- ...Well now. As much as I loathe the necessity, I do actually need to take your report. Things are getting a little urgent.
- MM, sure, sure... Just, ah... One moment while I mmm... Oh quit it, I can hardly think of serious things if you keep distracting me like that!
- But it's ever so fun. How could I possibly resist?
- Flatterer... Mm, just keep it slow for now, alright? So... HM. What to begin with?
- Well that's easy. Tell me a little story about Champagne court.
- Those folks, mm? Well, they've been busy. That little prodigy you keep mentioning is literally burying them under an avalanche of new and exciting. Not just by herself, either. To be frank here, we keep hearing odd things about all of it. On one hand, we are quite certain the engagement with the third prince was dissolved because she wanted it gone. On the other, she immediately turned around and dragged the third prince into a joint production effort. Speaking of which, would you kindly arrange for a bit of extra funds?
- Oho? Didn't we already buy a whole gross of spyglasses? I'll grant that they're quite useful for certain kinds of job, but... Aaah, I see, something else they're offering that caught your eye?
- Mume1Aunt Magdalene and her girls were quite vocal about graduated glasses...
- Do tell?
- Oh, yet another of those "so simple yet so useful" little things. Remember the measuring cups? Well, imagine the same cup made out of glass. And having a stack of marks on the side. Fill it up to the first mark, that's onse, fill up to second, that's two, fill up to third, that's posson. Or a bigger jar that fits a pinte with posson marks. Or a fine vial that lets you measure out quarters of onse...
- I see, I see... And that's hardly the only thing they make for alchemists, I wager?
- Dokter Netsboym had been making noises about "Royal medicos kit", whichever that is. According to girls over at the guild, a fine and extensive collection of instrumentarium for a medical scholar. A little pricy, but I do believe we should get at least one, see what new things are inside. Maybe take some notes and pass them to our own artisans for, ahem... inspiration?
- Yes, that sounds reasonable enough. I'll see what can be done about extra funds later... For now, continue. So the new keeps coming?
- Just so, yes. NN, a little lower... Yessss... Anyway, the latest buzz among the knights is some kind of new weapon. They're being cagy about it, so we don't know much yet. Here's what I'm confident at. One, it's something similar in use to bow. Point and shoot. Two, it requires only one hand to aim and shoot, much like a small crossbow. Three, it's something alchemical in nature. Finally, fourth, it can punch a hole clean through the solid steel helmet, front and back. Not sure from what distance, though.
- Wait wait wait wait. Helmet? Not chainmail? Solid cap?
- Yeah, we actually have the helmet in question. Oh, this is just a conjecture, but we believe that this weapon was what Jungfrau Gillespie used to fend off the assassin on Year's Ending celebrations. If so, then we additionally know that using it produces a loud sound reminiscent of a thunderclap and that using it comes with fire and smoke. We also strongly suspect the projectiles are small round pebbles of the kind you'd see used in a sling.
- So our standing recommendation should be...
- Don't piss off any Gillespies or Cullens if they can see you. Chances are, if they can see you, they can make a hole in you at their convenience, and neither amulets nor armor would mean much.
- Scheisse, Old Man is going to be a problem there, won't he?
- Yes, indeed. He is supremely capable in the art of pissing powerful people off, unfortunately. On the plus side, after getting killed two times in a row, even he has a measure of healthy caution insofar as Jungfrau Gillespie is concerned. She is worryingly and remarkably unconcerned about erasing inconvenient people out of existence.
- Are your gals and pals safe?
- Oh, I have explicitly ordered all of them not to be inconvenient. We will have much need of them later on, when Old Man inevitably shits in the soup once again.
- Now, now, it's not like you to be so weary.
- Sorry. It's just... he used to be someone we all looked up to. A hero. A person to build yourself after. To see this... mockery of him resurrected over and over and OVER again... And to realize that we did not see how incapable this, this... this facsimile of a person truly is... Ugh.
- To be completely fair, I suspect the chief problem here is simply in the fact that being killed twice over in a short row gave Old Man pretty much no time at all to grasp all the new things that occurred in the last year. The pace is breakneck for the living, let alone revenants like him.
- True enough. I've certainly been wondering if I'm actually awake a time or three.
- Alright. So we know Jungfrau Gillespie is the real deal. How does she do that, do we know that much? God-blessed? Stable of scholars? Lucked out with her defilement target?
- Everything, by the looks of it. Champagne Temple is confident she's gods' chosen one. Kassandra confirms she is very thoroughly defiled. Plenty of scholars around her, both as lovers and as employees.
- Lemand Lemarchand, you mean?... What can you tell me about that consumption treatment? Something worthwhile or?
- Oh, that one is a real deal alright. Reliably cures consumption in any stage, so long as you stick to instructions and don't screw up.
- Oho? I suppose I should not be surprised. How many people are known to be already cured?
- We do believe at least two dosen, partially in Parsee, partially in Grenwille. Soon to be more, sir Pasteur gave his unrestricted endorsement for the treatment last week.
- Can we get our hands on a detailed enough description of procedure to reproduce?
- Sure, so long as you sign off on obtaining license.
- ...And they will give license to someone from Kraut?
- On standard terms, yes. I have already made inquiries. His highness Alphonse had already signed off on royal endorsement of this license within Kraut.
- Ahh. So it's just a matter of getting herr Netsboym through the licensing office, then? Good, good.
- ...And now I have a premonition that Old Man will try to steal it.
- Why would he? It's basically given out to us as it is.
- Because he would never be able to believe there is no hidden cost or trap with what was proffered to us voluntarily.
- ...Scheisse.
Spycraft is hard. Spycraft without grudges is harder. Spycraft involving the death of Klaus is inevitable.
For everything else there's MasterCard.
Very clearly old man is Klaus, so it is probably some other secret researchers or spy network beings that work in tandem with him. considering the homunculus stuff we learned about, they are probably a bunch of researchers. Considering they actually know to not be inconvenient to lady Gillespie , they have more brains than Klaus does.
probably the rest of Kraut spy infrastructure. more capable of actually being shadowy and functionally smart, less homonculuses and resultant stupidity from degradation due to rapid retirement of previous versions.
My bet? The male voice is Hiram's spy master, or somebody who works for him, whose been referenced a couple of times in comments. The girl I'm less sure about, except that they're on the same side, and either she holds the purse strings, or she's the rout for covert messages home. I'd also like to point out that they weren't necessarily having sex, the comments work just as well for a massage, some of them work better even. In short? I think that this is a spy, filing his report home with a long term agent stationed at either a brothel or a massage parlor. Which gives them a convenient excuse to meet for arbitrary lengths of time in private, that nobody will question.
Astute guesses.
Wait, how do u know their genders and affiliation with Hiram
@Nubtastic Well... I don't. That's why its prefaced as my 'bet'. I'm guessing. But the evidence is there to support it. We'll just have to wait and see what the next chapter says when it comes around. Or more likely several chapters as I think that Alyssa has some other things to do before she'd meet these people, assuming my guess is right of course.
I feel kinda sorry for Klaus's underlings. Have to deal with a paranoid boss would royally f*cks up constantly.
Paranoia is a bonus if you are a spymaster. It is a job where you do need to consider that there is an enemy behind every bush, or that any random underling is a double agent, or that the next door kingdom has initiated a long term plan that will harm your nation even if you cannot make head or tails of it.
The whole thing is that Klaus did not constantly f*ck up. When the original was alive he never suffered a defeat, to the point that the homunculi cannot even imagine surrendering. Only recently did he run into consecutive set backs (not defeats seeing that that would mean the other side would have won) and only when dealing with Alyssa, which is why they still keep him around since he is still dominating everything not Alyssa.
If you want to talk about a problem it is his obsession with Alyssa (as a result of dying to her or to someone that works for her without knowing how or what he was doing).
@ThatGuyOverThere Reasonable paranoia. If you let it ramp up to the point where you suspect literally everything, getting anything done becomes a problem.
Klaus has already shown the inability to accept that some things are just as they appear on the face of it. The roads for instance.
Actually being suspicious about the roads is not that strange. You need to remember they are still in the era where maps are locked up tighter then the stuff in the royal treasury due to their strategic importance.
So why would you give your competition the ability to move their army faster (main reason why the Romans built that highway network of theirs)? Why would you give your competition something that makes internal logistics faster and easier to manage? Why would you give the competition something that eventually will result in a bigger economy, which translates in a bigger better equipped army? That is how strategically important decent roads are, so why give it to a competitor for free instead of using the time it takes them to steal the innovation to boost your economy and give yourself an edge to pressure said competition with.
So yes there has to be a trick that Klaus (and the others in the intelligence service) haven't figured out. There IS a trick, it is just that Alyssa is such an outside context problem that no one will guess it until after the fact. Alyssa is bootstrapping the technology (she wants streaming movies, home delivery, and a fast ride to Mars and wants it yesterday) of the world, having a bigger base to do so from makes it easier. And as a possible side effect reduce wars due to integrating economies (the reason why the EU got started, do exactly this between France and Germany so that a war between them would destroy their economies in a form of MAD).
@ThatGuyOverThere I was more on how he didn't believe his own intelligence reports or at the very least test it out. He received the information but discarded it out of hand.
@Akhier He didn't dismiss the report. He couldn't believe it was that simple since someone would have thought of it earlier. He expected something that was done to the one component that could hide something, the tar. Tar production to which his spies/infiltrators, who wrote/gave the report, didn't have access since they were working on the road crew.
@ThatGuyOverThere @Akhier Essentially so. While Klaus managed to get together some testimonies from people handing parts of the process, he never found anyone who performed it all from the raw materials to a stretch of road, because Alyssa assigned workers with job distribution in mind and there was literally no one who handled the whole of process. Since the whole thing turned out to be so blatantly simple, he presumed there are some intermediate steps in preparation of tar or/and gravel or some kind of post-processing to solidify the road surface properly that he didn`t manage to get his hands on. Which, to him, makes sense, as those would be the parts most likely to involve magic and therefore likely handled by petty nobles who as a whole he perceives to be a whole different class of actor to subvert due to contemporary sensibilities about noblesse oblige and honor.
@Cytotoxin @ThatGuyOverThere Yes, he didn't get the "full picture" with the report, but he did dismiss it out of hand. Even if there was a missing step he should have still done some tests on what he did have. To just toss the results away without testing is what I mean by dismissing out of hand. Even if the test had been a failure it could have pointed towards what was missing. He didn't need to pave a full road. Just do enough to check the results.
@Akhier Klaus DID NOT dismiss it out of hand. He could not believe it was that simple and suspected a missing step.
The never doing the test is just your goal post shifting explanation of why you are still right. Which is still WRONG even if he never ordered a test since he did not dismiss the report he just assumed the people working for him did not get the whole process from start to finish. Worse for you since we never read about him not ordering a test, as you need for your argument to 'win', you cannot assume he did not order it. Especially since Klaus is frighteningly competent and is more likely to order such a test (assumption based on history of Klaus, homunculus Klaus and general behavior of the latter not a guarantee that this test was ordered) just to make sure there is a missing step, and more importantly where, so he can tell his underlings where and what to look for.
Even better not doing the test no could also mean that Klaus concluded that, most of, the report was correct and that he'll get the part he assumes is missing soon.
it also was something like one week between receiving the initial report and Alyssa dropping in (almost literally seeing the first real use of the airship) so he had other priorities. Priorities like countering her mercantile bent when introducing shelves of new goods into Kraut or finding what the play is behind delivering tons (or quintals) of ripple steel (and products made of it) or setting up all the needling Alyssa got, to test her, when she finally arrived in Kraut. And that is on top of all his other work. Else said it was likely doing the test was not high priority, especially since there was a chance Kraut would get the whole process at the meeting or the expectation that his spies/infiltrators would get into bits of the process that they failed to get to with the current report.
TL;DR: Klaus WILL NOT IGNORE a strategic invention like tar roads for the reasons I outlined in my earlier post. Your argument of him dismissing a report on it, since said report is in his opinion merely incomplete, is plain moronic. Claiming things no one knows happened (or did not happen) does not circumvent that problem, nor does it guarantee your interpretation is correct since there can be other reasons.
@ThatGuyOverThere @Akhier
Peace. Klaus actually tried testing, as it happens. First, he hit a delay sourcing enough of tar, because no one in Kraut, just like no one in Champagne, ever bothered to keep track of where the tar pits are on a centralized level. So he was reduced to sending out his men all over the Kraut edge of the mountains to poke around in the villages there and discreetly find out if anyone knows any "useless" tar pits. This took better part of two months to locate the suitable pit, extract a bunch of tar out of it in relative secrecy and transport it to secure location. They were just about ready to begin poking around with sages to see if they can figure out the "missing steps" on their own, when Alyssa came over and kicked the stool from under them by simply giving Alphonse the manual for complete technology.
Hence, Klaus bellyaching about it. If he did not assume he needs to figure out the missing steps and did not go about things discreetly, he could have just tasked the western lords with finding the tar instead of sending out his own men and it would be at his disposal much earlier.
P.S. To be entirely fair to Klaus, his efforts did NOT go to complete waste. Thanks to his scouting for the tar pits, he was able to quickly and decisively arrange for a source of it to be exploited by Kraut kingdom. So, while yes, he could have had roads earlier, his actions did help to make things quicker, even if not in the way he would have preferred it to happen.