Creative Director
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Am I missing something here? Where does the genuine meat come from? AM I to assume House Arkona, since they have a rep for helping out the commoner? If so, is this a publicized pact, or a secret?
The genuine meat comes from pigs and cattle and other forms of livestock. Said "legitimate" meat comes in early morning from the same places it always has; from outlying farms in the Korvosa hinterlands. Although with things getting so dicey in the city at the time of the adventure, the amount of meat coming into town has slowed to a fraction of normal, which is why there's always big lines out front every morning.
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I thought that the adventure made a point of mentioning that with the riots, the food shippers on both land and sea just turned around. The deliveries into the city were turning back for fear of being mobbed at the gates, or did I read into the situation something that wasn't there?
I take it your answer then means that House Arkona does NOT want to take credit for feeding the poor? If not, then why did they subvert Verik to do this in the first place? The story mentions getting a loyal base of followers, but if it's a secret who the benefactors are, who should they be loyal to? I only have the first two issues, so I don't know if this is brought back into play later on.
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Creative Director
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House Arkona does want credit for feeding the poor, but it's a bit more complicated than that. Basically, there's a schism afoot in House Arkona between its two leaders, Glorio and Vimanda. This split in power is only starting to manifest during "Edge of Anarchy," and doesn't rear its head fully until "Escape From Old Korvosa." Vimanda predicts that she'll need her own collection of supporters when this schism strikes, and she hopes to be able to leverage the loyal customers of All the World's Meat to her cause against Glorio at that point. Unfortunately for her... the PCs get into the scene well before things come to that point.
In the end, it's okay for folk to know that All the World's Meat is subsidized by the Arkonas, but chances are good that most folk don't know and/or don't care where the free meat's coming from. Since there are shenanigans going on in All the World's Meat, Vimanda probably does want to keep some distance from her involvement, so that if the PCs find out what's going on there she and the Arkonas can claim plausible deniability and say something to the effect of, "Hey, we were just trying to help out by getting livestock in there; that crazy Verik guy wasn't REALLY part of our plan."
Since the Adventure Path assumes the PCs break up All the World's Meat early in the campaign, this subplot isn't returned to later on, so any additional developments you want to add to it in your game should be fine.
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I see. Thanks for the response! I think I'll let it be known to any who inquire that the animals come from House Arkona's cast offs. That way it can explain why the commoners are going hungry, but most of the nobles still eat (they can afford the security to escort cattle shipments from their private farms into the city), and it establishes in play the "charitable" nature of Arkona.