1c: Mabellyne Intro

[Scene: A room decorated in a fantastic manner. The back wall is covered with otherworldly paintings, and contains a bookcase with bizarre trophies and objects, including a large ornate sand timer that lasts for about two minutes. In the middle of the room there is a table with six chairs, also of outlandish design.

A CHORUS of five women in fantastic masks and cloaks sit around a table. When the chorus speaks, usually one person speaks one line, and another speaks the next line. But sometimes multiple people speak a line simultaneously. Sometimes a line is started by one person and ended by many, or vice versa. Sometimes one member or group will complete another's line, and sometimes one woman will ask a question and then answer it herself.

There is a whistle offstage.]

Chorus: Come in, my child.

Mabellyne [walks in, curtsies, and takes a seat. She is scared and nervous.]

Chorus: We have much to discuss. But first, a statement.
Mabellyne Geargadget, we wish to make it common knowledge that your life belongs to you.
You may reject us and our plans at any time. The worst possible outcome for you is leaving the family and starting life over as a young free woman with money and a good education.
This is your threat point, and if you agree to anything unpleasant for the sake of the family, you may demand appropriate compensation.
Do you understand?

Mabellyne [softly]: Yes

Chorus: Do you, Mabellyne Geargadget, consent to become objectified as a discussion topic in a Ritual of Rationality?

Mabellyne [softly]: Yes

[With great solemnity and ceremony, each member of the CHORUS does a ridiculous thing and makes a change to their wardrobe.]

Chorus: We have learned from our source in the League Mission Command that Martin Cooper wants to collect all of the adventurers who have proposed to him and send them all on a wildspace mission to test their skills and character.

Mabellyne [sobs openly].

[The CHORUS ignores this as they continue talking among themselves.]

Chorus: So, our question for this meeting is what to do now.
Which suitor will generate the least disutility, after negotiated compensation, and how can we best game the negotiations?
Objection, ill-formed question, unnecessary limiting of options. Brainstorm.
Disowning and exile. Always an option, but she must navigate that herself, without assistance.
Fight for systemic change. Highly Unlikely. Even if we had provably better rules to propose, we would have no credibility.
I think we can get her on the mission.
[murmuring, shock]
She is a daughter of nobility, not a sellsword. Even the jarheads in Space Command know that.
If we pull some strings and grease some palms, we can get her name added to the list of suitable adventurers.
Query. Mabellyne.
[The CHORUS looks at Mabellyne.]
Before we discuss this further, are you winning to risk your life in wildspace if we can devise a suitable strategy?

Mabellyne: Well, if the risk is not too much, then yes.

[The CHORUS goes back to discussion.]

Chorus: Any experienced hero who meets her will see instantly that she is no adventurer.
Martin is not supervising this mission directly and has no plans to meet them before they leave. He is busy with other things and delegated the details.
How can he be that lax about the choice of his future wife?
He probably has no intention of making a decision any time soon. He wants to wait, and collect information. He will use the debriefings of this mission, and possibly many more, to help make a fully informed decision at a later time.
Still, this seems like an odd way to choose a wife. Send all the suitors on a wildspace mission, without meeting them or having his people do background checks and interviews, just to test them for some character trait? What is his game?
Humans are strange, and wizards are strange. I also hear that he has been under a lot of stress recently due to the River Disaster and some major secret mission. And maybe he is actually a bit crazy, instead of being a cunning operator pretending to be crazy like everyone assumes?
We still do not know what he is looking for in a wife.
[pause in conversation]
I think we need to think about this for a turn of the glass.

[A CHORUS member stands up, takes the Thinking Glass from its place on the bookshelf, places it on the table, turns it, and sits down. The lights on the chorus dim. Everyone in the chorus sits silently as the grains of sand trickle down, occasionally jotting notes with chalk on pads of slate. MABELLYNE gets up, fidgets nervously, and walks around, before addressing the audience in a spotlight.]

Mabellyne: I am a careful sensible girl. I like nice comfortable things. I love books and a quiet life, and I never would have imagined becoming an adventurer. Really, all I wanted was to land some solid boring job like rocket engineer, and be married to a decent man who would take good care of my kids. But it seems that this will not be my fate.

You may laugh at the rules and rituals of goblin society, but they really do make sense. If we did not force high-aptitude people like me to marry and reproduce before a certain age, then the inevitable logic of the arms race would make us delay family formation to focus on education and career, until our bodies are too old to produce healthy offspring, if we can even have them at all. The inevitable genetic deterioration would eventually destroy us.

There are loopholes and exceptions, but they are limited. If I break the rules, my family will face serious political and economic sanctions. However, all genetically compatible single men that I have met are absolutely horrible, for one reason or another.

We have been delaying as long as possible, hoping for someone better to some along so I do not have to marry or be disowned. We have even been paying the elves to run genetic tests to find humans that I might be compatible with. They discovered that I would be a match for the great wizard Martin Cooper, who is obviously quite a catch, so we sent a marriage proposal to him. We calculated that he would probably reject me, but according to our rules, I am not obligated to marry while he is considering the proposal. But now the situation has changed, forcing us to act.

[When the sand is almost gone, the light returns to the table and MABELLYNE goes back to her seat.]

Chorus: Maybe he does not actually want to choose a wife, and is just using the hopefuls as tools to accomplish some other goal?
Unlikely. He is a good person, and good people don't like using other people as tools, especially people who have professed their love and devotion.
He is neutral, not lawful. Consequentialists have no problem with that.
Still, it is a bit out of character.
The question is moot. Getting Mabellyne on the mission would give us more time to operate, and she might even get chosen.
I am not convinced we can do it.
Like every goblin noble, she has basic combat training and a sound classical education from good tutors. The goal of the mission is to collect scientific specimens, not to kill things. She is a good candidate for a mission support specialist.
Wildspace gets nasty, dealing with the things out there is not like sparring. The risk to her life is serious.
They are sticking to the moons with tamer ecosystems. She will be part of a team. With some intensive training and our family's collection of heirloom magic items, I am confident she will be safe.
What makes you think the real adventurers won't rat her out, or just let her get eaten by a jellyfish or something to thin out the competition?
This is Martin Cooper. Do you think anyone will think that he will marry anyone who deliberately lets someone die? If anyone is responsible for the death of a crew member, everyone else will use that to disqualify her. And a conspiracy is unlikely because of the reward for defection. Even a dumb adventurer will know that, or will see it instantly when it is explained to her.
So the risk should be small, and the rewards substantial.
The odds of being chosen are small, and we have no good strategy to improve them.
The reward is not in being chosen, the reward is in the delay. It should be possible to delay Martin's choice so that it requires several missions for him to decide.
Yes. Brainstorm. Strategize.
Conceal information. Conspiracy of silence. Make decision impossible.
It will only work if everyone agrees. How can we give the other women an incentive to conceal information?
Make it more profitable to go on more missions than to force a choice. Remind them that nobody knows what Martin wants, so they have small odds of being chosen.
It is very profitable to be part of well-functioning adventuring company with a constant supply of missions from a patron who wants you alive. Make a good thing that everyone wants to keep going.
Yes. Yes. Yes.
We have a strategy. Equip, train, prepare, go on the mission, work to make it run as smoothly as possible. If possible, make it so Martin needs to send you on more missions before making a choice.
[The CHORUS looks at Mabellyne.]
Are you willing to put in the work for this, and risk your life in wildspace?

Mabellyne [breathes deeply, then answers strongly]: Yes.

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