At that city, it had been loaded with enough supplies for several days sailing, one silver-bound barrel and one golden sack. Its crew were members of the Royal Household Guard, accompanied by one of the Steward's Agents, B. Tomkins. Their mission was ancient in origin but of vital importance to the current crisis which had not only successfully brewed, but been supplied with milk, tea and honey.
A few days later the unnamed vessel - which had assumed the moniker 'ZNS Durable' - arrived in the Shirekeep in the early afternoon. The a school of the so-called Cabbage Fish lapped playfully in its wake. These toothy denizens of the great river were believed by many locals to have mutated from smaller, kinder fish, their minds and anatomy twisted by the same brassicosis which had brought the Imperial Republic to its knees all too recently. In fact, they were sharks, whose arrival had come after the changes in local conditions following the Cabbage Crisis made the river near the capital more salubrious. Some theorised this was due to the fires burning away thick layers of algae, others that the decimation of the population had reduced the amount of sewage pouring into the once-azure waters.
With this honor guard of new arrivals, the Durable gained access to the docks behind Raynor's Keep and requested a meeting with the Captain of the Mahamantot Bunker, with the help of a perhaps priceless Aurang placed in the hand of a guard - an erb coin from the latter half of the fourth millennium ASC, when Hawshire-Dura became a part of the Imperial Republic. After an hour and a half, a portly, serious-faced and uniformed man came down to meet the travellers, stepping aboard their vessel without permission. His nostrils and eyes ablaze, he held out the coin with one hand encased in a black leather glove, offering it to all them in turn as he tried to work out who was in charge.
"My men don't take bribes," he barked at the assembled, "but this little bugger is something that could make a Minister wobble. Tell me why you're wasting my time before I have this rickety thing sunk. You should know that you need specific permission of the Kaiser or the Minister of Military Affairs to access this part of the waters, and without that, you are unauthorised personnel." At this point, B. Tomkins stepped forward. He had been dressed in a normal sailor's garb, but as he approached the angry officer, smiling, he brought from underneath his plan shirt a dazzling chain of gold, at the end of which was a bejewelled lock, studded with exquisite rubies and emeralds. As he came closer, the officer's jaw dropped further, until he was close enough to take back the coin. At that point he laughed and patted the neutralised officer on the back and said, "I think we are authorised personnel. The ZNS Durable. That's not an official designation, by the way, and you won't find it on any register. Indeed, there is no record of us here, and we have no manifest or inventory.
"But we truly are Zir Niftiness' Ship in the sense that we come to affirm our loyal affiliation to the Kaiser. If you must speak to someone, so be it; but we must deliver some ritual items to the Kaiser personally. My name is B. Tomkins, and I am an Agent of the Steward-Count of Hawshire; I act on his instructions and behalf. This chain binds me to my office. I understand your need to comply with duty, good officer. Let's talk..."
[OOC: Kaiser, I need to know if you are intending to hear this audience, or if there will be someone else to receive them in your stead...]
