Not a Bad Deal
Of course, that was the reaction from Tannhauser's mercenary users — smooth, low-key, and completely unbothered. The Agency users at the center of it all, on the other hand, were feeling a little more... complicated.
There was plenty of other chatter, of course, but when you boiled the man's own position down to its essence, it looked something like this:
Of course, as was always the case with our village chief positions, "I don't want to" was never going to get anyone out of the job.
A short while later—
[Image: Three Krakens lined up in formation in front of the base of Zmerlingweiss, the man marked as Tannhauser's village chief.jpg]
There was some back-and-forth about refusing and whatnot, but Icarus just Tiananmen'd the whole thing with a Kra-Cerberus and that was that. Clean.
[Image: A pink-haired toad pointing a pistol at another toad, who is trembling violently.jpg]
[Image: Icarus typing in a stuttering chat, then using the chat screenshot function to send a shot of three Krakens parked in front of the base.jpg]
[Image: Same chat room, Zmerlingweiss shaking as he accepts Icarus's chat request.jpg]
"H-hurry up and a-accept it, y-you slave!"
"Fuck."
He just threatened the guy like that and dumped the job on him.
And that was how, with a well-timed WWE spectacle, I managed to cleanly hand off the village chief seat at Tannhauser.
Truth be told, choosing a village chief for Tannhauser was relatively easy. Yes, more than two thousand users were docked there — but most of them were mercenary types who drifted from place to place at the drop of a hat, so nobody particularly cared who got the job. If anything, as that earlier Tannhauser merc chat had shown, they were perfectly happy with whoever I appointed.
The remaining bases, however, were a different story — the Level 4 strongholds we'd newly seized for the route expansion, and the Level 3 escort bases assigned to guard Daidalos.
The Level 3 escort bases weren't too bad. Their location was what it was, and at a mere Level 3, the only people showing any interest in relocating were users who'd been sitting on Level 1 or 2 bases to begin with. No real rush.
Unfortunately, Tomsk — a Level 4 supply base — sat right between Daidalos and Tannhauser, with resource zones all over the neighborhood to boot. Which meant...
The competition was fierce enough that user activity there was absolutely buzzing. And if you announced you were picking a village chief in a place that lively... well. You can imagine the catastrophe.
Paradoxically, Tannhauser had been so overcrowded that everyone found the job too burdensome and nobody wanted it. Tomsk was the opposite. Everyone was thinking hey, this is doable, and the enthusiasm was overflowing so hard that settling on a village chief became aaaaaabsolutely, ungodly difficult.
Anyway. After roughly settling the village chiefs for both Tannhauser and Tomsk, and wrapping up a day that had been complicated beyond belief, I decided the next day that it was time to focus on my own work.
Of course, even then, some of the users in the Most Noble (etc.) Republic were still wondering why I hadn't appointed chiefs for the escort bases near Daidalos — and among them was Jessica, sitting right beside me.
"Commander, are you not planning to hand the nearby escort bases over to the other commanders?"
"Hm? No, of course not."
Looking at our dear Jess-Jess, I decided to offer a proper explanation.
"Then what do you intend to do?"
"I'm planning to give priority rights to the users docked at Arclight and the other Level 1 bases near Spiralis."
"Arclight... that would be the one with OdenSoup, the gentleman who brought us information on the users who staged that rebellion some time ago."
"Yeah, that's right."