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.
 
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[X] Head more or less straight for the nearest ship and ready torpedoes! (Pro: Get into action. Con: Potentially be singled out.)
-[X] Radio in while doing this.
 
[X] Head more or less straight for the nearest ship and ready torpedoes! (Pro: Get into action. Con: Potentially be singled out.)
-[X] Radio in while doing this.
 
[X] Head more or less straight for the nearest ship and ready torpedoes! (Pro: Get into action. Con: Potentially be singled out.)
-[X] Radio in while doing this.

[ ] Convoy escort engaged with enemy cruisers. Kari beginning torpedo attack.
 
[X] Head more or less straight for the nearest ship and ready torpedoes! (Pro: Get into action. Con: Potentially be singled out.)
-[X] Kill the lights.
 
[X] Head more or less straight for the nearest ship and ready torpedoes! (Pro: Get into action. Con: Potentially be singled out.)
-[X] Radio in while doing this.
 
[X] Head more or less straight for the nearest ship and ready torpedoes! (Pro: Get into action. Con: Potentially be singled out.)
-[X] Radio in while doing this.
 
[X] Head more or less straight for the nearest ship and ready torpedoes! (Pro: Get into action. Con: Potentially be singled out.)
-[X] Radio in while doing this.
-[X] Kill the lights.
 
[X] Head more or less straight for the nearest ship and ready torpedoes! (Pro: Get into action. Con: Potentially be singled out.)
-[X] Radio in while doing this.
-[X] Kill the lights.

Voting with both optionals, because I think both are important.
 
[X] Head more or less straight for the nearest ship and ready torpedoes! (Pro: Get into action. Con: Potentially be singled out.)
-[X] Radio in while doing this.
-[X] Kill the lights.
 
5-6: A fight against overwhelming odds
There was no option but to attack. The soldier and the sailor should esteem valor. If you did nothing or hesitated, the whole convoy might be lost.

"Flank speed!" As Ishinari wrenched the engine telegraph over to 'Flank', you bent forward to the speaking tube.

"Engine room! I need everything you can give me and more!"

"Yes, captain!" The reply came back and you had barely heard it before you were on to the next tube, which lead to the tiny wireless room that actually sat beneath you in the interior of the little bridge island.

"Wireless! Relay following message: Torpedo boat Kari, enemy cruiser sighted. I am attacking. Then give our position and repeat until acknowledged. Understood?"

"'Torpedo boat Kari, enemy cruiser sighted. I am attacking.' Then I am to relay our position. Repeat until acknowledged, aye!"

You straightened, swaying a little as the torpedo boat's engines begin to rattle and thrum as they built up to flank speed, looked to Ishinari, who was pale behind his impassive expression.

"Ensign Ishinari, prepare the boat for torpedo attack."

"Aye, captain. Prepare the boat for torpedo attack." He turned to relay the order down along the deck and you turned forward again. You were moving perpendicular to the course of the convoy after your hard turn to port and through the fog you could make out flashes of gunfire and the indistinct shapes of the enemy. They were 2000 or 3000 meters away, you thought--which made your job all the trickier--you had to close within 1000-1200 meters to make sure that your torpedoes would land a hit without worrying about them running out of propulsion. And to be sure of your target, given the weather conditions. Droplets of the fog's condensation stung your face and you wiped at your face with a hand, squinting into the fog.

"Captain!" One of the watch-standers. "There!" He pointed and following his gaze with your own binoculars you made out the dim bulk of a ship. A warship, painted in the same confusing array of lines as the others. Caspian, larger you thought, but it was hard to say. It was your only clear target for the moment though and you snapped an order to the helmsman. The boat turned towards the target, maneuvering to try and find an angle for a successful attack. The best angle, you remembered, was to come at them dead on from the side at 90 degrees. Of course, that rarely happened in the real world, which was something you had learned to accept about your Academy lessons in the years since you'd graduated. To make it worse, you didn't know how you'd tell you were at 90 degrees, the way the ship looked. It took you a few seconds just to figure out which way it was going, relayed orders to the helmsman.

You looked back at the men standing by your torpedo tubes. The two flank tubes were carefully pointed forward. When fired, they would be shot of the tubes into the water, where they would start under their own power and hopefully land a hit. Using the bow as an aiming point, that gave you an idea of the spread you would get from those two and a rough course. And you would need to be good with the first attack, because it would take minutes to reload, minutes in which you might be turned to scrap or in which the convoy might get cut to pieces. Your heard the rumble of guns somewhere in the fog, clashing gunfire. Maybe your destroyers had run into theirs. Your focus though, was the dim shape of the cruiser which was growing closer as you sped across the water at 28 knots. You raised your binoculars, trying to gauge the range. 2000 meters. Someone on the cruiser had spotted you. The light guns along the flanks flashed and plumes of water splashed around you. Ishinari ducked as a shell went humming overhead like an express train and exploded into a plume of water aft of the boat.

Bastards. You weren't going to flinch. Salt spray whipped across your binoculars and you had to wipe at the lenses on the front. Reaching out, you grabbed Ishinari by the arm and urged him upright.

"We're officers!" You yelled just to be heard over the gunfire and the engine. "You stand tall on the bridge!If you can hear it that just means it's not going to hit you. If we get hit in this tub, that's it for us anyway." It was a bit chilling how normal getting shelled felt, but after all that time on land, cooped up in the hospital… It was thrilling to be at sea again coming to grips with the enemy.

"Range to target?" You called out and the sailor peering through the rangefinder replied.

"1500 meters, captain!" You stepped over to the wheel to take control from the helmsman. You needed to be sure of this.

"Ishinari! Stand by to fire one!" He nodded and turned, raising a hand to signal to the crew at the first torpedo tube.

"1200 meters!" You bit at your lower lip as the cruiser seemed to grow larger and larger at an even faster rate than seemed possible. It's guns were barking constantly but they couldn't seem to find the range and she was turning, trying to change the angle on the attack but she had been too slow to notice you, too slow to react. Something, a shell from light fast-firing gun perhaps, glanced off the deck and you felt a blast tugging at your cap but you ignored it, focusing on your torpedo run.

"1000 meters!" The range.

"Fire one!" Ishinari's hand chopped down and there was a 'whump' of compressed air as the torpedo shot out of its tube to splash into the water.

"Fire two!" Another signal with the hand and the second torpedo was away. You cranked the wheel as hard over as she would go and spun the torpedo boat around. Now you needed the cover of the fog to hide you from the cruiser's guns. You let the helmsman take back control, weaving the boat back and forth as shells continued to rain into the sea around you. You glanced back towards the target as fog obscured your vision, then let out a rather unofficer-like yelp as something whirred past and the boat shuddered, the wooden boards beneath your feet flexing and nearly throwing you off balance.

"What the hell was that?" You peered around for a moment, then looked down the side of your little bridge tower. There was a neat hole just the size of a six-inch shell punched through both sides. The shell had passed through without exploding and then splashed into the water somewhere. A sobering thought.

"Captain, are you alright?" Ishinari was at your elbow.

"I'm fine," you said.

"It's just, you're bleeding--" Behind his words there came a sudden distant rumble. Whether it was more gunfire or a torpedo exploding, you couldn't be sure.

"Bleeding?" You looked down at yourself. Your left arm between the shoulder and elbow was bared and a piece of shrapnel or other debris had sliced through your jacket and undershirt as neatly as a knife, leaving behind a gash that only now seemed to pain you in the moment that you saw it.

"Get me a bandage." You said. It didn't even hurt. A little cold, maybe. That'd probably catch up to you, but right now it felt almost like an injury to somebody else's arm. Absentmindedly, you tugged at the cuff of your jacket and it came loose, sliding off your arm and peeling the torn undershirt with it. Below one of the forward gunners lay on the deck, a pair of his comrades crouched over him. He must have been hit by the same blast that had wounded you. The reality of the situation hit you in full force for a moment. You could have gotten yourself--everyone--killed.

+1 Stress

Then again, the same could happen if you didn't get your head together. Somebody was bandaging your arm, you hadn't noticed them start, and you called out to Ishinari.

"Any sighting of the enemy?"

"Nothing yet." The boat swung around again and you peered into the fog, trying to find a break that would let you regain visibility. Then, with a rising breeze, the fog and light rain shifted away and you could see the cruiser. She was listing slightly to one side, practically dead in the water--or at least not able to make more than a few knots. But she was still capable of fighting and hammering anything that came close with her guns as she laboriously tried to make a turn away from the convoy--no doubt they were planning on running for home.

You couldn't ask for a better target, but you only had the last torpedo in the aft tube ready. On the other hand, they knew you were out here now. They would be waiting for you if you came at them again.

[ ] Attack: You'll never have a better chance to send an enemy cruiser to the bottom than this. Then again, they'll know you're coming.​
[ ] Try to find a different target--your job is to protect the convoy, not launch solo attacks on enemy cruisers. Besides, she's out of the fight at this rate.​
 
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[X] Try to find a different target--your job is to protect the convoy, not launch solo attacks on enemy cruisers. Besides, she's out of the fight at this rate.

It's not glorious, but...
 
[X] Try to find a different target--your job is to protect the convoy, not launch solo attacks on enemy cruisers. Besides, she's out of the fight at this rate.

Seize the moment and fight in another direction.
 
[X] Attack: You'll never have a better chance to send an enemy cruiser to the bottom than this. Then again, they'll know you're coming.
 
You cranked the wheel as hard over as she would go and spun the torpedo boat around. Now you needed the cover of the fog to hide you from the cruiser's guns. You let the helmsman take back control, weaving the boat back and forth as shells continued to rain into the sea around you. You glanced back towards the target as fog obscured your vision, then let out a rather unofficer-like yelp as something whirred past and the boat shuddered, the wooden boards beneath your feet flexing and nearly throwing you off balance.

"What the hell was that?" You peered around for a moment, then looked down the side of your little bridge tower. There was a neat hole just the size of a six-inch shell punched through both sides. The shell had passed through without exploding and then splashed into the water somewhere. A sobering thought.
Aaaaaaand that's an overpen. With a thin tub like this, a shell would only explode if it hit something really solid. Like the engine.
"Bleeding?" You looked down at yourself. Your left arm between the shoulder and elbow was bared and a piece of shrapnel or other debris had sliced through your jacket and undershirt as neatly as a knife, leaving behind a gash that only now seemed to pain you in the moment that you saw it.
Ouch, how deep a cut are we talking?
"Get me a bandage." You said. It didn't even hurt. A little cold, maybe. That'd probably catch up to you, but right now it felt almost like an injury to somebody else's arm. Absentmindedly, you tugged at the cuff of your jacket and it came loose, sliding off your arm and peeling the torn undershirt with it. Below one of the forward gunners lay on the deck, a pair of his comrades crouched over him. He must have been hit by the same blast that had wounded you. The reality of the situation hit you in full force for a moment. You could have gotten yourself--everyone--killed.
Welcome to not having enclosed turrets.

But the alternative on those is... well, usually total losses.
"Nothing yet." The boat swung around again and you peered into the fog, trying to find a break that would let you regain visibility. Then, with a rising breeze, the fog and light rain shifted away and you could see the cruiser. She was listing slightly to one side, practically dead in the water--or at least not able to make more than a few knots.
YAAAAAAHAHAHAHAHA-
But she was still capable of fighting and hammering anything that came close with her guns as she laboriously tried to make a turn away from the convoy--no doubt they were planning on running for home.
AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH!

[X] Attack: You'll never have a better chance to send an enemy cruiser to the bottom than this. Then again, they'll know you're coming.
DEATH OR GLORY! POUR ON THE COAL!
 
You couldn't ask for a better target, but you only had the last torpedo in the aft tube ready. On the other hand, they knew you were out here now. They would be waiting for you if you came at them again.

This is an important thing to note. We'll have to do the attack using the aft-tube. That's far from handy.

Also, given how quickly this ship has slowed down, and the fact that's it already listing, it may already be dead. We just have to wait for the flooding.
 
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[X] Attack: You'll never have a better chance to send an enemy cruiser to the bottom than this. Then again, they'll know you're coming.
 
[X] Try to find a different target--your job is to protect the convoy, not launch solo attacks on enemy cruisers. Besides, she's out of the fight at this rate.

Not my Circus, not my monkey. She's taken serious underwater damage and come to a halt, which indicates serious engine damage too. Cruisers in 1910 don't come back from that, and if they do get steam up and try to go home our fleet is lurking in the dark too. We need to get the tubes reloaded and kill another, not waste time on a cripple.
 
[X] Try to find a different target--your job is to protect the convoy, not launch solo attacks on enemy cruisers. Besides, she's out of the fight at this rate.

dontwannadiedontwannadiedontwannadie
 
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