Discovery Gaming Community

Eva Morgenrot entered the conference room aboard the Cruiser Schwarzwald and expected to see many of her associates. Instead, she found Karl Kuerbis loading boxes with pumpkins. So many pumpkins.

Noticing she had entered, he turned and said, "I am sorry Eva, we had more pumpkin orders than I thought! I am moving them out now, it shouldn't take too long, ja?"

Eva just shook her head and walked out of the room. At least the Outcasts weren't set to meet with them for a while.

* * *

Two hours later, Eva returned to the room. It was now emptied of surplus pumpkins, though a few carved jack-o'-lanterns sat around to give some ambience. It was much better. Knowing that both her associates and the Outcast delegation would be there shortly, she took a seat at the nearby table.

A moment later, Albrecht, their newly recruited ex-salesman, entered the room with several binders, each containing information about various models of tractors and other farm equipment.

"Good," Eva said, "the Maltese delegation is very interested in this."

With that, the two sat and waited as other LWB members joined them, as they all awaited their potential future business partners.

Koeln System - sometime near "dusk", New Berlin Time (NBT)

The giant Deep space/colonist ship, La Diligenza was silently gliding through the Norddrauwolke Nebulae, in Koeln. Slowly creeping through the dense cloud system, making it's way to the Schwarzwald. Mission, increasing cardamine production.

The sound of alarms echoed over the Diligenza's comms as the massive ship slowly made it within the Schwarzwalds scanner ranges. The entire crew was in high alert, nobody know how well they could trust the farmers, and they were known to cooperate with a enemy of the nation, the Red Hessians.
As expected, Martino remained calm, confident in his ships stealth devices. The cloaking devices was de-activated as the Diligenza broke through the walls of what seemed to be a small void in the cloud, the Schwarzwald was a mere 400m away. Frantic and surprised rheinland voices was echoing over the comms, demanding everything from papers to disabling the weapon systems.

Eva, sitting in the conference room smiled carefully as the news of a mysterious ship appearing 400m off the aft. She quickly assured the commanding officer onboard to take it easy and calm down, After all, her quests had arrived.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

On board the Schwarzwald

Martino finally made it onboard, along with him was some of his most trusted men. All of them armed to the teeth in order to protect their administrator in case things went south.
Martino and his delegation was greeted by a young looking girl, her clothing seemed to fit better in a soft-core magazine then on a cruiser, however, he didn't pay much attention to it. With his mind set on "business mode" anything unrelated to business became irrelevant to him.

As the delegation moved through the corridors, they noticed that crates upon crates of pumpkins littered the sides and walls of the corridors. Occasionally, a jack-o-lantern was placed around the place to provide some eerie lighting.
After what seemed like an endless cycle of turning right in every cross section they could find, they finally reached the goal, three minutes late.

"Oh, gut, you are almost an hour early!" Eva said to the Outcast delegation. "You did know that we use Stuttgart Standard Time here, ja?"

She stood and gestured toward the conference table. "Please, have a seat," she said. "We may have some of our other associates join us later. As you can see, sometimes it's hard to get around in Rheinland."

Eva sat and gestured across the table. "Now, down to business," she said. "We hear you are interested in some of our farm supplies, ja?"

The meeting

Martino walked down the corridors, holograms depicting the past littered the hallways, along with political slogans and propaganda. It finally dawned for him, that he was in Rheinland. He couldn't but smile when he saw the images, they reminded him of home, back at Malta.
As the young girl lead them to conference room, another woman came to greet the entourage. Her name was Eva Morgenrot, and apparently, she held the command on-board. Martino kept smiling, shook her hand and presented himself. Then he reached for his right pocket. He clearly needed to calm down, things were going along without a hitch, it made him nervous.

"Do you mind, signora?" he said, as he nonchalantly lit the cigarette anyway.

Eva said something to the young girl and gestured that they should follow her into the conference room.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Business

Eva clearly was a woman who meant business. Not a single second was wasted from the moment they sat down, till the moment she presented her merchandize. Martino were intrigued by this strong sense of business, he hadn't expected the farmers to cut to the point this soon. However, this wasn't a bad thing either.

Martino and his advisers browsed the catalogs laid out before them. Several products caught their attention. Not only had the farmers been able to present top of the line agricultural machines, but they also had presented various supplementary goods, such as fertilizers, weed killers, watering systems and processing plants. Just these catalogs alone was worth the trip, even if the deal went south, they now knew which products would fit their use the best.

As they finished browsing the catalogs, some more people entered the conference room.

"Ah, you look like you see some products you are interested in," Eva said with a smile. "If you are, we can start higher production soon. Right now we don't really need as many in space, as you can imagine. Mein engineer tells me we can produce them en masse, however."

"We do have plenty of the non-mechanical items, though," she said. "We're low on FloraGro though, it's hard to get from Liberty. Maybe we could come to some kind of agreement about that, too?"

Eva nodded to some of the people entering, which included Karl Kuerbis, who first spoke with the Outcasts. "Ja!" he said, joining right in. "But it would be even better if we had the opportunity to do some farming of our own. At least I imagine many people would enjoy that."

"Oh, ja, that would make sense," Eva said. "You Maltese use regular money, ja?"

"The Negotiations"

The entourage looked at eachother, some of the nodded, some of them didn't even flinch. But a general consensus had been reached. Martino looked at each of the other members one more time before he started to speak

" We want 10 tractors, some of this, and this, and 20 000 tonnes of fertilizer, in addition to 5000 tonnes of floragro... each month"

Naturally, we do utilize the standard currency like everyone else, however, if you were to take some of our product with you home, you can gain alot more money by simply handing our product over to the rogues or junkers in Liberty.
As for farming on Malta, it has some hazards that comes with the job. The fields are deadly, inhospitable and outright hostile to farmers, this is why we use cheap labor. Another problem would be the inevitable cardamine addiction that you would build up. You would be bound to work for us, for the rest of your life. However, if such dedicated workers were to pop up and ask for work, well, i wouldn't stop 'em.

The farmers were a bit startled by these words. Dangerous to be farming.... that didnt sound very good. Still, they were more then happy to do business, as long as the maltese fellow's paid up.

"Karl raised his hand and said; just one more thing, how do we get to ze planet of yourz?"

The other farmers looked at each other and nodded. They hadn't thought so far ahead.

One of the Maltese fellows took one of the napkins lying on the table and started scribbling on it with a ballpen and some crayons he had with him...

"he....has....crayons. A gangster with crayons...." Eva stuttered with a shocked voice.

The Maltese man handed them a crude map.
Now, shall we do business, he said.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The Map

"We want 10 tractors, some of this, and this, and 20 000 tonnes of fertilizer, in addition to 5000 tonnes of floragro... each month" the man had said.

"Ja," Eva said, "We can definitely do the tractors und the fertilizers, even more than that I think as long as the GMG don't cause problems."

She stopped and frowned. "The FloraGro though," she said, "I don't think we can't ship that much. We barely get any of it down here in Rheinland. The Libertonians are using it all for themselves!" She rubbed her chin thoughtfully before continuing, "But maybe your business associates und big ships in the California system, you could... acquire some? We could trade you some of our deliciously fresh food und fine tobacco for it."

"Of course, if we suddenly find ourselves with ein supply of it," she said, "We'll gladly sell you the surplus."

Albrecht spoke up and said, "We also come across a lot of Daumann brand light arms, particularly Daumann Devastators und Daumann Shredders, if you are interested in those."

Meanwhile, the Outcast had been sketching the map to Malta and handed it to Karl. "Oh!," Karl said, excited, "This will surely be of use in shipping our goods to your planet, ja? I can't go personally because of mein wife, but I will make sure our captains can find it by copying this to other napkins in the Biergarten."

Meeting is closed

Martino stood there and listened to the farmers, he then raised his hand slowly, signaling for the farmers to stop talking. The room went dead silent almost immediately.

"Well then, except for the FloraGro, please bring whatever else you can. For example, i hear that Xenobiotic Filters are being produced within your reach, a few of those could come in handy, if you wish to stay "healthy" after paying a visit to our little corner of sirius"

Eva looked at him with a suspicious glare. She didn't like the sound of what had just been said. "stay healthy after paying a visit to our corner of sirius".... It sounded dangerous, yet so very very exciting at the same time.
The other farmers didn't seem to pay attention to the health risk at all, and the negotiations were wrapped up a few minutes later.

"Ill be expecting you soon. Please don't ruin my expectations for you, i don't handle disappointment very well" Said Martino as he exited the room, along with his entourage.
Everything had gone according to his plan, soon, they would be able to produce cardamine at a scale never seen or heard of before. Just the thought of that made him want a spicy drink and some cigarettes, with this urge in mind, he made haste towards the shuttle.

It was time to celebrate!