[X] Have a nice little chat with Crimson Lotus
-[X] Buffs as per
Goldfish, using the Sirine's Grace variant.
-[X] Go into this as if it as a play that will be written on the fly. The cell is a stage, every word spoken a script, and with the knowledge gained from his interrogation, you can write a play that sees him not only dance to your tune, but do so willingly and with joy.
-[X] Script Outline:
--[X] Seat him in a cell, chained to a chair at a table. When Viserys enters, he sends all guards outside the room and opens the chains with a spells, proclaiming them unnecessary.
// There are multiple layers to this showmanship. On the one hand, it's a straight power-play. Crimson Lotus is well and truly the weaker party here, so fearing and restraining him is utterly pointless. The second layer is that it gives him symbolically some measure of agency. He is still our unwilling guest, but he is free to act within the boundaries we give him. This is a psychological thing for humans, but for a fey, it means the difference between a willing oath and one made under duress. Lastly, it sets a clean stage, restricting this to two actors with little in regards to diversions, meaning that this is a direct battle of wits and titanic social skills.
--[X] Ask him clearly if he knows why he is here. Focus on the reason why we would object not only to his indirect dealings with Baator, but also his coercion of mortals into de-facto slavery.
// Setting the focus of the scene and establishing the roles. We are the reasonable authority figure, he is the criminal.
--[X] As he has already shown a willful blindness to a mortals desire for a free will, he will most certainly object to the interpretation that he enslaved anyone. Adjust the following to fit the particulars of his answer: "What else would you call it then? They were made to swear oaths they never wanted, forced upon them by capricious fate and no fault of their own. Forever bound to the whims of another, no say in their own path, their wants and needs an afterthought at best. This may seem strange to you, but this is what we call slavery." Pause here. "But maybe you know this far too well..."
// We know that he is an ambitious one and his acting out is precisely the result of that ambition being stalled by his oaths and the rigid structure of the Court of Stars. Furthermore, he abandoned his previous court to escape it's ever changing nature that would have subsumed him. So he basically is our default recruit. Ambitious. Arrogant. Self-serving. We have achieved marvelous results with these base materials. For him though, all of this is far more absolute then for a human. His oaths constrict him and getting the necessary Traitorous Underling narrative going to rise the ranks would be difficult. Here though we offer him a plot hook to get out of his situation. The rebel that throws off the shackles of oppression. It is one of those roles with tremendous potential and one he played to some degree in the past. A sweet offer and given freely at that.
--[X] Bridge section in which he has room to state his motivations while we nudge him along to the freedom narrative that is our preferred outcome. Wrap it up by clearly stating that you can now see why he acted the way he did and that he is not the cruel monster some might see him as. None the less, you can't let his actions slide. He will face trial, either in your court or that of the Court of Stars, depending on how negotiations go. Then end teasingly with: "Unless..."
// Shaping his narrative more into a preferable route for us. This is not a process where we force a new narrative upon him, we just give him a lead and aid him redefining himself. He can block all of this by simply not playing along, instead opting for a Haughty Fey narrative or Loyal Servant Of the Court line, but given everything we learned about him, he will pounce on the chance we are offering here.
--[X] Offer him a bargain. There will be no trial in a court for him, but a trial in our service. For 7 years, he will swear himself to us, then he is free to go. Either to rejoin his old court or do something else, that will be up to him.
// The core of the offer. He pays us with 7 years of service "for his transgressions" and in return, he gets his freedom afterwards. As someone who has chaffed for millennia under his current master, we might as well tell him that he can do whatever he wants in a week.
--[X] No matter if he agrees immediately or wants to know his duties, spin the following tale. You believe that there needs not to be strife between Fey and mortal, but that it will require effort and understanding to create peace instead. You can sway the mortal side, eradicating prejudices and standing up for the Fey against fanatics and madmen, but to reach the Fey, you need help. Many more are there in the Court of Stars who chaff under the chains binding them, willing to take out their frustrations on mortal, or hurting them not from malice, but simple obliviousness. Crimson Lotus task would it be to seek out those who are straining under their current positions. Tell them that we would take their service gladly if they are willing to live side by side with humans, giving them the freedom from their shackles that they crave. Obviously, the higher ups of the Court of Stars should not be made aware of this, lest they tighten the vice and cause more harm and suffering to cling to their power. It is not the power of the Fey we seek in this, but to ease tensions and give those like Crimson Lotus a way out before they do truly heinous things.
// And this is basically it. We start a recruitment drive among the dissatisfied parts of the Court of Stars. They will obviously not like it, but going against the narrative we are setting up her is dangerous and thorny for them. They would have to cut back on the allowable terms for bargains with mortals to shut us out and we are preemptively attaching the image of cruel masters tightening the collars of their slaves to any resistance they offer. At the same time, we exploit existing dissatisfaction and disunity in the Court of Stars with this.
--[X] Detailed list of potential counter-attacks by the Court of Stars and how these have been mitigated or prevented:
---[X] "Fey can't swear fealty to mortals." - This is a false, as both Doran and soon Oberyn have oathsworn Fey minions, and any attempts to curtail the ability of Fey to bargain their fealty would cause problems with their own Rainbow Guard for the Tyrells. If they actually try this narrative, their whole infiltration operation goes poof.
---[X] "This isn't about Freedom, it's just about power." - This is a bit more thorny for us, but we have enough leverage to weather this attack. There are a bunch of freed slaves in Essos after all, so by giving all of this a slavery spin, we can use that narrative weight accrued against attempts to frame this as a power-play.
---[X] "This is an act of war." - This one is hard to spin for the Fey, as we would not attack anyone. Not entirely impossible, but if they want to sell this narrative, they would neat to react to it as if it was a an act of war and that would create a situation where the person with the better spin-control wins. As we already have the anti-slavery spin on the story, we can turn their act into unprovoked attacks, play the bodies of the courts against the leadership and wrap this whole mess up by murdering 7+1 Fey lords.
---[X] "Fey and mortals can't live together." - Part of the narrative they tried to push during the talks on the Redwyne ships was that it's good and proper that there is a Fey lord for Fey matters and a monkey lord for monkey matters. This one is very shaky to employ against us due to the number of Fey in our service. Especially Moonsong making a spectacle of herself in front of most of Essos is undermining this by her very existence as our oathsworn vassal and captain of a mostly mortal crew. The other Fey in the Golden Fields area will help fortifying us further against this.
