Castles of Steel - Lesbians Good, Imperialism Bad

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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​


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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] Plan First Things First.
-[X] Maintenance
-[X] Medical Care
-[X] Care
-[X] Recoaling

Pretty much what I was trying to write down as I wanted, already formulated and done :)
 
I mean, it's like.

You're on a bote. It's on fire.

Your top priority is to put out the fire. So's you don't ALL die.

Your second priority is to take care of the burn victims and anyone who was injured in whatever incident set the bote on fire.

Everything else is third priority.
 
I want to put coaling up higher, since coaling (much like refueling) is extremely difficult. At the same time, we can always break away if something goes wrong during refueling, leaving it with only a little more for now. But medical problems and maintenance takes care of things that cannot be done later, so I have to choose
[X] Plan First Things First.
Ato said:
She dreamed of Steel.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
I like her rather a lot. There needs to be more grand construction.
 
VicSage said:
I want to put coaling up higher, since coaling (much like refueling) is extremely difficult.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
The thing is, we're not at war in the normal sense of the word. If the re-coaling of this destroyer just doesn't happen for like a day while we get the ship patched up and get the wounded crew aboard and all that, it's okay. Arguably it's going to be actively unsafe to pile a lot of coal into the Maikaze before we know how damaged the hull is and all that; a hundred tons of rocks poured into the coal bunkers might break her back or something for all we know.

What matters is damage control and keeping sailors alive, then we return to normal operations.
 
Okay!

12 (roll) + 10 (strategy) = 22, partial success
Karlito threw 3 6-faced dice. Reason: Strategy Total: 12
3 3 5 5 4 4
 
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1-10: It's a bad scene
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    • Things moved quickly. Very quickly. Before long the aged boilers of the Okinami roared back into life and the ship was churning through the sea as fast as her engines would carry her. You hurried to organize your men as best you could. If the damage was as bad as you were hearing, you'd need to make sure that you had parts and materials ready to help keep the ship afloat. Meanwhile pumps were being rigged and parties organized to go aboard to help with damage control. You also needed to talk to the ship's doctor about moving wounded men across and once you have your initial orders set.

    You found a harried looking Lt. Commander in a white coat hurriedly clearing out the sick bay and shouting at his own staff. You saluted and made yourself and your spare hands available, for which he seemed grateful, and you hurried back to your own men to detail a section of men under a petty officer to report to the medical officer and place themselves at his disposal for the duration. You worry briefly that you might miss them later, but what's been done has been done. Then there is only the anxious waiting as the deck trembles with the force of the engines below. Once in a while, Hideaki passed by to give you a hurried update from what the wireless room had been getting but it's jumbled and incomplete, plus there are rumors constantly flying between the men. One report says they're sinking, another says they're not. Still another says the damage isn't as bad as initially thought. At last, fed up, you ordered them not to spread scuttlebutt and to focus on their tasks.

    At last, though, the Maikaze came into sight. It was bad. The destroyer listed heavily towards her port side and you could see the ragged edges of a horrendous looking gap torn into her side by the force of an explosion. Smoke rose from her and all around her the sea is covered in flotsam from the merchant vessel and other debris. There was still a fire on the aft part of the deck that burned brightly. Maybe the remains of the ship's boats. The Okinami slowed and begins to ease itself up to the destroyer's side, tossing out lines so that she could be lashed in place. Everything else happened in a rush. Hoses were run across and soon the powerful pumps of the Okinami were at work, desperately expelling as much water as they could from the listing destroyer.

    Your preparations had paid off. The transfer of maintenance crews, parts, and materials went as smoothly as you could have expected. You stood on the deck directing your men as they go back and forth with supplies as they were needed. The captain wasn't giving you trouble now about wearing trousers or ordering men around. Not when it mattered most. What you weren't ready for was the sight of a row of bodies (you counted at least ten) lined up next to the destroyer's rail, each covered in canvas sheeting. Occasionally the sea breeze whipped a corner up, revealing a shattered stump of an arm or leg or the lifeless stare of a dead seaman.

    The wounded come across as well. They were somehow worse than the anonymous and shrouded dead. Some of them were screaming in pain, crying for their mothers, for the Spirits, or for their ancestors to help them. One, skin horribly distended and burned by what you guessed must be steam in the engineering spaces, cried for God. As he was carried past, you noticed that he was clutching an Icthysian symbol that he wore on a chain around his neck. You couldn't help but reflect on the earlier conversation with a brief pang of guilt. Only a night or two ago you had been sitting and joking about letting men like him drown.

    Other casualties were mercifully unconscious and still others were silent and stoic. One stuck in your mind, an officer in the uniform of a lieutenant carried across on a stretcher with both of his legs missing above the knee. He was absolutely quiet, laying back with a sort of grim acceptance and puffing thoughtfully on a cigarette that someone had considerately stuck into his mouth and lit for him. He met your eyes briefly as he was carried past and his expression didn't change a wit. In fact, he seemed to stare straight through you and the thought sent a shiver down your spine.

    The working men didn't look much better off, covered in soot and water and blood, rushing back and forth across the deck to tackle the next disaster. You caught a breathless Ensign, shirt torn open and a bloody scratch across his face, and asked him where your men could go to relieve the strain on his, but he pushed away your hand (leaving a bloody mark on your white jacket).

    "My men won't rest until the ship is saved." He said, and hobbled off to direct more men to firefighting. One slipped and fell on the slick deck, and when his comrades moved to pick him back up he staggered like a drunk. They weren't effective anymore, just bodies being thrown at the task and getting in the way of your much better rested crews, but you didn't have the authority to do anything about it.

    It took until nightfall to save the ship, for a given degree of saved. It probably would have happened sooner if the Maikaze's crew had swallowed their pride and left the bulk of the work to your better rested ones. By the time the last fire was out and the pumps ran dry, everyone was equally bone-tired. The butcher's bill wasn't quite certain, but you had heard that aside from the ten dead on the deck, there were at least twenty-two men wounded and six missing. The six were the men of the boarding party, including a young ensign who had been a classmate. They were officially missing, if only because finding any piece of them as proof of their demise was effectively impossible.

    You were about to organize a coaling party when a runner came to you. His duty uniform was covered in blood: he'd probably been helping with the wounded earlier.

    "Captain says no coal, we're towing her to the Nokor naval base instead." He reported. The base wouldn't have the resources to restore the ship by any means, but could ensure she was seaworthy enough to get to dock on her own. You also suspected this was less due to the state of the Maikaze and more due to scheduling: it would likely be faster to move the stricken ship and then move on to the next than to recoal it and escort it as it crawled home.

    Honestly, that was fine with you. The last thing you needed today was to supervise coaling in the dark. You dismissed the runner and were about to go crawl back to your office when you were presented by some armed sailors from the Maikaze with a trio of badly burnt and shocked young men without uniforms. It took you only a second to figure out they were probably the Cathay saboteurs. All of them were in bad shape, and not just from living through the explosion. There were black eyes, swollen lips, and other injuries that you were certain had come from fists, rifle butts, and boots instead of the disaster that had unfolded earlier.

    "These are yours now." One of the men spat, pushing a prisoner forward with a rifle. "Lieutenant Akagi says they need more questioning, but ain't nobody on our ship speaks Cathay." He said. "Question away, ma'am."

    Question indeed. It wasn't likely that they knew anything. Or that they had actually been questioned. They didn't have any rights here, and people like this mysteriously went overboard for far less. The subtext was clear: they'd been ordered to hand these guys over, with the expectation that the tender's crew would… ahem, deal with them.

    Of course, regulation on the treatment of prisoners was strict. It was also not enforced.

    [ ] Put them in a store room and post a guard: Rules are rules. Have them put under a proper watch in a room that doesn't contain anything vital, and keep them there until you can dump them at port. The courts can figure it out. This will make you look naive and soft.
    [ ] Hand them off to Somebody: This wasn't your problem. Hand them over to a petty officer and tell him to put them somewhere. 50/50 chance they ended up there or in the water, but either way it would get dealt with. This is what is expected of you.
    [ ] Shove Them Into the Mess: The bulk of the Maikaze's crew were currently recuperating there. If you wanted a reputation as a mean motherfucker who puts the men over the rules, this was a good start.​
     
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