Reins sits quietly eating his breakfast and waiting to see if anyone will show.

A servant shows up but keeps he head low

Lorra appeared, for once. The doctor had mostly kept to herself but today was, perhaps, different.

Bomilcar showed up and tossed the likely fake books he had collected from Carthag onto the table. It would be something they could look over and try to find discrepancies with. "Probably useless. Worth a look. From Harkonnen stronghold."

"I would be glad to look them over and see what I can find. "

"Probably not much," he says. "Mentat's work."

But there was a bit of hope there that someone far more mentally capable than himself would be able to glean something.

[Getting through De Vries' cookbook with anything remotely useful is an Understand 5 check, and I bump difficulty by 1 with Threat whenever a die is bought via Threat for this. Success at a cost is not an option and the level of mental trickery makes Complication at 16. You are facing a supreme intellectual foe here. Talents, Traits that lower the difficulty apply if conditions are met. If Momentum is gained, it is Game Momentum.]

(I am definitely willing to collaborate and accept assists)

[Oh, I will definitely spend Threat on raising difficulty for that too, so that assistance only makes sense if you hope for a crit.]

Add 1 threat for Obtain Information: How have the books been organized?

According to the best CHOAM practice, in line with prior reports.

[2 Threat Trait: By the Book]

Reins uses his time indexing to understand a little bit about the mind of the deranged mentat

Activate Trait : In His Head (Theory into Practice)

He withdraws his beaded contraption and begins going over everything.

Diff 5
+1 By the Book
-1 Financial Analyst Trait
-1 Quality 1 Abacus
-1 In Your Head

Spending Determination for +2 Succsesses
Truth (I will Find the Truth)/Understand (Choam Bureacracy)
TN 16/8

Truth/Understand Harkkonen Book 16/8 Diff 3 After Traits, Determination for auto 1: 1d20 4

Total Succeses 4 Final Diff 3, Succsess +1 Game Momentum

Bomilcar sat by and observed. Curious what the fake books would reveal. He hoped that the smug Harkonnen would be unpleasantly surprised.

Claudius Reins wrote: ↑

Fri Sep 10, 2021 12:30 pm

Reins uses his time indexing to understand a little bit about the mind of the deranged mentat

Activate Trait : In His Head (Theory into Practice)

He withdraws his beaded contraption and begins going over everything.

Diff 5
+1 By the Book
-1 Financial Analyst Trait
-1 Quality 1 Abacus
-1 In Your Head

Spending Determination for +2 Succsesses
Truth (I will Find the Truth)/Understand (Choam Bureacracy)
TN 16/8

Truth/Understand Harkkonen Book 16/8 Diff 3 After Traits, Determination for auto 1: 1d20 4

Total Succeses 4 Final Diff 3, Succsess +1 Game Momentum

The books were neat. There was no discrepancy at the accounting level whatsoever. Clean enough to be be lauded by any CHOAM bureaucrat, just dirty enough at the edges to be credible to anyone sensitive to creative accounting, like Claudius. It was a masterful work, that much he had to give the Harkonnen. So this approach was futile, and Claudius had to try something else.

As he already knew, the greatest controversy was the relocation of spice operations. De-emphasising the Splintered Rock, dispersing it among smaller centres, like Chin Rock they were now in. It even made sense given the kind of officially listed risks to spice production, increased overall resilience of the operations, leveraged labour costs to improve bottom line in the face of surtax, decreasing a chance of a terrorist attack. The security costs of it were flat-rated as per the siridar charter and thus unexaminable, so even if those spiked, the Harkonnen wouldn't show it in the books, and they were careful not to leave much to deduce them from. So there were only the civilian ones, in infrastructure, labour, and of course equipment.

Here, Claudius' findings at the Splintered Rock were largely corroborated. The loss rate of equipment has spiked, due to negligence and parts cannibalism as much as due to external events, but those were presented as the necessary cost of transition, with new harvesters and thopters pushed to boosted sites. Here lay a possible caveat, but it required application of some rough economic models of industrial relocation. It could be a rabbit hole and lead nowhere, but... it led somewhere.

The minutiae of labour productivity, equipment life cycles, costs of materials, tech imports, industrial accidents and a dozen other factors were almost all thinly elevated in liabilities columns. That was a statistical improbability for this level of coincidence to occur across almost all spectra. Individually, they were acceptable. Together, they amounted to a hefty cost of the magnitude required to finance... yet one another, undisclosed spice processing spot. What led onto that path was a small line of surcharges imposed on imported technology being desert-rigged in the industrial centre at the Wind Pass, but those surcharges had no justification in CHOAM prices of the tech, especially that Ixians were on a predatory dumping spree to kill off Richesian competition. If they were kickbacks to someone there, as they could be, what was so precious to keep it disguised? Though if they were bribes, the hidden facility theory frayed, as there wouldn't be enough to build something operational in a greenfield fashion.

[Game Momentum indeed!]

Reins settles in, getting very in depth in his studies, he pores over the tomes for some times, muttering to himself, finally he chuckles softly, "I got you now, Mentat' after a few more minutes of fact checking he explains his findings to those present.

Bomilcar is patient. He was curious what the books would reveal to the Londine.

[This also earns a Legitimate Suspicion!]

[I think you can act on assumption that Claudius has already referred his findings to you. You may also want to get this spread?]

A distant electrical discharge ominously reverberated, foretelling an approach of a great storm.

He nods in thanks to Claudius. "Appreciated. I... Am needed." He says possibly somewhat mysteriously as the sound of the storm echoed. They had been together during the discussion with Hebe earlier. Was he actually thinking of doing something as stupid as facing this storm?

"I believe that this definitely shows that there are funds being sent somewhere, now can we identify where they are going? "

Claudius frowns at the sound of the Storm "Should the Frigate be able to ride the storm out do you think?"

"Probably shielded," he says with a nod. "Search for site soon. After storm."