Goals: 1. Gather information about what all the Myriadic Councilors are planning and use it to profit. 2. Get to know the other Merchants and try to set up mutually beneficial arrangements. 3. Try to bribe your way into control of the temple and its contents. You are Merchant Ardmore, the "Insider Among Insiders." You learned a long time ago, almost half a million years ago, in fact, that there are a lot of ways to make money in a market, but the best way is almost always to have an inside track. It's so effective, in fact, that basically every market economy makes it illegal eventually, something nobody ever bothers to do with a losing strategy. Whether it's a restaurant owner orbiting a neutron star or a bookie on a Colosseum world, you make it a point to have friends in every place, high or low. There is more to you, though, than a not-so-little black book. After all, you didn't start out with the galaxy's most profitable list of friends. You built that damn thing one name at a time. Whether it's giving someone a leg up in their early days or helping an old-timer dodge the law, you've invested time, money, and energy in the people on your contacts list, and that's what made you the obscenely wealthy person you are today. You've come to the [[Council of Chains]] for two reasons. First, the chance to form connections with nine powerful Holdings you haven't encountered before. Your list of friends might be long, but it can always get longer. Second, you got word from one of your many contacts that this temple contains some kind of ridiculously old (even by your standards) AI. It's probably not anything like as powerful as the stuff you get these days, but AI systems are almost universally for storing large amounts of information, which means you might be able to learn secrets from the earliest ages of the [[Celestial Empire]]. Those aren't the kinds of insider secrets that make fortunes, they're the kind that make or break the galaxy's greatest powers. ## Asset: [[Went to Market]] You begin play with a number of resources. These resources are represented by cards marked "Raw Resource", "Refined Resource", or "Fuel". These resources may be expended to fulfill other characters' Liens, spent in service of [[Endeavor|Endeavors]], or traded in [[Negotiation|Negotiations]]. You can't lead Endeavors or Negotiations without a Governor's express, case-by-case permission, but you can participate in them and lend your resources as you see fit. ## Lien: [[Blood Money]] The galaxy is not an innocent place, and commerce cannot be innocently conducted within it. The kind of resources necessary to be a player on the galactic stage simply cannot be sourced from a single planet, or even a few hundred planets, without brutality and oppression baked in somewhere. In order for you to lead a [[Negotiation]], in addition to permission from your Governor, you must be accompanied by at least one Martial officer (from any Holding).