Aleph: Oh, Keris. From the outside her harbour is much secret, very hidden. From the inside, she made it all pretty~
Aleph: How big is the islet? Will the harbour be large enough for her whole fleet, or just one or two ships?
EarthScorpion: You know those rocky islands at the end of TFA? It's like... small Scottish island scale.
Aleph: Just one ship, then.
EarthScorpion: No, let me just look for a picture. Like, about
this size, only rather rockier and more vertical.
Aleph: Oh, huh. Cool. So there will be space for her fleet, once a decent-sized harbour is hollowed out of the middle.
EarthScorpion: Yeah, it's about 3.5km by 1.75km. Although, I note, hollowing out the rocky bits in the middle will ruin the fresh water source which is rain gathering in the centre above sea level.
Aleph: Yup. She can find some other way to get fresh water. Hmm. And possibly salt at the same time. An artifact, maybe. For now, the Baisha has good stocks.
EarthScorpion: Hmm, actually, by RAW... well, a marotte counts as ten men. Digging away a granite mountain is... not that quick.
Aleph: Sigh. Yeah. But, eh, they can get started on at least enlarging the bit where the Baisha is parked. Fifty men working around the clock can get a fair amount done.
Aleph: ... huh. Actually, if her islet is the size of Tresco, it's about 300 hectares, and she only needs 30 or so for a good-sized harbour. Wait, no, wow. By your measurements, it might actually be closer to
600 hectares than 300. Hmm. It's probably not a rectangle, though.
EarthScorpion: No, it's all... well, islandy.
Aleph: I'll model it as an oval, and... yeah, that's about 480-500 hectares. That'll do. Sweet. Keris might well be able to keep the freshwater source, then, depending on where the best coverage for her hidden harbour is.
Aleph: ... sigh. She may put the harbour
next to the big rocky bit, and then summon a shitload of marottes to hollow out a large harbour and use the excavated material to build hills around it. And then plant jungle on the hills.
EarthScorpion: Well, you know. "The countermagic required to cleanse the blight is not based on the Infernal's Essence rating - instead, Emerald countermagic cleanses an area with a radius of up to 250 yards, while Sapphire and Adamant cleanse a radius of up to 500 and 1000 yards, respectively." That means you can make a safe channel through the jungle planted at sea. And of course, by RAW, it's super-easy to find food in a luscious jungle. It's also very hard for an invader to burn it out. Because, you know, most of it is underwater.
Aleph:
Keris: "..."
Keris: *makes two "safe" channels*
Keris: *one of them only goes halfway to the island and then abruptly stops, much to the woe of anyone who was following it*
Keris: *includes a visible marker like a jutting-up reef at the start of the trap one*
Aleph: ... haha. That's even better. Because even if you notice and manage to stop the ship before you sail into the Sargasso, she'll just make the channel narrow enough that you'll have
extreme difficulty turning your ship around in it. So you're still stuck unless you can re-navigate the fake channel backwards.
EarthScorpion: Oh, Keris. You're going to wind up turning this island into something surrounded by Metagaos jungles. Though your secret island lair is lacking in mountains or volcanoes.
Aleph: ... huh. WWI actually lets Keris excavate granite
really fast. She can chain it with Echo and run along going WHEEEEEEE. Remind me to estimate how fast she can clear space with that, because I suspect the answer is "very".
EarthScorpion: Yes, although not leave it in a state to be used, I note
Aleph: Yeah, which is a pity. It's subtractive. She can use it to "dig" down and break walls away, though.
EarthScorpion: Well, heh. Remember, in AGSITV Louise used WWI to make a cave.
Aleph: Hmm. Going by estimated mass and water density, I think a yeddim is... maybe 15-20 cubic metres?
Paraceratherium was about 4.8 high, 7.4 long and probably 1.5 wide, and even dividing by three to account for empty space, that's in that ballpark.
Aleph: Call it 15m^3 for a WWI, then. And she can use SIHW to hit everything on her Dash tick.
EarthScorpion: So if she's using SIHW. the main volume is coming for that giant trail she's marking out. Lawl. Keris. Really good at making canals
Aleph: Well, heh. She can run along walls. All she has to do is run along the bottom of one of the inlet walls and the rest will collapse in.
Aleph: Then her doborminn can hurl the rubble up and out and her marottes can get started arranging it. Then repeat. And she can also deepen lakes and harbours really,
really fast.
EarthScorpion: Keris, stop digging a secret tunnel
EarthScorpion: through the mountains
EarthScorpion: secret tunnel
...
EarthScorpion: Oh, Keris.
Aleph: She does like scoping things out from the bottom. And has an entirely shameless love of that thing where people try to do something nasty to a defenceless vulnerable victim who turns out to be something hilariously overpowered, as long as the former make funny expressions when terrified and the latter is her.
EarthScorpion: Yes, that does amuse her.
Aleph: ... Pirate Queen Keris is going to get a reputation among her followers for her Ekoan sense of humour, isn't she? It's going to be a known thing; the impish mischief she occasionally indulges in.
EarthScorpion: Echo indicates that this is clearly the best form of humour.
Aleph: ... there comes a point, to be honest, where some of her subordinates are aware, in a certain type of fuzzily-defined situation that you get a feel for by experiencing several of them, that a person they're dealing with may be a Gale or Keris herself.
Aleph: Most of them then play along and see if they can sucker other people into falling for it.
...
EarthScorpion: Kerisssssssss. Just went straight for the Tengese triad. I wonder how she's going to react when she finds they give equal veneration to the Golden Lord and the Pale Mistress?
Aleph: ... hmm. Yeah, that'll be interesting.
EarthScorpion: And will she give Darling Yellow's group to the triads?
Aleph: Probably, yes. But not until she has more control over them.
EarthScorpion: Oh, Keris. And once she's running the triad, she's the one responsible for their slaving, their drug selling and their prostitution. Running a criminal organisation will be eye-opening for her.
Keris: "... so I'm basically a Nexan merchant-prince."
Sasi: "Yes. There's really no difference."
Aleph: She may well be able to find mental work-arounds for the drugs and prostitution - heh, especially with some upwards-mobility programs. It's the slavery she won't like. She'll... mmm... probably at first try and limit it to what she considers "acceptable targets", and long-term find another source of profit that she can swap it with; banning her triads from the slave trade and doing Other Thing instead.
Aleph: Her Get Revenge doesn't care, but her Compassion does.
EarthScorpion: Yes, heh, there will be...
interesting clashes between Haneyl and Calesco over this. And even Haneyl and Echo, because Echo doesn't like seeing people sad.
Aleph: Oh, Keris. She's thinking bigger now. "Take over the triads". "Screw not poking the Navy, I'mma build up and kick them out of my ocean". And oh dear. Before she gets that far, she'll want to slowly crush (and in some cases absorb) the other pirate fleets in Saata.
EarthScorpion: Heh. That's the other thing she can do if she runs the triad, of course. They run trade routes. They're not the Lintha. They're much more functionally integrated into societies. They're... hmm, sort of a local Guild-alike in quite a few ways, really. And that means that they do in fact have their own supply stations. Which can, with a bit of work, become their own free-standing towns.
Aleph: Excellent~ Oh, Keris. Gettin' all grown up and becoming a player~
...
EarthScorpion: ... keris
EarthScorpion: you have left Piu and co on your boat
EarthScorpion: accompanied only by demons and Kuha
Aleph: Yes, I know. I'd thought about mentioning it, actually, but they've been with demons in Malfeas for the past year. Now they're with demons in Creation and have an island to run around on. I briefly considered having Keris get one of the small 1-masters out for Yelm to play with, but then decided that this would be a very bad idea.
EarthScorpion:
Aleph: ... more to the point,
kerissss
Aleph: u really want ppl who use ur sekrit harbour to know who it belongs to, don't u?
EarthScorpion: Sigh. Sadly for those Kimberyian statues, things are decidedly... uh, lewd.
Aleph: Do they have clothes on?
EarthScorpion: What would Keris do?
Aleph: ... dammit keris
Aleph: they do have clothes on
Aleph: and somehow manage to have clothes on in a way that is lewder than
not having clothes on.
Sasi: "... I'm almost impressed."
EarthScorpion: She may need to go back and touch up on them, since the demons making them don't live up to her personal standards. Actually, huh. You know the thing about all those marble Greek and Roman statues?
Aleph: They were painted?
EarthScorpion: Yeah. When they were made, they were painted. So Keris' statues are very painted.
Aleph: Oh dear.
EarthScorpion: And eye-clashing. Oh, Keris. Sasi is fairly sure you're colour-blind. You're fairly sure Sasi just doesn't really see colour.
EarthScorpion: ... actually, uh. Sasi kind of doesn't see colour. Or at least, it doesn't mean anything to her. It's just sensory data.
Aleph: Honestly, with the published logs, her Exaltation is long enough pre-An Teng that we could probably retcon it that she
was colourblind before Exalting, and has mostly got used to it but still goes a bit overboard.
Aleph: "kerisian (adj): coloured in a garish, eye-clashing and magnificently tastelessly beautiful way"
EarthScorpion: Oh, Keris. That's what happens when you use the Kimbery excellency for the roll. If you wanted awe-inspiring magnificence, you should have used Malfeas.
Aleph: Well yes
Aleph: but let me just name a few words from the Malfeas excellency.
Aleph: "obvious". "ostentatious". "overkill". "Any intentional subtlety... makes this Excellency inapplicable".
Aleph: Now, I'm not saying that these are
bad choices for making, you know, a secret harbour.
Aleph: Just that perhaps they might slightly disadvantage you in the subject of
keeping it secret.
...
Aleph: Okay, so Keris currently has the Isle of Gulls and Saata. I'm starting a modified map of the Southwest in the Kerisgame folder to keep track of places. Do we still have the Yu Shan gates as things?
EarthScorpion: They are things that exist, yes. Keris doesn't know where they are - they aren't automatically in their canon positions. But since Sidereals can also make their way through spirit courts, they're much less important. Hell knows that historically there was a gate somewhere near Saata, but Creation has changed a lot.
EarthScorpion: Saata is basically Singapore geographically. So it's
like this, right up against
a larger island.
Aleph: ... wow, huh. The Isle of Gulls to Saata is like Land's End to John o' Groats, more or less.
Aleph: ... and Keris can, sigh, swim it in an afternoon.
Aleph: keris u so bullshit
EarthScorpion: And doesn't even get bored swimming it, because she dream-meditates while doing it and so spends an afternoon playing with her children.
Aleph: Oh, Keris. You're going to go
nuts down in Scale Crest. Wheeeeee demonic islands everywhere~ And then have a chain of stop-off islands up the coast.
EarthScorpion: Heh By taking this tiny, mostly canonically undetailed area (apart from An Teng), we basically have free reign for a reasonably, ~Europe sized play-area.
...
EarthScorpion: Heh. Oh, Keris, your scalp piercings and the way you use them to anchor garotte wire in your hair so your hair has a hard core for strangling. And of course, your flesh is so damn tough that it's nearly impossible for anyone to pull a piercing out. It's like trying to pull a bolt out of the metal it's bolted to.
Aleph: Keris: "I'll tell you one thing: I'm damn glad I got those piercings
before I got this tough."
...
Aleph: ... heh. Neride actually quite likes Keris at this point. She
gets how things are meant to work onboard. Keris spends time in her quarters working on art and doing Sorcery and whatnot, and lets Neride run the ship without trying to micromanage. And when it comes to attacks, she again lets Neride take the lead at sea, and takes part in the raids on land (and handles it competently).
Aleph: ... also, neither of them are terribly fond of the Priest.
EarthScorpion: And Keris isn't pushing the vessel too hard.
