You Are: A sector admiral of a strained imperium.

[X] Refuse
-[X] "I have no interest in the words of a mouthpiece with no understanding of the situation before her. Upon this Sector and more the NASP can be broken, not in battle, but by their very nature. I will not endanger the Imperium, regardless of who rules it, by giving them unity in a moment of our weakness. You will obey my orders, aid in the execution of this plan, and then we will return to the sector capital. You know that what is said here will not be recorded by my implants and I have no interest in attempting to bring you down when I have no proof. You will suffer in the court of your peers for your conduct today. That is enough."

Gunman said:

I may be speaking as someone who wants Reinhard to become the next Napoleon, but I feel no loyalty for this corrupt, inefficient system and the Houses that created it.

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I'm a sucker for tragically loyal people who maintain their loyalty, even in the face of armageddon.

She is a monster.
Making her empress is making the universe a worse place.
Kill her.
Make it look like enemy action.
She rushed in like a fool.
Everyone who knows her knees she's a Dunning-Kruger example.

Ignored the dark defence station.
It got all her ships. All of them. Total loss.
You nuked it of course.

Your bridge crew will swear to this.
And so will your logs.

The crew of the monitor abandoned ship in the chaos. No prisoners to interrogate.
But.. you got the ship.

Cut your losses. Take what you can and leave.
Still get profit.


[ X ] it's treadon then.

Broadcast a firing solution to the Gao.
Tell him to have all the stations Target her ships and arange TOT to be an alpha strike.

Keep her busy with conversion while enemy weapons aim.

Inform Gao, that her intention is to genocide.
Tell him you will leave with tribute to make it look good, but will leave without starting a war.

You'll take every ship, but no slaves, and you'll leave their defence stations intact.

If the battleships show up. You'll take two.
The third Will have a damaged FTL.

Unless they'drather keep the old monitor. Galactica?

[X] Refuse. You will have no part of what is, ultimately, treason and genocide.

[] Arrest

I don't think I want to aide her in this at all. She has at every opportunity tried to undercut us. When we first met she tried to boost herself up. She then pretended to agree with our plan but never had any intention of following it. I'm pretty sure she intended to use us as a scapegoat for the nuking. She refused to talk with us until we forced her hand. Now she is trying to get us to go against established rules of conduct as if she is in the superior position of power. No this has gone on long enough arrest her.

Edit: Changing my vote to snowfires refuse option.

[X] Demand More. Agree to her proposal in return for five shares, sufficient to make you a baron, along with assurance of strategic command when you openly move to the side of her family in future. This will make it obvious that you are a client of House Arslan, people take note of that level of share transfer. You would be asking for the value of a pair of battlecruisers with screening fast ships or a flotilla of light cruisers, a significant investment even for a rich ducal house.
[X] No. You let her go along with her original plan of genocide and refusing surrender to create an atrocity, be it her plan or her fathers.

Let's see, a split second decision where it's hard to check every piece of information, and thus, most of the negotiation can be translated into a single question : Do we trust her?

Reasons to trust her :
- She is polite?
- She is providing information on a possible course of events.
- She is offering early a decent bribe.
- She respects our skill.

Reasons to not trust her :
- She is ambushing us with a massive decision that will alter the fate of empires.
- She is a subordinate willingly refusing to obey orders from her skilled commander for political reasons.
- She is willing to kill green soldiers, not even out of school and defending their homeworld, even if they are begging for surrender.
- Even though she knows we are skilled, she is probably not skilled enough to truly recognize our genius.
- She might be treating us as a mercenary you can bribe.
- The first part of her plot can very easily lead us to being turned into a scapegoat.
- She is pulling a Littlefinger plot.

Yes, there is all that. But to be honest, I want to smash her against a wall ever since she disobeyed orders. Her reasons didn't help that at all.

[X] Arrest Her. She is attempting conspiracy to treason, broadcast to all ships that she is a traitor then board the Fafnir and take her captive.

Trust is absolutely irrelevant here. How will she betray us? Thumbing off that Genocide or that killing of surrendering soldiers off to us?
Laughable.
What Imperial Intelligence does to those who surrender has proven clearly that death is preferable for them than surrendering. We are living in a society were the fate of commoners counts not very much mind you. Thus this "genocide" will either be lauded or ignored. It will be lauded as the decisive action of a Fleet Commodore to retaliate against Rebels and Terrorists. Or it will be ignored simply because we are an extremely capable officer required either in the coming war or the coming civil war.

Really, there is no reason for any of them to court martial us within the next few years.
Generally the Treason argument is relatively moot, she NEEDS someone like us. And even afterwards there is no reason to discard us. Worst case scenario we are thumbed off to some backwater posting by her. And that is several years into the future and thus not really relevant for the moment.

In fact attacking her right now leaves us in a very precarious situation. We will definetly win. I have no doubt about that. But what then? We would be weakened, she would be weakened and then there is still three Battleships eventually en route to us. Mind that the Imperial Fleet arrives is far from given at the moment, even worse, by attacking her we might cause the civil war to start early at the inconvenient moment of an Neo-Australian Incursion.

Morally what we are doing might be reprehensible from a 21st Century Western European Outlook. Strategically, arresting her however is a mistake far worse at this moment. Ethically, depending on our loyalty (of which i am still not sure) it might actually be preferable for the empires continued survival to support her. Mind you even if we push for the maximum options, we can still arrest her if she denies us or at any later given date. Hell we can accept her deal wait for an opportune moment right after the Campaign and get rid of her then.

Hm. Guess I'm changing it up. Rare.

[X] Arrest Her. She is attempting conspiracy to treason, broadcast to all ships that she is a traitor then board the Fafnir and take her captive.

So, taking in some of the feedback, I am going to generally stick to a once every two days update schedule. As well as scaling back on the 'write in' results for voting because that does lead to decisions really coming down to a handful of people who then have to put a lot of effort into megaposts, which are then hard to deal with when translating into a time limited IC conversation or debate.

Also there is definitely the eternal issue of never having enough information in an original theme setting and I am never going to manage to answer every possible question through posts. I have put together a Discord channel where I will at least sometimes hang out to answer questions:

Discord - Free voice and text chat for gamers

[X] Demand A Lot More. Agree to her proposal only if she will make you a baron immediately, with another five shares to follow and a guarantee that you will be given strategic command when you openly move to her families' side in the future. Given people will know where the shares come from, this is going to make it obvious that you are a client of House Arslan, but also a terrifyingly valued one. You would be asking for the value of a planet or nearly two squadrons of capital ships, enough to build up House Arslan's navy by at least a fifth and probably a quarter instead.
[X] Infrastructure & Surrender. You will limit bombardment of Chuang Mu to infrastructure and take the monitor's surrender. You will seek to provoke the war another way.

[X] Arrest Her. She is attempting conspiracy to treason, broadcast to all ships that she is a traitor then board the Fafnir and take her captive.

Ghazkull said:

What Imperial Intelligence does to those who surrender has proven clearly that death is preferable for them than surrendering. We are living in a society were the fate of commoners counts not very much mind you. Thus this "genocide" will either be lauded or ignored. It will be lauded as the decisive action of a Fleet Commodore to retaliate against Rebels and Terrorists. Or it will be ignored simply because we are an extremely capable officer required either in the coming war or the coming civil war.

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Actually, the Imperials treat prisoners of war very well. For example, officers of the strike cruisers Reinhart captured over Imhotep were attending the party the governor threw. The QM said that Arslan refusing to accept the surrender would upset a lot of nobles. Ranca would only be the first person in a long line of nobles trying to duel her over it. As a ducal heir, Arslan might be able to wiggle her way out of it, but Reinhardt is a mere commoner with quite a few enemies.

Now if the prisoners are pirates or privateers, then they would be treated very harshly. But the monitor isn't a pirate ship.

kaeim said:

Why do you think we should arrest her?

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Because I don't want to cut deals with someone like Arslan and because she can pin the blame for these atrocities on Reinhardt.

Mathematicae said:

Actually, the Imperials treat prisoners of war very well. For example, officers of the strike cruisers Reinhart captured over Imhotep were attending the party the governor threw. The QM said that Arslan refusing to accept the surrender would upset a lot of nobles. Ranca would only be the first person in a long line of nobles trying to duel her over it. As a ducal heir, Arslan might be able to wiggle her way out of it, but Reinhardt is a mere commoner with quite a few enemies.

Now if the prisoners are pirates or privateers, then they would be treated very harshly. But the monitor isn't a pirate ship.


Because I don't want to cut deals with someone like Arslan and because she can pin the blame for these atrocities on Reinhardt.

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We did hand a bunch of NASP prisoners over to Imperial Intelligence early on, but that was partially because we wanted the PC boost and partially because they were... sort of not official?

Chronologist said:

We did hand a bunch of NASP prisoners over to Imperial Intelligence early on, but that was partially because we wanted the PC boost and partially because they were... sort of not official?

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I referenced them. They were privateers and wouldn't admit to being part of the NASP military. Therefore they were treated like pirates.
I wish we had chosen to space them instead of sending them to Imperial Intelligence, but that vote's long over.

[X] Arrest

I'm not a fan of accusing her of treason without solid evidence we can point to but I can't accept working with her in any way with the plans she has. I'd rather arrest her for her conduct in not accepting the monitor's surrender given that there would be widespread noble support for that to counter the "commoner arresting a noble" backlash but that's not an option.

My biggest worry about arresting her is that given she most likely hand-picked the officers of the three HCs she brought then they may turn on us if we stay to finish the plan and capture the 3 BBs that will be coming in. If we get involved in combat and they either run from the fight after we've engaged or they open fire on us while we're fighting the BBs then we'll be in a difficult situation.

That said, doing that is almost admitting guilt in the whole treason accusation but given the recklessness in the Viscountess's plans I think they might do that.

[X] Arrest

JesseJ said:

My biggest worry about arresting her is that given she most likely hand-picked the officers of the three HCs she brought then they may turn on us if we stay to finish the plan and capture the 3 BBs that will be coming in. If we get involved in combat and they either run from the fight after we've engaged or they open fire on us while we're fighting the BBs then we'll be in a difficult situation.

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I can confirm there that she has a family member as either the captain or executive officer of each ship, it is a very good bet that none of them would turn on her.

Wait. Didn't snowfire have time to write his plan he said he would get done today?

Votes must only close once most agree and the big plan authors like Snowfire and Gunman have done their thing.

Packrat said:

Discord - Free voice and text chat for gamers

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This isn't something any of us asked for. Now there is going to be a split in the community along with a split in what knowledge is available for anyone who doesn't use discord.

Nobody minded an update every day. The lack of a declared time of the vote closing was the issue. You've updated without announcement of a vote closing from 12PM to 3AM.

Gunman said:

This isn't something any of us asked for. Now there is going to be a split in the community along with a split in what knowledge is available for anyone who doesn't use discord.

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I agree, i cant get on discord...

Satar said:

I agree, i cant get on discord...

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Discord rarely improves a community and anyone who becomes part of it could end up as an "inner circle" of voters because they will have more information. It can be hard to keep track of all the information in this quest, but at least all of the information was available to everyone by searching in the thread or checking his profile. Are we expected to quote from Discord now? It also takes away some posting and planning from the thread.

Yeah...

I am planning to use Discord questions to better populate the setting information, not have it as a black hole of secret inside knowledge.

Packrat said:

I am planning to use Discord questions to better populate the setting information, not have it as a black hole of secret inside knowledge.

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But its not the problem we had with the quest to begin with. Its a solution to an unasked problem. All we want is for you to give a heads up before closing the vote, is all.