Dead Star Dockyards

"Good morning, Lady Diana."

"And a good day to you sir Montaug." Diana accepted his assistance in stepping off of the ferry. "I take it you have made the proper preparations on your end?"

"Naturally. Given the nature of this event there is never the guarantee we will have enough cash on hand, but it should be far in excess of our competition. What about our collaborator?"

"You needn't worry about me, your honor." Morizo followed a few steps behind Diana, bowing to the Montaug after he disembarked. "I do hope I have shown you proper respect."

"Please, stand. My station does is not deserving of reverence. Simply refer to me as 'Montaug' or 'the Montaug'."

"As you wish." Morizo extended a hand. "Morizo, head of the Mori Trading Company. It is an honor."

"The honor is mine, mister Morizo. I gather you have brought as much money as you could?"

"I borrowed and liquidated as many assets as I could in the short time given to me." Morizo assisted Rize in disembarking, beckoning the boy to shake hands with the Montaug as well. "This is my grandson, Rize. And please, the 'mister' before my name is wholly unnecessary."

"If that is how you wish to be addressed, then I have no option but to oblige you. As for your expenses, I have managed to convince the council in charge of extranational finances to provide funding to reimburse you for this event as well as provide an extra bit of capital as a show of thanks." The Montaug subtly gestured to a sizeable trunk by his side. "It should be enough to nab one or two extra vessels."

"Oho? I was under the impression you preferred not to build connections with outsiders."

"It may be against policy, but a failure to do what we can to save helpless individuals is in violation of our principles. Of course, placing a price on the life of an individual is always something of a contentious matter, but we need to avoid raising suspicion."

"True. One of the greatest powers going all out on one of the Sanctum's auctions would be a bit worrying." Morizo looked back towards the chests of similar size being carried off the ship by nearby attendants. "I take it you have something in mind?"

The Montaug looked to Diana. While he had provided input, the boat auction was actually Donovan's brainchild. It was only right for Diana to take the credit for this.

"In order to draw attention away from you, the Holifanian delegation is to focus their spending on the larger long distance vessels they can operate under their conditions. About 23 of the hundred being auctioned off today fit within their parameters, and I anticipate they will secure twenty of them. I imagine you could purchase about seven or eight without raising many eyebrows."

"What makes you say that?"

"A merchant buying seven or eight small to medium sized ships is an unreasonably wealthy man donating to the Sanctum while trying to make more money or replace losses. A pacifist great power buying twenty large vessels is a blatant display of force and hints at war." Diana paused for a moment, allowing Morizo the time to consider the notion. "Of course, you shouldn't go flaunting them once you have them."

"Um, of course." Morizo looked around, making sure nobody was listening to them before leaning in. "How do I know which ships to purchase?"

"I told you, I have a friend verifying which of the selected vessels fit the criteria you set forth."

"A friend, right. Where is that friend?"

"That should be him coming over now, right?" Rize drew their attention to a half-walking half-skipping individual making his way down the hallway. He held a stack of papers in his hands, fighting against the wind he made while walking to keep them from scattering. "Does he really need to go that fast? It isn't like we're in a rush or anything."

"Considering how many papers he brought with him, I imagine we will have to take a few minutes to sort through them all." Diana had already produced one of the precious few ball-point pens she possessed. She had given the Scholar some fairly precise instructions as to what he should be looking for - instructions that barely required the use of a single piece of paper, much less a stack.

"Hah, hah, hah, Lady Diana!" He was panting. He had probably come a long way from wherever the docks for the auction ships were. "I'm, hah, I'm here!"

"So I've surmised." Diana allowed herself to smile at his awkwardness, there was definitely a good reason for all that paper. The Scholar could get excitable about matters related to the study of English, but he was an experienced bureaucrat familiar with paperwork and how tedious it could be. He definitely wouldn't make more meaningless work for them just because he wanted to practice his English. DEFINITELY. "I am a bit curious as to why you have so many papers with you though."

"It's, hah, I was doing, hah, doing what you asked." The Scholar slammed the stack on one of the nearby trunks, taking a few seconds to gather his breath. "I was doing what you asked, but I wasn't sure if you wanted anything more specific on certain aspects like speed or crew capacity or width or whatever-" The Scholar then patted the stack of papers with both hands. "-so I took it upon myself to get every bit of information I could. I even consulted the dictionary about things that even I was unsure of."

Diana took a moment to register what the Scholar said, before slowly closing her eyes. The smile she was wearing widened as she did so, her core tensing so as to kill the laugh forming in her lungs. She brought her hands together, palm to palm as if praying, bringing them up towards a downturned head so she could kiss her index fingers. Then, her hands crumpled into fists as she wiped her eyes with her thumbs. Her desire to laugh had turned to a desire to lash out somehow, but she could keep herself in check. 

"God damn you, Arc." Diana whispered the insult into the watch on her wrist, quiet enough that no one would hear. With that, she returned to her usual smiling self. There was nothing to be done about it at this point, she could only grit her teeth and bear the annoyance without a fuss. "Is that so?"

"Hah, sorry!" Judging from the change in the Scholar's expression after her strange display, Diana wondered if the Scholar had learned to read lips. 

"No, no. It's not a problem. In any case, I am sure that Donovan would appreciate some additional information about how these vessels are valued. I take they are in order?"

"Yes ma'am. One ship per page, ordered as they are to be shown during the auction. I brought a few extra pieces of paper just in case."

"Perfect. Rize, take one." Diana handed a piece of paper to the boy, who immediately retrieved a pencil from a pocket inside his coat. "We will be labelling each line item as either something to contest or ignore, as well as the maximum we are willing to bid on it for. You can tell your father which ships he should be focusing on."

"Got it."

- - - - -

Morizo looked over his son's shoulder, greatly confused as to what the two of them were doing. It was obvious that they were determining which ships had the qualities Morizo was looking for in a merchant vessel, but how that translated to scribbles on canvas was beyond him.

"Grandpa, how much money are we working with again? I'd like a Sanc value." 

"Um, let's see. I've got about three small trunks of around 60 thousand Sanc each, a larger one of about 100 thousand, and two filled with other currencies that should come to about . . . maybe 30 thousand total if exchange rates are what I remember them to be."

"Are they each worth 30 thousand or-"

"Combined value. It might be closer to 35, but I'm working on the safer side."

"And then there's that trunk from the-."

"100 thousand."

Rize got to work scribbling something at the top of the paper. Morizo gathered the symbols had something to do with the amount of currency at his disposal, but there were a lot of those circles.

"Rize, you don't have to draw out all the zeroes." Diana pointed her utensil at those circles. "If you are working with numbers exclusively in the thousands, it's common to just replace those three zeroes with a 'K'."

"Why's that?"

"Do you remember what 'kilo' means?"

"It's how you denote something is multiplied by a- Oh! That's smart."

"Right? You can do the same with millions, billions, trillions, and so on."

"Cool. I don't think I'll ever end up with numbers that big though."

"Probably not, but it doesn't hurt to know. Now, how much is your grandfather working with?"

"410 thousand Sanc, give or take. Is that enough?"

"We don't know yet." Diana also wrote something on her piece of paper. "Morizo, how much does a mid-sized ship often sell for? In Sanc, if you will."

Morizo had to take a second to think. "Anywhere from 20 to 30 thousand, depending on specific size."

"How many people can a 20 thousand Sanc ship carry, not including crew?"

"Um, I don't know. That really depends on the length of the journey."

"Fine, we'll ignore that aspect." Diana scribbled something on the paper. "For the sake of argument, I am going to assume that the average fair market value of the ship type we are looking for is about 30 thousand Sanc, favoring larger ships that can carry more people."

"I wrote down the appraised value in the-"

"I know, Scholar. I don't need to know the specifics at the moment." Diana waved away the Scholar, who had bent down to point something out. "The average auction price for a charity and exotics was about 25% above fair market value, but we can expect up to 50% over for particularly expensive. If early prices are lower and grow over the course of the auction . . . lets say it grows from 25% at the beginning to twice fair market value at the end when people get desperate."

"What are you doing?"

"Assuming averages per quarter are 125, 150, 175, and 200, then we can anticipate to have to reach 38 thousand Sanc within the first quarter, 45 thousand in the second, 53 thousand in the third, and 60 thousand in the fourth . . . or was I supposed to ignore the latter half? I think I was." Diana scribbled out some of what she had written. "If we only have 410 thousand, and we are shooting for at least 5 ships, then our budget for each one is about 80 thousand."

"Don't we want more than that?" Morizo didn't understand why she had suddenly dropped the number.

"We absolutely do, but we have to contend with other people for them. All I'm doing is setting an upper limit for what you are allowed to bid. You'll be bidding higher early on, obviously, but I hope those bids aren't too high."

"Why would we bid high early?" Rize asked the question Morizo wondered about. "Doesn't it make sense to save our money for later?"

"If we were waiting on ships that were of comparably higher quality, then maybe. However, the ships we are bidding on are all more or less the same. The people we are competing with probably don't know that. In addition, fewer and fewer opportunities to purchase a ship will arise the longer the auction goes on. People will recognize that, and become desperate to bid for a ship should they really want one."

"Is there a reason why they wouldn't bid from the beginning?"

"Morizo, would you ever pay 150 Sanc for something you only value at 100?"

"Of course not, that's a terrible deal."

"Would you pay that much if it was the only one left? Say you really needed it to fill an order."

"If I absolutely needed it to fill an order, I would probably eat the loss, but I can't imagine a scenario where that might happen." Morizo scratched his chin, making connections while a smirk grew on Diana's face. "Except for an auction. Sales are limited during an auction, and the selling price of the sale is determined by the person who values it highest."

"Second highest will control in the majority of cases, but you are correct. In general, the perceived value of auctioned items will increase as the auction goes on, which is dictated by the psychological response of those bidding not wanting to waste their time or lose an opportunity to gain something. That value is capped by the capital at the bidder's disposal, and it is safe to assume that there will be people in the audience with enough capital to outbid us on an individual level. However, those same people run into the problem we went over earlier."

"Paying thirty thousand Sanc for a ship worth twenty thousand at most is an awful investment." Diana nodded along. "So we should be purchasing ships early on, at prices that seem ridiculous but in reality will be well under what ships sell at later."

"Precisely. However, we must also take into account the possibility for irrational spenders or people who have also realized this amongst our competition."

"So you put a cap on our bid price per ship so that we don't waste it all when it isn't necessary."

"And to force our competition to spend more than they wanted. Ideally, they won't have enough funds to beat our cap before the others start competing as well."

"Clever . . . incredibly clever." Morizo had only attended a few auctions in his lifetime, more to appease clients and less to seriously bid for things, and so he had never put much thought into how one might 'win' at an auction. All he knew is that they were bad for buyers outside of a search for rare materials. "Do you go to auctions frequently?"

"No, this will be my first. I just looked at the data regarding auction psychology and mathematics and devised what I believed to be the most effective strategy. To be honest, the mathematics and modelling were handled by someone else. I'm just putting Donovan's plan into action." Diana waved Morizo away, beginning to read the first page. "I will have you wait out the first two or three bids unless they are below the anticipated minimums. I just need to figure out what those are."