Farewell, Baron Namsos. Hello . . . ???

 In an earlier post I described the chaotic events on Schamel that led to the death of Baron Namsos of Stavanger, and narrowly avoided the nuclear death of several thousand people at Count Murietta's mining camp. The players have not been able to move this conflict forward for several weeks, owing to real-world commitments. 

The situation remains volatile. Within two weeks of the Affair's conclusion, the following official statement was released by the Baron's Council. It went to Schamel, Holtzmann, and every Embassy and Consulate Stavanger maintains.

The Government of Stavanger has made it known that as of week 22 year 929 SA, a state of Feud has existed between the House of Namsos of Stavanger and the House of Murietta of Holtzmann. Namsos holds Murietta personally responsible for the death of Baron Dominic Namsos of Stavanger. Therefore, all vessels, persons and institutions bearing allegiance to Murietta or operating under his banner or colors are subject to attack, seizure or destruction wherever they may be found.

The Government of Stavanger recognizes the right of House Namsos to take such actions as it deems necessary to exact retribution including the death of Count Murietta. No other Imperial vessels, persons, or institutions are legitimate targets of this Feud. The Feud will be ended when Namsos is satisfied that Murietta has made adequate restitution and compensation for his offenses against the House.

Letters of Marque have been issued, all Stavangerian diplomatic outposts have been notified, and all allied and friendly governments will receive customary notice of the State of Feud.

For the Barons of Stavanger

signed Allan Hokksen, First Baron of Stavanger 

Count Murietta replied:

A Statement Regarding the Declaration of Feud Between House Namsos and House Murietta

The Schamel Affair: A Traveller Braunstein

It all started in week 16 of year 929 of the Space Age when Tyrian von Stolberg arrived on Schamel. He was under orders from Count Murietta to explore for ways to boost the Schamelian economy. this was meant to get into the local's good graces and allow Murietta room to negotiate with them for mutual economic benefit. Two weeks later, von Stolberg's prospecting team hit the jackpot - a lode of gadolinium, possibly as much as a million tons of it. In-game, gadolinium is an important component of jump drives, so it's in demand by the ship-building powers: Lanzhou, Stavanger, Dekalb, and the Empire.

On the Traveller Trade tables, metals/alloys go for 10,000 credits a ton, so this mine was billions of credits waiting to be dug up.

What Happened?

Six Factions showed up on Schamel to negotiate and deal for access to the gadolinium mine.

• Count Murietta
• Baron Namsos of Stavanger
• The Lycosky Trade Protectorate Director of Operations, Corridor Region
• The Dekalbian business director for Thetford Aerospace
• Mr. Tarpov, Assistant Secretary for Trade at the Talaveran Consulate (a Boss for the ICO, the Sakamoto Ring)
• Baron de Quintero, another Contender who has a lot of money in mining already, and might see Murietta as competition.

and the Governor of the Schamel Habitation, Gov. Castberg, played by the Referee. In retrospect, it should have been a player running Castberg. The Referee had too much to keep track of to play him effectively.

The Referee assigned each faction a primary and a secondary objective. this front-loaded some conflict into the game. Each faction would, at the end, be assessed on how well those objectives were accomplished. 

Each turn, the players handed to the Referee a card explaining their plans for the following turn. Then they had 20 minutes to interact with the other players in negotiation, argument or whatever. The time limit kept things from bogging down, but we could have made it 30. We only had the afternoon to play it out, and we wanted to get through as many turns as we could, to get to some kind of resolution. We did. See below.