ChiefTurtle117
The Sigillite
- Location
- Holy Terra
[X] 3 squads of soldiers (0-4)
[X] 3 SAWs (0-4)
[X] Set up a FOB (100 militia attached to base)
[X] 3 SAWs (0-4)
[X] Set up a FOB (100 militia attached to base)
Age of Strife
2.3
- Pronouns
- He/Him
[X] 3 squads of soldiers (0-4)
[X] 3 SAWs (0-4)
[X] Set up a FOB (100 militia attached to base)
While the hospital is rather worrying, you decide that you would be safest to have a fallback position first before you go exploring any further. Having your troops and helpers begin collecting rubble, you start the process of creating fortifications around the entrance to the rail pillar. Unlike the fortifications you have seen which tend to be simple straight lines, you make sure that your barricades are set up with an eye towards firing lines and setting up overlapping kill zones. The assistance of your artisans and academics with working the rubble and calculating things comes in invaluable in that regard.
Of course, the level of activity you are getting up to was bound to draw attention, and you soon enough have people coming up to you with wary interest. From them you get a bit of information about what is going on in the ruins of Shattersaw.
The dragonfly banner people are from Dragonfly's Landing, which is a fair distance on foot. They are evidently unusually well armed, although your military grade gear still causes people's eyes to bug out in surprise so you are guessing that they are armed with higher quality hunting gear rather than the more common varmint guns. While probably not having the ability to reliably penetrate your armour, big bore hunting rifles can still cause enormous amounts of damage and even if they fail to penetrate can still cause significant blunt force trauma. They are also unusually well disciplined, if not perhaps military discipline. They're the sort of guys who if they say they are going to do something, they will do it, which includ Someone smart and clever is clearly in charge of the Dragonflies.
As for the black saw group? They're Forestry Local 504, a worker's union that has organized into their own sort of government. They're nowhere near as well armed as the Dragonflies they are also much more willing to get into fights and sustain casualties. This would normally be seen of as a bad thing, but the 504 are much better liked by the people eking out an existence in Shattersaw for being charitable and respectful towards others where the Dragonflies are cold and subtly aggressive. The 504 actually fought what could be considered a war with the Dragonflies over the farms, wearing forestry gear augmented with scrap plates as makeshift heavy armour tough enough to let them get into melee with the Dragonflies and attack with a variety of power tools. The Dragonflies kept control of the farms but ended up being forced to distribute a portion of the harvest freely to the locals as part of the settlement.
The hospital and the skull and crossbones flags were apparently related. The hospital was, by all accounts, the work of a single madman called the Grave Keeper who seemed to have gone completely insane at some point and had made it his mission to collect every body in Shattersaw and intern them in the hospital abandoned and stripped bare by Armin's leaving of the place. No one was quite sure if he deliberately went out to make new bodies, but he was apparently incredibly dangerous if attacked and by all accounting the vast majority of the bones he was storing in the remains of the hospital had to have come from victims of the starbomb, so no one felt like picking a fight with him on a large scale. The skull and crossbones flags were people invoking his protection, more or less. They gathered up bodies from the rubble and laid them out for him to take away, and in turn there was an alarming tendency for anyone who hassled such communities to simply disappear. The most frightful legend was of a squad of 504 men who got drunk and rowdy with some survivors flying the Grave Keeper's flag who subsequently vanished over the next week in their own barracks, although the telling of the story sounded like it had already picked up more than a few rounds of embellishment.
As the sun started to set and these impromptu interviews started to trickle away, a far less impromptu group begins to march up to your barricade. Wearing slash proof clothing augmented with scrap metal plates and carrying rotary and chain saws with a few rifles like the various interviewees had said, a squad of the 504 marched under their red and black banner before stopping a respectful distance from the barricade. One of the men then stepped forward and announced, "We wish to parlay!"
Waving to them, you exit outside your barricade, your rifle slung on your back and your men watching out for you. As you get closer, despite the dying light, you notice that the armour they are wearing has been extensively patched and repaired, the damage looking like multiple bullet penetrations. The damage is far too great for any individual to have survived all those bullets, so it seems obvious that their gear has been passed on from the dead to the living multiple times in the past fourteen months. That's quite the turn over rate.
Going up to them, the man who came forward announces himself as "Union Officer Martin Badrock, official representative of the 504 in Shattersaw."
"Grand Captain Dia Stone of Greengraft," you introduce yourself. At the expression on Martin's face, you add on, "I'm pretty much the only military authority in my community so unless we find a general puttering around somewhere, I'm going to be at the top of the hierarchy for the foreseeable future. I'm not calling myself anything more than what my responsibilities actually are, but we decided to add 'Grand' in front of the rank to denote my actual position in our group."
"That's surprisingly humble of you," Martin points out.
"Well, I'm not exactly humble but I do know enough about hubris to figure that calling myself 'General' or 'Marshall' is a bad idea," you reply. You then add on, "I'm guessing that you're interested in knowing what we're doing here and what our intentions are."
"That is correct," Martin states.
"We're interested in setting up a forward base to secure our interests in Shattersaw, which at the moment are primarily for salvage," you explain.
Martin frowns at that and then says, "So you're just another exploiter like the Dragonflies?"
"Not sure about that since I haven't met them, but we're looking to have a food surplus soon so trading it for salvage seems like a distinct possibility. Right now we just want to get the situation stabilized," you explain.
Martin thinks it over for a minute before he says, "I suppose that is fair. Still, many have come to Shattersaw looking to only loot and exploit with no thoughts for the people still living in the ruins."
You held your tongue, for the moment, on how much of that you had done last year. Then again, you had also taken in nearly a third of your current population from Shattersaw through (mostly) peaceful means, and the less than peaceful incident had been you finishing a fight rather than starting it. So you wouldn't call yourself purely exploitative. Instead you say, "I had heard that the Dragonflies are not the most liked around here."
"They have come out and said that their intention is to control food production in the area to force the submission of everyone else. The claim kinship with the same tyrants that brought this destruction upon us all in the first place. By all accounts, Dragonfly's Landing was a resort and hunting club before the starbombs fell, which tells you all you need to know about how these people operate," Martin explains.
Considering Davion... yeah, if this is accurate then an entire faction of nobles could be trouble all right. Then again, Martin seemed a bit aggressive in his distaste for the Dragonflies and other 'exploiters'. You get the feeling that the 504 might be more than a little fanatical in their politics after everything that has happened.
There is a bit of a pause, during which Martin sort of eyes you sideways as he considers what he would like to say next before he eventually shrugs and says, "Actually, I have a bit of a proposal for you. While the Dragonflies have no doubt heard of you and the fact that you are better armed than most, they have not seen you directly yet. We have already attempted to liberate the farms, but while the fighting was fierce enough to force them to concede to release some of their harvest into general circulation, they still keep many in bondage through their control of the farms. The surprise of your troops should help to permanently dislodge them."
You raise an eyebrow at that and then say, "So you want me to attack a group I have not had contact with who are 'bad' based off of hearsay and the word of their self-admitted enemy, who is not only asking me to assist in an attack, but is proposing an attack in violation of a peace treaty?"
"Yes," Martin admits nonchalantly.
Your response is...
[] (1.2) We will investigate and speak with the Dragonflies ourselves
[] We will go about our business and spend our time salvaging and investigating
[] (0.8) You're right, they sound like jerks, we'll assist you in your attack
[X] 3 SAWs (0-4)
[X] Set up a FOB (100 militia attached to base)
While the hospital is rather worrying, you decide that you would be safest to have a fallback position first before you go exploring any further. Having your troops and helpers begin collecting rubble, you start the process of creating fortifications around the entrance to the rail pillar. Unlike the fortifications you have seen which tend to be simple straight lines, you make sure that your barricades are set up with an eye towards firing lines and setting up overlapping kill zones. The assistance of your artisans and academics with working the rubble and calculating things comes in invaluable in that regard.
Of course, the level of activity you are getting up to was bound to draw attention, and you soon enough have people coming up to you with wary interest. From them you get a bit of information about what is going on in the ruins of Shattersaw.
The dragonfly banner people are from Dragonfly's Landing, which is a fair distance on foot. They are evidently unusually well armed, although your military grade gear still causes people's eyes to bug out in surprise so you are guessing that they are armed with higher quality hunting gear rather than the more common varmint guns. While probably not having the ability to reliably penetrate your armour, big bore hunting rifles can still cause enormous amounts of damage and even if they fail to penetrate can still cause significant blunt force trauma. They are also unusually well disciplined, if not perhaps military discipline. They're the sort of guys who if they say they are going to do something, they will do it, which includ Someone smart and clever is clearly in charge of the Dragonflies.
As for the black saw group? They're Forestry Local 504, a worker's union that has organized into their own sort of government. They're nowhere near as well armed as the Dragonflies they are also much more willing to get into fights and sustain casualties. This would normally be seen of as a bad thing, but the 504 are much better liked by the people eking out an existence in Shattersaw for being charitable and respectful towards others where the Dragonflies are cold and subtly aggressive. The 504 actually fought what could be considered a war with the Dragonflies over the farms, wearing forestry gear augmented with scrap plates as makeshift heavy armour tough enough to let them get into melee with the Dragonflies and attack with a variety of power tools. The Dragonflies kept control of the farms but ended up being forced to distribute a portion of the harvest freely to the locals as part of the settlement.
The hospital and the skull and crossbones flags were apparently related. The hospital was, by all accounts, the work of a single madman called the Grave Keeper who seemed to have gone completely insane at some point and had made it his mission to collect every body in Shattersaw and intern them in the hospital abandoned and stripped bare by Armin's leaving of the place. No one was quite sure if he deliberately went out to make new bodies, but he was apparently incredibly dangerous if attacked and by all accounting the vast majority of the bones he was storing in the remains of the hospital had to have come from victims of the starbomb, so no one felt like picking a fight with him on a large scale. The skull and crossbones flags were people invoking his protection, more or less. They gathered up bodies from the rubble and laid them out for him to take away, and in turn there was an alarming tendency for anyone who hassled such communities to simply disappear. The most frightful legend was of a squad of 504 men who got drunk and rowdy with some survivors flying the Grave Keeper's flag who subsequently vanished over the next week in their own barracks, although the telling of the story sounded like it had already picked up more than a few rounds of embellishment.
As the sun started to set and these impromptu interviews started to trickle away, a far less impromptu group begins to march up to your barricade. Wearing slash proof clothing augmented with scrap metal plates and carrying rotary and chain saws with a few rifles like the various interviewees had said, a squad of the 504 marched under their red and black banner before stopping a respectful distance from the barricade. One of the men then stepped forward and announced, "We wish to parlay!"
Waving to them, you exit outside your barricade, your rifle slung on your back and your men watching out for you. As you get closer, despite the dying light, you notice that the armour they are wearing has been extensively patched and repaired, the damage looking like multiple bullet penetrations. The damage is far too great for any individual to have survived all those bullets, so it seems obvious that their gear has been passed on from the dead to the living multiple times in the past fourteen months. That's quite the turn over rate.
Going up to them, the man who came forward announces himself as "Union Officer Martin Badrock, official representative of the 504 in Shattersaw."
"Grand Captain Dia Stone of Greengraft," you introduce yourself. At the expression on Martin's face, you add on, "I'm pretty much the only military authority in my community so unless we find a general puttering around somewhere, I'm going to be at the top of the hierarchy for the foreseeable future. I'm not calling myself anything more than what my responsibilities actually are, but we decided to add 'Grand' in front of the rank to denote my actual position in our group."
"That's surprisingly humble of you," Martin points out.
"Well, I'm not exactly humble but I do know enough about hubris to figure that calling myself 'General' or 'Marshall' is a bad idea," you reply. You then add on, "I'm guessing that you're interested in knowing what we're doing here and what our intentions are."
"That is correct," Martin states.
"We're interested in setting up a forward base to secure our interests in Shattersaw, which at the moment are primarily for salvage," you explain.
Martin frowns at that and then says, "So you're just another exploiter like the Dragonflies?"
"Not sure about that since I haven't met them, but we're looking to have a food surplus soon so trading it for salvage seems like a distinct possibility. Right now we just want to get the situation stabilized," you explain.
Martin thinks it over for a minute before he says, "I suppose that is fair. Still, many have come to Shattersaw looking to only loot and exploit with no thoughts for the people still living in the ruins."
You held your tongue, for the moment, on how much of that you had done last year. Then again, you had also taken in nearly a third of your current population from Shattersaw through (mostly) peaceful means, and the less than peaceful incident had been you finishing a fight rather than starting it. So you wouldn't call yourself purely exploitative. Instead you say, "I had heard that the Dragonflies are not the most liked around here."
"They have come out and said that their intention is to control food production in the area to force the submission of everyone else. The claim kinship with the same tyrants that brought this destruction upon us all in the first place. By all accounts, Dragonfly's Landing was a resort and hunting club before the starbombs fell, which tells you all you need to know about how these people operate," Martin explains.
Considering Davion... yeah, if this is accurate then an entire faction of nobles could be trouble all right. Then again, Martin seemed a bit aggressive in his distaste for the Dragonflies and other 'exploiters'. You get the feeling that the 504 might be more than a little fanatical in their politics after everything that has happened.
There is a bit of a pause, during which Martin sort of eyes you sideways as he considers what he would like to say next before he eventually shrugs and says, "Actually, I have a bit of a proposal for you. While the Dragonflies have no doubt heard of you and the fact that you are better armed than most, they have not seen you directly yet. We have already attempted to liberate the farms, but while the fighting was fierce enough to force them to concede to release some of their harvest into general circulation, they still keep many in bondage through their control of the farms. The surprise of your troops should help to permanently dislodge them."
You raise an eyebrow at that and then say, "So you want me to attack a group I have not had contact with who are 'bad' based off of hearsay and the word of their self-admitted enemy, who is not only asking me to assist in an attack, but is proposing an attack in violation of a peace treaty?"
"Yes," Martin admits nonchalantly.
Your response is...
[] (1.2) We will investigate and speak with the Dragonflies ourselves
[] We will go about our business and spend our time salvaging and investigating
[] (0.8) You're right, they sound like jerks, we'll assist you in your attack
Choice three is liable to net us the Trusting Trait so I wouldn't recommend voting for it, but given simply ignoring the situation to go about our own business means this situation will deteriorate in the long-term which is bad since enough humans have already died even before adding future deaths due to skirmishes over resources.
[X] (1.2) We will investigate and speak with the Dragonflies ourselves
[X] (1.2) We will investigate and speak with the Dragonflies ourselves
[X] (1.2) We will investigate and speak with the Dragonflies ourselves
Keeping the power play going is in our best interests. The 504 Must have a ton of people to expend with their operational doctrine. The issue is if they are willing to break one treaty, then they can just as easily break the next.
But tact is needed.
[X] We will go about our business and spend our time salvaging and investigating
But tact is needed.
[X] We will go about our business and spend our time salvaging and investigating
Night_stalker
Slava Ukraini!
- Pronouns
- He/Him
[X] (1.2) We will investigate and speak with the Dragonflies ourselves
ChiefTurtle117
The Sigillite
- Location
- Holy Terra
[X] (1.2) We will investigate and speak with the Dragonflies ourselves
[X] We will go about our business and spend our time salvaging and investigating
- Location
- Tel'aran'rhiod
Maybe we can talk to him about this grave keeper, if he is so concerned about the people then he might be interested in taking this loony out.
- Location
- Skyrim
[X] (1.2) We will investigate and speak with the Dragonflies ourselves.
-[X] "If they turn out to be as tyrannical and expansionist as you say, it's only going to be a matter of time before there is conflict between us and them, but I must at least let them speak for themselves once."
This guy is not giving a particularly good impression, but on the other hand, peace treaties with self-declared tyrants just about never mean much of anything anyways.
More seriously though, if the Dragonflies are as imperialistic and oppressive as they sound, we will end up fighting them, because one thing a tyrant cannot allow, is a serious independent power capable of challenging him/her.
-[X] "If they turn out to be as tyrannical and expansionist as you say, it's only going to be a matter of time before there is conflict between us and them, but I must at least let them speak for themselves once."
This guy is not giving a particularly good impression, but on the other hand, peace treaties with self-declared tyrants just about never mean much of anything anyways.
More seriously though, if the Dragonflies are as imperialistic and oppressive as they sound, we will end up fighting them, because one thing a tyrant cannot allow, is a serious independent power capable of challenging him/her.
jwolfe_beta
Semi Genre-Savvy Overlord
- Location
- Canada
[X] (1.2) We will investigate and speak with the Dragonflies ourselves.
-[X] "If they turn out to be as tyrannical and expansionist as you say, it's only going to be a matter of time before there is conflict between us and them, but I must at least let them speak for themselves once."
-[X] "If they turn out to be as tyrannical and expansionist as you say, it's only going to be a matter of time before there is conflict between us and them, but I must at least let them speak for themselves once."
Beyogi
and a fairy
- Pronouns
- She/Her
New [X] (1.2) We will investigate and speak with the Dragonflies ourselves.
-[X] "If they turn out to be as tyrannical and expansionist as you say, it's only going to be a matter of time before there is conflict between us and them, but I must at least let them speak for themselves once."
-[X] "If they turn out to be as tyrannical and expansionist as you say, it's only going to be a matter of time before there is conflict between us and them, but I must at least let them speak for themselves once."
jwolfe_beta
Semi Genre-Savvy Overlord
- Location
- Canada
Avoid if we can, kill him if he threatens us. The guy sounds like an insane Chaos worshiping psyker .
[X] (1.2) We will investigate and speak with the Dragonflies ourselves.
-[X] "If they turn out to be as tyrannical and expansionist as you say, it's only going to be a matter of time before there is conflict between us and them, but I must at least let them speak for themselves once."
-[X] "If they turn out to be as tyrannical and expansionist as you say, it's only going to be a matter of time before there is conflict between us and them, but I must at least let them speak for themselves once."
Hazardine
Asura of Darkness
- Location
- Somewhere in Florida
[X] (1.2) We will investigate and speak with the Dragonflies ourselves.
-[X] "If they turn out to be as tyrannical and expansionist as you say, it's only going to be a matter of time before there is conflict between us and them, but I must at least let them speak for themselves once."
-[X] "If they turn out to be as tyrannical and expansionist as you say, it's only going to be a matter of time before there is conflict between us and them, but I must at least let them speak for themselves once."
Deadly Snark
Tryhard As Fuck
Dangerous and eventually going to be a huge problem, but not someone we can deal with right now.
Damnit Kelso!
- Location
- Cyberspace
[X] (1.2) We willinvestigate and speak with the Dragonflies ourselves.
-[X] "If they turn out to be as tyrannical and expansionist as you say, it's only going to be a matter of time before there is conflict between us and them, but I must at least let them speak for themselves once."
Eh, I figure that if he's busy collecting bones and not stripping meat from them, he's *probably* not Khornate. Now... A follower of Nurgle? Could be, could be.
Good thing we've got that sweet medical tech.
-[X] "If they turn out to be as tyrannical and expansionist as you say, it's only going to be a matter of time before there is conflict between us and them, but I must at least let them speak for themselves once."
Eh, I figure that if he's busy collecting bones and not stripping meat from them, he's *probably* not Khornate. Now... A follower of Nurgle? Could be, could be.
Good thing we've got that sweet medical tech.