From the personal journal of Eckart Stein

The Halton Gardens

As expected, Magyari wasn't too happy about our delayed drop, but she accepted the reality of the situation. Even though the Halton Gardens is a wreck, it has its uses from time to time; even then, I do want to replace it, and do need to get Royale focused on that goal rather then wasting our money on fast cars, luxury apartments that we never use and the like. On the other hand, we do have a good potential replacement available to us.

Some days it's nice how things line up.

Speaking of things lining up, Zhen is an interesting case, albeit a little frustrating. He’s definitely not that open about his past, which is exactly what I'd expect. However, but he's also a lot less willing to play ball then somebody in his situation would be, which was unexpected. A part of me thinks he's just being stupid, which wouldn’t be a complete surprise given what he used to do and who he used to work for. On the other hand, it could be that he's genuinely loyal to the Irregulars, which is unexpected.

Loyal people are the worst ones to deal with.

Clearly I ticked him off, something that was pretty clear by his rather belligerent reply to my negotiations. It's also likely no coincidence that Kardos and Georges came around asking questions shortly afterwards. Fortunately, this is one case where we actually have nothing to hide and that the general stupidity of my employees is actually a benefit (I have no doubt that they mentioned the Goat Licker in reply to their enquiries), which hopefully will discourage further enquiries.

Things are going well in the field too. Magyari's in essence forcing us to shoulder the bulk of the work does play nicely to our advantage. We’ve had isolated, fleeting contacts with the locals and their mercenary allies, but nothing that has resulted in a solid, stand-up fight as yet. And while Magyari's air cavalry has been 'assisting’ us, they've had nothing to report either. This has been helped by Dernko's obvious distaste at working with our people, something I'll have to look in to further. It could be useful.

The biggest problem will come when Magayri's forces take to the field. Thing will have to be handled carefully.