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Lieutenant Arisukawa Haruna

Balance Stats
❁ • Work / Life • ❁
❁ • ❁ Warrior / Princess ❁ • ❁
❁ • ❁ Radical / Respectable ❁ • ❁


Tactical Stats
Gunnery 0, Navigation +2, Command +2, Technology -4, Personal -2, Strategy +3

Stress: 3


PLEASE READ THE QUEST RULES BELOW

You collectively vote on the actions of Arisukawa Haruna, the first woman to serve openly in the Imperial Akitsukuni Navy.

This quest is set in a universe which is much like our own circa 1910, but with different politics, cultural norms, and ideas about gender and sexuality, as well as some unusual and advanced technology in places.

We are using this quest to explore themes like breaking the glass ceiling, divergent outlooks on gender and sexuality, colonialism and imperialism, and the place of royalty.

Content Warning
This quest goes some dark places.

There is violence, often explicit, often unfair, often against undeserving targets.

There are not always good options forward. The protagonist is not necessarily a good person.

There is implied content and discussion of sexual harassment and assault.

This is a world where people are often racist, sexist, queerphobic bigots. Sometimes, even the PC and the people they are friends with.

Voting Rules

We will tell you if write-in votes are allowed. If we do not say that write-ins are allowed, they are not. This is to prevent people from unrealistically hedging their bets.

You may proposal other options in a non-vote format, subject to approval, on non write-in votes.

We will tell you when a vote allows approved voting. If we don't say the answer is no, pick an option. We like making people commit.

Discussions makes the GM feel fuzzy.

Game Rules
When we ask you for a roll, roll 3d6. You are aiming to roll equal or under the value of your stat. If you succeed, Haruna gets through the situation with no real difficulties. If you roll above the target value, Haruna will still succeed, but this success will cost her something or add a complication.

Whenever Haruna loses something or faces hardship from a botched roll, she takes Stress. The more Stress Haruna has, the more the job and the circumstances she's in will get to her, and it'll be reflected in the narrative. Haruna must be kept under 10 Stress: if she reaches 10 Stress, she will suffer a breakdown and the results will not be great for her.

Haruna loses stress by taking time for herself, by making meaningful progress on her dreams, and by kissing tall, beautiful women.

Meta Rules
Author commentary is in italics so you know it's not story stuff.

Please don't complain about the system or the fact we have to roll dice. We've heard it before, we've heard it a thousand times across multiple quests. We're not going to change it, and it wears at our fucking souls.

Just going "oh noooo" or "Fish RNGesus Why!" is fun and fine. Complaining at length because you didn't get what you want less so.

If you have a question, tag both @open_sketchbook and @Artificial Girl. If you only tag one of us, you will be ignored. Seriously, we both write this quest.

And yes this is an alt-history type setting with openly gay and trans people, ahistoric medicine, and weird politics. Just... deal, please?

This quest employs a special system called Snippet Votes. Please read this post for more information.
 
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HELLO BEFORE I ACTUALLY START READING THIS QUEST I MUST PROFESS MY PROFOUND DISGUST FOR YOUR IMPERIALIST WAYS STOP

AND MOREOVER I MUST EXPRESS MY DISLIKE FOR THE RIGID AND BLINDED DEVOTION TO THE HIERARCHY ENGENDERED BY THE IJN STOP

IN ADDITION THE SIMPLY TOXIC FRATRICIDAL RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN AND WITHIN THE DIFFERENT BRANCHES OF THE IMPERIAL MILITARY MADE IT PARTICULARLY DYSFUNCTIONAL EVEN FOR A EARLY TWENTIETH CENTURY NAVY STOP

I JUST DISLIKE THE IJN STOP
HELLO MAYBE READ THE QUEST BEFORE YELLING ABOUT HOW MUCH YOU HATE THE IJN STOP

IT'S KIND OF JARRING AND RUDE STOP

LIKE I GET THE IJN WASN'T GREAT STOP

THAT'S PART OF WHAT WE EXPLORE IN THIS QUEST STOP

THE MAIN THESIS OF THIS QUEST IS "IMPERIALISM IS BAD MKAY" STOP
If this were a light novel, the title would be "I Can't Believe My Feminist Fantasy Of Being The First Lesbian In The Alt-IJN Isn't Intersectional".
 
My gut instinct is that the turrets are going to be too protected for our shells. The better plan I expect is to hit vulnerable stuff that can disable their ability to pursue us and send anyone after us. I agree that the machine gun nest should be the first priority, but after that I think it should be bridge, then rudder. So in order of priority:

[ ] Hit the machine-gun post.
[ ] Go for the bridge.
[ ] Smash their rudder.
 
Wait... How did we even hear the contact if it was on bearing 185? That should be in the baffles of the submarine right?
The destroyer was really close when we heard her. She wasn't discovered until she was right upon us. That close she will be heard.
 
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Three gunshots in the chest, but properly taken care of and given some kind of Caspian death rite. Likely killed in the mutiny. Enlisted mutineer, maybe?

Might be the inciting factor. Way I see it, they get stuck in the ice, they're at dinner, morale is in the shitter, as it's a icebreaker and now they're stuck in the ice. Nobody wants to wind up like HMS Terror, and murmurs start going about. Ya know, the stupid kind, they're only a few klicks overland from people, that kinda thing.

Then some guy, popular man amongst every enlisted man/woman, stands up, starts going on and on about how life sucks, they should go, damn the Tsar, that kinda crap.

Naturally, one of the officers tells him to sit down and shut up unless he likes finding out what a knout across his back feels like, while the people sitting next to him start moving away post haste. This causes him to not stop, and people to start chanting as well.

Then some shots ring out. Some panicky or idiotic junior officer (Always their fault, and it's not like this place has Grade C personnel, even in a war), has just lifted the cauldron off hell by capping the guy.

In the aftermath of the riot that became a mutiny very quickly, someone tries saving his life, but to no avail.

Man in the boiler. Likely an officer, judging from the hat we found.

Or some guy who stole the hat. Either way could work. More seriously, you don't just stuff someone in there unless you REALLY hated the man.

Judging from the outfit though, he's a sailor. Hat could just be knocked off in a struggle.

That said, typically it's 2-3 hours to turn a body into ash, so we're looking at him being in there about a hour, tops.

And the last two, killed while setting scuttling charges. I don't think they killed each other, though. I think someone else killed both of them with the hatchet. Whoever it was probably wanted something on the ship to be found.

Problem is, what's on a icebreaker that's so valuable to warrant scuttling charges? It's not a courier, those would just have a bag with holes in it, toss document overboard, and no issues there.

So could be cargo?

Mutineers abandon ship

Into the middle of the arctic, god knows where from the nearest building?
 
That said, typically it's 2-3 hours to turn a body into ash, so we're looking at him being in there about a hour, tops.

What--

Of all the random knowledge, how do you know that? My estimates using the temperature of tea are purely based on forgetting to drink my tea after making mug of it and using Discord timestamps to try and figure out how much time I wasted talking about memes.
 
It's going to be hard to aim torpedos with the periscope out. I guess a man will have to shout headings down the hatch.

Seems like we'll have time for maybe 3-4 shots off before they start returning fire- at least we're a small target.
 
At the risk of being visibly ignorant, what exactly does "intersectional" mean in the feminist context? (I really don't know as much about the theory as I'd like.)

Essentially, while women are all disadvantaged by a patriarchal society for being women, there are others who have OTHER axes of oppression that effect them in addition to being women: trans women, black women, other WoC, gay women, disable women etc.

To quote wikipedia:


Article:
The term intersectionality was coined by Black feminist scholar Kimberlé Crenshaw in 1989. "Intersectionality" represents an analytic framework that attempts to identify how interlocking systems of power impact those who are most marginalized in society. Intersectionality considers that various forms of social stratification, such as class, race, sexual orientation, age, religion, creed, disability and gender, do not exist separately from each other but are woven together. While the theory began as an exploration of the oppression of women of color within society, today the analysis is potentially applied to all social categories, including social identities usually seen as dominant when considered independently.


In the context of the quest, it's Haruna realizing that while she is denied agency and respect from many quarters due to being a woman, she also has many advantages that accord her opportunities that others don't have (like, say, Aiko) due to the fact that she is wealthy and from a family of hereditary nobility. Her experience is different (and vastly more privileged) than that of a woman from Joseon or even her own country born into a peasant family.
 
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Furthermore... we write Haruna as a feminist fantasy character, breaking into a male space and making a place for other women by sheer force of will and effort. Which is awesome except... that space is the navy of an imperial power... uh oh...
 
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i was going to edit a katana, a revolver and a IJN officer's cap onto the land of lakes butter lady to celebrate the title change

but i didn't

because that would've taken a lot of time and I have other stuff to procrastinate on instead
 
Seems like the guns are a viable target. Rudder gives a better chance of a mission kill than the bridge and is more likely to give our torpedoes an easy shot. My draft:

[] Plan: Before They Do It To Us
-[] First priority machine guns
-[] Second priority main guns
-[] Third priority rudder
 
I'm quite concerned about our ability to outshoot four guns if they complete the turn. I can see us knocking out the machine gun nest and maybe two guns, but then we're out a boat and POWs at best. I think keeping the number of guns able to actually line up good shots at us much more important than actually blowing up the guns.

To put it another way, taking out the rudder effectively kills 2-3 guns who can't turn on us enough to get a nice enough shot lined up, leaving us in a race against the one gun or so that can shoot at us.

I like that a lot better than finding ourselves with the enemy ship properly broadside to us and down to two or three guns vs our lone gun. We lose that kind of slugging match.
 
My main question for attacking the rudder is what kind of firing arc they'd have to the aft. If we think we can manage it, maybe it'd be better to just aim at the subsection of the main guns that cover that arc before going for the rudder?

Also, I'm sure I'm convinced about the meetin theory anymore. I'm not sure mutineers would care about skuttling the ship, and they almost definitely wouldn't have cared about clearing out the codes and stuff, even if they were able to get access to the safe. That strongly suggests to me that at least some of the higher ranked officers were still in charge
 
Well okay, I think the first question here is whether everyone agrees on taking out that machine gun emplacement. My impression is that the answer is "definitely yes", since if a machine gunner sweeps our deck and kills the deck gun crew, we're fucked regardless.

I think the next priority pretty clearly comes down to either the bridge or the turrets. The rudder is always going to be last priority, if it makes it on at all, because the bridge is command and control, while the main guns literally will kill us dead. If either is damaged, then the rudder won't be useful to the enemy.

Now, we know for sure that the bridge is going to be vulnerable, simply because glass exists and isn't resistant to 100mm shells. Taking out the bridge is harder because it's a smaller target that's harder to hit, but if it does hit it has a good chance of knocking out anyone who's giving orders to the turret crews. The dice roll is on whether or not our gunnery skills are up to the task of hitting the bridge and destroying it.

Meanwhile, the bridge doesn't matter if the turrets are nonfunctional. In fact, if we get really lucky, the turrets may explode in a way that kills the destroyer. The dice roll is on whether or not our 100mm gun can actually penetrate the turret armor.

Personally, I don't believe the 100mm has any chance of making it through the turret armor, and I don't think it's productive to try.
 
Well okay, I think the first question here is whether everyone agrees on taking out that machine gun emplacement. My impression is that the answer is "definitely yes", since if a machine gunner sweeps our deck and kills the deck gun crew, we're fucked regardless.

I think the next priority pretty clearly comes down to either the bridge or the turrets. The rudder is always going to be last priority, if it makes it on at all, because the bridge is command and control, while the main guns literally will kill us dead. If either is damaged, then the rudder won't be useful to the enemy.

Now, we know for sure that the bridge is going to be vulnerable, simply because glass exists and isn't resistant to 100mm shells. Taking out the bridge is harder because it's a smaller target that's harder to hit, but if it does hit it has a good chance of knocking out anyone who's giving orders to the turret crews. The dice roll is on whether or not our gunnery skills are up to the task of hitting the bridge and destroying it.

Meanwhile, the bridge doesn't matter if the turrets are nonfunctional. In fact, if we get really lucky, the turrets may explode in a way that kills the destroyer. The dice roll is on whether or not our 100mm gun can actually penetrate the turret armor.

Personally, I don't believe the 100mm has any chance of making it through the turret armor, and I don't think it's productive to try.

The turrets aren't armored. They're open gun positions without gun shields.

This is the Russian destroyer I based your opponent on:
 
The turrets aren't armored. They're open gun positions without gun shields.

Do we have a machine gun? Later subs had them for anti-air, but I don't remember if ours has it.

Anyway, the enemy ship is already coming about, so shooting the rudder is pointless. Inertia will likely bring them into range before we've successfully disabled it.

Anyway, do we see any conveniently exposed stacks of ammunition, mines or torpedoes? Maybe some red barrels haphazardly stacked on the deck?
 
Considering this is a pre ww1 destroyer it is safe to say that taking out the rudder would either render most of the gun ineffective, as we are outside of the firing arcs of the guns and the ship will have no ability to turn the ship to to bring the guns to bare, or all render ineffective if we got the ship stuck in a turn as turrets during this day and age had a traversal and elevation rate of 3 deg per second, it would be more practical to try and pre-aim the guns and wait for the ship to around to make a shot.
 
Do we have a machine gun? Later subs had them for anti-air, but I don't remember if ours has it.

Anyway, the enemy ship is already coming about, so shooting the rudder is pointless. Inertia will likely bring them into range before we've successfully disabled it.

Anyway, do we see any conveniently exposed stacks of ammunition, mines or torpedoes? Maybe some red barrels haphazardly stacked on the deck?

We missed the obvious. All the supplies and goodies were signs of an impending boss-fight.
 
Do we have a machine gun? Later subs had them for anti-air, but I don't remember if ours has it.

Anyway, the enemy ship is already coming about, so shooting the rudder is pointless. Inertia will likely bring them into range before we've successfully disabled it.

Anyway, do we see any conveniently exposed stacks of ammunition, mines or torpedoes? Maybe some red barrels haphazardly stacked on the deck?

You have a machine gun but using it requires passing it up through the tower to be attached to the bridge, it's not permanently attached.

Sadly, you don't have time to make the close study of the deck you would need to determine that.
 
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