined your crew when you agreed to raid this world?"

"Ah, new hands are bad luck in my line of work. They might have had a good gig on another ship, but I don't like them for a while, don't even learn their names until they've been with me three raids and got out of it alive. I couldn't name names or point out faces."

"Curious, that your force had two DropShips. Expecting trouble, or just hoping to fill both holds and get back the jump point before trouble arrived?"

"That was a bad investment, I take it the other ran?" At your nod, the captain nods to himself. "There is no honor among thieves, Sir Knight. The moment that the light shines on the burrow, every rat will try to save themselves."

"True enough. Which ''Mech did the 'Mech Commander pilot from? Was he aboard your DropShip?"

"No, no. The Fighting Lady had only one master, and that was me. He and his Orion were aboard the other." He catches the glint of recognition in your eye. "Oh, dropped anyway, did he? Given he's not here, and you look healthy, I imagine he's dead?"

"Quite, His ammo bins went up, and his crash seat didn't eject."

"Couldn't have happened to a better man."

"Your outfit, despite your small DropShips had a lot of metal. I know Merc Groups with larger craft that couldn't field a pair of Medium Battle Lances. Were they yours, or 'subcontractors'?"

"Ah, one of them was the group of an associate, the 'Mech Commander, but the other, new blood with shiny machines looking for a scrap, blood themselves, get some street cred as it goes, ja?"

"Hm. Was this the only world on your tour? Seems a might unreasonable to plan for just one raid on a single world if you're going to be so far out from anything approaching civilization for so long."

"Being pirates is hard work, Sir Knight. We don't get to pick our targets often, just look for opportunity. There were other ideas 'pitched', but we decided to keep the plan simple, in case of trouble. And trouble we found, ha-ha." He chuckles at his own joke, and you keep your face flat as you weigh your next question.

"Curious thing. There was a Phoenix Hawk in your 'Mech stable, but it was basically in factory condition. I know pirates have some funds, but a fresh Phoenix Hawk would have been earmarked for the Lyran Armed Forces. How did you come by it?"

"Oh, you know, a friend knew someone who know someone, and when all was said and done, it just didn't make it unto the DropShip it was supposed to be shipped on."

"Really. Well, I'd want to return it to its owner, what factory did it come out of, this friend of friend?"

"You would get him in trouble, Ser Knight. But if you must know, it was the factory on Howick in Lyran space. I think it was a little operation licensed from Acherber, Achernar, something like that. It was a nice machine, but unarmed when my friend got it, so we had to rig something up."

You can't help but chuckle as you listen to him, the man's face confused as you look him in the eye, a tight smile on your face. "You should have stopped at just Lyran space. See, I can read the Serial Number on the Phoenix Hawk, and I know it came from a little rock called Barbaros, and given that you said it was a three month trip here and back? Means my map is pretty accurate."

> The man is a liar, bring in the next highest ranking after you throw the Captain in an isolation cell. Let him make of his absence what he will.

The Discussion you have with 'Lieutenant Schmidt' is only marginally more informative than that you had with the captain.

He does double down on the cover story of Howick, but he breaks when you mention your own sources about the origin of the Phoenix Hawk, telling you a little more about the Gang they had been running with, with Commander Hawke being a real piece of work, but effective at leading a lance of 'Mechs against Militia Vehicles and rag tag defenders.

Shame he ran into your lot.

When you finish staring at him after running through your questions, many of them the same that you'd asked the captain, you speak up again.

"I was hoping you'd be more honest with me. Do you know what happens now, Schmidt? I call another of your crew in, and whoever lies to me less doesn't hang before sundown. Do you want to play that game, or do you want to tell me what I want to know, Pirate?"

"I don't believe you'll keep your word, boy." The officer is smug, his toothy grin showing off the black tar on his gums. "I think if I tell you anything, it's my head in the noose, but you seem an honorable lad, so I don't think you'll hang us all. Some of the lads in there were honest men just looking for some extra scratch to cover their bills. You wouldn't hang a man who poached to feed his family, eh?"

Why would they be so confident, so unwilling to save themselves by telling you what you want to know? It boggles the mind.

>Go through with your threat.
> +"And considering that you and your captain have been lying like rugs to me, I cannot trust that anything you say is in any way truthful. Perhaps a demonstration of how we treat pirates, freebooters and raiders around here will suitably loosen your tongue, Lieutenant."



When all is said and done, the lieutenant being dragged out of the interrogation room, you are left with Dave, Gunner-third mate aboard the Fighting Lady.

"Now, Mr. Dave, I hope I have this right. Your DropShip Captain got together with the captain of another DropShip, the Crossbow?"

"Cr-Crossbones, S-Sir."

"Crossbones, yes. And aboard this ship was a Commander Hawke, and this was a different set of 'Mechs that you usually had, correct?"

"Yes, S-sir. Hawke was a regular, but he was Sig's attack dog. He sent him out every now and then to keep his blood up, didn't want him lying around and getting fat."

"And who is Sig?"

"Sig is, I don't know his title, but he's in charge. He's got a lot of pull with all the captains out here, but I don't know why. Just keeps his DropShip on Barbaros and gives out a 'Mech every now and then to people that keep him happy. They're good 'Mechs, or so I hear, but I'll never get one. I've got a tick in my brain or something that would just make me faceplant and make it worse if I tried to pilot one."

"So, this Sig, is head of your little coalition, correct?"

"Yeah, I'd say so. Sig is the boss of bosses, and He works hard to keep it that way. I saw him promise a captain that if he went against him, he'd give whoever killed the man a full lance!"

"I see. Well, Dave, I think I'll have more questions for you, but why don't you follow the Sergeant there to a new cell, and we'll get a warm meal down for you, alright?"

"Yes, Sir. Thank you, sir." Dave is a simple man, and you can appreciate his honesty after being lied to constantly by two pirates that think they hold any advantage over you.

You will still remind the kitchen to make sure it's a soup or something, wouldn't want to give the pirate, helpful or not, a knife.

---

As you assemble the various bits of information that Dave and other pirates, made far more reasonable and talkative as they see their ring leaders, namely the captain and his second swing from a rope. It painted a grim picture as you started to write, transferring pirate crew testimonials into far more digestible pages of information, with the biggest being the presence of the extensive pirate band, or perhaps a bandit kingdom, not so far from your home of Freirehalt.

Five systems, habitable planets really, were controlled by these pirates, none of them worth the name by the description of the crewmembers, with the most populous, if you can call maybe a few thousand souls such, sitting at the furthest extent of your maps, otherwise unmarked. Within the datapad of your ancestor, Captain Gawain of the SLDF, you had found a name for those otherwise unimportant coordinates corresponding to a faint star.

Barbaros.

Your ancestor, a War Veteran of the Amaris Civil War, had fought in the Rim World Republic under General Kerensky, and had participated in clean up operations, not quite as far out as your homeworld or Barbaros, but close enough that his Pad had operational information about the region uploaded to it while the SLDF-in-exile was reequipping itself from the storehouses and factories of the RWR. The Shark Logo that the pad presents answering the question that had lingered in your mind as to the origin of the warehouse where you'd discovered the Black Knight once more.

Barbaros is the subject of a single page report, stating that the 121st​ BattleMech detachment had arrived in system with its DropShips aboard a Corvette, had deployed to the planet, destroyed its defenders, and found a Hegemony-grade factory there. What it produced is left unstated, aside from that they looted the store rooms of everything that wasn't bolted down, fired a nuke at the site from orbit, and returned to the bulk of Kerensky's fleet, the 121st​ having believed they had at the least mission-killed, or otherwise irreparably disabled the factory, preventing its use to rearm or repair any machines by RWR stragglers that were so far out from the traditional limits of the Inner Sphere.

Likely the 121st​ had damaged the factory badly, but after centuries the radiation of their Atomic weapon had dissipated enough for an eager and bright eyed Lostech prospector to pull together what funds they'd gathered from previous finds, and finance the year long trip to reach the planet. Whoever Sig was before he became a Pirate Warlord, that person died with the discovery of the factory, its condition unclear from the reports of the Fighting Lady's former crew, but with the thought of a nuclear blast happening almost directly on top of it? You doubt that it was totally unharmed, even with the storied durability of Star League Fortification you had found scraps about in the family libraries, and the greater detail within your ancestor's journals.

The claims that Dave had made of 'Sig' giving away 'Mechs to his trusted lieutenants may have been slightly exaggerated, but not that much, and he had indeed made the claim, after a heated argument, that he'd give a "lance of 'Mechs" to whoever killed a doubting captain if he didn't fall back in line. However, the more technical crew said that the 'Mech they had delivered to their cargo bay after they returned from their last trip into the Inner Sphere, the same one that saw Diana kidnapped and forced to work on their machines, had been all but naked, with only the Chassis, the Engine, and the other internals in working order.

That explanation, haphazard as it is, does much to explain the Phoenix Hawk's odd appearance and load out, given that it basically all they could scrap together to outfit the thing, including the use of an class-5 autocannon that one of their crazier members had modified heavily, cutting back components, heat shielding, and barrel length until the whole thing was a ton lighter, if increasingly like a cut-off shotgun In terms of range, just for the Phoenix Hawk to use.

For their cooperation, you see the pirates given thicker blankets and a hot meal for supper, the logistics of seeing them off to the mountain farms, where they can be watched and do some good for the people they would have despoiled. Your people up on those rugged slopes and small plateaus are always eager for more hands, and with the unspoken threat that the pirates can either work or be hung, you imagine that it will only take an incident or two, maybe one of the crew getting too handsy or picking a fight, and the totality of the punishment you would inflict to calm them down and make sure they keep their heads down.

Naturally, you'll separate them, a pair here, a pair there, a soul to commiserate with, but with two alone it will be almost impossible to overwhelm the dozen or so hard working men that have worked around and slept in those barracks and bunkhouses for decades.

---

The replies to your letters to the Lady Armmore and Lord Knightway arrive at different times, your former overlord's, the logistics of that change far smoother than expected as your father all but ran the eastern provinces to begin with, arriving first, along with a small troupe of technically skilled journeymen, men who had at some time trained under MechTechs, mainly in the realm of Laoricia, Kedia, and Alylia.

What you find in the end is it is not so difficult to find the bare minimum of help you might need to service your newfound vehicles or the mountain of metal that needs attention and final confirmation. No, the difficulty comes from getting men, who learned from a dozen different MechTechs that each had their own way to go about their duties, to agree about much of anything. They had arguments about the right torque to put on bolts, the right temperature and pressure on a fusion engine, even the right angle to put on emitter caps for best performance. Even Master Burrel, big brazen man that he is, can only silence the debate for so long with his booming voice, his authority felt, but just as quick forgotten as they resume their arguments.

It is not until you draw your pistol from its holster, a nod to Fredrick and Diana making them join your family's tech in covering their ears as you fire a single shot into the air, the sharp crack of your pistol giving you blessed silence once more as the arguing men turn to look at its source, those closest to you giving you sour looks.

"I have not brought you lot together to endlessly argue, but to assemble a collection of knowledge, a place where your skills will not be lost on your deaths or distorted as they are passed down the generations. A MechTech is the Squire to a Mechwarrior's BattleMech, honored with their trust and expected to keep that machine in good repair, just as the TankTech may not take the field with their knight, but they see that the tank's treads are upkept, their hoppers full, the capacitors in good order so that it may serve their knights well in the heat of combat.

Without the technical skill that your masters have passed down to you, there would be no Lords in our mighty war machines, or knights that defend the homesteads and towns. Without your skills, the pirate threat would have swept over this planet, raiding, raping, and pillaging whatever they felt like as they continued unimpeded as they did in the decades before the Round Table descended on fiery wings to bring justice against the pirate menace."

You pause for a moment, looking over the assembled group of engineers, armorers, weaponsmiths, acquisition experts. These were men who knew the value of the machines they worked on, and how important it was that they continue to do so. A BattleMech may not be an air recycler, or a waste plant that took in trash and produced power, but in a world as verdant and lively as Freirehalt, the former is far more valuable than the others.

"Now, sit down, and if we have to go through every step of mechanical lore that exists on the designs you know and were taught on, we will."

~

Despite your stirring speech and your own knowledge of technical matters, the debate never becomes as raucous again, but it is still clear that the arguments are far from over. Listening to the same group of people argue over and over again about the same set of topics, you tire of it quickly.

And so you ask one of the guards to send for a projector and light table, that age old solution to students struggling with a concept. When it arrives, you hook it up quickly, dousing the lights and leaving the room in the dim glow of the projector as it points at a blank wall, your paper clearly seen there.

"What now-"

You level a finger at the first man to speak, your voice cold. "Shut up. If I left you lot alone, you'd kill half of each other, maim the other third, and declare your way best when you merely have the heaviest fist. So shut up, I'll point as I care to listen to you."

And so you begin, pointing at a tech, presenting him with a problem, and letting him give his solution to it, the likely cause and probable repairs needed, before you move on to the next, giving a different problem, getting a different answer. Occasionally, you ask one of them the same question, though never the same as the-man-before's, and start to compile their methods. It is a long process, but before too long, you have reduced the atmosphere from combative, to collaborative, as the men on either side start to quietly offer suggestions to their fellows as they sit and listen.

"-And so I'd open up the engine case, and give it a once over, because you- when you start to hear odd noises from ICE you got to be careful that it's not a piston that got stuck and is being smashed to pieces against the injectors. If it is, the engine is junked, like, you may salvage parts from it, plenty should be in decent repair, but the casing is going to be cracked, the faulty piston is smashed, the cam is probably scraped to hell. You never know."

You listen to many men give their solutions to the problems and reveal that many 'Mech Techs that had never found work in their field had taken their mechanical knowledge elsewhere, such as the repair business, much as Master Burrel had.

This was only the beginning however, and you knew you'd be spending many days in a room much like this one, hammering out details, and starting to form a basis for trying to teach these very skills to the most novice of individuals.

It should be a challenge.

---

The other reply you receive is in the hand of the Lady Armmore, delivered by the same man you had sent out with your own letter.

"To Master Elric Gawain,

I appreciate your offer of assistance in what is otherwise an internal matter, and welcome you to visit the ducal keep. The presence of your BattleMech would be.. an over estimation of my wayward lord's capacity for battle, as his Archer remains in its 'Mech bay at his keep.

As far as my agents can tell, the errant lord has gone to ground in the mountains of my lands, my border patrols stopping and searching every party attempting to leave and maintaining close watches on the passes and goat trails that lead into Kedia and Alylia.

Consider this a formal invitation, Master Gawain, to bring your person and a small party if you'd care to make good your offer. I will await either your reply, or word of your party entering my lands.

Faithfully,
Lady Samantha Armmore, Duchess of Meleutia."

It is a short letter, merely an invitation, but with a word to your father, his permission is given to form a small vanguard to accompany you, fresh horses being readied at the way stations through Laoricia. It will take you two weeks to get there, but with the speed you've run through your other duties, you have the time.

~

You order the Maxim commander, a fresh crew of second sons manning the front, to bring the hover-APC to a halt as something catches your eyes as you look out the slit windows of the infantry bay, your men enjoying the spacious interior as the Hunting hounds sit almost perfectly still except for the roll of the APC over the plains and hills.

When it comes to a slow halt, the sudden acceleration bleeding off, it doesn't take long to get it spun around, creeping forward until you reach a small copse of trees, stragglers around it heading back for the much thicker forest not far beyond it. You and yours disembark, men taking up perimeter positions, and you start to investigate the odd shape of that the trees conceal.

It takes you only a few minutes, and the helpful entrenching shovel of one of the men, for you to dig and cut away a section of vine and wood-like roots that have sprawled over the front of this structure, your investigation only hardening the rectangular impression it's left in the nearby area. Out of curiosity, you drive the shovel into the dirt at the base of the wall, wedging apart grass and soil until you hit something stony beneath, prying it just far enough to see cross-cracked concrete pressed up against the old base of the wall.

Fascinating.

With a hand, you wave your troops to inspect the other sides of the structure, and before too long, you hurry over as one man finds a door, his own knife cleaning away the vines covering it, while another man digs out the dirt that's built up at the door's base, clearing it out until the door can open, your men surging in to secure it for their Lord's heir.

Inside, you find a workshop of some kind, a number of machines left idly where they sit, a thick layer of dirt and dust over everything.

You've not much clue what kind of work this place might have done, but when you have one of the battery packs from the camplights hooked into the power system, you avoid turning on the lights to keep from draining it too quick, instead seeing if you couldn't get just one of the machines to dry fire for lack of a better term, and you are rewarded, as the bit that had been choked up in the machine starts to spin almost instantly, the motor turning over rapidly, if smoothly.

You've not the means to transport these tools anywhere, not unless you wanted to ditch some of your men, and it is in Knightway lands regardless. You mark it on your map, using the heading and clocks of your travel to pinpoint its rough location. When you get the chance you'll make sure that the coordinates make their way to Lord Knightway, as well as a rough description of what you'd found. With any luck, he'd be able to salvage it.

Found Old Machining Shop in Knightway Lands, incapable of Salvage, Marked for Later Retrieval.

 

[Lord Of Flames]

The first thing you notice as you enter the lands of Meleutia is the sheer verticality of its landscape.

Spoiler: It is these mountains that give the region its natural borders, enforced with the metal boot of a Highlander.

The mountain ranges are by far the most striking feature of the region, steep cliff-faces giving away to fertile valleys, where the vast majority of House Armmore's people live. You are intercepted at the border by a pair of mounted soldiers, their armor peaking out from beneath the fur cloaks they have slung over their shoulders.

"Hail!" They call, their voices joined by the rustle of the chainmail that trails down from their helmets. "Be you Master Gawain and his Party? Our lady sent word to expect someone, but we thought it would be by Horse, not tank." Their Star League English is stilted, but you pull your cloak tight as you move.

You step out of the troop bay, your finery, subdued as it is, clearly marking you out as someone of money, if not sense. "I am Elric Gawain, and this is my party. I regret not sending word back to Lady Armmore, but I knew that with a vehicle like this under me, I would easily outpace any messenger on horse back."

"Aye, that much is obvious." They bring their horses around, pointing back down the less-steep by comparison incline that they'd approached from. "We will escort you the rest of the way, after we reach our watch station. Another set of riders need guard the way, in case of fugitive or smuggler."

You nod at that, with your party recognized, you order the driver to keep a sedate pace and stay with the horsemen as much as he can, taking your seat in the heated cabin at the back of the Maxim as your journey continues.

~

Your compliment of a single combat vehicle rolls over the hills at the foot of the mountains, every time you clear the base of one of the steep slopes revealing more of the almost idyllic valleys that make up the Armmore's rugged, but beautiful home.

You see the sturdy construction of their people's homes, the log cabins butted up with clay, red brick's on the most afluent and to a one all of the houses had healthy chimney's kicking out smoke to keep warm. The people live hardy lives, caught between farming rugged vegetables that will grow in the stony soil, cutting lumber from the tall pines, or mining deep into the mountains for the valuable ore inside.

Past them you see a massive structure start to climb into the sky, a mountain in its own right.

The House of Armmore was the only house to claim a greater title than the others, owing to its overlord status, taking the title of Dukes for their own, though they have no more claim to it than any other noble house that landed with the rest of the Round Table.

No soul alive knows who led the Round Table when it arrived, and every house would claim that it was them if they had the firepower to press the claim.

At the gate of the palace, a place you had to climb to on horseback, as your Maxim was too large to scale the winding path. you are greeted by more of Armmore's soldiers. Their armor is a touch more decorated than the border patrol you'd been escorted by, but when you state your name, and produce the letter, you are allowed entrance and your men allowed to keep their weapons, though any more than a pair to flank you were barred from entering the keep.

The throne room is large, and you walk in to see it full of petitioners, many voices trying to be heard over the clamor as the Lady gives her sentence for whatever she's currently hearing.

"You will give the Clamborn back their Sheep, Mickiel. In return, they will give you a ten-piece of their next clover harvest to pay you back for the feed they have failed to pay you for. Theft is not the answer, You should have come to me or one of my Watch-masters to begin with."

"Aye, Me lady. I was just upset in the moment, and the sheep were already in me pasture, so I just moved them to one of the barns. I'll bring them back out where they can see, you can send a patrol man to make sure I honor it, be no trouble."

"I have your word, Mickiel, that is enough. Now go home, free the sheep, and let me hear no more of feud or blood-price. Now, who is- Master Gawain?" The Lady's voice rises as she notices you in the back, and you stride forward to greet the Lady of the keep.

You give her a bow from the waist as you approach, not kneeling for her as you were not one of her vassals, but giving her all the courtesy due to her as Keep Master and Overlord of the region.

"I traveled as quickly as I dared, Lady Armmore, though I fear I outpaced any letter I dared to send." You see the pull of a smile on her face, before she dips her head to you and bids you rise.

"And glad I am that you did. I will hear no more petitions today, court is dismissed, if you have any truly pressing concerns, please bring it up with the sergeant-at-arms, or one of my Watch Commanders. Master Gawain, please follow me."

You follow the lady as she leads you through her home, the walls painted a lovely cream that lets the light that filters through metal grated windows light up the hall, small paintings hung up that show, much like your own home, portraits of past lords and their families, showcases of their Highlander's might, the glorious battles that happened when the families came together to defend the planet from various frenzied raids.

It gives you something to focus on rather than the well dressed lady that suddenly stops short, your own attention snapping to her as you also come to a halt, the heavy wooden door opening with a stiff pull from Lady Samantha, the door left open as she slipped inside.

The room itself reminds you much of your father's study, though there are far fewer bookshelves in the Armmore study. She gestures for you to take a seat, taking her own high backed chair, not quite as richly decorated as the stout throne in the chamber below you, but no less intimidating for it.

"As I said in the throne room, it is good you arrive so quickly. I thought that for appearances alone I would have to subdue my search until you arrived." Her words make you quirk a brow, and the lady brings down a map from her wall, laying it over the desk as you stand to look at it. It is a far more detailed map of the region than any you'd seen before, and it makes far greater notice of the divide and grade of the mountains that lead towards Kedian and Laorician lands, the eastern border with Andercher more detailed, but not to the same degree.

"My men have been having sporadic contact with mercenaries in this region." Her finger pressed down on a small valley, flanked on three sides by steep mountains, but near enough to one of the exits from the region if you could just get around the northern wall.

"Do you think he's hiding out there, or you caught him there before he could get out?" She nods as she hears you question, her dark eyes fixed on paper just before her finger tip.

"I think, that we know where he is, and I would like to have his confession before the end of the week." You look up at her, her eyes meeting yours with a passion that was difficult to deny. This woman was angry, and perfectly capable of hiding it.

Reminded you of your mother when your father pissed her off.

"Well then, if your mind is made up, I have a suggestion. The Maxim I arrived in is speedy, quieter compared to traditional tanks in this terrain and can carry a foot platoon of thirty men with room to spare and plenty of leg room. I brought a demi-platoon of my family's elites, and a dozen of our best trackers. I wasn't aware that you'd have already found him, but needs must. We can station the Maxim to the north near the pass and cut off his escape, but intentionally give him a hole to slip through."

You begin to illustrate your plan, borrowing a number of objects from her desk as you show her how you wanted to create an unbalanced line using your infantry, giving the enemy a weak point they could attack coming down the mountain, which from there your line would wheel to the right, pushing the enemy down the mountain, through the hole, where they should then run to the north and straight into the waiting guns of the Maxim and any infantry that the Lady has to spare.

She listens intently, following your words as you use erasers and pens to represent your forces, before she stands up straight, looking down at the map.

"You have given me a strategy, now we need to implement it. I will send a unit to reinforce my rangers and make sure the enemy stay penned in for the night. You said your vehicle can move a great many troops quickly?" At your nod, she looks at you. "Good, then tomorrow we capture my traitor, and then I will hear his confession, or pry it out of him like Iron from the bog."

The dinner you shared that night was pleasant enough, richly sauced beef with a side of pasta and fresh bread still steaming in its basket made for good faire. Come the morning, you would be treated to a simpler dish, a filling porridge with honey and butter alongside thick cut bacon.

Before too long, you were on the road, only the first trip that the Maxim would make today.

~

At dawn, the operation begins, as you move with rest of the Gawain forces, all of you clad in the same, almost identical armor. It would take a telling eye to decern the differences between you, the myriad painted marks on your armor random and meaningful all at once.

The Soldier with white tears down his faceplate? A sniper, despite the auto-rifle he holds in his hands. The white marks down his chestplate are meaningless, though you've heard civilians try and say its the sign of a veteran, that the more white you had the better you were. You've heard the same from men who scoffed at a Soldier who's entire metal kit from boot to crown was painted white, said he'd never seen a fight in his life, because the paint wasn't scuffed.

Its a fun exercise to fuck with people that think they have the schedules down by just repainting the armor and making them think an entire different pair were now guarding the Library.

Either way, you advanced up the hill side, the morning fog still holding on to the ground as the first rays of sunlight start to punch past the mountains like search lights.

On your Right is a length of Armmore men at arms, their heavier armor needed for their task of breaking on command, your own men backed up by another string of the same.

At the top of the rise, you see the glint of metal as the sun light hits it, and you fall to one knee, the shadows starting to shrink towards you as the light rises, and you level your rifle at the glint.

With a waved fist, your line stops, a staggered firing line behind whatever cover was near forming in seconds, and you take a breath.

and another.

And then you hold it.

>You fire your rifle, pulled tight into your shoulder as you fire the short burst, and the smaller rounds of your rifle crack through the air, taking your man in the head and throat, a spray of blood visible against the white fog as he falls backwards without a sound.

The Other Mercs on morning watch are equally unlucky, as they too are fired at only a heartbeat after your man falls, the fire from your line dropping the three Mercs you can see with concentrated fire. With a dozen rifles split between them, they don't stand a chance.

Unfortunately, super-sonic weapons are hardly quiet, and you can hear the echo of your weapons fire bounce off the valley walls as you approach.

"The Fook is 'dat!" You hear bellowed from up above, and dip your head slightly as more Mercenaries, their armor as random and mismatched armor rise from where they slept, leaping into defensive postures against old stone walls and stacks of firewood where they can, all aimed down at your section of the line.

Their bullets from submachine guns and the rare full-sized rifle start to crack in the air around you, but you keep your calm, aiming down the sights for another man.

The next man is barely armored at all, just a string of plates on his shoulder with the crudely painted cross of their company, but you line up with the edge of the belt keeping it banded to his arm and the exposed surface of his heavy gambeson. Poor bastard couldn't even get some metal inserts for a poor man's brigandine, as he bleeds out as you punch another three rounds into his side, no doubt causing a wet gurgle as you hit him high in the chest and shred his lungs from the side.

With the fall of the Sentries your men switch to their own judgement, taking shots at priority targets as they appear, before you bellow in Gawain battle cant, "Volley Fire, Hold!"

All at once, years of training kick in, and your men halt their fire, waiting for your order to resume as you let the silence linger for a moment. You watch up the hill as the enemy move with just the barest sign of them, and then you feel the tension quicken, building.

With a short shout, you order your men to "Fire!", just as the enemy rise from their cover to rain hell on you, your men catching them a breath early, bullets tearing into metal plate and woven cloth alike to bite deep into the flesh beneath.

A dozen more men fall under the disciplined fire of your men, and you order the line to start advancing up the left side of the hill, trying to push them from their position.

You feel your teeth clack in your mouth as your head is suddenly jarred upwards, the round ricocheting off the top of your helmet and becoming some other poor sod's problem as you dip behind a tree stump, fingers feeling out a fresh dimple the side of your thumb on the temple of your helmet.

You trust in the smiths that forged this armor and the poor quality of the enemy munitions, but that was far too close.

Perhaps it's the ringing in your ears from the metal helmet over your thick woolen coif, but it takes you a moment to get back in the fight, rising from your stump to fire a shot at a fool too slow to recognize the threat you present, ripping open their chest with a controlled burst, and you know you're near the bottom of your magazine when you look up at the thump of foot falls.

One of the Largest men you've ever seen has vaulted the stone wall, something like a claymore in his hands as he runs forward.

Straight at you.

You feel like time slows as you recognize what you're seeing, your rifle suddenly feeling far heavier in your hand as you see this man in full plate, an expense usually done away with unless for ceremony, charge at you, a claymore or something in his hands. You can't identify it as all you can see is a mass of metal in the shape of a man moving towards you at full tilt, murder as clear in his step as the stars on a cloudless night.

So you do the only thing you can figure.

You draw on the bastard.

With a hand that is smoother than it has any right to be, you drop your firing hand from your rifle, a move that Sir Christoph would be right to wail on you for considering it took your long gun out of action, and drew your revolver from your hip.

With a steady thumb you pulled back the hammer, the cylinder locking as you pulled the trigger, and watched the first bullet spark off his helmet, a roar of pain coming from the charging knight as you pulled the trigger, heavier this time again, this time catching him high in the chest, a blow that staggers him, before your follow up hit him high again, and again, your third pair you find equilibrium again, cocking the hammer back as you wait a heartbeat, the man's crazed eyes meeting yours through the slits in both your helmets.

Your fifth shot is a mirror of your first, catching him just below the visor's slit on the opposite side, but your sixth, hits him just below the lip of his helmet, and just above where his gorget cuts out, leaving nothing there but leather, chain, and lifeblood.

The man falls to a heap at your feet, his sword forgotten as he claws at his throat with steel clad hands, eyes wide as he looks at you, before you give him a kick with your boot, the leader of these mercenaries falling to the ground, dead.

You holster the empty pistol, and bring your rifle up once more, the men on both sides staring on at shock at what they just saw.

So you don't feel bad as you put another burst into the chest of a Mercenary standing lack spittle with a trenchgun in his hand. You dive back to the floor, the comforting cover of your stump welcome as you hear wood fly as bullets slam into it, before the return fire of your own side starts to silence their guns.

When you rise again, a fresh magazine in your rifle, the enemy are broken, and your trap seems unnecessary, as your line simply advances. The enemy mercs are broken, and you find your target sitting at a table inside the cabin at the very top of the hill, his hands flat on the table, his sleeves rolled up, and a look of resignation on his face.

~

You are the second man into the cabin, and keep your gun leveled at the Lord as the rest of your fireteam sweep the simple building, finding only a small storeroom off to one side, a washroom on the opposite side.

There is resignation on his face, but looking at Lord Osway, it's easy to see that the man is not a stranger to having a gun leveled at him. There is a still of gleam of superiority in his eyes, and a low cunning as the man cocks his head as he looks over your armor, so different than his liege ladies' shock troopers.

"Gawain Riflemen?" He muses aloud, keeping sure to stay still under your rifle sights. "I suppose I should have expected that, considering how chummy your master was getting with the Lady. I do hope she didn't do something foolish to procure your services."

You don't rise to the obvious bait, but lower your gun as your team signals all clear. "For acts of treason against your liege lord, including his murder, you are under arrest, Lord Osway. You will be remanded to your Liege Lady's custody shortly."

Muffled as your voice is by your helmet, you still imagine you see a glint of recognition in his eyes, but he says nothing else as you wave a man forward, the disgraced noble lifted from his seat and patted down for hidden weapons, three men waiting for him to try something stupid, even if it never comes.

Content that he has no obvious means of hurting either you or the Lady Armmore, you have him dragged into the brisk mountain air, the dew of morning still settling on the grass and plants around the high cabin. Yours are not the only troops surrounding the place, Armmore's shock troopers keeping watch around the area, and you turn to look down the hill to see another contingent climbing the slope.

At their head is a figure wearing very similar armor, the only difference the fine jet black cape around their shoulders lacking any symbol of unit or rank. It is still short, ending just below the shoulder blades, but it is a statement in and of itself.

Around their lady more soldiers gather, the heavier shock troops framing them in and giving excellent coverage against anything equal to or below your position on the hill.

It'd take more than wood to stop a proper sniper, but enough bodies and shields and it'd be impossible for them to get a proper shot on their target.

Lady Samantha closes the distance between her gaggle of guards and your prisoner, the plain metal of her armor a marked difference compared to the fine quality of her spear, etching running down the broad leaf tip of it, before she comes to a halt and levels the spear at Osway's chest.

"I have come for my pound, Johan."

"I see my calls for you to see reason were summarily ignored, my Lady." Osway snarks, even if he keeps any sly smile from his face. "I warned you that that boy was lying to you, making you see shadows where they didn't exist. What benefit did I have to kill your father? The man had ruled well, and if not for the council, we would have expanded our territory by a third if the war continued. I respected him, why exactly would I kill such a man?"

"At first, I though you were right, Johan." You are careful not to jerk your head up at that admission, your eyes scanning the ranks of Armmore troops surrounding your own on three sides. "But then you ran. You ran, when I asked you to stay, and when you ran, I started asking questions. My anger and grief had blinded me, but I started to listen, just not to you. It wasn't hard to follow the trail that Master Gawain had uncovered, not when my kitchen maids are apparently incorrigible gossips. Not when I can find the men-at-arms that were called up on those days to stand guard for the camp, and question them thoroughly.

The funny thing about shotguns is that they are almost impossible to trace as a murder weapon, every shell has a different pattern coming out of the barrel, but there is still information there. The size of the spread, the ammunition used, the distance from target. My father spared no expense to make a fine set of guns for his hunt, and the only one left in my armory was the Sanmon gift, refused by the Lord because he hated my father for his part in the war."

You see the man's brow furrow as he listens to his lady, not quite connecting the dots.

"It made an excellent testing piece, seeing as how it was identical to the other half a dozen guns made in the order."

The man winces a little at that information, and it confirms what you'd gleaned months ago, that 'someone' had used, Osway or not, had used one of the gifted shotguns to kill the Lord Armmore.

"Now, we are going back into that nice cabin, and I am going to ask questions. You will answer them truthfully, or I will start to sanction your house. Your death is certain, Johan, but there is no reason for your family to suffer for your mistakes."

The man is scornful for that, a fresh glare of defiance in his eyes. "My mistake was hoping that the Daughter would be any more reasonable than the Father. If I answer your questions, how would you know I was telling the truth, keep me alive until you confirm impossible information, or would you just kill me, and sort out the rest yourself?"

You can't see her dark eyes under the helmet she wears, but you imagine her eyes are full of that anger you'd seen in the Ducal Palace. "That is for me to worry about, my Lord Osway." With a sharp nod, two of her shock troopers take the man from your own troops, and march him back into the cabin.

The questions become even more pointed with time, the lies revealed faster, the truths flowing more smoothly as Samantha points out that she'll not torture Johan.

When she questions who put him up to it, first he tries to paint Sanmon as the villain once more, a lie shot down in its tracks she scribes a line into the table with her boot knife.

The second, he claims it a crime of passion, that her father had said something that deeply upset him, and before he realized, the gun was smoking in his hands, and his lord lay limp on the ground. Samantha merely scribes a line beside the second, staring the man down.

The Third, silence reigns, and when no answer comes, she starts to scribe a third line, but he speaks up before she finishes.

"Summermere." There is a rasp in his voice, and you still at the name. "I worked with Summermere. I… I was promised that I would be made your regent, to rule in your name until you married, that he had the means to influence the Council to that effect. You broke that when you claimed your Father's machine, and none would second guess the rights of a Lady who was already a Mechwarrior."

And there are the pieces you were missing, as you listen to the man speak his tale.

Summermere had approached him shortly before the contest, hoping to gain an ally in the politics of the region, as Lord Armmore was less than receptive to his envoys. Osway was indecisive, up until the hunt itself, where Lord Armmore was, for lack of a better term, an Ass. Not reason in and of itself to kill him, but it was kindling for the flame that was the snubbing that Osway and his family repeatedly through the war, combined with the low opinion his liege had of him, and the money that Summermere had promised Osway had certainly not hurt. Together they agreed to the assassination, and so they plotted.

The murder itself was a quickly planned thing, money exchanging hands hours before the deeds need be done.

That Sanmon had shown up only to snub Armmore seemed to provide an ample excuse for the Lord's death, a gunman hired by the former to kill the latter and continue the feud that had lasted for almost a century at this point.

But how to kill him without drawing too much attention or scrutiny? The answer was in Osway's hands, and he made ready use of it. As the lady had said, it was difficult to identify, beyond a shotgun, what the weapon was.

The murder weapon was buried in the woods, forgotten and lost by the footman that had been bought off, before he was, removed from the board.

In the aftermath, much changed, and Summermere's attempt to make good his promise fell through, leaving Osway in a bad spot. He had pulled the trigger, but his conspirator had an alibi, having left the morning off, so who would believe him even if he confessed on the spot.

And then weeks passed, and months passed, a year. As he was able to suggest it was Sanmon, the weight of discovery shifted from his shoulders, Samantha taking to the family feud like a fish to water.

And then this nosy bastard from a distant land started to ask questions, spurred by a haphazard command from the Lady herself.

The interrogation continues for some time, and only two more marks are added before its end. Lady Samantha rises from her seat, sheathing her boot knive before looking at the Lord in his own chair.

"Thank you for not making this as difficult as it could have been, Lord Osway. I wish it hadn't come to this, but you leave me little choice."

She holds out a hand, her spear passed into it by one of her guards without a sound. "Lord Johan Osway, for the crime of treason, I attaint your name and strip you of your noble titles. As Duchess of Meleutia, mine is the only word that matters in my mountains, and so I declare, Master Gawain as my witness, that House Osway shall pass to its next legal heir.

For the crime of murder, the Sentence for your crimes is death. Have you any last words, Johan?"

The man is resigned even in death. "See my bones back to my family if you would. They should be able to bury something."

With that, she thrust forward, a picture perfect stab. The man barely got out a grunt of pain before he went limp. The damage to his body was minimal, and with that, your part in this affair was complete.

Stepping outside the cabin, you would give one of your family's soldiers a nod, the man pulling a tubular launcher from his side and loading in a shell, before firing it into the air, a blue rocket popping at the end of its arc. That would recall the Maxim and the troops around it, and with any luck they'd arrive soon enough to transport you and the Lady back to her keep.

When she steps outside, the Lady Armmore finds you sitting on a rock not far from the door. Perhaps she merely needs to say something, or she sees the curious look on your face, your helmet sitting on your hip as you look over to her.

"House Osway will send a ward to be educated in the Ducal Palace. I may take the side of their detractors for a few months, heavier taxes for a few years, but I will let the matter die with Johan." More generous by half, but about what you expected to be honest. There is a time to severely harm a house that's wronged you, but in the calm before a storm is not it. "Thank you for your part in this, Elric. I appreciate your efforts, and your own part in the battle. If you'd like, I can have the Mercenary's armor cleaned and prepared and send it to your family's keep for proper refitting."

>Accept.

With a nod, she tells you that the armor will be sent as soon as her men finish clearing this small battlefield. The mercenaries are not locals, nor do they have families in the immediate area, meaning that their armor, weapons, and supplies are battlefield salvage, and therefore the property of whoever controls the land they fell on, namely the good Lady.

The trip back is quick enough, and the vistas are just as pretty on the way back as they were there, before you enjoy another dinner at the home of the Lady Armmore, this time a rich dish of honey glazed chicken, oiled and fried greens over a bed of citric infused rice, a range of fresh breads and flavorful sauces within arm's reach.

Come the morning, you bid the Lady good bye, riding down the winding path to where the Maxim and the rest of your soldiers await, before you set off for home, where if your sense of time is correct, the first DropShip load from the Artemis should be arriving in just a few days.

---

As you cross over the mountains and forests that divide your lands from Lord Knightway's, you order the Maxim to a halt. After three days of being more or less cooped up in the back of the APC, you are in desperate need to stretch your legs, and so you and the rest of the poor bloody infantry dismount from the tank, knowing that you are at most, half a day from home.

It is as you are walking along, just getting the blood flowing, that one of your men gives a shout, and you see him point at something on the mountain side, nestled deep into a shallow gully that would be easily hidden from sight by trees and stone from almost any other angle. What had caught his eye, was an odd formation, looking like a stout box, and if you squinted your eyes and looked through your rifle scope, you can make out the signs of human action, even if it was centuries in the past, because the odd shape has a broken black gravel road leading up to it.

That is a curious enough thing to warrant an investigation.

The terrain itself is too blocked up with trees to get the Maxim in, but the Hunting hounds rejoice in being able to run as they like through the woods as your patrol moves through them, keeping an eye on every direction as you move deeper, until you emerge on the opposite side.

The shutter door to the structure, some forty feet high if you had to guess, are closed tight, but with the help of half a dozen souls, they manage to lift it enough to get a man to roll through it to the other side, and soon enough the door starts to lift again, this time aided by a pulley from the interior, a few more men rolling under it to help their fellow.

When you get inside, your lights cut through sheer darkness, letting you see the weight of the dirt and dust covering everything, but soon enough you reach a generator room, and with a bit of help from the team engineer, you have one of the old generators emptied out, through in some fresh fuel siphoned from the Maxim's giant tank, and give it a shot.

It takes you the better part of an hour tweaking it, hooking up a battery, trying it, and fixing what ever seemed to be impeding it, before you rise with a shout of triumph as the generator finally turns over properly, and the lights above you start to flicker.

Half of them explode in a shower of sparks and glass, but PROGRESS!

Having survived the sudden overload of degraded lightbulbs, you are finally able to see just what this structure was for.

Namely, Large Agriculture vehicles.

>Found an Intact, Abandoned Factory to Produce Agricultural Vehicles, ranging from Tractors to Farm Combines.

---

When you arrive back at your family's keep, it is to an uproar of activity. Servants are moving to and from, the guards are on double detail as they move along their patrols, and at the center of it all, your father is sat in his chair, a clip board with papers on it, already flipped up half a dozen sheets as he issues another order.

This was always where you could find him in the days leading up to the DropShips landing, and going by everything, it wasn't very far now.

He looks up as you enter through the gates, and you see the wide smile settle over his face as his son returns unharmed.

"Elric, I take it your expedition went well?"

You can't keep the smile off your face as you nod. "And I found the most interesting things on my way there and back, but those are better discussed in your solar than out in the yard. I take it Cousin Thaddeus is not far?"

"Our observers put him at half a day's burn this morning, but he's been away from home for the better part of a year. I'm sure he'll be planetside before sundown."

You nod at that, and soon enough you are your father's deputy once more, going where he cannot and supervising the preparations on a more personal level. Warehouses are cleared, trucks are readied, and the Landing plain, a square stretch of concrete that would take three dozen steps in the Black Knight to cross is cleared of the brush and vines that try to cross over it.

Your father's words prove prophetic as it is almost half past four, just a few hours shy of sunset, that the observers report the DropShip entering its finally entry burn, the spheroid craft taking on a fiery tail, like the comet a child might draw as it moves through the upper atmosphere. Its fusion torch is on full blast as it falls, slowing it down until the wisps of fire die away and the smoke clears.

You watch as it clears five thousand feet over your heads, then four, three.

At two the flaps deploy, giving the bottom of the sphere more surface area for the air to help slow it down with. At One Thousand, the torch starts to narrow, the speed of the DropShip already doing its level best to keep it in the air, before the landing struts deploy and you watch as it makes its final decent.

With a thump that rattles your teeth, and sends a bellow of smoke and soot flying as the fusion torch cuts off a two dozen feet off the ground, the Mule is safely on the landing pad, and its several bays open their doors and extend the long gangways down.

For a minute, no one steps down from the craft, before a man wearing a simple tunic, a sash of grey-white over one shoulder, steps down the main gangplank. His salt and pepper hair is a little darker than your father, and there is a mean scar about the right side of his face, but you see in his tanned face many of the same things you do in your fathers.

When he reaches your father, he comes to one knee, his head bowed. "My Lord Gawain, the Artemis, and its Quiver, have returned with full stores and ample return on our journey."

Your father nods, speaking his part in this ceremony. "And they return as long-awaited kinsmen. Rise, Cousin Thaddeus, and be welcomed home."

The man obeys his lord and gives your father a firm handshake, the ceremony complete as he moves along the line, giving your mother a kiss on the hand, your sister the hug she requests, and gracing you with a rare smile as he shakes your hand.

"You've gotten strong, and I see things have changed in my absence. I would be glad to hear how much over dinner, but for now, I need to manage the unloading. My Lord, Ladies, Young Master."

With that request, your father waves him off, and he returns to the DropShip to oversee the unloading.

~

Your cousin's family is shuttled to the keep from their nice homestead not far from the same, the man more than happy to reunite with his family after so long away. It is a touching image, and as you lead them into the keep, you hear the man's daughter, a young girl named Eve ruin your surprise.

"And then a bunch of Badmen tried to attack Uncle George, but Elric fought them off in Granduncle Arthur's robot!" Her excitement is contagious, and you can't help the smile that crosses your face as you turn around to face your Cousin, older than you by over a decade, with something approaching awe on his face.

"You found it?" You give a small nod, and incline your head for the castle gates. Thaddeus picks up his daughter, too eager to see the machine that his uncle, your grandfather, had piloted into combat once more. You forgot on occasion that Thaddeus was your only a little younger than your father, who was a man grown, when the Knight was lost. Had he ridden in it with Grandfather as a boy, as a treat for finishing his work in good time, or getting a good score on a test?

You don't think the specifics matter, as you see his mask crack into a bright smile as he sees it kneeling there, paint touched up, damage repaired, looking like it had when it left the keep all those years ago.

"And you fended off the 'bad men', cousin?"

"Yes. House Ginenet was pushed by its overlord to, persuade father into rebellion at the worst, neutrality at best. Father said no." You let him put the rest of the points together in his mind, before you continue. "Ginenet has been punished, and the family is now our Vassal, Gladwell has payed weregild for the death of Arthur Gawain, who was killed on his order. We've risen far in the past few months, Cousin."

"I'll have to hear more from your Father, Elric. But it is good to see the Knight again, but…" He looks wonderingly at the doors to the Mechbay. "I don't imagine you would just leave it here on its own for no reason."

You just chuckle at that. "As I said, we've risen far. Now, come along, Dinner should be ready after your party washes up some."

~

Dinner is a good affair, with rich meat, savory sauces, fresh baked loaves of brown bread spread with butter and sweet mustard, while a collection of greens and tubers have been fried, baked, mashed, into a veritable feast. A welcome thing as your cousin and his family dig in, spacer food a far cry from the fresh cooked meals of home, while your boy cousin is still growing, practically inhaling his food like charcoal into a furnace.

You enjoy the conversation, and bring your cousin up to speed about the happenings of the planet, including the pirate raid that you and Alistair had fended off.

"Another DropShip? Well, my crew should be able to get it out of the mud, maybe even get the Torch working again. Manatee's are small, too small for anything but scouting or lance deployment, but valuable despite it. Have you decided what you want to do with it?"

"Not yet," Your father answers. "but I'm of a mind to let Elric decide. As it stands, your records and my own suggest we've made a tidy profit on the investment."

Your cousin can only nod at that. "Hard Bargains all, but our usual customers, apparently one of their usual haunts for food, got hit by a raid, Leaguers or Draconis ronin, I'm not sure, but it got us a good rate after I heard the rumor. I took them at their word after selling to them for years, and got burned a little, but more than made back what you spent to buy the stock here."

"That you made profit at all is good, that you made so much is great fortune." Your father raises a glass to his kinsman, saluting him with it before he drinks. "I'm sure we'll have much to do in the coming weeks, but I'm sure that Elric and I can manage for a few days. Spend some time with your family, see how big your boy is getting, and then we can all get back to work after you get your land legs back, spacer."

Your cousin just nods, ruffling the hair of his son before he returns to his meal.

A wonderful end to the month.

 

[Lord Of Flames]

With the return of the Artemis and its Mule-class DropShip, the Quiver, starts the near month long rotation of burning for Freirehalt, landing, unloading, and returning to the JumpShip to pick up more cargo from its holds, before it repeats this process a few times. Come a month later, it'll begin the opposite, ferrying cargo in its stores to the Artemis to prepare for the next 9-month stint burning towards, trading in, and coming back from the Inner Sphere.

During this time, the Crew of the Artemis is reduced to a skeleton set, cycling out each week to give them all a fair bit of time on their homeworld, and allowing the crew to see their families, catch up on gossip, enjoy good home cooked meals, and live life as if they won't be reupping on the next pass to the Inner Sphere.

It doesn't surprise you to learn that some young men stay in the Sphere, just as it doesn't surprise you to learn that new faces have paid the fare to come all the way out here, looking for a safer, simpler kind of living. Some of them will have to be weaned of certain comforts, like regular electricity, but in time, you imagine you might be able to bring a little bit of the sphere back to Freirehalt.

But that leaves you with a great many duties, and only so much time.

---

(The turns of the quest consist of actions voted on by the readers, which take place over the period of a Month at this point in the quest. Later it transitioned to a season: Spring, Summer, etc. and then to Bi-yearly turns, taking place over the course of six months.)


Steel Song.

In the nights after the return of the Artemis, you let your cousin and his family rest, his crew recover from their long voyage, and instead act on something that only just became possible. You've been looking at the ruined mass of PPC that once adorned the Black Knight's arm for months now, and with the discovery of a factory fit for the creation of heavy vehicles, you have the tools to do something about that.

It has been in the back of your mind to do something with the chunk of metal slagged to hell by on coming fire, but it's not like you have the parts or the facilities to take the better half of the original you have, and create a functional PPC out of it. That leaves taking the irrecoverable, and recycling it, and what would be better than to take your Grandfather's broken particle cannon, and make it into another weapon for the arsenal of the Black Knight.

You wouldn't say that you and Frederick steal away into the night with the remains of the cannon, that would suggest that it wasn't yours to do with as you please, and you had given it a once over before you loaded it into the back of a truck to make sure that none of the rare electronics and valuable internals of the PPC that had survived its crippling remained. All you really had were the slagged barrel and the capacitor casing, a mass that still mounted up to just over five tons of material, but combined with the small weight of armor plating you had appropriated, you should have enough metal to do what you desire.

When you approach the Factory, you are stopped by one of the many patrols that you and your father have put around it to protect a critical part of your future plans, but many of the soldiers recognize you, and after a cursory friend-foe identification, you and your truck continue up the mountain, and through the opened door as your men at the base signal those controlling the entrance.

You've elected to start this process late in the evening for a reason, and that is to interfere as little as possible with the men your father has sent up to get this factory back in working order. The generators themselves have already been refurbished, the congealed fuel inside blasted out with water and various emulsion mixes, giving you a good source of power to work the tools at the very start of the assembly, a variety of draws, drop hammers, spreaders, and everything you could need to get the blanks ready to start stamping material, as well as the molds for injected. This was a varied facility, and its product required a broad mix of metal-based parts, making it ideal for your needs.

The first step to taking a weapon from a PPC, designed to withstand impacts, shakes, glancing blows, massive heat flares, and a variety of other things that a BattleMech-grade weapon can expect to encounter in its life, to what amounts to a sharpened club in some prefectures, is to disassemble it.

Usually a simple task, it is made more difficult when you realize that half the bolts have been melted into the casing by the blow that decommissioned it, leaving you and Frederick, your friend growing less confident with your plan by the moment, standing on either side of the capacitor casing with a pair of angle grinders.

Over the course of the next hour, the two of you cut though a great deal of material, cutting carefully along the seams to limit the loss of what you're actually looking to preserve, and with a shift of weight as you shear through the last former-bolt, the casing shifts on itself, carefully contained within the cradle of ties and rope that the crane arm was so helpfully holding for you.

With that complete, that leaves you to start the next bit of hard work, namely getting the induction heater ready. Using a complex arrangements of magnets, coils, and other things you're not quite sure you understand, you are able to feed the various chunks of metal through the coils, turning it red hot in seconds, and reaching the temperatures you need in just a few minutes, before you take it over to the hammer.

Sparks fly as you flatten out what remains of the barrel, cut into thirds for ease of management, taking it from a ragged tube and turning it into a flat blank that you are able to cut and fold using the various power tools available to you. Alone, this would have been virtually impossible, between the number of tools, operations, and the sheer weight of the parts, but with a second man you have much better luck as you start to reduce it all down to base materials to use further on.

You can't just draw out a sword for a BattleMech, the way you would for a human being. One is at most a two meter man capable of only so much force with one, while the other is a fourteen meter behemoth whose muscles are the equivalent of electrically contracting steel wire, capable of moving at great speeds by being fed by a nuclear heart, and clad in armor impressive enough that the weapons of the 21st century would have struggled against it.

The armor of BattleMechs make cutting attacks difficult, punctures requiring great power and precision to damage components beneath the armor it doesn't fully penetrate, and while crushing blows do the most immediate damage, they are also the most unwieldy. You doubt that there is a mechwarrior alive, even as far out in the periphery as you are, that hasn't heard of BattleMechs uprooting trees to use them as makeshift clubs against the enemy, to limited success, and your own experiences in Melee tell you that a better weapon must be devised.

But on Freirehalt, Mechtechs are mechanics, technicians, and blacksmiths all rolled up in one, forging parts meant to stand the test of time within their master's war machines. Between you and Frederick, you know the numbers, you have a design in mind, and as heir to your house, you have the materials to see it done.

And so you work.

You begin by drawing out a bar of metal from the combined mass of metal that was a PPC six meters long. This was not the edge of the Knight's future sword, but rather the core of it, strong and sturdy. It is a trial to temper such a massive chunk of metal, but when you manage it without it warping beyond repair, you are left with a strong, but flexible inner rod, one that should be incredibly difficult to damage. With that complete, you start the next process, using the variety of tools available to you to start shaping the armor-blanks you brought with you, as well as the shards of Endo-steel you had been able to recover from broken components hidden away.

You could not reforge the Star-league wonder material into the edge of your sword even if you wanted to, you simple lacked the facilities, and the know-how to create more had been lost to the Inner Sphere for centuries, but that did not mean it could not lend its strength to your cause now.

Anchoring it into the central core, your started to build up a proper sword around it, keeping the endo-steel near the optimal striking surface that the two of you envisioned, and so the work continued.

It was tiring, it was grueling, but you and Frederick are used to long nights spent hard at work, and so when dawn breaks, you give a final spritz of your bottle of machine oil, designed to protect your hard work, wiping away the excess to reveal the finished product.

Sitting a little over six meters in length from pommel to tip, the sword is truly massive, and its outer-shell is made from the same materials as BattleMech armor, meaning the thing could likely take a blow from a PPC and need only the outer shell to be replaced.

Its striking surfaces were made from a variety of metal alloys, not quite the same as those found in the internal structure of most BattleMechs but near enough, letting it deliver its force into a pointed location that would deal heavy damage to a 'Mech, while only doing superficial damage to the blade itself.

From the ground, it was almost difficult to say it had an edge, considering that each face, broken up in a serrated fashion to better tear at exposed mynomer, was as wide as your forearm was long, with the final contour a little narrower than your fist, but at the scale of a BattleMech, it would make little difference.

Like all of your arsenal, this was a weapon that you would need to practice with, to learn to accommodate the extra, external weight, to get used to the ability to not just punch and kick, but use your training in the sparring circle as well. You would have to devise a new course for it, or rework the existing one to give you the chance to practice.

You doubt that any one would offer up a BattleMech as a training dummy for a boy who's made a weapon out of a quarter million c-bill hunk of scrap, but it shouldn't be hard to create a target that would suffice.

The morning crew to work on the factory arrives to the sight of you standing there, looking at a massive sword, while Frederick is passed out in a chair, his jacket over his face to hide his weary eyes from the lights overhead.

>Gained: External 'Sword': 15 Damage, Melee, 5 Tons. Can be held as a handheld weapon by Any 'Mech capable of lifting 5 Tons with hands.

---

Smoothing Ruffled Feathers.

It takes you a few weeks, and more letters between yourself, your father, and Lord Knightway, to put together what amounts to a joint training exercise of Limited Infantry, Combat Vehicles, and BattleMechs.

These being your lands, you will provide the op-for of the exercise, consisting of your amateur MechWarriors, yourself, Lord Knightway on occasion, and the Three Lances of Combat vehicles at your families' commands. You imagine that others would take their places on both sides of the line at some point, but for the moment, that is how its shaking out.

Those weeks sending letters are not spent idle either, as the progress on the Factory continues apace, with projections that you should see the first fresh vehicles out of it before the year is out, though there is a good chance that the first real production wouldn't happen until the summer of next year, some eight months out. For all intents and purposes, a tourney ground is erected on a good section of land located below a grassy knoll, largely flat, cleared of trees, and with a wonderful view of the surrounding terrain that strikes you as almost idyllic.

When a date is finally set, you and your family start to prepare for the arrival of so many guests, their households, and their BattleMechs. Your father had requested that each overlord only bring a single one of their vassal's machines, if they brought them at all, simply to not damage the terrain overmuch, though the concern of security and being outnumbered goes unsaid.

When the 'Mechs arrive, it is a motley group, one that had clearly come together as they traveled through the lands of the various overlords. You see the massive King Crab, bedecked in a scheme that resembles a turtle with the plotchy color of its top side, the Silver bolted Highlander walking as far from its fellow assault 'Mech as possible, while the more familiar shapes of a Catapult and Knightway's Hammerhands take up the middle. There is a second group of 'Mechs behind them, a handful of vassal machines, a Griffin, Ostsol, Rifleman, and paired Hunchbacks., all sporting their own schemes as they follow their lordly masters.

They are not the only group to arrive, and Godsfield's Archer is bedecked in the Striped Yellow and Black of his house, while the orange-helmed Crusader that flanks him gives him one of the heavier compliments of machines here, aside from your own.

All are accompanied by a small army of servants and soldiers, walking or riding along in carts or in small trucks pulling canvas covered trailers.

This was to be an event, a showcasing of skill and warcraft, even if it was among friends, or at the least not enemies.

Inside the small Cabin that had virtually appeared over night, You and your father assemble the Overlords, seating them around a smaller table than had sat in Andercher's hall, and presented the most pressing matter before the exercise.

"They will be coming back, and in force."

Your father's flat tone is met with confused looks, before the glances that flicker to you see them connect the dots, recalling the raid you routed some months back.

"And I imagine you learned this from the Pirate scum." Lord Sanmon is the one to ask the obvious question, too old to care overmuch about posturing. "What did they tell you? That they were part of a larger band, Assault 'Mechs on every DropShip, a whorehouse for our women when they burn us out of our homes and slavery for our children?"

Your father shakes his head at that. "The Pirates are based out of a planet named Barbaros, some months distant from us and deeper than even Freirehalt. My son questioned the pirates, the pilots of their machines, and their officers. After hanging the liars, the rest of the crew, questioned alone mind you, started to tell an interesting story that lines up with some evidence we've extracted from the Drop Ship's computer.

The leader of the bands, a Sig, is sitting on top of an impressive stash of damaged star league 'Mechs. Not Lostech from what we could find, but still enough to give out a Medium ''Mech to show favor from time to time. Several DropShips and their compliments pay tribute to the man, and my son killed his favorite attack dog in the first ambush. By now, the enemy Jumpship should be arriving back in the Barbaros system in a few weeks, meaning that he will learn about us, his failed raid, and the death of his subordinates then."

"And I imagine that you mention this because he will come bringing war in the next year or so?" Lady Armmore grasps your father's words quickly, and he nods at her question.

"Yes. Freirehalt and her people will be coming under attack by more than a few pirate 'Mechs in the not-so-distant future, and I would have us all ready to meet them with steel when they arrive." You don't miss the way the other overlords note the missing few of their number, and neither does your father. "My family has been wronged by Gladwell, Summermere, and Ruxhall in the recent past, and so I leave it to you to make your choices and warn them. My house will go to the aid of whoever is struck, regardless of bad blood, but I will not advertise my power to those that would benefit from my death."

You see the other Overlords share a collection of nods at that, it was unreasonable to expect a man to warn his enemies when the threat is so distant.

"Now, forewarned as you are, there is the matter of the Manatee that my crews are repairing. I'm sure word has already reached you with the caravans bringing you the goods you ordered, but the Manatee should be airborne, if not capable of orbit, in a few weeks." The news doesn't seem to surprise many of the Lords and ladies, and so he continues. "I wished to discuss landing sites, for the movement of cargo, goods, and machines should it be needed to respond to future attacks. This is the first military DropShip we've had in decades, perhaps since the founding of our houses, and I would not have it destroyed because of our internal squabbling."

Your Father is deeply respected among the circles of the nobility, and that he has become an Overlord in his own right is something that may have caused concern for almost anyone else.

That caution is still there but most have known the man personally for decades at this point, and the few that don't having experience with you, does a great deal to assuage their concerns.

No 'Mechs on the DropShip during peacetime? Very well, but he reserves the right to garrison the thing like a Keep, seeing as it is your family's DropShip.

How will tariff's on the cargo work, considering that it is flying over the border posts? Half of what Merchants that will be traveling through and living off their lands would pay is more than fair don't you think, especially with how the drop ship will only be there for a day or two before it leaves for its next destination.

The Manatee is small, but can carry a lance, can you really be trusted to lend aid with what amounts to an entire Region's 'Mechs? His son is a man of honor, and has already ridden out to aid his friends, metal or no. Elric is a good man, and one that would sooner defy his father than follow through on the tyrannical.

There are many questions, but your father is a skilled talker and gets through them with only a minimum of concessions. In the end, you have the right to land at a prepared site in four of the eight regions, as well as two more within Kedia and Laoricia itself.

---

Your meeting with Lord Godsfield is short, owing both to the long discussion that he and the other Lords had with your father, and the simplicity of your discussion.

Inside his tent, you present your father's offer of alliance, a simple defensive pact that would see the other respond if either side were to be attacked, unprovoked by anyone outside the pact. You've been given full permission to bargain on behalf of your family, and so when you lay out the deal and the advantages it would have for him and his family, it doesn't take long before he agrees.

His ease when it comes to signing his part of the document, identical to the one now in your possession, makes you wonder, and you can't help but voice the question.

"Why agree so readily?"

The older man just looks at you, his lone eye peaking at you from under his white-haired brow as he glances up from the paper.

"Because it's the winning play." Is his simple reply. "Your father is one of the richest men on the planet, and with the return of the Jumpship, perhaps the richest. He controls four BattleMechs in good repair, has the salvage for another, and the parts and the money to bring in more machines if he wanted to. House Gawain is powerful, Elric, but to someone raised in it, especially recently, I imagine it's difficult to believe."

He waves off to the side, where a small map of Freirehalt sits, drawn out between two poles. "You control half of some of the most fertile and resource rich land on the continent. If you are even half the mechwarrior the stories say you are, you have a long life of glory ahead of you, and now your father comes to us, and doesn't just let the dice fall where they may. He warns us about a common threat, even though he could have played the cards a bit closer to his chest. I can respect that, and when you come with me, and ask that we safeguard our families against a shared enemy? I'd be a fool to refuse, not when your conditions are so lax."

When you quirk a brow at his words, he shakes his head. "You could have asked for my daughter in marriage, and it would still have been hard to refuse. Instead you offer an open hand, instead of a contract demanding a signature in blood." He shakes his head again as he stands up, holding out his hand.

You take it, and exchange a firm shake, before the man speaks again. "I hope that you never have to take the field again, Master Gawain, but we both know this life is rife with conflict."

You answer him with a nod, and a smirk. "Someone has to man the walls, Lord Godsfield. Might as well be me."

With that, you leave the man behind, one more ally behind your family.

---

In the days before the exercise is to begin in truth, you begin to work with Alice and Alistair as a team, using the mobility of the Shadow Hawk and the firepower of the Warhammer as a powerful combination.

Inside the iron shell of the Black Knight, you were also dealing with a new experience, as you carefully rotated the wrist of your war machine, taking note of how it tilted, locked, how far it could extend and how far it could turn inward. It was less than a human being, but an acceptable compromise for the degree of protection that encased a BattleMech.

Beside you, a Yellow limbed Shadowhawk stepped forward, sporting the scheme that the Warhammer had worn until you had disabled it.

"Are you ready, Master Gawain?" The Comm static of her machine did little to hide the youth of Alice's voice, but you could hear the tinge of excitement beneath her worry.

"He'll be fine, Alice. I've seen that hunk of Iron he wants to use in combat, the mad man." Alistair's voice crackles in from your opposite side, the Blue Warhammer taking up position as if he was your body guard, his arms and torso scanning the clearing for threats.

"We've a few days to get you used to your new machine, Alice, and get Alistair more accustomed to doing more than standing on the ridge firing PPC's."

"Yes, Sir." Comes the easy reply from Alistair, while Alice is a little slower, but quickly falls in behind you with an "On you, Lance leader."

And so, you started small.

Running.

~

Moving out in formation, you take care not to take a path that is too extreme for the young pilots behind you, and while Alice is far from stable in her running, she is able to keep up with both you and Alistair, her gait smoothing as she both she and the computer of the Shadow Hawk, scrubbed of the last pilot's neuro-sig, get used to one another.

She's still a bit too unstable to try firing on the move, but with the shoulder mounted nature of the Shadowhawk's main weapon, that was probably for the best. You wouldn't want her getting distracted trying to line up a shot, and slam into a tree as tall as her medium 'Mech.

Alistair on the other hand is far smoother, coming to a run only a little slower than yourself, and you can already imagine his targeting computer going through the calculations for when to fire to hit a target, much the same as your own.

As you round a corner, your lancemates just behind you, your eyes snap up to see the targets you had ordered standing in proper position. You key the comm link between your machines, while bringing your weapons to a quarter power, enough to scorch wood and scour metal, but not enough to destroy the targets outright.

>The Silhouette of a Centurion, a common enough 50-Tonner.

"Lance, Targets in the open, fire at will!"

You flash your lasers for only a moment, the capacitor charge bleeding off nigh instantly as they cut through the air, and strike the metal plated targets, scoring solid hits along the Torso section, and likely mangling whatever missile launcher the Centurion was sure to have in its left. You spare a moment to watch Alistair's PPCs thunder, two bolts of lightning, moving far more slugishly that usual repeating your feat, the left most target all but losing its shield arm as both shots slam into it's torso.

If it were a real enemy, or you were piloting that 'Mech, you'd be very worried about an ammo detonation right about now.

Alice on the other hand, is not so quick to anchor her self, and the speed she gathers as she turns the corner is too much of her, leading her lead foot to skid in the dirt as she tries to come to a halt, her large laser cutting through the air to barely single the back board of her intended target, but she recovers just enough to angle it towards a different enemy, your target, the center 'Mech, taking a glancing hit to his right arm.

She has a good mind, but her reflexes aren't there yet, and so you order the Lance to fire again, moving clockwise as you hammer the targets.

As your force moves around the targets, you ready a cross shot with your PPC, only to be reminded that not even you are perfect, your shot threading the needle between the targets and only lightly singing the them as it passes.

Behind you, both your Lance mates are far more lucky, as Alistair gives the nearest target a staccato-two step with his Medium lasers, the upper pair burning first and cutting out right before the bottom pair,cutting a pair of parallel cuts into the left side of the same machine he'd struck first, more likely than not taking the torso, and its connecting arm, out of action.

Alice is not so disciplined with her fire, but it works out for the better as she empties the dummy rounds of her LRM's and both Medium lasers right into the torso of the center target, one of the paint balls popping right in the middle of its crested head.

With that pass, you charge into the woods, taking the pair of green Mechwarriors into rougher country. You've practiced in areas like this for weeks, but you don't think that this is too far beyond your lancemate's current skill.

You take the hill as you always had, skidding down it and fighting the gyro to keep your torso upright rather than parallel with the ground, but you manage, and with a short hop are back unto your sprint.

Alistair is a bit more clumsy, having to take it a bit slower, short hops down from the top of the hill costing him distance, but he'll make it up quick enough as you slow down to maneuver through the trees, some of them tall enough to block your sight. You're just about to reach the copse when you hear a girlish shriek, and then laughter.

It takes you a moment to place it, the head of the Black Knight swiveling to look up at Alice's Shadowhawk as she doesn't slow for the hill you and Alistair descended on foot, her 'Mech finding nothing but air under it as it plummets the better part of a dozen metres, only for her to engage the jumpjets, almost instantly arresting her momentum and taking her forward.

With a child's whimsical laughter, her jumpjets cut out a yard or two short of the ground, and she rocks on her heels as she regains her balance, the 'Mech whirring around to look at you, and you can almost imagine the smile on her face.

Either way, you dip the head of the Black Knight in a nod, the two of your lancemates reforming on you as you continue on the track you'd plotted out.

And with one last burst of speed, you exit the forest and come back around to the targets you had left behind, this time outflanking them from the opposite side you'd departed from.

It's not a good rendition of the tactics you could expect, but you didn't want to endanger anyone by having them shift 11-meter-tall targets around to simulate a perimeter, so it would have to do.

Behind you Alistair lags behind, bad fortune seeing him find mud slicks several times that bring his forward progress to a halt as he leverages the length of his PPC barrels to get up the hill, while Alice uses her Jump jets in short bursts to gain speed as she bounds up beside you, this time coming coming to a good stop as you round the top.

You give the simple command, and give the nearest target an Alpha strike.

"Lance, Open Fire."

~

Your alpha strike carves across the side of your target, and even with the down-powered nature of your weapons, takes the Arm, usually carrying an Autocannon, clean off the target. Your follow up into the torso is bit wilder, your movement taking you into an odd angle that sees your medium lasers glance across the three sections making up the body of the 'Mech.

Alistair is a decent shot, and his PPC's take his own target in a similar spot, enough damage that any pilot would worry about further hits. The SRM's off the shoulder of his machine splatter paint over the side of his target, nowhere especially notable, but some mechtech would be pissed to be picking shrapnel out of mynomers.

Alice's failure, as she clears the ridge, is not even her own, but rather a mix of several failings. The first is that dummy ammunition is rare on Freirehalt, leading to interesting substitutions, the second, the failure of the Astech told to load the launcher to double check that the Missiles were of the correct size.

The Last, is yours, for how hard you laugh as her LRM Launcher explodes not in a shower of sparks or metal, or the cringe of having to pay for it, but instead in a shower of hot pink paint that covers her 'Mech from shoulder to thigh.

You are glad you can lock the Black Knight into standing still, because you just can't stop laughing.

---

You try to keep the smile off your face when you see Alice later that day, but you have to try hard to contain yourself when you see her walk away, the bottom of her boots the same hot pink that two poor souls that drew the short straw are scrubbing off her 'Mech. Thankfully, it's a different solution and can use a mild solvent to strip off so it's not so terrible, but still.

The performance the three of you put on could have been better, but with three targets crippled, you figure that even with Alice's paint mishap, you would have triumphed over the three enemy 'Mechs.

You repeat the exercise twice more over the following days, your pilots improving each time, though you do mix it up some, like having the targets hidden around a clearing. That time, there'd been a small mechanism timed so that when you entered said clearing you would have a few moments before it pelted you with paint like an opening missile salvo, which seemed to spur Alice and Alistair to better focus their fire, sending a Centurion to the grave before you disengaged to come at the enemy from a different angle.

You didn't mind taking the brunt of the enemy's "opening barrage" as it were, if it meant that Alice and Alistair became sharper targets without being left isolated against real foes.

But your training does not go unnoticed, and when your 'Mechs return from the woods dirty and doused in paint, more than a few of the nobles are there to witness your party dismount. You do pass the man assigned to clean the knight, broadest and the most difficult to clean a twenty crown note and take off your helmet before you look to your nearest admirer.

"Should we be afraid of Paint Traps in the forest, Master Elric?" Lady Armmore is polite, but also straight to the point.

"Not traps, my lady. But I'd be weary of paint from the sky. It heralds poor tidings for 'Mechs too slow to run."

"I'll have to keep that in mind. Are the launchers simulated or real? I wouldn't want to pluck Autocannon rounds into the woods only to learn my target was never there."

"Against you and the others, they'll be real. For me and my lance, it was important to establish you couldn't win every fight cleanly. Alistair may have fought beside me, but he's only so much better than Lady Ginenet. They have a lot to learn."

"And you don't? If I recall rightly, you've been a Mechwarrior for, oh, six months at the best?" The comment is intended to rile, though you don't see her game here.

"I'm the best of the three, there's little need to hide that, but even I make mistakes. It's why you train, to spot them, and learn better behaviors before they get you or others hurt or worse."

The lady looks almost thoughtful at that, her brow creased as she thinks it over. "You are right, Master Elric." She dips her head to you at your name, dropping some of the formality. "If I may, I would join your Lance for the War games. It is four to a lance if I recall correctly."

> Accept her offer. Four make a true Lance.

With your lance assembled, your green Mechwarriors slightly more prepared for what comes next, you lock down your 'Mechs, and prepare for the first exercise set for the next day. It will be a simple skirmish, one where equal numbers will duke it out to see who comes out on top.

You had hoped that the mechtechs, Master Burrel especially, might have come up with some way to spoof your BattleMech's signature to read as another heavy machine, but the various ECM systems and the Targeting computers use a variety of sensors, including a visual identification back up to identify enemy 'Mechs. Even if you could spoof your signal to look like an Orion, most BattleMechs would default to showcasing you as a Black Knight.

Either way, come the morning, you were standing there with the rest of your lance in cooling vests and suits, your neurohelmets in your hands. It was agreed that you'd be given a short head start ahead of the enemy lance to maneuver into proper positions. For the sake of fairness, this time you'd been told the enemy composition, so as to keep it fair.

>Enemy Force:

Hammerhands, 75 Tons.

Riflemen, 60 Tons.

H-Griffin, 60 tons.

Crusader, 65 Tons.

260 vs 290 Tons. A relatively balanced Fight.

~

With your head start, you direct your lance, moving as fast as they can to reach your chosen battlefield.

This was once a logging forest, and the hard packed roads they used are still prevalent despite the decades that have passed since the loggers moved on to more profitable areas.

For your purposes, the tall trees and worn roads will make manuevering around the enemy easier, but also slow down your attack. They would also aid any ambushes you might set, but you should be careful not to overextend and lose one on your machines early. Though this exercise is Sim-fire, losing on the first day would be troublesome.

Just as you guessed, the Heavier machines that Knightway has brought in his lance make it difficult for him to simple walk through the dense forest, the lack of jumpjets on half of them making that even more clear, and so he must use the old logging roads to approach your position.

You wait at the fore, standing proudly beside the Warhammer as you wait for the enemy to approach, When they enter the Max-optimal range of your PPC's you give the order to engage.

With a unseen nod to your fellow MechWarrior, you pull the trigger on your PPC, the simulated bolt lancing from your arm and through the woods, striking the stark white Hammerhands just to the left of your target, his jinking turn buying him half a ton of armor, though the follow-ups from Alistair are singularly potent, his strikes hitting harder than usual, perhaps owing to the tune-up to his weapons, but almost shearing the armor off the right torso. You see the Hammerhead, unharmed visually, starts to sway as its gyro receives the damage feedback, but Knightway is able to keep his 'Mech standing despite the exaggerated effect.

Your Opening strike is surprisingly effective, and the enemy counterfire is next to useless as it either putters out too early or finds itself unable to properly effect your position.

On your own lance communication, you get a short update from Armmore.

"Enemy Rear element engaged, Riflemen at 60 percent Combat ability, I expect him to yield before I take off the other arm. Enemy Griffin is currently being harangued by Ginenet, Unable to bring his PPC to bear. We've divided them, now we must crush them."

~

>The Robinrice Crusader fires a wealth of missiles in to the brush, more than a few decorating yet more trees with the starkly visible paint, only for Alistair to mirror your movement, using the deeper foliage to his left to ruin his enemies target lock, sending a number of demi-guided missiles slamming into whatever they can find, only a few specks of it Alistair's BattleMech.

Knightway advances on you quickly, firing off his AC/10, who's down powered rounds are still enough to smash chalk across trees and break the younger trunks almost in half with the force, his Lasers set to laser-pointer levels of power, cutting through the air to just miss your 'Mech as you dip it down, your short lived sprint turning into a power slide as you arrest your 'Mechs motion, and bring your weapons to bear.

From your sides, two brilliant Blue beams 'cut' across his 'Mech, a collection of green just behind it as you cycle your weapons and your 'Mech's cockpit rockets to steaming levels as the cooling shuts off to simulate your alpha-strike.

~

For a moment, you are suprised by the sheer speed that Knightway and his fellow mechwarrior show in adapting to your attack, surging forward when you would have withdrawn after that first attack, only to double down, a tactic that might have worked on a smaller or less well armed machine.

But you are not in a lesser BattleMech.

Instead, the two of you trade fire, a miracle of combat seeing him only barely score yours, not even enough to note a loss in weight, while Knightway's Hammerhands suffers in the virual battlespace as you slough off three tons of armor in as many seconds, before it shuts down. You flip through the system prompts, finding a glowing red line stating an Ammo-cook off had been simulated, the right torso of his machine glowing a cherry red, as well as most other parts, as it finishes tallying the damage to his machine.

The Crusader's hail of missiles is once more less than effective, Alistair's twin PPC's taking it in either leg, though not enough to seriously stagger the enemy machine.

As you bring your bulk around to bear on the Enemy Crusader, Armmore's voice speaks through the lance Comms once more.

"Enemy Rifleman down, surrendered. Moving to assist Ginenet with the Griffin. Hold the Line, Commander, We'll be there soon."

You resist the urge to tell her you have things well in hand, and instead focus on the fight in front of you.

>The simulated damage that the Crusade takes is too much, and the Pilot is unable to stop the Gyro from sending his 'Mech to its knees as your strafe his cockpit with a pair of Medium lasers, the Polarized glass doing just enough not to blind the man as he takes a hand off the controls to shield his face.

There is little else to say about the battle, as the Crusader slips and falls, bracing itself on its left arm as it climbs back to its feet, only for the dirt beneath its massive feet to give away again, the hand of its arm smashed apart as it falls once more.

You can sense the spirit of the man inside the opposing machine, trying to right himself so he can 'die' in battle, but you have a battle to win, not glory to seek. You line up your lasers manually, switching to each in turn and adjusting their gimbal mounts as you suddenly fire, a thin tracing of green filling the air between you as you cut off his head in a simulated strike.

It is not the glorious end he was hoping for, but you hope he will understand.

You turn to face the distant beacons of your lance, distorted as they are by distance, and raise your right arm, looking down the length of it like a sniper rifle as you wait. Your blue clad ally advances beside you, the bottom of his Warhammer's feet stained with painted mud as he steps beside you, the remains of dirt and wood clinging around his ankles.

When the Griffin emerges from the woods, it is with a limp left arm, its PPC hanging uselessly, while its right spits simulated laser fire at the Shadowhawk hot on its heels. You don't give it another chance, slamming a bolt into its leg and sending the sprinting 'Mech into a faceslide, ending at the bottom of the hill you stand atop.

This battle is over, and you have won.

Sending the range safe code through the simulated battlenet, you watch as the Hammerhands powers back up, Lord Knightway taking up the yokes quickly as it stomps over to you.

"I have seen fine shots in my life, Gawain. I've been shot at by more than a few. That was a well done thing." There is a current of tension in Knightway's voice, but also earnest admiration of a thing done well. "I hate to be the first to fall, but First Blood is yours. We should return to the campaign grounds and refit. I know that Lord Robinrice over there," He gestures with a giant barrel towards the Crusader, Alistair's Warhammer using one of its one long barrels to help the 'Mech rise. "certainly needs it. Simulated weapons or not, a fall will do nasty things to a BattleMech."

You can agree with the man, and so you go around collecting the 'dead' and finally link back up with Lady Armmore half way to where the Rifleman lay crippled. You see her gun arm swing up when Knightway strides into the clearing, but you pull out from behind him, and she lowers it back down.

"I'm terribly sorry, but I finished up early and thought I'd come pick you up for a night on the town."

You can hear the unladylike snort she gives at your words, before the Highlander moves to loom over you by just a meter or so. "Standing like this, I should be the one asking if you've got a nice suit ready."

Alistair, faithful friend he is, is the one to cut through the tension. "If the two of you are done comparing cannons, I believe we have a schedule to keep, Commander." With that, the heads of your 'Mechs almost swivel to look at each other, having broken the staring contest to glance at the Warhammer as it gestured, laughter bubbling up from the two of you as you fall in behind Knightway once more.

Your friend doesn't get to keep the last word however, as you get a private burst from the Highlander as you march, and opening it, you only blink several times.

"For the record, Gawain. Mine is bigger."

~

The field that your father and the other lords choose to simulate a pitched battle, not an ambush or surprise attack, but one where both sides know the other is there, and will attack, blindly perhaps, but furiously, with all the power and strength they can bring to bear.

Looking across the yellow grass, broken up by the hills dotted with trees, this will be a very different battle for you.

You will simply have to make the best of it. You are given an hours head start, so that you can reach the opposite side first, and you so you wait for your enemy to arrive.

When they do, you see their leader, one of the few BattleMechs that had laid your own low this past week. A King Crab.

Lord Sanmon is one of the most decorated Lord's on the planet, and one of the most experienced. His 'Mech may be limited, but it is formidable. Beside him, you see Knightway's Hammerhands once more, an Archer wrought in black and yellow marks Godsfield, and there at the edge you see the red Catapult of Andercher. These are the highest lords of the world, come to do battle, imaginary or not, with your lance. They outmass you by only a small sum, but will it be enough?

Hefting the sword in your giant metal hand, you can only try.

---

>Elric and his lance lose the battle against Lord Sanmon and the other Overlords. Not unexpected, given that they are each veterans of a decade or more of piloting their machines, compared to Elric's three months.

With the conclusion of the training exercises, something that went better than you had honestly expected, but worse than you had hoped, there was a great deal of feasting and entertainment that was scheduled before the different lords and their households started their trips back home. Lord Sanmon had the better part of two weeks set aside just walking his 'Mech back, let alone the baggage train that was almost sure to lag behind the massive assault 'Mech.

But as amused as you were by watching the best and brightest of each lord's personal guard slam into each other from horse back with half-hollowed lances, the spray of shrapnel from a good strike spurring a cheer from the crowd of servants and other knights, you did have other business to attend to.

Namely, sitting in a large tent, Lord Knightway and Lady Armmore equally distant around the circular table, a small map of the continent laid out before you.

It had not taken long to get Lord Meric up to speed, and Lady Armmore nodded grimly when he looked to confirm the more outrageous claims you made, even if they came from first hand watching the questioning of the former Lord Osway.

He looked tired as he sat down, the wooden chair creaking as he massaged the bridge of his nose. "And so, Summermere is a damn fool and if he pushes the subject any further, you want what, Gawain? A united front to crush him against?"

You give a shrug of your shoulders. "A defensive alliance. Just as my father has joined arms with Godsfield, so I would have the three of us in a shield wall against Summermere. Issues with Gladwell aside, Lord Summermere is a more pressing threat for both you and Meleutia. He shares no direct border with Lady Armmore, but even considering the weight-differential between Kedia and Corum, on the plains that make up the gap between his lands and the north border of Meleutia, an Awesome can outshoot a King Crab all day. There is no cover, and as our exercise proved just the other day, an isolated and outranged assault 'Mech is a dead assault 'Mech."

"A given in this instance." Lady Arrmore speaks up. "House Gawain has been generous with my house of late, and I know that ours have had a cordial relationship for many years Lord Knightway. Lord Summermere embodies the sigil of his house, and I do not want my home to be the China shop he smashes in his rage. He already pines for the lands of our houses, the prestige we have and the wealth that we've built from our respective regions. This is a shared threat, and I believe that our reprisal should be equally joined."

You see Knightway nod, seeing where this was going. "And if he attacks one of us, the other will respond in kind, with the backing of House Gawain either way." You give a nod of your own, confirming his reasoning. He waits for a few moments, staring off into the distance as he balances the sums and costs of this potential alliance. "…Very well, I will agree to defend the current borders of Meleutia as they stand today, and in return expect House Armmore to do the same for Western Laoricia."

"And I will agree to those terms, witnessed as they are by Master Elric." With the words said, Lord Meric extends his hand, and gives a firm shake when Lady Samantha takes it, sealing the agreement. There would be a proper document at some point, likely worked out between the two of them before it was sent to your father for his own signature, but for now, this was enough.

~

With the cooperation of Knightway secure, he sees fit, with only a bit of inexperienced prodding from your part to share a bit of Summermere's activities in his own holdings. Nothing to the same scale as arranging the death of a rival lord, but enough to have annoyed Lord Meric, in the form of bullying the fishing trawlers that operate out of Meric's ports, raising a fit over them being in his waters and therefore their catch belonging to House Summermere. It's an incredibly petty thing, but enough to rankle Meric's ego.

Thankfully, your former Overlord is wise enough to know that going and picking a fight with Summeremere over it is likely to lead to only greater problems, especially if it escalates into a 'Mech fight. Knightway's Hammerhands is not a bad 'Mech in a scrap, but against an Awesome, He'd have to close quickly, something that the Awesome can delay for a good long time.

That is however, the only bit of drama you get out of the older lord, and with a general agreement to hammer out concrete language at a later time, you see them off to enjoy the end of the games.

Who knows, maybe the melee will be just as entertaining as the Joust.

---

Census Taking.


>You are in a pickle. A rider almost alone except a small group of surveyors and scribes? Easy pickings for bandits, right? Except you are not easy prey.

Honestly, you wonder if you should have expected this, as you let rip a burst from your rifle that draws blood and a pained cry from the tree line as you open up on the bandit that fired a rifle at you, only a feeling of something being quite wrong saving you from a bullet in the shoulder, or a dead horse.

The civilians with you panic as you exchange fire with the poor sod, your one guard drawing their own rifle to add to the confusion as more muzzles flash in the woods as they fire, the woods behind you popping and cracking as their bullets smash into the brush.

This was supposed to be a census gathering mission, just going from village to village, town to town, collecting information on the population, general education levels, what work is available or prioritized. It was supposed to be peaceful.

Damn your luck that the villages were rather quiet about the information that you needed, seeming scared of you for some reason or another. You are the heir of their lord, not some petty cut throat that would be angry that there are more farmers than miners because you can't tax food in a belly like you can silver in a chest.

That should have been the first sign. The second should have been the lack of wildlife in the nearby woods, your foraging limited to wild berries and a rabbit to supplement the hardy supplies you had taken from the keep. You had honestly expected to resupply at the villages with fresh warm food, but to be told they had 'little enough as it was' should have been yet another clue.

And now, here you are in a firefight.

>You open fire again on the first man, this time catching him just as he steps from cover to shoot, letting the shot fly past you head as you dump three shots of Gawain lead into his chest, the man dropping like a marionette with his strings cut.

You quickly sight a second man, squeezing the trigger as you pull your horse to the side. Your Shot tears through the man's left leg, bereft of the simple armor that some of these bandits are wearing, and taking a pear sized section off the side of his leg. Any hope he had of only taking a flesh wound dies a quick death as he falls to the ground screaming, weapon forgotten as he tries to stem the bleeding with his hands.

If you bothered paying any further attention to the man, you might have noticed it was futile effort.

>You leg another bastard, this time hitting him right in the knee.

Your guard does much the same, taking a man in the back, but going by how you hear moans of pain and the dragging of something heavy, not enough to kill.

That's alright, you need people to question for the Census anyway.

You dismount from your horse, waving your fellow soldier to hurry ahead and get his man before he crawled into the woods and died before you could question him.

Your man is just rocking on the ground, hands clutched around his knee, and so when he opens his eyes he sees you kneeling there, revolver in your hand.

"I have questions. You will answer them, and I promise to make sure that knee doesn't kill you. Try me, and I put a hole in you and move on. Understand."

The man nods rapidly, and you are more than happy to pull out your notepad. "Now, We'll begin with your name, occupation and where your buddies were stashing their loot."

As it turns out, a captive audience is a receptive one, especially when he's stuck there answering questions. Whenever he clearly lies to you, you pull the hammer back on your handgun, letting the cylinder click forward a round. If he was a betting man, he'd pray that you'd fired it while you were repelling his group's failed attack, but considering you had brought them down with the staccato rhythm of an Autorifle, you know the gun is full.

Turns out this was about half of a larger gang, one that had been terrorizing the local area, taking food, jewelry, and quite recently a couple pretty young things, though at your glare he says nobody has touched them yet, because they're supposed to guarantee good behavior.

He does answer a few more questions, giving his name, old position "T-tanner", and lastly his education "I know my numbers and me letters, but I never liked reading none."

You knew that the average person had some schooling, passed on from parent to child, perhaps a pamphlet full of common prayers if there was a nice church in town or nearby, but you can't help but be dissapointed.

And then a thought crosses your mind.

"You wouldn't happen to have known a fellow named Olin did you?"

>Poor Georgie here is a poor liar.

The other Man is less helpful, spitting in the face of your bodyguard, before he tries to pull a knife.

Your Bodyguard comes back perfectly intact, minus a prisoner. He does however carry back a helmet, the common pipe-bar visor of the Ginenet elite in his hand.

You tend his wounds as best as you are able, before you tie him up and throw him over the back of your horse, digging a hand into the rope as you steer your mount back to the road. There you find the rest of your group, a variety of civilians looking scarred out of their wits, before they recognize you and calm themselves.

Soon enough, you are back on the road, with a fresh prisoner, and heading for the next township. There, you meet with the Marshals, hand over poor Georgie to be hung after a short trial and consider your next move.

You are on a task to take a census, but these bandits are a pressing concern. If you were to finish your task you could ride home, take up a company of your best and root them out, but that would take weeks at best, or you could saddle up and gather a posse of Marshals and well-meaning folk and deal with it now.

What do you do now?

> Gather a posse and burn out the cancer.

~

>Bandits rolled very poorly in their perception rolls.

"Did you hear something out there, Springy?"

"Nah, just the wind. Georgie and his crew ain't back yet. Think they tucked tail and ran?"

"Who knows. All I know is that its five less bastards I have to share that pretty lass with when her dad gets uppity come collection time."

"Eh, watch it. The boss says don't touch 'em, and don't think of touchin' 'em."

"What the boss don't know won't hurt him."

~

Your approach is not as refined as you might have liked, owing to the inexperience of the men you had managed to wrangle into a posse to destroy this gang of bandits and restore some law and order to this place, but they do a fine enough job once you get them in position.

The signal is simple enough, and you give a short, low whistle as you line up your sights, and squeeze the trigger. Your concentrated burst is off target, catching him low in the chest, but you don't miss the way he falls instantly, meaning that you took out something important in that shot, and then the mountain of fire starts pouring in from the rest of the posse, shredding another man and sending a third to the floor of their little hideout with bullet holes in his leg and arm.

With their watch men either dead or crippled, you give a nod to only other member of the group properly armored, and together you make the sprint up to the gate of the small fortification, your entrenching tool making short work of the thin wood they've used as a gatebar as you slam through the wide gap between the two doors.

And like that, you're in the courtyard, staring down a man with a shotgun.

You have all of a moment to realize he's not loaded for deer, when a solid slug breaks a post behind you in two, the bandit racking the slide and firing again.

With the slug slamming into the gate behind you as you leap to the ground, you honestly can't blame your fellow soldier for hitting the dirt and firing a spray of inaccurate fire. That shotgun has the potential to cripple whatever it hits at this close range.

Just as well, You do much the same, only with far better results, as your pitter patter of shots spark off his armor, and tear a bloody rent in the side of his arm, staggering the man.

~

Watching the man reel back, you grab your revolver from its holster bringing back the hammer on the draw and put the first two shots into his chest, causing a pinging sound as they hammer into steel, but also add a fresh source of crimson to join the puddle at his feet. Your follow up slams into his leg and almost taking it out from beneath him, the next pinging off his bracer and drawing a fresh groan as his arm goes limp.

You pull the hammer pack on the fifth shot, slamming it between the first two and creating a fresh constellation on his breastplate as it hammers home, but when you pull the trigger again, and nothing happens. You pull the trigger again, and the gun clicks empty, and your target is still standing there, under a generous understanding of term.

You watch him as he sways, his right hand empty while his left has a death grip on the pump of the shotgun.

You've hurt him bad, but you can almost see his eyes through the dark holes in his helmet, before a ringing sound echoes through the yard, and a young woman is standing behind him, a cast iron pan in her hands.

"I got him?" It's more a question than a statement, but you just nod at the girl, before you get to your feet, thumbing the cylinder free and dropping the spent shells, unfired included.

You didn't need a misfire going off out of battery and costing you a hand and a nice gun.

You find the last of the bandits half dressed, clearly having just gotten out of bed, and you share a look with your fellow.

They level their rifles and scatter guns at the poor bastards.

"I'm going to need you to put your hands up, and keep them where I can see them, or I'm going to save the marshals some rope, you understand?"

The last man gives you a shaky nod, and slowly you get him to come out of the room, before he is swiftly hog tied like Georgie and ready for the gallows. You clear the rest of the small structure, a cabin that the bandits found and built their little fort around.

You do find the other hostages, a number of young ladies and a boy that was simply unlucky if you had to guess, and after dealing with their fearful reactions to an armed man all but kicking in the door, you get them outside. There are men from the posse that recognize some of them, remembering them as cousins or the children of family friends. In a valley like this, everyone knows everybody, it's just the way things are.

But with the swift execution of the bandits, that means you can get back to what you were actually here for.

Census Data.

~

It takes you months to properly tabulate the date you collect, but soon enough, you have something approaching an actionable census. You are not on the ground for most of it, time consuming as it is, but you do ride out and put pay to the idea that Gawain citizens should expect to walk the roads unaccosted by bandits. That many of them still have scraps of armor from the Ginenet army from almost a year ago does little to soothe your mood, and so you turn to the data itself.

Lords generally expect a certain level of tax from their lands and their people, determined mostly by the taxes they've paid in the past. Sometimes this angers lords who get less than they expect, not realizing that there was a drought over this section, or that flooding drowned the crops here, the sun burnt the grapes into raisins and now all the crop is good for is mincemeat.

When you finish, with the aid of half a hundred other groups going around to ask about populations, jobs, expenses, wages, education and a hundred other things that slip your mind, you have a number.

Namely, that your father has in his lands some fifteen million people, a figure that suggests that some of the smaller regions may have a much higher density of population if you're not mistaken but would put Laoricia as a whole as one of the most populated regions on the planet.

Of course, the average education does leave something to be desired, but to your surprise, there are a great many, over half if your small army of scribes has tabulated correctly, are literate in some fashion, with craftsmen typically being better at it than farmers, though the sale of almanac's, little booklets with a description of predicted weather, suggested planting times, and other such things, helping narrow the gap.

Still, Fifteen million people is a lot.

 

[Lord Of Flames]

The Ginenet Lands

With one of the larger regions, and certainly a wealthy one at that, having almost fifteen million people would suggest that the population of Freirehalt is higher than you and others had thought it was. The population was almost always assumed to be about a hundred million in total, but if the other regions have similar numbers, perhaps a little less or more in places, than the world-wide population could easily be a third, or even half again as high as was assumed.

There was a wealth of manpower available to the Lords of Freirehalt, they just didn't know it yet. For now though, your father would likely be able to take this census and create plans that would allow better support and taxation for the different areas within your holdings. Who knows, you may even be able to set up watch towers around the most populous areas to keep a watch out for bandits and trouble to help keep them safe.

Of course, that led you to your current endevour. Namely, riding out with Alistair to examine the lands that will now be held by House Tristain for his good service.

Though, after your mother had heard about the excitement of your last trip, she'd simply decreed that you were not to left alone. This lead to a platoon of your father's best being given what amounted to guard duty over your person.

Could you have taken the Black Knight? Perhaps, if you wanted to drag it out of Master Burrel's cold dead hands, focused as he was on refitting it with the Proto-Freezers you had found. If his calculations were right, you would be able to fire indefinitely with only a little work on your part, making the Black Knight even more powerful than it was before.

The Warhammer was slated for the next refit, and finally the Archer after that, but for now, you and Alistair were enjoying the outdoors, a brisk wind, the weight of armor on your body, and the silent paranoia of your escort.

~

Is it any true surprise that as you take your horse through the woods, Alistair at your shoulder and a platoon of loyal soldiers at your back, that you find something?

You, who with every retelling becomes more of a genius, more of a lostech hunter, a better MechWarrior than any that have lived on this planet? Someone who has the ears of God as he guides you to somehow bringing Freirehalt to the same level that the Star League enjoyed at its peak?

The stories are farcical, and you are no saint blessed by the lord, but you do have a knack for certain things. One of them is violence, the other is finding the long lost.

Who knows, perhaps someday you'll stumble on a modern bit of salvage, one lost in a dispute in the last hundred years, rather than finding bits and pieces from three hundred years ago.

What actually draws your attention to the find is the thunk of metal on metal as your horse paws at the ground, its steel shoe finding something for you. Your group had stopped for a moment to let the horses graze, and at the sound almost everyone turns to look at your little palomino horse, an expression of confusion on its own face as it strikes the thing again, once more sending a ring of metal on metal through the air.

Some of the men with you just give long suffering sighs, already reaching for their shovels, while the others are as confused as Alistair as he sees you walk forward. It doesn't take long to expose the shroud of a PPC buried in the dirt, or the other one just next to it half a foot to the side. The guns help you to orientate to the tank, digging back form them looking for the commander's hatch.

When you get it open, you are treated to stale air, dirty skeletons long scoured of anything approaching flesh, and a long dried moat of mud ankle deep at your guess. The source is obvious when you look at the front of the tank, the glass of the driver and gunner seats shattered, a few more holes in the armor at head level. You imagine that was what did the crew in.

Of course, with the hatch open, you have a much greater feeling for the size of the tank, and if you took the time, say a week, you could dig it out with your hand tools, but you have better options.

"Lord Tristain, I believe we have one of your houses first combat vehicles down there. Heavy-class, two PPCs, and only moderately damaged. Dig it up, clean it out, and put an air freshener or seven inside, and I think all you'd have to do is weld on some new armor."

"You seem… unsurprised by this, Elric." Alistair's suspicion is well placed, and all you can do is shrug.

"I have a habit these days of finding things I shouldn't. Just the other day, I found a bandit problem, the time before that a dog that could jump so high you'd swear it could fly, and that's ignoring what I found for Armmore."

If anything, Alistair's look becomes even more deadpan, but all you can do is smile as you pat the tank's weapons fondly. "It could be worse, Lord Tristain." You swear he bristles every time you call him by his title. "It could have been a Scorpion."

"I'd have thrown it back if it was a Scorpion."

~

Honestly, that last thing you expected to encounter while riding through your friend's new lands was a broken down carriage in the road, a well dress man trying to fix the wheel, and a lack of anyone else around you.

You are many things, young, inexperienced, brash, all true.

You are not, however, an idiot.

Merchants that travel as well dressed as that man do not travel alone for a variety of reasons. They usually have several guards who would not desert them over something as simple as a broken wheel. They usually have aides and servants to help move the product.

For a long moment, you just look at the scene in front of you, before you turn to Alistair. "Are you thinking what I'm thinking?"

"I believe so. Half and half?"

"That's about right. I'll take the left; you take the right. Surrenders?"

"If they offer. A damn clearer ambush I've never seen."

"Aye. It could be worse, it might be real."

"Can you imagine?"

You give your brother in arms a pat on the shoulder as you wheel your horse, hand movements seeing half the platoon split to join you as you double back a hundred yards, before you dismount and move into the woods.

~

Your men move quietly through the woods, taking care not to make too much noise, and soon enough, you've outflanked the enemy. They are not difficult to spot, given they've done a decent job of camouflaging themselves, but only from the road. From behind its a mix of shiny metal buckles and plates depending on the salvage of the given bandit.

You wave your men forward, waiting only a few moments in case Alistair needed the time, and take carefull steps before you are just behind one of the most well armored bandits. He stiffens up when you press the barrel of your revolver under the lip of his helmet, and you imagine he's gone pale as you cock the hammer back. Leaning in you whisper.

"Now would be a good time to drop that gun and raise your hands. I'm in a forgiving mood, raider."

He is not the only man that chooses the better part of valor obeying you or your men, but eventually, the ease has to come to an end.

Which is how half a dozen bandits on your side die in a few seconds of highly accurate rifle fire.

Opposite you, you see the fake merchant look quite confused at the sudden crack of gun fire, before you see a man break from the tree line, coming towards the man as he stumbles through a run, the familiar green and grey of your family's troops emerging after him and putting an end to that one quick enough.

You let Alistair approach the would be merchant, letting him go through the spiel of how he was forced to do it, that the bandits had his family, that he was an honest man made to do terrible things. It lasts until Alistair asks him for his guild card, his papers, and his stamp. The man does a good job of looking relieved when he asks for these things, turning to the cart and saying they were just inside.

Of course, when he turns back around to reassure your friend he means no harm, he is held at gunpoint a dozen times over.

Which just leaves you with several prisoners, and the stash they had within the cart. It is nothing too exotic by your tastes, but they've clearly done this enough times to have a small trove of jewelry and pocket watches they've liberated by people far more generous than yourself. You doubt you'll be able to find owners for half the precious metal at this time, but some may come if they hear a description of the pieces or where it was recovered.

Sad as it is to say, some people could do with a little more awareness, as it's not Paranoia if someone is actually out to get you.

All it takes is a little display of force, and whatever troublemakers would have come to bother a large group of travelers, or just the stupid that think bothering a large force armed to the teeth can possibly end well.

What does result is a pretty clear survey of the former Ginenet lands, which reveals a few seams of minerals that will be a welcome source of income for your new vassal, a few wild pastures that could be easily be turned to good purpose with only a little bit of work, and a nice site for a future keep, running along a ridge with a natural moat provided by a swift moving river to the east.

If nothing else, the river should help quarried stones get down to the site, as well as a variety of other resources that can move faster down the water way than over land.

Either way, you and Alistair consider it a good first step, and that it provides a good foundation for future surveys into specific areas. Perhaps you'll even be able to consult the Ginenet records to see where they saw the greatest room for improvement later on, but for now, this is sufficient.

---

Keeping in contact

Coming back from the new Tristain lands having routed yet another band of bandits and their scam to take advantage of your citizen's upright character, and finding an impressive tank that'll take about a week to excavate with the help of a few dozen men, your mother has had quite enough with the shenanigans and danger that seems to follows in your wake.

If you were being honest, you seemed to stumble into danger more than have it spring up behind you, but that would have earned you a smack so you just stood there as your mother ranted for several long minutes about how God has laid before her a trial.

"And if God wants to play dirty, I can respond in kind. Elric, I think it would be best if you stayed in the keep for the next few days."

Which led you to this current state of affairs. Alistair was speaking with a number of Gawain man-at-arms that he had known in his time in the garrison of your keep, looking for his first knight among their number, while you had been all but boarded up in your room, after the staff had dropped off a heavy chest, one full of letters of all things.

Now, you can't say you didn't know that your parents were receiving letters about or for you, but the sheer number of them boggles the mind. That the first- God there must be a hundred of them- have been opened by your parents doesn't bother you, as you fold open the broken seal, a mailed fist on a quartered shield and begin to read.

"My dear niece is a lovely girl, one who enjoys reading, riding, and making a home for herself. I know that the young master and she have only a passing acquaintance, but I am sure that combined with the friendship that would be solidified between our houses, and the dowry of a herd of fifty head of cattle, twenty head of sheep, and another fifty sows and boards, that I give me assurance that She would make a fine Lady Gawain in the distant future."

You've heard of the dowries offered by some of the less liquid knights that the Noble houses have sworn to them, but to be offered a girl and enough animals for a ranch is almost sad. You pick up another letter, this time a seal with a pair of foxes on their hind legs, like they were boxing.

"Lady Emily is a fine seamstress and with her companions has crafted no small number of fine dresses and clothes for her family, much to the adoration of their fellows at various parties. She would bring a seamstress and the funding for a new workshop with her to your keep should you accept her suit for your Son's future lady."

On and on they go, and each is just more of the same.

"She is truly Beautiful, Why she has the air of the angels of yore when she goes about."

"Smart as a whip, though her tongue isn't nearly as sharp if that is any worry."

"Caring. Why once we found a bitch by the side of the road, dead but recently whelped, and it was only by Anastasia's pleading that we brought the pups back to our houndmaster…"

These many young noble ladies, and to your surprise more than one widow, have had their family, or themselves, make clear their desire to win a match with you.

And honestly, while you recognize some of these names from small get-togethers, parties, feasts, and councils you've been made to attend, you don't remember any of them in great detail. Perhaps that's conceited of you, that once you meet one kind, pretty, caring noble lady you've met them all, but when you have your own duties as heir to your house to worry about, you find yourself paying less attention than your mother may like to the opposite sex.

Leaving aside that when you attended parties with Natasha, you were usually glaring at any young man that came near her, let alone the ladies she tried to speak with. Your sister would marry eventually, and you would be sure that it was to a good, kind man, one that knew if he raised an undue hand to her, You'd turn him into fresh paint for your Black Knight's greave. When you were young, it would have been that you'd gut the man.

It never fails to please how many problems can be solved by the presence of a fourteen-meter war machine.

As it stands, you look through the many letters sent with offers of marriage and dowries and put aside a few interesting letters offering up squires instead of wives. You might actually consider those. And finally move on to the unopened letters that have been laid underneath the bundle of future kindling. That thought makes you pause, as you realize you might have to send polite refusals to every one of those letters, lest your mother decide to restart your lessons in etiquette.

Ignoring that crushing despair, you find among the first of the important incoming letters, the crest of House Sanmon decorating an envelope of finest paper. Your penknife makes short work of the seal, and you flip open the letter.

"To Master Elric Gawain,

I hope you have been well since last we spoke. My grandfather has agreed that we should be allowed to exchange letters, if only to 'Grow your circle of contacts' as he put it. I think he is a silly man from time to time, but he was quite pleased when he returned from your family's tournament. He said that you had the makings of a fine mechwarrior, but you were still too young and zealous for your own good. He is hard to impress, so I think you are on the right track.

I am still sorry about your grandfather, but I hope that punishing the people that plotted against him has soothed that hurt.

I know not where your interests lie, but perhaps it will interest you to know that the harvests for Kedia have gone overly well, and though we usually have a surplus of foodstuffs, this year we will have to sell nearly half the harvest, or have the excess rot outside our store houses. It would be a waste to try and cart it about, but my grandfather has started construction on a massive pad of stone and concrete. I admit, I am only allowed to sit in on my grandfather's council when I ask and it suits his whim, but I did hear that your salvaged DropShip should be flying soon enough, and that the Artemis had arrived back in system.

Perhaps you could speak to your father about the opportunities that may arise from buying our excess at below market price and selling it further on in weeks instead of the months it would take us?

But I am young yet and may not see every possibility. Either way, I hope you and your family are doing well these days, and wish you the best of luck. Perhaps you could send a letter back detailing your own successes and thoughts since we parted?

Sincerely,

Lady Iona Sanmon."

You had wondered about the Sanmon girl, and it heartens you to hear she is doing well. As for the proposition, her grandfather may be behind her words, but it still merits consideration. You'll write up a reply soon, but first you have to catch up with the rest of your letters.

~

The next bares the Owl of House Armmore, and with a practiced slide of your knife you open the heavy envelope. Inside is a collection of sheets, numbered in the corner for ease of reading, and so you pull up the first page and begin to read.

"To Master Elric Gawain,

I find myself beholden indebted appreciative of your efforts on my behalf, and your miraculous find. There are few enough lords on this planet that would turn aside a tank of Assault-weight, let alone one that could very well move on its own after a few hours of digging and minor repairs. House Gawain has made clear how much it values its good relations with House Armmore, and we feel much the same.

That business aside, I find myself rather perturbed, Elric. My vassals are cowed, my fleet of Tanks is 95-tons heavier and features a tank riddled with LosTech, and now I find myself in an alliance with two strong houses against a singular enemy. I cannot say that I have the military accolades that you do, but off this alone, I might just go down as one of the most successful leaders of House Armmore in our history, especially if I were to rule in peace the rest of my natural life.

To my knowledge, you alone might well be the only person alive that can commiserate, even if you also had a part to play in many of those events. You found your family BattleMech, are a proven warrior at this point, and despite your own rough charm, managed to pull three other houses into the shield wall against your foes. Have you considered that you may have decades, even if it comes to a fiery end, left before you? As may be suggested, I have been forced to consider that very thing.

Do not mistake my words as chiding, I am most impressed that House Gawain has secured its future for quite the time to come with its actions, but I hope for all our sake that it is a measure that proves unnecessary. I do not wish to march my Highlander across the forests of your homeland only to arrive to you sitting atop the wreck of the enemy's 'Mechs, but I would honor the oaths I've sworn.

That brings me to a point I am sure you are also weathering. Marriage.

I cannot say I am uninterested in the topic, but to read the dozens of letters I've received from distant cousins, knights, and second sons, they seem to universally think that I would become subservient to them should we join hands, that My BattleMech would somehow become theirs, for no other reason than I lack the dagger between my legs that they have. I will admit however, that as a Lady in my own right, none have dared ask for a dowry of any kind, some going so far as to offer a bride-price for my hand.

Forgive me if this letter seems to be a way to vent, but I have precious few I trust enough to listen and say nothing, and for all your snark, I think you would listen to me and offer me a drink before you rant about your own troubles. My father use to say that there were few things that built friendships like shared suffering, or at least that was how he explained why the Men in the yard could try to kill one another one moment and then be laughing together the next.

If you do choose to reply to this, longwinded affair, feel free to express your own thoughts in turn. I have precious little I'd do with the rantings of the Heir to House Gawain, much as you do mine.

Your friend,

Lady Samantha Armmore, Duchess of Meleutia."

It takes you several minutes to fully read through the letter, dense as it is, but it doesn't take nearly as long to understand exactly where the good lady is coming from, as you spare a glance at the pile you'd all but pushed off your desk. It might be good for you to repay her gesture in kind, even if your ranting may be more about sheep and dowries, bandits even, than someone trying to take your birth right.

Setting that aside for the moment, you reach for a letter marked with a unicorn, and flipping it open, you find a short missive, a simple invitation really.

"To the Lord and Master Gawain,

House Knightway extends its sincerest invitation to their fellow lords, for a weekend of hunting in the woods near the Knightway keep. Please send a letter ahead of you if you accept, and please bring only a party of a dozen honor guard if you feel them needed. Cooking will be handled by the hunters themselves, so servants should be unneeded.

Lord Meric Knightway, Lord of Laoricia."

That would be a good one to attend with your father. Lord Meric had been good to your house for years, and there was no reason to strain that relationship.

~

With those read and set aside, you find several letters addressed to you less specifically, their authors trying to reach the authority in these lands. You can only assume your father put them aside for you to get your teeth wet in matters of governance.

Some of them are simple, Farmers looking for permission to expand their fields, offering a fair rate for the land as is that they will have to clear on their own. You consult the map of your territory, half scribed and finished as it is, and find the relevant farm, looking over the land they want to add, and decide that it would be a victimless thing to grant, considering that their neighbor is still thrice the expansion away on the opposite side of the woods. You'd have to send out a man to measure out the addition, but if your people thought they could do extra work without issue, who were you to say no?

Others are not so clear cut, as you find a few letters from wives and their families, complaining about their husbands. After the honeymoon bliss has fallen away, daily life has grated at the soft foundation of their marriages, and now they seek some kind of settlement or divorce. You can't say you know what to do about this, considering that marriage is usually the prerogative of the church.

You know what, that might well be the lesson your father wants you to learn from that one, so you set it aside to give to the local priest when you get the chance.

And some of them just get a clear cut answer.

Two farmers feuding over who owns the river? It belongs to House Gawain, so don't mess with it. If you do, I'll make you fix it. By hand.

Traveling merchants trying to get permission to monopolize their trade route? No, if you can't make enough money traveling that route, go find another.

Permission for a Knight to wed the only daughter of another? Granted, but please have more than one child so I don't have to deal with a knight having two tanks in a decade or two.

A Geologist looking for sponsor to examine the rocky hills to the north of the keep? There might be something to that, you'll see if you can figure out a standard rate for that kind of expedition and get back to them.

The rest are more of the same, and so you get through them soon enough, leaving you with plenty of the afternoon to do with as you please.

> Well, Armmore did offer. Send a letter along with a bottle to drink and vent some of your frustrations such as how you keep finding tanks and such in the woods somehow, your own marriage proposals and trying to start up the school, and how you had to stop the techs from killing each other with wrenches at least twice now.

Taking up the pen, you start to write.

"To Lord Meric Knightway,

I and my father would be more than agreeable to join you at your keep for your outing. I hope to see you and your family in good health when we arrive, and look forward to the entire endevour.

On a similar note, recent finds have brought into question the history of Freirehalt before the arrival of the Round Table, and I wished to know if you would join forces with me in order to further study some of our finds and discoveries. If the Star League or the Rim World Republic left behind so much in material, there should be a record of it somewhere.

With our combined resources, we should be able to discover something, and hopefully help grow the power of our houses together, as well as those of our allies.

Respectfully,

Master Elric Gawain."

It is a short letter, but more than enough for your purposes. You don't know Lord Meric especially well outside of the few times you've met him in person, and going any further might be seen as presumptive.

Thankfully, that is not something that should come up with your following letter, as you start to write to young Iona.

"To Lady Iona Sanmon,

I am glad to hear from you, and reassure you that my family is doing quite well. The recent exercise that your grandfather participated in has provided an ample source of data and places where our training, both Mechwarrior and foot soldier need to improve.

I find that our respective guardians, my Father and your Grandfather, can be quite similar in their ways. I sometimes wonder if I exasperate him more than make him proud, but I have never once doubted his love, as I'm sure you haven't your grandsire's.

I appreciate your thoughts on using my family to help your own with the cons of your family's success. I will be sure to raise it with my father, and see if he can append his own thoughts to this for your grandfather to see.

Thank you for your well wishes, and I hope that both our families can benefit from any arrangement that comes about.

Your friend,

Master Elric Gawain."

With those two written, and a note attached to the second to remind you to have your father think it over, you turn to the last letter.

"To Lady Samantha Armmore,

I hope you will forgive me not listing your titles, as if I did, I fear I would need as many pages as you did. I find myself with a wealth of time available to me, owing to my duties being so much lesser than a proper lord or lady, and so I've deigned to indulge you with my own ravings.

That being said, I appreciate you sending me a letter, and I hope you and yours are doing well.

On the topic of legacy, I suppose I would coin it, I have not given it much thought, preferring to act in the now with the information I have. Perhaps you would understand it as not wanting to cede the initiative, lest someone else strike out my name as they try to write their own story.

On the topic of Marriage, I have to wonder how having noble blood affects the price of wives. If a rancher's daughter comes with a dowry of five head of good cattle, does a noble lady bring fifty? At least one of the letters I received would seem to believe so. I am under the impression that these were in fact the 'acceptable' letters my mother has curated, if only to share her pain at having to deal with the inquiries, and that there were many others that did not meet that muster.

As for your issue with men presuming much, they simply don't realize that you have a very large cannon, and that if anyone should expect to stay home and balance the books, it would be the people that don't already pilot an Assault-weight BattleMech.

On other topics, I have had to destroy two different bands of Pirates in less than a fortnight. Their equipment would make me believe they are merely deserters from the force I destroyed almost half a year ago, but who can truly say? They will give no more answers as they stand vigil from their tall oaks.

On better topics, I wonder if you have ever given thought to a sort of education campaign. Less glory to be found than seeking battle against other machines, but I think a longer lasting sort. I was surprised to find that literacy was higher than I expected within my own lands, having just completed a census, the result of parents passing on the skill to their children through the generations. I would suggest you do something similar, as I was surprised to find my family's lands with more people than we thought we had.

My own attempts have had little fruit, but I think that the Technicians that would have killed each other over a difference of procedure for replacing a damaged capacitor, something they treated like a Zealot finding a Heretic, have finally calmed enough to start sharing their skills around. With any luck we will have a basis of study soon enough, and can start trying to educate people to at least repair their own machines, let alone our mighty BattleMechs.

Regardless, It was good to hear from you, and I wish you luck with your endevours. If ever you should feel the need to share your thoughts and simply let loose your anger, feel free to send me another letter.

I fear I shall be stuck in this room for a while longer, so it will be a comfort to hear from a friend.

Faithfully yours,

Master Elric Gawain."

There, that should satisfy some of your mother's requests for you to reach out to your fellow nobles, and you can't say you dislike hearing from Iona or Samantha.

But with that done, and a plan to have several literate members of the staff write out your polite declinations, you should be able to head over to the 'Mech Bay and finally see what Master Burrel has made of your Black Knight, and the Archer.

---

Now naturally, refitting the Black Knight does not have much in the way of showy external changes, aside from the moving of the external vents of the heatsinks and even those remain covered by the same armor plates that previously covered those areas running along the kidney area of your BattleMech, just over the cylindrical casings of your torso-mounted lasers.

So it is to no surprise that you find Master Burrel standing in front of the Black Knight as one of his techs in training finishes securing the last armor plate on the Torso, the proud black lion of the Round Table standing out from the stark white breastplate that frames the center of your BattleMech.

>Black Knight BL-6-KNT 'GAWAIN' Variant: 13 Tons of armor, 5 Medium Lasers, 2 Large Lasers, 1 PPC, 1 'Sword'. 15 Standard, 6 Doubles for 27 heat sinking.

"Master Elric, I've done all I can. The new heatsinks are operating as much as I can tell short of firing the PPC to spike the heat, but I'd rather not kill us all so I leave that to you." You give the man a pat on the shoulder as he waves a hand for you to follow, leading you out of the Mechbay and into the yard where the rest of the 'Mechs kneel in supplication.

Next to the yellow Shadow Hawk and the blue Warhammer, a crimson Archer kneels, its armor freshly painted, missile racks refilled with purchased stock from some of your knights' stockpiles, and a brand new hand actuator to finish repairing the arm.

ARCHER ARC-2K 'GAWAIN' variant: 11 Tons of armor, 6 Medium lasers, 2 LRM-15 launchers, 11 Standard, 5 Double for 21 Heat sinking.

"The refit on that one was a bit more involved. I had to splice the feed for the Large Lasers into two and then rewire it some more so that both lasers on the arms would get their needed power. Then I added a conduit running from the reactor to the two chin mounted lasers. It would run hot for almost anyone else, but with the addition of the Ex-Freezers, by the time you get into brawling ranges with it, you'll have no issues."

Warhammer WHM-6D 'TRISTAIN' variant: 11 Tons of armor, 4 Medium Lasers, 2 PPCs, 1 SRM-6 launcher. 11 Standard, 7 Doubles for 25 Heat sinking.

"Honestly, on this one the freezers may be overkill, considering it'll either be firing the PPCs or the Medium Lasers, but if it's in the goldilocks zone to fire both and not burn out the capacitors, it's going to hurt whatever it hits."

You nod as he goes over the designs, describing the simple changes he's made. Things like shifting the armor slightly, for better protection, overlapping it in places by moving a plate a few inches this way or that, and tuning the weapons to fire more accurately according to the in-'Mech simulations.

All in all, good work from a team of good Mechtechs.

---

Old Factories, Fresh Combines


The trip to the mountain factory is a surprisingly comfortable affair, considering that your family has basically taken the Maxim as a personal transport, and so the journey there was short.

When you arrived, it was to the sight of the engineers your father had hired to repair the factory standing in front of the main entrance, a platoon of guards standing in perfect honor guard positions, their rifles held up perfectly straight bayonets pointed for the sky. Your father gave them a fond look as he was pushed up the smoothed path, and when your party reached the engineers, he shook hands with the foreman of the operation.

"You said that you had something to show for your efforts and my money. I hope It lives up to what I think it is." Your father's wry manner is enough to make some men nervous, but this foreman had been working for him for decades at this point, giving a smile as he nods.

"I think you'll be quite pleased, Lord Gawain. Simon, the door." The latter words are spoken to an engineer beside the switch, and to your satisfaction it starts to roll up without any further encouragement, revealing to the open air a towering construct of metal and plastic, through the rake-bar and spinning blades had not yet been fixed to this, the first production model.

"35 tons of Farming equipment. The ICE fabrication lines were still working so we have no issues there, all parts are assembled in house, and it only requires man power to properly weld it all together once we get it on a line. Combine in the front, Back hoe in the rear, We've got an attachment point for a lift hoist, but we figure that will likely get used for either mounting a trailer to hold the harvest or a sprayer to help fertilize the fields. It's a rugged old thing, but unless you wanted to retool everything I wouldn't try making tanks out of it."

To the agreement of the engineer, this is something that makes your Father quite happy.

"How many can you build in a year?" The engineer looks away from your father, crunching the math in his head.

"If we had a ready supply of metal and materials? Fifty a year. If things start to break down, we could see as few as six as we have to hand make the parts using what tools we can. To be honest, this place is a gold mine, and I'm surprised it works half as well as it does after two-three hundred years of just sitting here rotting, but I think this place was buttoned up tight before we found it. Dirt and dust sure, but no vermin, no rust just old machines left alone."

Fifty farm combines a year. Fifteen million people to feed, something you can almost already do, but with these? These will change that math a lot.

> You notice that a source of failures going forward will be in the ICE production. Stamping steel is not terribly rough on the machines, but the required cutting of cylinders and valves can wear on the tools, and without ready replacements, you're going to have a hard time making more engines, let alone keeping them up to tolerances.

You realize that the tooling heads themselves are not super unique, and therefore if you can essentially clone a set of cutting surfaces off your current set, or even better use them to produce replacement parts before production starts in full, then you can side step this point of failure entirely.

When you mention it to the Foreman, he looks surprised that you even considered it, before he mulls it over, and agrees with you that it would be a good precautionary step. Who knows how much wear the tools from when production stopped centuries ago? That means creating new ones already made its way on to his to-do list.

---

Lord Knightway was surprisingly welcome in allowing your family to effectively rent the land that your crews had dragged the DropShip to after draining out enough of the swamp to get it out of said swamp. This was some three months ago, shortly after the return of the Artemis itself, and once its crew arrived they had been invaluable in getting the Manatee to something approaching flight again.

Of course, it took a great deal of work, replacing damaged armor, the fusion torch bells, the landing struts had to be reworked to replace the one that had been crushed in the crash landing. They even find the time to finish the refit your father was looking to do without the aid of a yard, using a fascinating combination of stubbornness and technological know how in order to rig up a standard 'Military' grade Manatee.

Evidently, if you stuck doors with good seals unto the holes you cut in the hull, you could in fact cut holes in the hull. Not something that comes readily to a mind that understands that a hole in the hull means burning up in atmosphere, but you also don't live in or around DropShips, so who are you to say.

What that does mean, is that the manatee can now deploy basically its entire 'Mech compliment in about a minute if their reactors are hot, which is a vast improvement over the fish shoot you had when you captured it.

The crew of the Quiver is also more than happy to start training up the dozen or so people you actually need to run a DropShip, one of their second rate officers happy enough to take command of the Manatee at your father's invitation.

Of course, that does mean that you have to show up to its relaunch ceremony. Some people say it's bad luck to change the name of a ship, but when it has had nothing but bad luck, perhaps there's a time for change.

For course, that does beg the question what to name the Manatee?

> The Unchained Dame.

Above a White sword set on a navy field, a small woman has been painted, a shattered pile of chains around her. The paint has been sealed for a day, and so it is with a small smile on your face you wave your hand, and watch a pneumatic cannon fire a bottle of good wine at the side of it, smashing cleanly and decorating the hull with a layer of spirits.

So it was that the Unchained Dame was entered into the service of House Gawain, its ignoble origin scoured from its history as it was put to better use by its new owners.

And among them, the first thing to happen aboard the ship was not its maiden launch, but inside its cargo hold, empty of everything but a number of tables decorated with food, a small wooden arch that the ship carpenter had thrown together in an hour, and two soon to be newly weds you really hadn't expected.

On one side of you, was Fred, wearing his finest clothes, which were actually quite nice on a Mechtech's salary, and opposite him was Diana of all people, wearing for perhaps the first time in her time on Freirehalt, quite a lovely dress.

You're not sure how this romance came to be, or how they reached this stage, but as you stand there, a priest at your shoulder saying a blessing over the happy couple, they don't look like they've been forced to be here.

If anything, they seem slightly embarrassed to have this happen so quickly, but when the priest gives you a pat on your shoulder for you to take over, you start into the spiel instantly. "We are gathered here to see a binding of two people in holy matrimony. Fredrick Artor Burrel, do you take this woman to be your lawfully wedded wife, to love her, to honor her, to comfort her in her despair and to keep her in sickness and in health, together forever, for as long as you both shall live?"

"I take this woman."

"And, do you…" You lean in for a moment as she waves you forward, before you stand up straight again "Diana Walker, take this man to be your lawfully wedded husband, to love him, to honor him, to comfort him in his despair and to keep him in sickness and in health, together forever, for as long as you both shall live."

"I do."

"Then by the power invested in me by my father, Lord Gawain of Laoricia and- Kiss the bloody bride already." You break with conformity as you see the eyes the two are giving each other, deciding to speed this along.

Thank God that bottle of wine wasn't the only one they brought out here.

---

Your own Council

Your father has a network of informants, your enemies had a web of spies and informants, and while you might eventually inherit the former, you have no ready means to combat the latter.

So it was that you had to start considering how you should build a network of rumor mongers, informants, spies, and professional people watchers. While your library is extensive compared to many lords, you can't say it has much in the way of practical knowledge to share on the subject of spy rings.

And the less practical would suggest that you should hire the first disgruntled, disgraced, and angry man you could find from the enemy camp and turn him into a weapon to fire in their general direction. Things may go wrong, may go tits up for a while, but eventually things will work out to where the man gets to spend a few months hiding out in some tropical paradise with women and drinks while everything blows over.

While you doubt you'd have to resort to such an extreme, you kept it in reserve. Who knows, it might be a good idea eventually.

But that did leave you with the problem of where to start.

For some things, it is easy to come across information, such as your sheriffs' records on scoundrels, smugglers, thieves, all people that you could have leverage into making half decent informants. If not for the fact that most thieves learn their lessons when a man with a badge makes it clear if they pick another pocket they're going to lose the fingers they tried to steal with, and the smugglers start to take different routes.

Are you surprised that when pressed a few of your father's constables admit to taking small bribes to let certain cargo by untaxed? Not really, but those same smugglers rarely visited the same place twice, avoiding a pattern from forming. Clever, really.

You also can't say there is a shortage of orphans in your lands, especially considering that the short skirmish war saw many men from Ginenet's army dead on Gawain soil. Trying to assemble any kind of network out of disenfranchised children is by nature difficult, and you are by no means a natural in this area, making your showings of private charity effective helping the children, but only getting you a source of garbled rumors, treats handed over for half remembered conversations. In all likely hood, it may well work out in the future, but for the moment, you have no more leads than you started with.

It briefly crosses your mind to try and finance a troupe of some kind, using the showy nature of the performers as a distraction while their more limber coworkers navigate the defenses and walls of enemy keeps to snoop more directly, but the chances of your enemies admitting such an oddity into their lands knowing it came from yours is low.

Thankfully, you do have a touch of success, as you meet with a man named Donatello Blaise, a merchant of some small fortune, and a contact that your father had seen fit to pass to you. Any network needed a base of operations to supply and move information to your ears, and so Mr. Blaise's trading emporium would make a good fit.

A good man, Mr. Blaise has made something out of nothing with his life, having a small fortune to leave to his family, and a business for them to inherit.

"Master Gawain, I was under the impression you came to talk business." The man's voice is heavily accented, and it takes you a moment to place it as southern, perhaps Mapon in origin, but you nod graciously all the same.

"Business of a sort, though not necessarily one that would deal in coin. I find myself needing a branching organization, one that travels often and sends back word of what it finds." You gesture around his office, where many a fine curio from around the continent lie on shelves and tables. "Your caravans run all around, visiting the major capitals of the regions on a regular basis. I would be grateful if you would allow me to attach a few bodies to these caravans, and in the future, carry any letters they may send back to me. You would be well paid for your discretion, and I would rest better knowing that we had an accord."

"The son of my liege lord comes to me, and propositions my help in setting up informants and spies? Wonders never cease." The man sets aside the ledger he had been reviewing, giving you his full attention. "And beside money, what would I get out of this arrangement? Intrigue and politics is an unhealthy business, Master Gawain, and I know as well as you that loyalty bought with gold has a sandy foundation."

> Your sister does not have much in the way of deep friends, so persuading her to take the daughter as a handmaiden should not be too difficult.

You tell the man your decision, and with that he clasps your hand, shaking it firmly.

"You will not regret this, Master Gawain. My Maria is a smart girl, and well educated. She will be able to do almost anything your sister may ask of her." A burgher like himself, almost an unofficial class above the average citizen but below the nobility, may have a great deal of money, but to have an in with the local lords is a prized thing for good reason.

"I am sure she will be welcomed by my sister into her circle, and good service may see her well situated in the future. I will see about sending the first group of passengers on in the coming weeks, as well as your payment. Gold alone is a sandy base, but pour it around solid stones, and you have a sturdy foundation. As for your boy, I know a number of knights that may need a squire. I'll keep him in mind if it ever comes up. Good day, Mr. Blaise, and good luck with your deals."

"And you, yours, Master Gawain."

Honestly, a sum of gold and a position in your sister's staff, if you could call it that, was almost overly reasonable, but the man clearly recognized that getting on your good side was getting on your father's, and if his daughter becomes a loyal friend to your sister? All the better.

Could things have gone better? Of course, but for now you are satisfied with the first few strands you've laid down in this web. There will be time to build on it in the coming months.

 

[Lone Courier 6]

The Pilot of the Shadow Hawk just watched his Lance Leader explode and two Heavy 'Mechs melt out of the fucking shadows. He is not in a good place right now.

Click to shrink...

This remains one of my favorite moments, idk why