Friends At The Table

Word traveled fast: The Oxblood Clan had demanded elections, and whether they’d get them had become the talk of all Icebreaker. For the hundreds on board familiar with the guild’s practices, Oxblood’s insistence was no surprise. The group was famous for deciding on things “as a family,” which meant a mix of extempore votes on the shop floor and regular elections for key decision-making roles throughout the organization. But the degree to which the entire fortress had been consumed with the question? That was a surprise.  The scale of Oxblood’s representation on board was part of that. In a crew of over a thousand, they made up a solid block of a few hundred, and that meant that a whisper was heard as a galewind. Within a day, a game of telephone (and the Oxblood reputation for drama) had transformed the election fliers into “fires,” demands written in burning oil across the topdeck. But it was also due to the novelty. While many had brushed against lowercase D democracy in their daily lives--whether that was