A strike has more in common with a military campaign than a protest. It is not a simple gathering of like-minded individuals seeking to air their grievances. It is a battle – sometimes metaphorically, but often literally.

When you engage in JP Coglinton in battle, you are engaging one of the great armies of the world. If you are lucky, he will send only the city constables to “keep order”. In the interest of keeping up appearances, they will allow you to march for a day or two while one of Coglinton’s representatives pretends to listen to your grievances.

Then they will invite you back inside, and if you refuse, they will “clear the way” for a fresh batch of willing workers to come take your places. Those workers will be paid what you were asking for, and though hiring and training them will require more effort than simply meeting your demands, the expense will be deemed worthwhile. JP Coglinton, on principle, does not concede.

If you are not lucky – if your work is deemed too essential, or your union too nettlesome, or if Mr. Coglinton has recently received some bad news – he will send The Steel Resolve. Unlike the Constable, The Steel Resolve do not purport to work for anyone but JP Coglinton, nor to have any purpose other than to break the backs of those who dare dip a hand in his pocket.

The Steel Resolve arrives with truncheons swinging even before the scabs are ready to come in. They are not there to “clear the way”. They are there to send a message about what happens to those who oppose Mr. Coglinton, who spit in the face of the good gnome who has provided you with work, food, clothing, and homes for their families.

Besides, swinging the truncheons is considered a perk of the job, for the faceless soldiers of the Steel Resolve. JP Coglinton is always looking for ways to compensate his employees with something other than money.

To hold its own against these forces, a union requires organization. It needs solidarity, and community, and logistics. Someone must bring supplies and cook food and provide security for those who are getting the message out. Someone must care for the children of the workers and see that their families are fed even as they are at war with the man who owns the store. Someone must tend the wounds of the beaten.

A spontaneous walkout is a romantic gesture but a foolish endeavor. Without organization and planning, a labor action cannot succeed.
Yet that is exactly what seemed to have happened. That was the word on Kreo’s rumor network, anyway: workers at a factory no one had ever even heard of before walked out spontaneously yesterday and hadn’t yet been broken. The constables were there, but waiting at a respectful distance, merely keeping an eye on things.

What were their demands? No one seemed to know, which was odd. Usually that was the first and loudest thing for an action to communicate. Without demands, what was the point?

People had theories, but nothing credible. Kreo knew how to sniff bullshit, and every theory he heard asserted matched a little too cleanly with the pet concerns of the person doing the asserting. So he went to see for himself.

The factory was in a remote corner of the Caldera, squeezed into a crevice at the end of a dirt road and tucked up against the interior wall of the volcano. The scene was just as the rumors suggested: constables gathered at a distance, their clockwork paddywagons blocking the road some three hundred yards from where the workers were gathered.

A few dozen workers walked, crawled, or flew in a circle as their particular bodies allowed. They carried no signs, but that was not unusual. Unlike his brother, JP Coglinton did not educate his workers, believing that literacy made them lazy. They chanted only, “We won’t build,” a powerful but frustratingly vague slogan.

Kreo recognized a few other organizers who’d given up trying to talk their way past the constables and were now chatting amongst themselves. They all worked for Coglinton shops, and a new round of wary whispers went up among them when they caught sight of the satyr.

OK, Kreo, you can take it from here. There's a lot going on here, so let me know if there's anything you'd like me to elaborate on. The constables are blocking the road, so you won't be able to walk right up to the striking workers. But there's the constables, or the JP Coglinton union folks with whom you'd probably have a pre-existing hot-and-cold relationship, or you could attempt to get past the constables in some way.

Also, you'd know that the best way to win the initial trust of striking workers is to bring them useful supplies to sustain their action. What have you brought with you?

Kreo hadn't seen a spontaneous walk-out in quite a while, and worry creased his brow as he hobbled the down the street towards the strikers. Whispers of a wildcat strike were dangerous, and likely to lead to violence.

A beaten heater shield hung on a guige across Kreo's back, his pistol holstered in plain sight at his belt next to his broad knife. Over the leathers he wore about town was a shirt of mail, over which the cloak and brooch denoting his current employer caught in the Caldera wind. At odds with this rough and combative attire, the satyr's visage was smiling, his hazel eyes ringed with teal eyeshadow, hair twisted into braids and long ears dropping slightly from the rings set in them

Currently the satyr struggled with a quarter cask of mead and a basket of bread and cheeses, and on reaching the lines of the constables, Kreo couldn't help but feel a twinge in the broken end of his left horn, now capped with metal over the jagged cracked end, from his own youth joining a wildcat strike in solidarity. Maybe one of these constables had been the one who broke his horn? It didn't bear asking.

"Morning. Heading through there, if you please."

He smiled at the nearest constable, batting his eyelashes and pointing with the hand holding the basket.

OOC: Persuasion 18

Sweet-talking constables was much a part of Kreo's job as convincing laborers their union dues wouldn't just be lining the pockets of yet another set of bosses. That was the nice thing about mead and cheese - it wasn't only striking workers that appreciated it. The satyr had played this game before: approach confidently, bat the eyelashes, let them bluster and threaten a little, and eventually you let the constables demand the tribute you were ready to give them anyway just so they felt like they'd shaken you down for something.

It didn't go like that this time, though. The constables guarding the road snapped to attention as constables never did. Hands reached for truncheons. "Turn around and walk away," a burly minotaur with chestnut fur advised.

A dozen sets of eyes were on the satyr now: six here on the road, and six more he could see now that he was closer, up on the slopes of the caldera, looking down on the scene. At no point did they show any interest in the mead.

Strange as well that they were all flesh-and-blood constables. He'd have expected mostly automatons for a watch-and-wait job like this.

"Walk way," the minotaur said again. It wasn't advice this time.

The constables aren't open to being persuaded, but it was a good roll, so I'll give you something else instead: these aren't constables. They're wearing the uniforms and driving the vehicles, but their demeanor screams Steel Resolve, JP Coglinton's private security and strikebreaking force. You wouldn't know any of them by their faces, because they usually wear steel helmets to hide them, but the attitude is familiar.

"Alright. Give my regards to Janpool when you see him later."

Kreo knew when he was liable for another beating. You learned this quick when you took a hard enough one the first time. He wished he could tell himself he knew their faces, knew some quiet secret to twist like a knife, but even if one of them had leverage material . . . there were eleven others. And that was dirty.

Hefting the barrel again and walking off, he kept his eyes open while he thought about alternate routes round.

OOC: are the buildings around her of the sort that would back onto the other side of this blockade? Residential or industrial? Is circling around an option with these streets?

I gave you advantage on a Perception check, since you have unlimited time and space to scope things out. It paid off big time:

The Tinkerer, on behalf of Kreo, rolled 22 using 2d20+2, dropping the lowest dice only.  perception. So here's a few things:

The factory is off by itself, at the end of a road leading through an industrial district lined with more JP Cognelius properties. There are no immediately adjacent buildings, and it's built right up against the wall of the caldera, so there's no circling around behind it unless you were inside the wall of the volcano. Which, now that you think about it, isn't so crazy: there are railways that carry workers from the exterior slope of the volcano, where the company housing is, into the interior, where the factories are, and those pass right through the caldera wall. So maybe JP also has a train that runs directly through the volcano into the factory.

The workers have to get here somewhere, and there's nothing else around. Clockwork shuttle buses are a standard means of transporting workers from the train stations out to the more far-flung factories, but this road is rather narrow, so it would have to be a small bus. Then again, there are only a few dozen workers marching outside, so maybe a small bus would suffice.

You hear the faint whir of machinery emanating from the factory, which is strange. If the workers are all out here, who's operating the factory? The "constables" would have had to have cleared the striking workers in order to bring scabs in.

What you don't see is any kind of discharge pipe for the industrial runoff. You're only a few hundred feet from the lake in the center of the caldera, so it's plausible there's an underground pipe that runs into the lake.

Finally, you see a few other folks skulking around who also seem to be scoping out the factory, trying to be discrete. I don't think we ever established exactly how you know Veracity, but you'd at least recognize her as a member of Baz Cinderhorn's crew. I don't want to tell you how you feel about Baz, but I'll give you the following info:

-None of his workers are unionized.
-He seems to treat his workers much better than the Cognelius brothers, and the more illegal activities - like what seems to be in the works here - in which he engages often target factories where workers are treated especially badly.

You can investigate further or ask more questions if you have them, but I'll ask you to hold off on approaching Baz's crew just yet. I want to give them a little chance to talk amongst themselves before you meet up with them, but I figured that 20 perception was a good excuse to have you spot them.

Kreo had already spotted some of Baz Cinderhorn's gang getting up to some manner of mischief, but now a new scene was developing. A kobold wearing the uniform of a constable and riding a mechanical dog approached the Steel Resolve's cordon in the company of an armored goblin. The two had words with the guards, the kobold flashed a badge, and then things began to turn contentious.

Kreo noted Veracity's presence with a chuckle and a smile. Of course she'd managed to get inside! Baz Cinderhorn's crew were a problem to be sure, if only because it was like trying to have a sit down negotiation with a hornet in the room. Hornet means no harm, but just by being their it agitates.

The satyr started towards the volcano wall, looking for a way around to hop onto the train, when the kobold on the mechanical dog approached the guard cordon and gave Kreo pause.

Turning back, Kreo headed towards the altercation, if only to observe if a fight broke out.

The way you'd expect this train through the volcano to work is that it would go directly into the factory where it is built into the caldera wall, so there wouldn't a place for you to hop on unless you were already inside the factory or at the train's origin point, wherever that was.

If you choose to get involved in the Procz/Frack situation, we can say you were just within range to fire your pistol. You'll need to roll initiative, and if you beat a 7, you can post your action. If you choose to do that, please post in their thread.