vorbarra: (baobabble06)
[personal profile] vorbarra
They bring her to him in one of the formal receiving rooms at the Residence, the walls covered in rose damask silk and the floor elaborate parquet wood tiles. Whatever else she is, she is a visiting dignitary as well, and the representative here of an entire planet no matter their relationship to it. She's accorded all the respect she's due from that.

Gregor is wearing a plain black military-cut suit, a concession to try to make things less stiflingly formal, though he doesn't expect her to understand the distinction that he's not in uniform. She is also to be his wife; presumably he's going to have to sleep with her at some point, or what is the purpose of this whole affair...

God. The whole concept makes him feel slightly ill just thinking about it. She's not hugely younger than him, but she's enough younger that Gregor is highly conscientious of it. If not for him, she'd be in the peak of her romantic explorations, most likely, free to make all of her own choices. Now he's tying her down as surely as he is, a sacrifice they're both making for the Imperium and for New London.

None of this shows on his impassive face. He's seated in an ivory tufted wingback armchair, a matching one set at an angle to face his. One long leg is crossed over the other, his hands neatly settled on top of them. One of his Armsmen shows the lady in, then fades back into a corner to nominally attend them, but really to stand guard. It's as private as Gregor could afford to make it, given his intended's known political dissonance and history of violent action, however well-justified.

"Thank you, Arkady," he says to his Armsman, voice quiet, eyes resting on Kitty. "Please take a seat. We have much to discuss."

He at least manages to sound smooth, all stiltedness polished out of him by this point in his reign. There is a small table between the chairs, with a sleek decanter of water, two glasses, and a flimsy with their marriage contract on it. A highly political document labored over for months upon months to the final details, and yet he still finds himself unwilling to sign it without discussing it with her personally. One last gasp of independence, he supposes glumly. The flimsy is a stark anachronism in such an archaic room.
rathercommon: (pensive)
[personal profile] rathercommon
This isn't a world that really matters to anyone. It's not on any important trade routes; it's not wealthy, doesn't have any real technology of value. The terraforming took hold well, so it's prosperous enough, but not so much to make it outright wealthy. There haven't been any real great thinkers from the world. There's not much culture of note there. If there were something that distinguished New London, anything at all, anything of real worth, then maybe people would care about what happened there. But there's nothing to take note of, and so no one interferes.

Which is a bad thing indeed. Because affairs on New London are...awful, honestly. Not so awful as to really arouse the fury of some of the more enlightened planets, because again, there's nothing really sufficient to distinguish this planet, but...The planet is ruled by a circle of quasi-religious oligarchs, a group of a few hundred wealthy men and women who use technology to make themselves appear to be magicians. They're able to conjure flames, make predictions about the weather and natural disasters, communicate over long distances, heal injuries that regular folk medicine can't; they use these remarkable deeds, and strictly control travel on- and off-world, and strictly control education, to make the people believe that they're nearly gods. It's almost laughable - indeed, on other planets, New London is sort of a joke, that planet where the people in charge have managed to convince people that they're magical. But the lines of control are cruel and efficient: the people are too afraid to rise up against people with such remarkable abilities, and so they work to prop up the horrid regime. They live lives of terror and squalor, while the so-called magicians live in luxury off their labor.

But those are secrets that can't stay secrets forever. The magicians are good at concealing the source of their power, to be certain. But there are people who are resisting magician rule, and they're making some small amount of headway. One rebel group, calling itself the Resistance, in one raid on a magician office, managed to acquire some communications equipment. One of the few survivors of the raid, Kitty Jones, actually managed to make contact with someone offworld - someone who knew what was happening on New London, how the so-called magicians held onto their power. And once she heard it all, Kitty - furious - began planning how to turn this opportunity into an outright coup.

An outside force is what's needed. She figured that out early on. And so, she rooted and researched and planned, and talked with offworlders more and more to try to determine who was best to contact. In the end, she hunted down a name: the Dendarii Free Mercenary Fleet, a group of mercenaries with reasonable rates led by a man named Admiral Naismith who, someone had said, seemed to have some fondness for just causes. And finally, after some time, she contacted them, and she asked to meet.