Discovery Gaming Community

Apologies for the late reply. We are certainly interested in providing VIP shuttles and pilots to carry the movers and shakers of Sirius to where they need to be. However, given recent events in Rheinland, we would need clarification on your legal situation with one of our partner houses before proceeding with such an arrangement. We are a cruise line, not an interhouse agency tasked with providing amnesty for political refugees, and our Liberty charter along with agreements with Rheinland would prohibit us from working with a declared fugitive from the law.

Of course, if there are mitigating circumstances in play or if this incident is a misunderstanding, we could still be persuaded to help. Otherwise, you are free to purchase a shuttle from Curacao if you can get here (the ship purchaser on Baden-Baden might be a better call, though the selection is more limited). But know that if you ask us to make a delivery, that would constitute "information on the whereabouts of Linus von Claussen," which we are legally obliged to pass along to the authorities.

I hope this situation resolves profitably for all parties involved, but I don't even know if legally I can wish you good luck right now without it being construed as an action undermining the Federal Republic. Rheinland holds one of our resort worlds, and I will always act in the interests of Orbital Spa and Cruise to protect our assets. Whatever information you chose to relay, assume I will react accordingly.

Let's focus on the contract for a personal shuttlecraft and safe the rest for when things have calmed down in Rheinland. I saw the nomad incursion myself earlier in New Berlin as I was scouting with my own Taurus, so one thing at a time seems to be the order of the day. Your terms are agreeable, payment can be made to OS&C|Guilder[Bank]. If there is anything else you need for your shuttlecraft, please don't hesitate to ask. Enjoy your flight, Mr. VonClaussen.

Oh, and the battleship Karlsruhe, the large capital ship maintaining vigil over the route to Baden Baden, appears to have a similar "clerical error," as you called it. I imagine resolving their understanding of the situation will be a far more pressing concern than hashing out Rheinland's relationship with OS&C.

I hope this channel is still open and active between us. First, I wanted to thank you for respecting OS&C neutrality in this conflict. As a Liberty chartered corporation with holdings in Rheinland space, I am glad you can appreciate the complexities of our situation.

That being said, the situation on Stuttgart does rattle me. The sooner order is restored to the system, the better it is for all parties involved. OS&C ships are not equipped to ship out detainees or transport materiel to the surface, but moving large amounts of voluntary passengers is our bread and butter. I know the Federalists are evacuating their people to Thuringia, and the sooner they are out of Stuttgart, the sooner life can return to normal in the system. They might cause problems for your efforts later down the road, of course, so I do not fault you for cracking down on such an evacuation.

I have a proposal: Let an OS&C ship (or ships) evacuate some of the Federals off Stuttgart. We'll write up the event in our publication, Wanderlust, and it can serve as a propaganda boost for yourself, a chance to appear kind hearted and magnanimous to all Rheinlanders, even to your enemies. Letting a single load through would be enough to get you the good publicity and might stave off years of insurrection. Any time someone will try to sully your name on Stuttgart, someone will counter, "Yeah, but he did let those evac ships through." A few thousand potential evacuees might be well worth having more of Stuttgart speaking on your defense, especially when all of those evacuees know the only reason they could get off world is because you allowed it. It also puts the Federals in a bind: stopping our ships means firing on their own people just to spite you and your government. Letting us through means tacitly accepting that it is you, not them, who is calling the shots in Stuttgart. OS&C gets to do a good turn for both sides in the conflict, Stuttgart is pacified that much sooner with that many fewer recruits to a potential resistance still in system, and Wanderlust gets a good story. Everybody wins.

I was at the Leeds evacuation during the war, I've seen the power that such acts can have first hand. I know I've come to the defense of the Gallic navy on multiple occasions because of the captains who refused to fire on the Breezewood as we were evacuating Bretonians from the planet before it was glassed. There is potential to show your strength in novel ways here.

Of course, you're in the middle of a war and if all this sounds like nonsense to you, by all means tell me to stick to Baden Baden. I'm just trying to do a good turn for as many people as possible.

New Berlin has always been problematic with its lengthy day night cycles. Any property we hold is only useful half of the time, leading to a lot of interesting logistical solutions on our end. Most of our assets on the capital can be packed up and moved to properties on the other side of the planet which are activated as they come out of "hibernation." It's functional, but less than ideal. And it is an open secret that Baden Baden has always struggled the most of all OS&C properties. We had hopes that Gallic tourists coming in from Zurich would finally make the world viable, but those plans now seem delayed indefinitely.

Developing Hamburg's tourism industry would be in the best interests of all involved. Certainly it is more accessible to the Liberty market. So long as the empire secures the friendship of Liberty, it would be easy to fill Hamburg's resorts with socialites and other tourists, though admittedly it would face competition from Denver on that front. Most Rheinlanders want to escape their comparatively cold worlds, and Libertonians looking for slopes can turn to Colorado. I think we can start to drum up some business for Hamburg, but obviously we need to proceed with caution.

I'd like to take point on this with the Breezewood and a writeup in Wanderlust magazine. We'll keep it as a purely internal route for now until the current conflict is resolved, but if you can guarantee safe passage from the military and its allies, I'm confident we can negotiate with any Federalist patrols we encounter. To that end, since you mentioned possible funding to encourage this endeavor, would the imperial government be willing to ensure the Breezewood's route against potential acts of piracy in Rheinland space? While we take comfort in your confidence in the security of Hamburg for OS&C ships, the ability to seek compensation for any incidental expenses would go a long way to allowing us to make those runs.

If the Breezewood has relatively uneventful flights to Hamburg, I will then open up the route to the rest of the corporation. But the politics here are delicate, and I would not want to put any of my other captains in harms way if I myself would be unwilling to take such a risk.

We've managed to evacuate approximately 9,000 Rheinland passengers from Baden Baden to Hamburg. They seemed content with the compensation we offered them, mostly econonomy passengers who we upgraded to luxury accommodations on Hamburg to get our obligations to them off the books. We're going to have many vouchers floating around due to all this for years, but this will be several hundred fewer to worry about. Their reviews seem relatively positive so far, so I call this a successful proof of concept.

I am relieved to see the security of the Stuttgart system is returning to something approaching normal with the retreat of Karlsruhe, but it seems the situation on Baden Baden is still problematic. I've heard unconfirmed reports of an arrest of an OS&C official by the Imperial police and the loss of contact with one of our liners, the Martinique. I've been out of the loop here in the Omicrons, and I was hoping you could shed some light on what's happening on Baden from your end.