A Practical Guide to a Cushy Retirement ( Youjo Senki/APGTE )
- Thread starter Raiseth
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- Fantasy
Raiseth
I Find Your Lack of Memes Disturbing
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- Russia
I'm not saying she's not qualified, I'm saying that others would have questioned it if her appointment had been too unusual. I mean, she's already Callowan, so maybe it's a moot point. Maybe other concerns were just insignificant compared to that, lol
Pethrai Darkos
Murder Ensued
They could also have veiwed it as "Black's experimental group". His judgment's usually sound so if he wants one of the new legions to get all the Callowans, staff it with new officers, and put his recently obtained apprentice in charge then lets see how this plays out.
Raiseth
I Find Your Lack of Memes Disturbing
- Location
- Russia
Apparently, it plays out exactly as one would expect, with the Kingdom of Callow effectively seceding a few years later and the legion full of Callowans becoming the backbone of their new army.
Who could predict such an unfortunate turn of events?
Pethrai Darkos
Murder Ensued
Hey now don't go blaming other people's fuckups on Black. The 15th Legion played a not insignificant part in putting down the rebellion, prevented a major city from getting mindfucked by a descending angel into crusade mode, and was instrumental in getting the Deoraithe and Sacker to deal with the fey invasion/Diabolist's plot instead of being stuck up north squaring off with each other. It, along with Catherine's planed Vice Queen schtick, was doing exactly what it was supposed to; solidifying in the minds of Callowans that they were part of the Dread Empire now and that wasn't really a bad thing. Then Malicia comes along with a sudden desire to own a Hellgate generator and completely shatters a rocksteady regime into three factions only loosely aligned because of the imminent crusade from the west preventing them from resolving the problems they had with each other. That's where you get Cat being crowned a full queen without a nod the the Empress and the beginnings of a plan for true independence.
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Whiteeyes
Crazy Pacifist Genius v3.9
- Location
- Pennsylvania, USA
The reason she wanted it was that she thought Black was only training Cat as a replacement because she believed that he believed that he was going to die. With the prospect of losing the Calamities (she didn't trust them to survive Black's death) and not trusting Cat to serve as a replacement Malicia felt like everything was going to fall apart. Because of this she felt the need for a new super weapon. Not to use but to serve as a deterrent. If Black had been open with her that Cat wasn't a replacement and was instead a pawn being used to seal Callow and Preas together as one I doubt Malicia would have been so willing to do it.
Raiseth
I Find Your Lack of Memes Disturbing
- Location
- Russia
The timeline doesn't correspond with it, her plans must have started long before Black took on an apprentice, otherwise a lot of things she's been doing just don't make sense. Like, no, it wasn't a spur of the moment thing done in panic, she may have tacked it on as a further reason to proceed, but the events leading up to the current situation have been set in motion twenty years ago, just after the Conquest.
ExNihilo
SPACE!
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- USA
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It's also, like, not a great plan? If there's anything more hero-bait than a superweapon like that, I don't know what it is.
Raiseth
I Find Your Lack of Memes Disturbing
- Location
- Russia
Yeah, also that.
Catherine agreeing with it for a moment is what I considered to be a start of her mantle-induced insanity.
Pethrai Darkos
Murder Ensued
Personally I think that bit was due to a Fait Accompli. She wouldn't pay for it and would do her best to kill anyone else before they can, but since you can't unpay for the superweapon she might as well use it.
Raiseth
I Find Your Lack of Memes Disturbing
- Location
- Russia
You certainly can't unpay for the superweapon, but you can dramatically swear vengeance on someone
who conspired to create it by implicitly giving two hundred thousands of your countrymen to a power-hungry psycho.
Like, I actually don't remember Catherine being much pissed at Malicia for that, when even Cordelia got some heat for it, but I guess she has many other much more personal reasons to be pissed at her now.
Could you expand your thoughts on that? Because I always felt that was mostly a retcon used as a justification to get rid of powers that would otherwise allow cat to steamroll her opposition.
Raiseth
I Find Your Lack of Memes Disturbing
- Location
- Russia
Well, it was also that, but I think that halfway through erraticerrata either realized that Catherine stopped being practical and started being cartoonishly evil or made her that way on purpose to justify the position she found herself in later. Like, Catherine became the very antithesis of new age villainy that Black and Malicia promoted, a combination of a, a Disney antagonist and Memetic Magical Queen Escalator Taylor.
If you smooth out the rough edges, it's actually a pretty coherent character arc that would normally end in death when you go out to find and challenge someone with a longer, er, mantle than yours, which is pretty consistent with the general rules Creation operates on.
Pethrai Darkos
Murder Ensued
You're Right! And not only that but that's what actually happens when she takes on a pair of nascent goddesses. Just because she had her body patched up afterward and the cognitohazard removed doesn't mean it didn't fulfill the story. Then in Book 5 she gets back to being practical and does things like achieving tactical surprise by marching troops through the section of town which is on fire (she formed an alliance and then betrayed said ally to someone else as part of a deal to form a new one, three times, in successive order, back in Book 1; you can't tell me this is any crazier) instead of being "Memetic Magical Queen Escalator Taylor" and thinking that ripping open a portal to the bottom of an ocean in order to drown several thousand enemy soldiers wouldn't provoke a response from the two greatest living heroes on the continent.
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Edison_Trent
Freelancer
....
I don't think I can properly express my astonishment that she wasn't killed first (before she finished the betrayal) in that third alliance, unless she kept the previous two alliances very secret so that no one but her victim was aware of the betrayal.
Pethrai Darkos
Murder Ensued
It was the war college. Yes fatalities and maiming injuries occur but they're (supposed to be) accidents rather than anything intentional. That's why the goblin only tried to kill her when they were moving through the tunnels, the instructors couldn't scry underground to see him doing it.
Raiseth
I Find Your Lack of Memes Disturbing
- Location
- Russia
Sounds plausible enough.
The thing is, I have two protagonists to manage, so it can't be just Catherine or Tanya running around doing stuff. For example, this chapter was about Tanya showing off, so the next one is logically about Catherine.
Besides, I do like the whole gambit pileup debacle, even if it's a little weird, but I want to try my own thing.
Pethrai Darkos
Murder Ensued
I think that it was meant to be for establishing characterization, showing that Cat can scheme with the best of them (so long as it's military rather than political in nature), give the readers a big multi-chapter battle scene, and explain why Cat is in charge of a Legion other then "nepotism because Black said so." It got a lot of shit done and you really needed something like the War College arc to turn the girl plucked from an orphanage into a military leader trusted/capable enough to command a significant force during the upcoming rebellion.
Now part of the reason why I think the War College arc seems so prominent, it took up half the book after all, is because Book 1 is really short compared to later books in the series. Even if current chapter wordcount has truncated to the point where it sometimes feels like you could fit three in the same number of pages taken up by the old ones, Book 1 only had thirty chapters including the prologue and epilogue while Book 6 had one hundred four.
Whiteeyes
Crazy Pacifist Genius v3.9
- Location
- Pennsylvania, USA
A long term plan to drain the house resources yes. Having her pawn succeed to a degree in the end by actually letting her make the doomsday weapon instead of smacking her down near the end after draining all those personnel and materials with the added benefit of the implied treason to destroy her enemies? That I could see as a more recent change in the grand scheme of... the scheme.
Raiseth
I Find Your Lack of Memes Disturbing
- Location
- Russia
Lol. Thanks for the good news. The update is sorta kinda ready, but I see no point in prettying it up since I have nothing else written beyond the next chapter, and also the grad school is kicking my ass.
So, I'd say it's gonna be up by the end of June..ish? The start of July? We'll see how it goes.
So, I'd say it's gonna be up by the end of June..ish? The start of July? We'll see how it goes.
Honestly, if she recognized that and intentionally and explicitly set out for the Drow in order to do that in controlled conditions that would make randomly going off to recruit the Drow make so much more sense.
- Location
- Toronto, Ontario(occasionally)
My thought: don't certain Fae units derive a large portion of their power from their magical banners?
And didn't the Triumphant-era Legions of Terror have Demons bound to their banners in some way that made them terrifying to the rest of the continent?
If banners have the potential to be magically significant somehow it makes perfect sense to build serious realistic exercises around trying to keep them or deprive the enemy of them as the most important objective on the field.
At seventy-ish people I'd say that they have a pretty good chance at still winning this conventionally, my information from historical fiction implies that in engagements of units of a hundred people or fewer things were often decided by morale, momentum, and the charismatic capacity of the commander to keep both up, more so than tactics or even numerical advantage.
On the flip side my information also includes that ancient tactical manuals advised quite strongly to avoid immediately re-engaging after a major reverse or defeat, even if it is perfectly tactically sound, as soldiers are superstitious and easily spooked, and instead rebuild their confidence with a series of smaller engagements they can feel like they're winning, and thus that they're favored by luck, or better than the enemy, before seeking decisive confrontation that they can tell the fate of the whole force will be riding on.
However, depending on whether Rat Company sees the engagements that took place during their retreat as victories that might have already been accomplished, giant explosions, superior magic, and Named support make for quite a morale lever to make one side feel like things are going well, and depending on how widely the coming attack by Juniper and retreat plan was known they might not actually have suffered a noticeable morale shock from their last engagement, as shocks from losses can be much mitigated by managing expectations and seating the expected reverse within a role in a larger plan in advance.
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