Castles of Steel - Lesbians Good, Imperialism Bad

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Lieutenant Arisukawa Haruna

Balance Stats
❁ • ❁ Work / Life ❁ • ❁
❁ • ❁ Warrior / Princess ❁ • ❁
❁ • ❁ Radical / Respectable ❁ • ❁

Tactical Stats
Gunnery 0, Navigation +2, Command +2, Technology -4, Personal -2, Strategy +3

Stress: 3​


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PLEASE READ THE QUEST RULES BELOW

You collectively vote on the actions of Arisukawa Haruna, the first woman to serve openly in the Imperial Akitsukuni Navy.

This quest is set in a universe which is much like our own circa 1910, but with different politics, cultural norms, and ideas about gender and sexuality, as well as some unusual and advanced technology in places.

We are using this quest to explore themes like breaking the glass ceiling, divergent outlooks on gender and sexuality, colonialism and imperialism, and the place of royalty.

Content Warning
This quest goes some dark places.

There is violence, often explicit, often unfair, often against undeserving targets.

There are not always good options forward. The protagonist is not necessarily a good person.

There is implied content and discussion of sexual harassment and assault.

This is a world where people are often racist, sexist, queerphobic bigots. Sometimes, even the PC and the people they are friends with.

Voting Rules

We will tell you if write-in votes are allowed. If we do not say that write-ins are allowed, they are not. This is to prevent people from unrealistically hedging their bets.

You may proposal other options in a non-vote format, subject to approval, on non write-in votes.

We will tell you when a vote allows approved voting. If we don't say the answer is no, pick an option. We like making people commit.

Discussions makes the GM feel fuzzy.

Game Rules
When we ask you for a roll, roll 3d6. You are aiming to roll equal or under the value of your stat. If you succeed, Haruna gets through the situation with no real difficulties. If you roll above the target value, Haruna will still succeed, but this success will cost her something or add a complication.

Whenever Haruna loses something or faces hardship from a botched roll, she takes Stress. The more Stress Haruna has, the more the job and the circumstances she's in will get to her, and it'll be reflected in the narrative. Haruna must be kept under 10 Stress: if she reaches 10 Stress, she will suffer a breakdown and the results will not be great for her.

Haruna loses stress by taking time for herself, by making meaningful progress on her dreams, and by kissing tall, beautiful women.

Meta Rules
Author commentary is in italics so you know it's not story stuff.

Please don't complain about the system or the fact we have to roll dice. We've heard it before, we've heard it a thousand times across multiple quests. We're not going to change it, and it wears at our fucking souls.

Just going "oh noooo" or "Fish RNGesus Why!" is fun and fine. Complaining at length because you didn't get what you want less so.

If you have a question, tag both @open_sketchbook and @Artificial Girl. If you only tag one of us, you will be ignored. Seriously, we both write this quest.

And yes this is an alt-history type setting with openly gay and trans people, ahistoric medicine, and weird politics. Just... deal, please?

This quest employs a special system called Snippet Votes. Please read this post for more information.
 
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I'm hesitating between the antennae, which plays to our skills, and the guided torpedo, which plays to the strength of being a sub. Sub on sub sound unlikely to be the greatest thing, as they're quite experimental and it's probably easier to get some patrol boats built for sub hunting.
 
Unfun fact: The slave trade in Japanese women was very real. It went on for two centuries officially and effectively continued in reduced and illegal capacity for... a while longer.

It should be noted that while this trade was happening, Japan was also forcing Korean prisoners of war into mass slavery as well.

Y'all, history sucks.
 
[X] Interceptor Antenna: An extra tall radio mast that can be extended while surfaced to pick up distant radio traffic. Perfect for intercepting and listening in on enemy radio signals, which is why the new station seats the crew's decrypting specialist. (Sneaky spy shit)

Why do I feel we have a better chance at changing the world in this quest then in the airplane one?
 
Miner238 said:
Why do I feel we have a better chance at changing the world in this quest then in the airplane one?
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Hey now, that's not fair. The airplane quest changes the world all the time! It's just always for the worse.

[X] Interceptor Antenna: An extra tall radio mast that can be extended while surfaced to pick up distant radio traffic. Perfect for intercepting and listening in on enemy radio signals, which is why the new station seats the crew's decrypting specialist. (Sneaky spy shit)
 
This was an excellent update. Like, really excellent. A wonderful mixture of funny, cute and incredibly heavy stuff that can't have been easy to put together this well. I think Haruna is going to be a lot better off for it as a person, and I like the character development that will probably come of it.

[X] Magnetic Detector: The submarine has a special piece of equipment on the nose called a Magnetometer, and changes in the dials measure the presence of steel objects. I-02 is now the most effective machine in the world for finding mines, submarines, and other hidden things. (Hot sub on sub action)

Miner238 said:
Why do I feel we have a better chance at changing the world in this quest then in the airplane one?
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Because we are playing a member of the imperial family. That's probably the core of it.
 
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[ ] Wire Guided Torpedo: They've made a new version of the manually guided torpedo you'd experimented with on the Minisub, and its much superior now. It uses two different wires inside a single insulated case for increased control, you have a pair of buttons at the station and knobs that determine the projected turning angle by regulating the length of the signal for you. (Good old fashion convoy raiding.)

*hums* Boom boom boom, I want you in the sea, down on the sea bed, down beneath the waves.
 
Miner238 said:
[X] Interceptor Antenna: An extra tall radio mast that can be extended while surfaced to pick up distant radio traffic. Perfect for intercepting and listening in on enemy radio signals, which is why the new station seats the crew's decrypting specialist. (Sneaky spy shit)

Why do I feel we have a better chance at changing the world in this quest then in the airplane one?
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Mr Apollo said:
Hey now, that's not fair. The airplane quest changes the world all the time! It's just always for the worse.

[X] Interceptor Antenna: An extra tall radio mast that can be extended while surfaced to pick up distant radio traffic. Perfect for intercepting and listening in on enemy radio signals, which is why the new station seats the crew's decrypting specialist. (Sneaky spy shit)
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If it helps, think of it this way.

Asuka is like a merge between Forrest Gump and The Wind Rises' take on Jiro Horikoshi. Even when they have a direct hand, its out of their control. History sort of happens to them, and their influence on it is always sort of distant and nebulous. They must endure and practice their art.

Whereas Haruna is like... if Richard Sharpe was a Japanese lesbian. Just like him, she gets to travel around the world, bang hot ladies, and be present at all the cool pivotal battles. But Sharpe was pretty much just a violent fuck with no interest in questioning the conflicts he is in, whereas Haruna is a member of one of the most politically consequential families in her country and has been doggedly making a mark on history since she was 16, so she's not going to stop now. Sharpe's role in things was ultimately always trivia in the literal sense: his presence answers questions like "What happened to the Tipu Sultan's bigass jewels" and "who blew up the border fort at Almeida". Haruna, on the other hand, is working with unwritten history and has a lot more room to make changes, especially once she catches up in the timeline slash as long as Asuka continues to remain blissfully ignorant of all things naval and political.
 
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Well, eventually Haruna might hear about Ohara Airlines, the nations first commercial air travel carrier, now running nonstop flights from Tokei to *Seoul, *Sakhalin/Karafuto, and *Nagasaki, as well as a connecting flights from the main islands to southern Cathay.
Like, maybe.
And honestly, it'd probably have a pricepoint set for people around her social strata anyways. After all, modern airlines make their money back on first class tickets - everyone else is just a spacefiller to make it moderately more profitable than flying mostly empty. Not so much of a problem when your plane seats a number of people that's small AF anyways.
 
[x] Wire Guided Torpedo: They've made a new version of the manually guided torpedo you'd experimented with on the Minisub, and its much superior now. It uses two different wires inside a single insulated case for increased control, you have a pair of buttons at the station and knobs that determine the projected turning angle by regulating the length of the signal for you. (Good old fashion convoy raiding.)

CRASIAN WANT BIG BOOM.

Also it sounds like we'll be using pulse width modulation, which is pretty neat.
 
[X] Wire Guided Torpedo: They've made a new version of the manually guided torpedo you'd experimented with on the Minisub, and its much superior now. It uses two different wires inside a single insulated case for increased control, you have a pair of buttons at the station and knobs that determine the projected turning angle by regulating the length of the signal for you. (Good old fashion convoy raiding.)

The one most likely to get Haruna to reenact Das Boot.

Also, MAD is something used to detect subs IRL, but it is used by sub-hunting planes, not the subs themselves.
 
[x] Wire Guided Torpedo: They've made a new version of the manually guided torpedo you'd experimented with on the Minisub, and its much superior now. It uses two different wires inside a single insulated case for increased control, you have a pair of buttons at the station and knobs that determine the projected turning angle by regulating the length of the signal for you. (Good old fashion convoy raiding.)

This sounds like the one that's most likely to actually work properly. Subs are just too low to the water to do radio intercepts as well as pretty much any surface ship can, and the chances that they have the whole "Earth's magnetic field isn't uniform" thing worked out well enough to get more than a vague "there might be something that hasn't degaussed recently over that away, possibly" signal from it at best seems low given that IRL it took until after WWII to work that one out.

As for the subject (nation) of Joseon, I suspect Haruna really doesn't want to look into why Joseon noble girls aren't available to volunteer as royal maid servants the way Akitsukuni ones do.
 
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[X] Wire Guided Torpedo

[X] Interceptor Antenna: An extra tall radio mast that can be extended while surfaced to pick up distant radio traffic. Perfect for intercepting and listening in on enemy radio signals, which is why the new station seats the crew's decrypting specialist. (Sneaky spy shit)
We can do quite a bit with the right listening.

Edit: Vote change
 
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[X] Interceptor Antenna: An extra tall radio mast that can be extended while surfaced to pick up distant radio traffic. Perfect for intercepting and listening in on enemy radio signals, which is why the new station seats the crew's decrypting specialist. (Sneaky spy shit)
We can do quite a bit with the right listening.
Artificial Girl said:
"Not our proudest moment as a nation." You said sheepishly. "It's not something the government would want to talk about in the public school curriculum, obviously."

"I thought this was when the Europans were on their big equality kick, though?"

"Just because they gave women certain rights didn't mean that they saw us foreigners as real women. Or real people, even. " Your vehemence on that point surprised you a little. "They enslaved Ophirians, remember? This modern economy was built so we wouldn't have to use our people as currency again. We're going to stay independent--that's the duty of the Empress, to make sure that these things don't happen and that Her people are well taken care of, no matter what circumstances arise."
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The big equality kick was PROBABLY why the demand for slaves was so good. Give local women rights. Then buy slaves with no rights to do all the things they used to.
Artificial Girl said:
"Hot springs are the sure sign of a right and proper society," you mused. "They're what separates us from the animals. To quote the great philosopher--"

"What about those monkeys that hang around them?"

"They're what separates us from the barbarians, then."
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The monkeys are nice and civilized.
The Sandman said:
Subs are just too low to the water to do radio intercepts as well as pretty much any surface ship can
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Pretty sure the idea is that subs can get a lot closer to intercept than surface ships ever could
 
open_sketchbook said:
If it helps, think of it this way...
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Honestly, it really doesn't. In fact, it currently feels like the first paragraph suits Haruna a lot more than Asuka at the moment. After all, she is the one stuck staring up in awe as Asuka redefines the face of warfare. She's not writing history, she's going back to add in footnotes. So long as the focus remains on a smaller level things are great and the action is tense. The moment things take a wider view of the world the tension completely leaks out of the scene. The sinking of the flagship could have been this terrible moment where we all ask ourselves 'could we have done something to prevent this?' but it wasn't. The flagship was always going to go down with all hands, (except 'ha-ha, the guy who is totally cursed survived again' because of course he somehow ended up on the pride of the fleet) and the only question was if it was going to happen 'on screen'. It's the basic and nearly unavoidable problem with prequels.

This is all just my personal feelings on the matter and I'm pretty sure that I'm probably the only one that feels this way. Even with all that, I'm still greatly enjoying the quest.
 
[x] Wire Guided Torpedo: They've made a new version of the manually guided torpedo you'd experimented with on the Minisub, and its much superior now. It uses two different wires inside a single insulated case for increased control, you have a pair of buttons at the station and knobs that determine the projected turning angle by regulating the length of the signal for you. (Good old fashion convoy raiding.)


Gonna go for this one since big boom is good boom.
 
I have to inquire: is the Imperial Household's succession enatic? That seems like it's hard to fit in with the whole "women can't do politics" gender roles attitude Akitsuni has going since even a figurehead political position is still, ya know, a political position.

Is it also supposed to be semi-divine like the pre-WW2 Japanese imperial dynasty was?
 
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Mr Apollo said:
Honestly, it really doesn't. In fact, it currently feels like the first paragraph suits Haruna a lot more than Asuka at the moment. After all, she is the one stuck staring up in awe as Asuka redefines the face of warfare. She's not writing history, she's going back to add in footnotes. So long as the focus remains on a smaller level things are great and the action is tense. The moment things take a wider view of the world the tension completely leaks out of the scene. The sinking of the flagship could have been this terrible moment where we all ask ourselves 'could we have done something to prevent this?' but it wasn't. The flagship was always going to go down with all hands, (except 'ha-ha, the guy who is totally cursed survived again' because of course he somehow ended up on the pride of the fleet) and the only question was if it was going to happen 'on screen'. It's the basic and nearly unavoidable problem with prequels.

This is all just my personal feelings on the matter and I'm pretty sure that I'm probably the only one that feels this way. Even with all that, I'm still greatly enjoying the quest.
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I understand, but Haruna is still in the stage where she's a junior office in a navy. The changes she's wrought so far are mostly backstory, but...

Look, Haruna uncovered the conspiracy that is directly responsible for the Purity Club losing the election in-universe in ADCQ, even if it was the dice doing it over there that made it for real happen, because Haruna is lagging a bit. ADCQ is about to go into pretty serious slow burn slice of life mode for a little bit, so Haruna will be catching up and be able to make much waves.

Asuka isn't responsible for airplanes changing the world. Asuka is merely a conduit for airplanes to happen through. If not them, somebody else. Maybe not as well, maybe not as elegantly, but it would happen.

There are women in Akitsukuni's navy because Haruna fought for it to be so. The Purity Club is disintegrating as a political force because she uncovered and confronted a conspiracy. That's the kind of stuff Haruna's going to be up to for a little while. What will happen when she gets her first command? When she starts making political and media contacts?

Well, we'll figure it out together.

obssesednuker said:
I have to inquire: is the Imperial Household's succession enatic?
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The Empress designates one of her daughters (or nieces or sisters) to be the heir, at her discretion. The others have to settle with merely being very rich Princes and Princesses and usually marrying into various cadet branches and other high nobility.

In the event the Empress dies before she has an heir(ess), it goes to a sibling. In the event there are no siblings, it would pass up the chain to one of her aunts. In the incredibly unlikely event that none of those people existed, there would be A Problem, which is why every Empress has a bunch of kids. The current one is like, 37 or something, and she has four or five? We wrote it down somewhere.

The reason for this, and for it being so different from modern Akitsukuni, is that the Empress is literally a holdover monarchy from a pre-Akitsukuni proto-state which was more generally matriarchal society that was eventually supplanted politically, but not spiritually, but a more traditional (as we would see it) patriarchal culture. The Empress has at times been a warrior, a leader, a figurehead, powerful, powerless, and at least once in exile, but to the best of anyone's ability to tell (and the Akitsukuni keep pretty incredible records with excellent continuity), its the same dynasty as it was like four thousand years ago, cuz unlike the Cathay emperors and empresses and their mandate of heaven, even if you conquer the place, keeping the Empress around is actually a good idea to unite the people under you.

Ooor... maybe there is actually something divine at work. You never know.
 
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obssesednuker said:
I have to inquire: is the Imperial Household's succession enatic? That seems like it's hard to fit in with the whole "women can't do politics" gender roles attitude Akitsuni has going since even a figurehead political position is still, ya know, a political position.

Is it also supposed to be semi-divine like the pre-WW2 Japanese imperial dynasty was?
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Yes. You have to be descended from an Empress through your mother and then chosen by the Empress as her successor. Usually picked from daughters or granddaughters, but sometimes sisters or nieces have been selected.

EDIT: If the Empress is dead or incapacitated before she makes a choice clear, there are ways of selecting who actually succeeds her (usually eldest daughter or sister).

EDIT 2: Yes, she is also seen as a divine/semi-divine figure who is descended from the Spirits and is here on Earth as their representative to help guide the nation. In the nation's ancient past, there were Empresses who were also warriors, generals, diplomats, etc. but over time as a patriarchal structure asserted itself in Akitsukuni their ability to wield temporal power dwindled and military strongmen set themselves up as Shogun in the Empress' name because she was too busy being divine and feminine to rule directly (so they said).
 
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open_sketchbook said:
I understand, but Haruna is still in the stage where she's a junior office in a navy. The changes she's wrought so far are mostly backstory, but...

Look, Haruna uncovered the conspiracy that is directly responsible for the Purity Club losing the election in-universe in ADCQ, even if it was the dice doing it over there that made it for real happen, because Haruna is lagging a bit. ADCQ is about to go into pretty serious slow burn slice of life mode for a little bit, so Haruna will be catching up and be able to make much waves.

Asuka isn't responsible for airplanes changing the world. Asuka is merely a conduit for airplanes to happen through. If not them, somebody else. Maybe not as well, maybe not as elegantly, but it would happen.

There are women in Akitsukuni's navy because Haruna fought for it to be so. The Purity Club is disintegrating as a political force because she uncovered and confronted a conspiracy. That's the kind of stuff Haruna's going to be up to for a little while. What will happen when she gets her first command? When she starts making political and media contacts?

Well, we'll figure it out together.
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Haruna's come a long way from being a destroyer mom.
 
[X] Interceptor Antenna: An extra tall radio mast that can be extended while surfaced to pick up distant radio traffic. Perfect for intercepting and listening in on enemy radio signals, which is why the new station seats the crew's decrypting specialist. (Sneaky spy shit)
 
[X] Wire Guided Torpedo: They've made a new version of the manually guided torpedo you'd experimented with on the Minisub, and its much superior now. It uses two different wires inside a single insulated case for increased control, you have a pair of buttons at the station and knobs that determine the projected turning angle by regulating the length of the signal for you. (Good old fashion convoy raiding.)
 
Artificial Girl said:
Yes. You have to be descended from an Empress through your mother and then chosen by the Empress as her successor. Usually picked from daughters or granddaughters, but sometimes sisters or nieces have been selected.

EDIT: If the Empress is already dead or incapacitated, there are ways of selecting who actually succeeds her (usually eldest daughter or sister).
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The contortions they put themselves through explaining simultaneously that women aren't fit for politics while simultaneously explaining why the Empress is head of state must be hilarious to see.
 
obssesednuker said:
The contortions they put themselves through explaining simultaneously that women aren't fit for politics while simultaneously explaining why the Empress is head of state must be hilarious to see.
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It's not that crazy if you realize that the Empress is closer to pope than president.
 
obssesednuker said:
The contortions they put themselves through explaining simultaneously that women aren't fit for politics while simultaneously explaining why the Empress is head of state must be hilarious to see.
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Empresses are semi-divine. This overrides the weakness of their female form. Or something bullshit like that.

(It's like how in medieval Europe, women wielded power surprisingly often, but were often characterized as having in some way taken on some degree of masculinity that made them an exception to the sexist rules. Even if it's, like, the tenth exception of the generation, because (elite) women wielded power all the time, against our popular culture conception of things.)
 
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