Voting is open
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.
 
Last edited:
As far as you all know, you are the furthest north of any other vessel in the IAN.
...The destroyer isn't south of us, is it? Because there's no kind of correct like technically correct...

[I am like 90% joking]

I guess we're a light novel after all.
:(

I mean, if the tone shifts to the tongue-in-cheek self-aware unseriousness of the light novel, we'd lose a lot of the stuff this is for.

But serious title worked well with serious tone. :(
 
Last edited:
...The destroyer isn't south of us, is it? Because there's no kind of correct like technically correct...

[I am like 90% joking]

:(

I mean, if the tone shifts to the tongue-in-cheek self-aware unseriousness of the light novel, we'd lose a lot of the stuff this is for.

But serious title worked well with serious tone. :(

Sorry? I dunno what to tell you. We're not planning on making things more silly, but we have always tried to have a sense of fun and been a little tongue-in-cheek in some aspects of our story.

Having you tell me what my own story is for rubs me the wrong way, man.

EDIT: Actually I'm not done. Yeah, death of the author and all that but saying that having a sense of humor about my story defeats its purpose just pisses me off, honestly.
 
Last edited:
Yeah, the tone isn't changing, but the title was not super illustrative of the themes of the story and this one both pokes fun at and explains its really rather grim premise, which is good.
 
Sorry? I dunno what to tell you. We're not planning on making things more silly, but we have always tried to have a sense of fun and been a little tongue-in-cheek in some aspects of our story.

Having you tell me what my own story is for rubs me the wrong way, man.

EDIT: Actually I'm not done. Yeah, death of the author and all that but saying that having a sense of humor about my story defeats its purpose just pisses me off, honestly.
Yeah, the tone isn't changing, but the title was not super illustrative of the themes of the story and this one both pokes fun at and explains its really rather grim premise, which is good.

I don't like the title change because it comes off as an extremely passive aggressive snipe at Jemnite.
 
I don't like the title change because it comes off as an extremely passive aggressive snipe at Jemnite.

I mean, I just thought it was funny. Jemnite doesn't enter into it except in that they sparked the conversation that led to it. I already told Jemnite straight up what I thought of their post so I don't have a need to be passive-aggressive.
 
Yeah, we've been wanting to change the title to something that actually tells people what the story is about forever and this was just a chance to do so.
 
Since we're complaining about titles anyway. I don't like it.

Not because of what's in the title, but rather, the general form of it. The random run-on sentence kinda structure is just a bit lame.
 
Last edited:
Sorry? I dunno what to tell you. We're not planning on making things more silly, but we have always tried to have a sense of fun and been a little tongue-in-cheek in some aspects of our story.

Having you tell me what my own story is for rubs me the wrong way, man.

EDIT: Actually I'm not done. Yeah, death of the author and all that but saying that having a sense of humor about my story defeats its purpose just pisses me off, honestly.
Look, I'm sorry, when I say "what this story is for," I mean "literally the exact things you told me it's for and I believe you; I didn't go slope off and invent my own separate idea of what it's for."

But okay, light-novel title being said to clash with serious content offensive, sorry, my apologies, bye.
 
But warm!
Good and correct man!
black tea in the kitchen
Чаи ето вещь хорошая!
There was also a curious smell about the place.
That's not good.

Update: Aaaaaaaaahhhh
The destroyer, you saw, must have run right over the periscope and sheered the top away,
Oh crap. That's not good. That's not good at all. Fighting a destroyer on the surface is not at all a good bet for us but the other option is certain death as the periscope floods us, so, well, here goes.

[x] Plan Machine Gun and Ramming Avoidance
-[x] Hit the machine-gun post
-[x] Smash their rudder.
-[x] Knock out their main guns.

As vote goes, I'm thinking machine gun-rudder-battery? The rudder is a critical kill that we need, because this thing can literally just kill us by ramming if we're not careful. The machine gun and the battery are also pretty clearly needed kills, so that we can get to doing what is best for a sub in this scenario: running away as fast as possible.
 
Last edited:
[X] Plan 'Ship No Longer Maneuverable - To The Last Shell'
-[X] Smash their rudder.
-[X] Hit the machine-gun post.
-[X] Knock out their main guns.
-[X] Go for the bridge.
-[X] Write-in: As soon as we're done ordering the gunners, bring up the machine-gun and begin firing on the fore gun-mount.

edit: forgot to put this part in; this plan is really risky, but we're in a very bad situation. If we can lock the destroyer in a turn, that'll reduce the risk of being pulped by the main guns much faster than relying on four direct gun hits. We're at risk of being machine-gunned like this, but the rudder is an opportunity that will pass by very quickly.
 
The turrets aren't armored. They're open gun positions without gun shields.

RIP. Did I miss a post earlier somehow? Thanks for the heads up.

--

As for plans:

[x] Plan Run Away
-[X] Hit the machine-gun post.
-[X] Knock out their main guns.
-[X] Go for the bridge

Because we're not here to duke it out with a convoy escort. Let's make it as hard as possible for the Caspians to kill us and keep track of where we went, patch that periscope, and dive for the depths.
 
Last edited:
Look guys, we're just having fun with the title. We're like... we're basically starting book three of a series that doesn't have a name yet with this, you guys are watching the first draft happen and helping shape it. The thing that goes up at the top of the thingy makes little difference either way.

Like, Castles of Steel is the name of like, a real book about history? It's not really a viable actual title for whatever this is and its something we stuck with because we had no idea how much joy we'd get out of this and how much people would enjoy it. But its been a problematic title for a long time. There's also the issue, that we've been worried about for a long time, that the opening of the work and the presentation might come off as apologetics for the IJN before we actually get to the parts where it super isn't, and it's something that's been on our mind. We've tried some subtitles and stuff but nothing really worked, and we've wanted to do some kind of change forever because doing that draws new readers to the work. Finally, we just wanted to do something fun and silly, and getting pushback on making a joke can be pretty frustrating.

Dealing with... idk, petty surface-level critiques like "you made a joke on this internet thing" is just... really exhausting. We put so much work into this and it can be frustrated to deal with that kind of shallow stuff, especially when for a very long time we would pour our heart and soul into worldbulding and dramatic moments and get back nothing but a small number of votes.

If you insist, you can keep referring to this as Castles of Steel until we come up with a better "serious" name. Honestly we were going to make the joke title a subtitle but we only had room for one or the other and we decided, you know, fuck it, let's enjoy ourselves. We'll never make that mistake again.
 
Last edited:
[x] Plan: Sinking the ship
-[x] 1: machine guns
-[x] 2: main guns
-[x] 3: Waterline shot right beneath the exhaust funnel

In order of priority, this plan first disables enemy offensive capability, before delivering what should be a pretty dangerous blow to their main propulsion system. Not sure if we'd take them out completely, but at close ranges like this our gun will get through whatever light armor they have.
 
Last edited:
Look guys, we're just having fun with the title. We're like... we're basically starting book three of a series that doesn't have a name yet with this, you guys are watching the first draft happen and helping shape it. The thing that goes up at the top of the thingy makes little difference either way.

Like, Castles of Steel is the name of like, a real book about history? It's not really a viable actual title for whatever this is and its something we stuck with because we had no idea how much joy we'd get out of this and how much people would enjoy it. But its been a problematic title for a long time. There's also the issue, that we've been worried about for a long time, that the opening of the work and the presentation might come off as apologetics for the IJN before we actually get to the parts where it super isn't, and it's something that's been on our mind. We've tried some subtitles and stuff but nothing really worked, and we've wanted to do some kind of change forever because doing that draws new readers to the work. Finally, we just wanted to do something fun and silly, and getting pushback on making a joke can be pretty frustrating.

Dealing with... idk, petty surface-level critiques like "you made a joke on this internet thing" is just... really exhausting. We put so much work into this and it can be frustrated to deal with that kind of shallow stuff, especially when for a very long time we would pour our heart and soul into worldbulding and dramatic moments and get back nothing but a small number of votes.

If you insist, you can keep referring to this as Castles of Steel until we come up with a better "serious" name. Honestly we were going to make the joke title a subtitle but we only had room for one or the other and we decided, you know, fuck it, let's enjoy ourselves. We'll never make that mistake again.
I don't super love the name (I think it feels a little at odds with the seriousness of some of the content), but in the context you laid out it makes sense and is entirely appropriate. It's amusing at least for now, and it is certainly more descriptive.

But really, though, at the end of the day this just isn't our business. This thing you have created is incredible, and if using a funny light-novel-esque interim name for it makes you happy, then by all means keep it.
 
[x] Plan Machine Gun and Ramming Avoidance

Gun traversal is slow in this time period. If we can get the rudder to jam while turning it would be next to imposible for them to aim the guns at us.
 
Voting is open
Back
Top