Behind the Serpent Throne (CK2)

Could go badly, or could go not badly. But if we take it, it will look odd if we don't take the next one, that's about getting extra for Kiralo. And we're short on dice as is.
 
Or we might get away with it.

It's not that I like it, but what else can we drop?

Maybe the Mystery Mage? That would allow for a dramatic reveal at an appropriate moment
I'd rather not risk it, the possible negative consequences are just too bad. And while the idea of a dramatic reveal is funny, it would also prevent us from assigning him to actions he might be good at.

Maybe drop The Civic Guard and hope that Kuojah can keep the city reasonably calm? Although he did mention he would try to keep the court calm, which is not the entire city. I'm honestly not sure if he's any good on military-related actions like this.
 
I'd drop the civic guard as unrest if it flares up, which isn't a certainty, can be managed and mitigated.

For the absolute essential actions, the ones that qualify for me are those that are only possible or best done before we start campaigning itself. So these include training the troops, setting up those spirit wards for camp, the medical corps, lieutenants, and mages so our critical critical can be best put to use. I would also include meeting our Rassit in this category as they are one of our elite forces and we're their leader, and they've entered a xenophobic empire which is undoubtedly gonna cause issues fore them and which will reflect politically back onto Kiralo. Any issues that could escalate from them being here need to mitigated until they've proven themselves in combat, which should then naturally start mitigating the negatives on it's own and hopefully provide positives.

I would have included logistics too, but that exceptional success last turn has mitigated it into a nice to have given our limited action economy.

From those above though most of the actions are already gone, as at minimum training the troops should have 4 dice IMO.
 
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*wakes up* Hmm, okay, I should post my plan then. Dropped Quit It and The Civic Guard. This one does not exceed 15 dice, but I'm still open to suggested changes. Two actions I would like to fit in somehow are Lay Down the Law and Repairing Ties, but what to give up in exchange? Don't take The Garb of Conquerors and Integrating the Nobles and hope that the nobles won't be insulted and won't cause problems? Drop a dice on Training Days (on numbers or thoroughness)?

[X] Plan Sitzkrieg
[] Do not send out the army this month. It needs to train and gather, and give more time for allied forces to march to meet up with it and swell it.

With Training Days needing such a large number of dice to be really effective, I don't think we can afford to lose any actions. That and the Prince needs a quick victory, he can't afford to spend too much time building up his troops. And I think we gain more from waiting than the Prince does, so time would be on our side. In summary, my plan would be to let the Prince come to us instead of attacking him on his own terrain.

[] March on the traitors within his own province, denying their troops to Jinhai, though of course it also means that the Governor's forces won't march forth to join you, though the trip would already be quite long.

While Hari-Os is the bigger problem, I think it's also more risky to send the Governor's troops away from his province when there are still traitors running around in it. And I think the Prince thinks his mercenaries will invade the province and take it for him, so simply taking care of the traitors and keeping Hari-Su in our camp should be enough for his plan to unravel on that front. It also keeps troops there in case we didn't take care of all the mercenaries.

[] "Send as large a contingent as is practicable, the borders will hold for a season."

We can't ask them to send everything and leave the province barely defended, but I'd like to get more than just a token amount of troops from them.

[] Fortify the current positions and move themselves to be in the right location to intercept any pushes by Jinhai, and also be ready to link up with the main army when it comes on south. If it does.

Moving to the border with Basrat is too risky, it might give the Prince a quick victory to keep his allies together, raise their morale and hit ours. Going after the rebels will just waste resources, better to keep the troops in defensible positions and have them link up with us when needed.

Actions:
[] Training Days - General
-[] 2 dice on numbers, 2 dice on thoroughness

In the end, everything will depend on our troops, so I consider this the main action that needs to be done. While this won't train as many troops as possible nor train them as good as possible, I think it will still be adequate.

[] Your Beast of Burden
[] The Garb of Conquerors
[] The Mystery Mage - Mage

Just things that have to be done. Getting animals for our supply train, not insulting nobles and generals by allowing them to be decadent and finding out what our mystery box is good for.

[] A Doctor In the House? - (Mage or General?)
[] Spirit Support - Mage

Medics and basic (spirit) infrastructure are important. If we put Hi'sen and Gen'ha on this, it should be fine.

[] Sprinkling of Mages - Mage

Fully integrate our mages into the army.

[] Integrating the Nobles

Bi'ming would have been good for this. Oh well, better make sure they're not too much of a problem.

[] Reserved Elite - General
[] Scouting In the Dust - General
[] Raising The Ranks - General

Reserves, scouts and lower officers are important to have, nothing more to add.

[] Lay Down the Law - General

Keep order among our troops.
 
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Huh. Was making a plan of action but then I realized Random's plan was basically the same, except for one Dice.

[X] Plan Sitzkrieg

I'm keeping what I wrote to show you my thoughts on the choices.

In parenthesis are the generals and mages best suited to them. It isn't part of the vote though, just my own opinion of how to assign them.

[] Training Days
-[] 2 Dice on Numbers
-[] 2 Dice on Thoroughness
-[] General (Jun? If not, then Kiralo)

4 Dice spent here is a good average considering 3.5 Dice is the median of 7 Dice. This gives us plenty of Dice on our other actions, many of which are just as important for a functioning army.

Half of our levy trained to a solid degree. And the other half? Well, let's not put them in the worst fighting. We've got many more troops for that. The Rassit, the Hanin, the professional core. Really, options is the word of the day.

[] Sprinkling of Mages
-[] (Ji'lae and all that's left)
[] Reserved Elite
[] Raising The Ranks
[] Scouting In the Dust
-[] (Kueli)

Call these choices the restructuring or better training of different aspects of our army so it may function better as a whole. Mages, reserves, and the sergeants.

[] Your Beast of Burden
[] [G] [M] A Doctor In the House?
-[] (Hi'sen)
[] Spirit Support
-[] 1 Mage (Gen'ha)

The organizational, support, logistical, or whatever you want to call it side of the army. The supply chain, medical, and spiritual.


[] Lay Down the Law
-[] 1 General (Jin'ha)

Law and order. Very important.

I considered putting The Civic Guard but as is, we're probably going to place Jin'ha and Niu in our homebases of Irit and Csrae (probably just Csrae since it's Jin'ha's specialty and the origin of our logistical train). In hindsight, we may have not gotten the most utility from our choices.

Besides, Jin'ha is on Lay Down the Law, which I think has more impact.

[] [G] Integrating the Nobles
-[] (Kiralo or Niu)
[] The Garb of Conquerors

These two placate the nobles. Perhaps we can get to see positive effects as well if we roll well?

[] [M] Quit It
-[] (Any really)

Kiralo's personal action. Getting to talk to the mysterious spirit hobo-ing off us. Fun.

@Random Member, I'd prefer you slash one die for your numbers. I wrote my reason why 4 Dice seems enough for the purpose of a levy.

I'm also torn between Lay Down the Law and Repairing Ties. The system doesn't encourage choosing choices that are much too personal and with softer, less measurable gains though. Why take the time to reacquaint ourselves with our band when we can create an MP system to oversee the orderliness of a whole army?

Which is, well, haha. We've made Kiralo into a workaholic.
 
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Huh. Was making a plan of action but then I realized Random's plan was basically the same, except for one Dice.

[X] Plan Sitzkrieg

I'm keeping what I wrote to show you my thoughts on the choices.

In parenthesis are the generals and mages best suited to them. It isn't part of the vote though, just my own opinion of how to assign them.

[] Training Days
-[] 2 Dice on Numbers
-[] 2 Dice on Thoroughness
-[] General (Jun? If not, then Kiralo)

4 Dice spent here is a good average considering 3.5 Dice is the median of 7 Dice. This gives us plenty of Dice on our other actions, many of which are just as important for a functioning army.

Half of our levy trained to a solid degree. And the other half? Well, let's not put them in the worst fighting. We've got many more troops for that. The Rassit, the Hanin, the professional core. Really, options is the word of the day.

[] Sprinkling of Mages
-[] (Ji'lae and all that's left)
[] Reserved Elite
[] Raising The Ranks
[] Scouting In the Dust
-[] (Kueli)

Call these choices the restructuring or better training of different aspects of our army so it may function better as a whole. Mages, reserves, and the sergeants.

[] Your Beast of Burden
[] [G] [M] A Doctor In the House?
-[] (Hi'sen)
[] Spirit Support
-[] 1 Mage (Gen'ha)

The organizational, support, logistical, or whatever you want to call it side of the army. The supply chain, medical, and spiritual.


[] Lay Down the Law
-[] 1 General (Jin'ha)

Law and order. Very important.

I considered putting The Civic Guard but as is, we're probably going to place Jin'ha and Niu in our homebases of Irit and Csrae (probably just Csrae since it's Jin'ha's specialty and the origin of our logistical train). In hindsight, we may have not gotten the most utility from our choices.

Besides, Jin'ha is on Lay Down the Law, which I think has more impact.

[] [G] Integrating the Nobles
-[] (Kiralo or Niu)
[] The Garb of Conquerors

These two placate the nobles. Perhaps we can get to see positive effects as well if we roll well?

[] [M] Quit It
-[] (Any really)

Kiralo's personal action. Getting to talk to the mysterious spirit hobo-ing off us. Fun.

@Random Member, I'd prefer you slash one die for your numbers. I wrote my reason why 4 Dice seems enough for the purpose of a levy.

I'm also torn between Lay Down the Law and Repairing Ties. The system doesn't encourage choosing choices that are much too personal and with softer, less measurable gains though. Why take the time to reacquaint ourselves with our band when we can create an MP system to oversee the orderliness of a whole army?

Which is, well, haha. We've made Kiralo into a workaholic.
Your plan has 2 dice different than mine. You took 1 dice from Training Days for Lay Down the Law (which I can agree with, so I'm editing that in) and took Quit It instead of The Mystery Mage. Quit It is important, no doubt, but I'd rather place 2 dice on it and if we don't know what our Mystery Mage can do, we can't really have him support actions.

On the other hand, if Kiralo was mistaken and we end up marching before next month.... ehhh.

Do keep in mind that 2 dice on numbers is unlikely to mean 'half our levy', assuming that we need something like 400 to train everyone. Or @The Laurent is using a system where we need to pass a certain number to train a certain percentage of our troops (like, get more than 50 to train a quarter, more than 100 to train half, more than 200 to train everyone)? This was edited in, so I don't think you get an alert then. If someone could reask this question and tag the QM, that would be nice.
 
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Votes, questions, anything?

Currently have a headache, haven't read the thread, but the vote closes on Monday maybe, but I do know there aren't a lot of votes. Or more than two.
 
Votes, questions, anything?

Currently have a headache, haven't read the thread, but the vote closes on Monday maybe, but I do know there aren't a lot of votes. Or more than two.
Not sure if you feel you can answer this question, but how is the number of recruits that are trained by Training Days determined? On a maximum of 400 (Roll 200, half our recruits are trained) or do we need to hit certain thresholds (Roll 50 or more and a quarter of our recruits are trained, roll 100 or more and half our recruits are trained etc.)?
 
Not sure if you feel you can answer this question, but how is the number of recruits that are trained by Training Days determined? On a maximum of 400 (Roll 200, half our recruits are trained) or do we need to hit certain thresholds (Roll 50 or more and a quarter of our recruits are trained, roll 100 or more and half our recruits are trained etc.)?

Each dice puts it into a certain bracket, sorta? Like, if you use one dice, even if you roll a 90 you're still in the 'one dice' bracket. Just at the top of it or whatever?
 
Each dice puts it into a certain bracket, sorta? Like, if you use one dice, even if you roll a 90 you're still in the 'one dice' bracket. Just at the top of it or whatever?
I think I understand, but I'm not sure if that's how you meant it. Let's say we placed two dice on numbers and rolled 50 on both (EDIT: On second thought, maybe rolling 40 on both would be a better example?), would that be better or worse than rolling a 90 on one dice?

Also, does Kiralo have an idea how much of Hirand and Hari-Su is supporting the Prince and what the troop strength of the traitors is compared to the loyalists in those provinces?
 
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[X] Plan Neptune

The goal of this plan is to take the fight to Jinhai, and thus ensure any fighting and manuvering that occurs happens within his own lands. This has the benefit of limiting the vulnerability of our supply situation while doing the opposite to him, and ensures further political difficulties if he isn't seen as defending the lands of those who support him.

[X] Set out at the end of the month. Perhaps speed is best, if combined with caution? (-4 actions)

[X] March on the traitors within his own province, denying their troops to Jinhai, though of course it also means that the Governor's forces won't march forth to join you, though the trip would already be quite long.
[X] "Send what can be sent, the borders are most important."
[X] Press the attack against the peasant rebels. Try to deal with them, even if it costs men and resources. This might not be the time to deal with them, but they're on the backfoot at the moment.

Thus I've choose marching at the end of the month. This gives me the confidence to let the Irit action clean out the bandits, as ideally we'd meet up and march out before Jinhai moves, but if that doesn't happen the fortresses are less needed with our troops already within Irit.

With Hari-Su I feel the best course of action is to resolve their own internal difficulties first, as it improves their supply situation while ensuring their forces can't be caught between the rebels and Hari-Os's forces. And finally for Hari-Buelli I've decided to let them keep most of their forces on the border, as from the previous turns we already know that they are being heavily pressured and forced backwards so I don't want to weaken them much more.

Title: Training Days - x2 influence dice, x2 influence dice
Dice Rolled: Martial
Chance of Success: Variable
Time: 1 Turn
Text: Training the new recruits and making sure they know what they need to know is vitally important. Important enough that this could well take up a good deal of Kiralo's time, or anyone's time in general. Dice invested in this are divided into two areas. Number of recruits dealt with, and the intensity and attempted thoroughness of the training. Training numbers can range from 1 to 4 dice, and training thoroughness can range from 1-3. These only involve all men that come in from Csrae. Others will arrive later, hopefully trained...hopefully.
Requirements (if any): 1 General

[G] Title: The Elite Cadre
Dice Rolled: Martial and Diplomacy
Chance of Success: 55%
Time: 1 Turn.
Text: The core of the army will always be the professional soldiers. Inspiring them and making sure that they are willing and able to work with the new recruits, and are a steady presence for them could be very important. But they might resent the interference, or the implication that they might fail in this duty on their own. Even if it might be true.
Requirements (if any): None

Title: Raising The Ranks
Dice Rolled: Martial
Chance of Success: 65%
Time: 1 Turn
Text: Any army needs people who can manage things. Who can make sure the average grunting soldier knows where to go. Sergeants, one might call them. Finding these people and making sure they have authority is very important, especially since they have to deal with the people one rung above, many of whom will be appointed nobles.
Requirements (if any): 1 General.

These actions ensure we have a capable fighting force. We need our levies to have a certain amount of skill, we need them to be adequately led with a good chain of command, and we need to ensure that our professional soldiers are adequatly intergrated into the raised armies. This has the benefit fo easing communication, but it should also mean that their skills and experience should gradually dilute to the levies whether camping or marching.

[G] [M] Title: A Doctor In the House?
Dice Rolled: Stewardship
Chance of Success: 50%
Time: 1 Turn
Text: A medical corps is very important to an army on the march. Very important, and very difficult to do well. Gather doctors now. Find money to pay them. Hope that it can all come together.
Requirements (if any): None required.

Title: Sprinkling of Mages
Dice Rolled: Magic
Chance of Success: 60%
Time: 1 Turn.
Text: Mages do not stand all alone, not in an army. While some cluster in groups, for large-scale battlefield magic, others serve as an attachment to existing units, to stand behind the line of spearmen and work their magic. Figuring out how to divide them up in a way that works best could definitely be important.
Requirements (if any): At least one Mage

Title: Spirit Support
Dice Rolled: Magic
Chance of Success: 70%
Time: 1 Turn
Text: Set up the basic spirit-structure that will help guard the camps from attack and make sure everything is working right. This is simple work, and yet doing it wrong is certainly possible. History tells of armies that did not have the basics down, and lost the war because of it.
Requirements (if any): 1 Mage
This establishes our support that our armed forces are going to need, and lets us take advantage of that monstrous mage critical success. Thus I've gone with establishing spirit-support and medical supports taking advantage of the mages we selected which is also best done before we march, and I've selected to organize our large number of mages we've recruited so our army can best take advantage of their skills. This is also best done before we march.

If we didn't get such an incredible success on our logistics option, that would have also went here. Given we did though, I feel given the limited action economy it's fine to drop so we can pick an option where we're not so strong.

Title: Repairing Ties
Dice Rolled: Martial, Diplomacy
Chance of Success: Variable
Time: 1 Turn
Text: Kiralo has been away from his men for quite some time. Perhaps he should refamiliarize himself with them, since they are officially his household troops. So he should go around, make sure the people in the lower ranks are ready. He has money to outfit them, though there's...there is the question, if the war is won, what is to be done with them.
Requirements (if any): None

Title: The Garb of Conquerors
Dice Rolled: N/A
Chance of Success: 100%
Time:
Text: Now that they have the titles, many of the new generals and powerful lords are demanding that they be garbed appropriately to their station, and their garb recognized as official. Even if it looks absurd. Refusing to do so could be taken as a deadly insult...or it might be gotten away with. Either way, just admitting that it's all fine might be best.
Requirements (if any):
There's two dice left and I think it's absolutely essential we pick Repairing Ties. Our Wind-Dancers are an elite unit numbering near a thousand, they have great personal loyalty to us, and because of the latter they've enter a xenophobic empire to help us. That's going to cause some severe issues (particularly with the Hanin) and it needs to be dealt with immediately, and hopefully once we actually start fighting the xenophobic will start naturally decreasing as they improve themselves. They're still going to need help though, and we skipped on the option to greet Kuelli last turn.

The Garb of Conquerors so any issues with the other leaders of the army are minimized, which IMO should be prioritized over the noble option. That should be capable of being taken next round.

Choosing of Generals/Mages - I'll do that later on.
 
I could understand moving out if you pressured the Prince on different fronts by having Hari-Su march on Hari-Os or having Irit threaten Basrat, but you're basically having our army march out on its own while leaving our allies behind. Sure, you're tying down the traitors in Hari-Su, but that still leaves Hari-Os, who have alot more troops, free to reinforce the Prince.

And while you can certainly say that doing both of these are too risky, my feeling is that you tried to combine agressive (marching out) and defensive (have our allies clear their own provinces first) movements in your plan, but in doing so we kinda get the worst of both worlds: moving out on our own with no allies to back us up. Just my 2 cents.
 
I'm not sure what you mean by that? The army we're raising is going to be marching south into Irit, and then into Basrat so we're not going to be leaving our allies behind at all. The Hari-Su one's wouldn't be able to join forces with us regardless due to the distance, nor would it be advisable given they can deal with either Jinhai's supporters within their province or threaten Hari-Os.

We'd have the army that's already marched into Irit from a couple turns ago (and hopefully they peasant problem would be greatly alleviated when you consider the time we'd spend marching to get there), we'd have the Irit raised army, we'd have the Csirit professional soldiers based in Csrae, we'd have the levies of Csrae, we'd have the mages that we recruited heavily, and finally our Wind Dancers. Then there's the other provinces soldiers that'll trickle in due to travel times.

So by the time all of this has been gathered and marched into Irit, then consolidated with the forces there, before starting the march into Basrat the Hari-Su armed forces should have hopefully had enough time to weaken the rebels within their province that they could start marching into Hari-Os with less chance of trouble being raised and their logistic line being threatened.

Thought after finishing writing this - do you think we're marching into Hirand? Are we @The Laurent , or has it not been decided yet?
 
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[] Fortify the current positions and move themselves to be in the right location to intercept any pushes by Jinhai, and also be ready to link up with the main army when it comes on south. If it does.
@Neptune, this looks like the right option if you want our army to link up with the army in Irit. It is after all mentioned right in the vote option. I guess hunting bandits means that the army in Irit is spread out across the province, which makes joining forces harder.

Your vote also tells the Hari-Bueli to send only a small amount of troops. I agree with Random Member that these choices don't fit well into your otherwise rather aggressive vote.
 
@Neptune, this looks like the right option if you want our army to link up with the army in Irit. It is after all mentioned right in the vote option. I guess hunting bandits means that the army in Irit is spread out across the province, which makes joining forces harder.
No, I believe the bandits were quite concentrated in the valleys or where Lord's were supporting them. Telling the army to focus on finishing them given our analysis believes that Jinhai doesn't want to march this month should more than sufficiently curtail them enough that the bandits don't threaten our supply trains, given what we accomplished last turn alone. It's also because the Irit army has time for us preparing our levies (3 or 4 weeks), then the time travelling, so they can more than make use of it.

If our army doesn't have to go through Irit, and instead can go through Hirand this option would be changed though to advancing into Basrat as my fear of the bandits threatening the supplies would be diminshed.
Your vote also tells the Hari-Bueli to send only a small amount of troops. I agree with Random Member that these choices don't fit well into your otherwise rather aggressive vote.
That's more because Hari-Buelli have one of the lowest population and military levies, and they're currently being invaded and pushed back by the Buelli.

This belief comes from this:
Population: 5.5 million
Minimum Required Levy: 55k
Minimum Expected: ...40k, maybe? Possibly less. Bueli is now a bleeding wound that needs to be patched.
Maximum possible, or at least likely: 100k
and I believe their military situation has deteriorated even further since we got those figures. Csrae for example, and because we're going to be training them next chapter, is liable to provide between 200k and 400k levy. Due to the sheer disparity in figures, I don't feel polity wise it's a good decision to remove many troops from active conflict frontiers. It's also because that by the time they've marched to Csrae, we should have already started marching our army anyway as they would have also had to prepare their forces.
 
I'm not sure what you mean by that? The army we're raising is going to be marching south into Irit, and then into Basrat so we're not going to be leaving our allies behind at all. The Hari-Su one's wouldn't be able to join forces with us regardless due to the distance, nor would it be advisable given they can deal with either Jinhai's supporters within their province or threaten Hari-Os.

We'd have the army that's already marched into Irit from a couple turns ago (and hopefully they peasant problem would be greatly alleviated when you consider the time we'd spend marching to get there), we'd have the Irit raised army, we'd have the Csirit professional soldiers based in Csrae, we'd have the levies of Csrae, we'd have the mages that we recruited heavily, and finally our Wind Dancers. Then there's the other provinces soldiers that'll trickle in due to travel times.

So by the time all of this has been gathered and marched into Irit, then consolidated with the forces there, before starting the march into Basrat the Hari-Su armed forces should have hopefully had enough time to weaken the rebels within their province that they could start marching into Hari-Os with less chance of trouble being raised and their logistic line being threatened.

Thought after finishing writing this - do you think we're marching into Hirand? Are we @The Laurent , or has it not been decided yet?
Okay then, my thoughts:

If we're joining forces with the troops in Irit, why are you spreading them out? Linking up would be easier if they're concentrated in a few places.
EDIT: Okay, but having our army move through several valleys that may or may not be on the optimal route towards Basrat isn't the same as having it move through several fortified positions that are part of the supply system or moving over the optimal route while being reinforced.

I don't think we should assume a month to be enough for the Governor of Hari-Su to have defeated the rebels in his province that decisively, we don't really know the specifics of the situation there. Hari-Os will still have been able to reinforce the Prince for an entire month and looking at their troop numbers, that should still be a sizeable amount.

So if we're moving to Irit, the question is, what does the Prince do next? I can think of 3 moves:
1) He stays in Basrat and keeps building up his forces. We'd then have to attack him. Not really a good situation. Sure, the Prince is on the defensive, but he's fighting on his own terrain, where he has an advantage over us. Also, our supply line is going to come under attack if we move into Basrat.
2) He moves into Irit as well, both armies meet and we fight. The best of the three situations for us, but we won't have time to get all the kinks out of our army. Neither is his at full strength, so best case it's a toss-up?
3) With neither Irit threatening Basrat nor Hari-Su threatening Hari-Os, he's free to take a different route and moves into Hirand, linking up with his allies there and opening up a way into Csrae. Unlikely perhaps, but we'd then have to fall back to the capital to defend it or attack Basrat and hope that this frightens the nobles on his side enough to force him to turn around.
 
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Another reason not to go hunting bandits is that we don't know how far Jinhai is in his preparations. Maybe he can lead a small army in an attack on Irit soon and Irit would have trouble defending itself if the trroops are spread out.
 
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