The Connacht Summit

[Luminium]

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"Ah, the Kongsi Syndicate is here as well. Good," the minister said, apparently unfazed by Alex's peculiar behaviour. He waited until Alex was seated before pushing the bottle and a glass into his reach, inviting him to indulge himself. "We may begin."

"If there are no preemptive questions, I will get to the reason why we are here. There are many eyes on Dublin at this moment, far too many for the Assembly to be comfortable with. The Bretonian Crown, the old company -- their pockets run deep and they will desperately dig into them to throw every mercenary, bounty hunter and gun for hire at our people while they plot their retaliation. The Corsairs, for their part, have always been trying to plunder Dublin and their raiding fleet is still lurking in the system. And then there is the matter of the other great Houses. We are not blind to the news of a gold crisis fermenting. The Blackout exacerbated the issue by once again drawing attention to our movement when we were blamed for it, but now there's news of some sort of talks happening."

Matthew paused to take another drink from his glass.

"The Houses want gold, gentlemen. They want it badly enough to offer their support to Bretonia, to pressure the Kingdom into doing something about our movement, something that we may or may not be prepared for. So," he continued mirthlessly, "we are going to give it to them."

He paused for dramatic effect, looking at each representative intently.

"I have mentioned when inviting you here that the Assembly is interested in expanding our cooperation with the Guild. We would find it difficult to do this on our own. In this theoretical partnership, we will oversee the mining and refining process and provide you -- the Guild -- with the goods at a discounted price, which you will ship and distribute however you see fit. The goal is to inject enough gold into Liberty, Kusari and Rheinland markets to stave off critical shortage, which will hopefully take some of the attention away from Dublin. We want to bog down Bretonia's talks with the other Houses as much as possible, to buy more time while we prepare. And of course, we both profit, securing additional funding for our respective causes."

The minister paused again, inviting the guests to voice their thoughts.

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