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....or not.  Spurs rolling.

Go Broncos!  I'll be busy coaching thursday and friday, might watch some saturday.  Maybe.

The Marian Imperator nodded his assent.  "Fine by me."

The Niopsian representative shrugged, smiling at the rest of the delegates.  "The terms of the treaty are the important part to Niops.  We'll take whatever name everyone else likes."

Marius nodded, So that's who he is.  The official Taurian line was that he perished in a crash years ago.  A good choice, one none of us have reason to quibble with he thought.  He rose and inclined his head to Edward.  "I had wondered who the mystery man at Lady Calderon's side was.  Good to see that rumors of your demise were greatly exaggerated.  While my nation is not so wealthy or powerful as the Concordat, we will not shirk our responsibility to this alliance.  I had recently been raising additional infantry forces for the Praetorian Guard Auxilia Legio, but I will instead be assigning these thousand infantrymen as the initial Marian contribution to the Marshals Service.  May they serve us well."


(OOC: 4FP of Infantry, to put it in game terms.)

Crimson, Canopus IV
January 30th, 3040


The negotiations were continuing apace.  There were of course bones of contention.  The Taurians were pushing a new pan-periphery military force, the Marshals.  The Marian and Niopsian representative were worried that too much of their national militaries would be drawn off into this force, leaving them vulnerable to pirates.  There was, however, broad agreement that the larger powers were too disjointed and widely spread to be effective working together in the short term.  For this reason, there had been a lot of talking of making protectorates ("provincias" to use Marius's own term) of the smaller states.  Such a nice way of saying "conquering them" Marius thought.  Some days, the discussions broke down into pair groups.  Marius had already had a tremendously productive agreement with Janice Calderon to cooperate on the construction of a new hovercraft.  Today he was paying a call on the Niopsian Vice President, while the Concordat and Magistracy representatives hashed out boundaries in the region between their states, where they'd be setting up their respective protectorates.

Oh boy.  Better speak up before the Taurian loses it.  Marius thought.  "I am Marius O'Reilly, Imperator of the Marian Hegemony.  To expedite things a bit, I'll introduce my neighbor here" he said, turning to the small man in the next seat "This is Vice President Chuck Maledden of the Niops Association.  Ms. Zadok, I hope you'll forgive my rudeness, but what exactly do you mean, 'true heirs of the Star League'?  I think I speak for everyone in the room when I say we've never heard of 'Clan Blood Spirit'." He asked, brow furrowing more deeply by the moment as he tried to puzzle out her remarks.   Home?  When was the Star League's home ever out here in the dark?  Clan?  What the devil is she talking about?

With a not-too-subtle glance toward the woman in the jumpsuit, she shook her head and whispered to the aide "We've plenty of uninvited guests at this meeting already.  If we had wanted the Confederation's presence we'd have requested it.  Tell the ambassador he'll find out when there's something to say beyond 'we're having a meeting.'  I doubt he has anything new to tell the press, since this meeting is obviously less than a secret at this point."

Crimson, Canopus IV
January 11th, 3040

The young Magestrix Emma Centrella looked up as the doors to the meeting room opened.  Her guards ushered the toga-clad Marian Imperator into the room.  Rising in greeting, she offered her hand to the older man. "Greeting, Imperator.  I trust your trip went well?"

"Quite.  Your capital is most beautiful, Magestrix.  Of course, I would expect no less than beauty from your realm."

She smiled "It is something we do well.  I'm sorry to say my preparations have not gone as well as hoped."

"Oh?  how so?"

"It seems this meeting will not be as well-attended as I had hoped.  Most of the invitees have rejected my invitation.  Of course, I expected that of some of the....lesser realms on the coreward side of the Sphere.  The journey is, as they say, long and full of terrors." She carefully avoided calling them "bandit kingdoms", considering the fact that most would consider the grey-haired man in front of her no more than the most successful of the bandit kings.  "Even the closer realms like Circinus and the Lothian League refused attendance, saying they wanted nothing to do with, forgive me, 'untrustworthy pirates cloaked in the barest legitimacy.'"

The Imperator smiled a bit at that.  "Yes, my nation has had a dark past, I'll not deny that.  Certainly not to the woman whose nation has felt the sting of our raids most keenly.  But I hope you'll trust me when I say that I'd not have bothered to attend this meeting if I did not want to bootstrap my people up from the old ways.  If I were still just a petty bandit king like Grimm or Valasek I'd not walk unarmed into the capital building of a former target of our raids.  I take it the response was better from the greater powers, Taurus and the Outworlds?"

"Your candor is appreciated, Imperator, and yes, the response was better, if only marginally.  The President Avellar also begged off on the basis of distance, but he wished us luck and asked to be kept apprised of the results.  Protector Calderon is sending an emissary."
"Let me guess, he's too busy checking under his bed for Davion assassins?"

The Magestrix chuckled at that, shaking her head.  "Now now, Imperator, we should not make fun of our potential allies odder proclivities.  I've said nothing of your attire, after all." she said with a sly smile.

Marius grinned.  "I think all the notable powers in human space have adopted one cultural veneer or another.  The ComStar adepts with their monkish robes, the neo-feudal trappings of chivalry in the Suns and bushido in the Combine, and so on.  My grandfather Johann wished to take Rome as his model, and felt it best to do so in more than just the way he organized his government.  He felt, I think, that adopting Roman dress, building style, and so forth would serve as a constant reminder to the people of what he was trying to achieve. " Marius shrugged and smiled at her "At least, that's what I tell my advisors if they question it.  I was too young when he left us to have spent much time discussing matters of state with him."

"And my condolences for your loss.  Whatever else he was, and whatever else it cost our peoples in bad blood, he was truly a man of great vision.  At any rate, I gather that the Taurian emissary is highly placed, Thomas sounded as if he fully trusted him and would abide by whatever his emissary agreed to.  He was a little secretive about it though, I'm as yet uncertain why.  But he should be arriving soon.  There could be other emissaries from small powers, but probably no one worth, shall we say, sitting at the grown-ups' table.  They'll follow our lead or they won't.  Perhaps we could review some economic figures while we wait?" she asked.

"Certainly"

She nodded, called up the files on her computer, and added "Oh, one more thing, let me get us some refreshment" she said, activating her intercom system.

Crimson, Canopus IV
January 10th, 3040

It had been a strange few months for Imperator Marius O'Reilly.  First, the revelations of Sean's embezzling.  He'd always known the boy was ambitious and secretive, had always wondered if he would one day suffer an "accident" when Sean wanted the throne, but draining Hegemony funds to support a dozen or more mistresses was too much.  Once he learned that he was a grandfather, the Imperator had quickly moved to have the plebeian girl and his grandson brought to Nova Roma.  Baby Julius was his new heir.  Sean himself had been stripped of position within the government, disinherited, and banished to one of the new colonies he had been siphoning money from, Herculaneum, which he had heard the inhabitants were already calling "Marius's Tears" because of the great disgrace their new colonist had brought on his father.  And then he got a letter inviting him to a pan-Periphery conference to discuss "the current situation and the possibility of cooperation".  So here he was, being chauffeured through the capital of his nation's most common raiding target to a meeting with the Magestrix herself and representatives from, presumably, the other leading periphery powers.  Any that cared to answer the call, at any rate. What strange times we live in, he mused.  Alliance is the order of the day. the Fed-Com Treaty, the Kapteyn Concord, and now the great powers of the Periphery were coming together.  Could this be the start of some coalition of Periphery states, or would they be unable to reconcile their many differences, Marius wondered as he gazed out the window at the people and the architecture of the Canopian capital.