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] Dyskeland

I think this is a perspective we haven't actually seen or considered before.
 
"As far as we know, not yet," came the reply. You were relieved, more than you were expecting. Not surprising, though; Akitsukuni was still recovering from the last war. There needed to be more time. It wasn't as if anyone else would be particularly excited to get stuck into something serious again, especially with the Europans. There was still so much to be digested. Submarines, how best to use your escorts, a potential increase in Army-Navy cooperation and (worst of all) airplanes.
Hmm, yeah. I hadn't considered that the much shorter gap between the end of the alt!Russo-Japanese war and alt!WW1 would likely delay their entry. It's a good in-universe explanation for our vote.

Soon enough, everyone was settled in, but honestly you were just anxious to get home, get a real posting, see Aiko again. Even if that last one was irrational: she was probably still crawling across the continent somewhere thousands of kilometers to your north, if she'd even made it yet.

You bought her a nice, light little woven straw hat which you saw just about everyone near the docks wearing. She was always complaining about not having enough hats. You tried one on yourself, but you just looked ridiculous. For her, though, you were certain she'd look radiant.
❤️

These two continue to be absolutely adorable. I love them.

You had the new officers assembled as the ship got under way, giving all of them a look over--none of them stood out all that particularly and they're all young. A gaggle of ensigns and junior lieutenants probably plucked from whatever postings they could be spared from. Bunch of kids.

At least they were listening, and were disciplined enough that if they weren't happy about having a woman for a CO, they weren't showing it on their faces. You were briefly almost impressed, but then all at once you noticed their heads turning slightly, their eyes tracking something behind you, and when you glanced you just noticed Cadet Kurasaki disappearing down a hatch.

Ah.

"Gentlemen. I see you've noticed our cadet, Officer Cadet Kurasaki Aya. I understand what you must be thinking, and let me make one thing absolutely clear." You paused. You know, for effect.

"She is here to do a job, just like the rest of you. If any of you consider for even the barest moment that you can get around the regulations in place by the Admiralty, hell, if any of you stare too long, then know that I will come down on you like a tonne of bricks. I will ruin you. You'll spend the next ten years of your career on a transport for Army dogs, your mother will be ashamed to be seen in public. Cadet Kurasaki is not one of the girls you meet in officer's clubs or at parties. She is not a member of the Women's Naval Auxiliary--not that I would condone that either--she is a fellow officer of the Akitsukuni Imperial Navy and you will treat her with all the respect and deference owed to a fellow officer and with all the responsibility that you hold towards those under your command."

Everyone's eyes had snapped back forward, and a few of the ensigns had a look like somebody had just fired a gun next to their ear.

"If you think that makes me joyless, you are correct," you added, jerking your chin upwards just slightly to emphasize the medal hanging around your neck. The one you got for bravery in the face of the enemy. "Know that I am not one to be fucked about with. Am I understood?"

You were.
This is good on Haruna's part. Definitely want to start off in a place where harassment is unacceptable; hopefully social inertia will keep it that way even after we're gone.

Dinner was a startling polite affair. Everyone was proper and very respectful. The only conversation directed at Kurasaki was related to her classwork and the Navy. One of the ensigns refused to even ask her for the salt or look her in the eyes. As everyone filtered out at the end of the meal Kurasaki paused and looked at you with a puzzled expression.

"Well! I don't think I've ever met such a cold group of young men," she said in a tone that suggested confusion more than anything else.

"They're probably still getting settled in," you said, without a hint that you understood what she was talking about. "I wouldn't worry about it."
And, well, that's unfortunate, though expected. Ugh, it's not that hard to interact with women without being a creep. I feel bad for her, though this is absolutely way better than the alternative. Hopefully it's just temporary and they get more comfortable with her over time?

"Why the fuck is it called Big Island?" Chibana complained.

"Well, have you looked at the island?" Mihara said, gesturing to the chart someone had spread on the table.

"Yeah?"

"It's big!" he exclaimed, arms held outstretched.

"Fuck off. I mean, it just doesn't sound like a real place, does it? It sounds fake."

"Everywhere sounds fake, if you think about it," one of the ensigns added. "Like, place names are generally kinda weird, especially translated."

"What are you talking about? Places in Akitsukuni sound real," he said glumly.

"Hey, aren't you from Yamashima?" Mihara asked slyly.

"It's not the same, there's a mountain!"
This is a funny conversation :). Gotta agree with Lt. Mihara though, place names do all sound weird.

You were saved from the rest of the conversation by the sensation of the engines pitch changing--you were slowing down. You rose to your feet to begin the climb to the bridge, but a sailor stepped through the door and saluted.

"Captain, there are what look like shipwreck survivors to starboard. Miss Kurasaki ordered us to slow to pick up survivors and sent me to come inform you."

You felt a moment of warm fuzzy pride.

"Very good, thank you. Inform her that I'll be up directly."
Hey, she's learned from her mistake! Good on her, and I really hope that we haven't fucked her career now.

We should definitely write some sort of letter of recommendation, or at least reference this incident in an annotation to the previous one.

Anyways, because I want to see the world burn:
[x] Caspia
 
I'm still waiting for Haruna to get a coded message to immediately reverse course and buy all the coal along the South Vespucian coast to prevent the Gaya!Scharnhorst from joining the Dyske Atlantic Fleet. :3
 
I'm still waiting for Haruna to get a coded message to immediately reverse course and buy all the coal along the South Vespucian coast to prevent the Gaya!Scharnhorst from joining the Dyske Atlantic Fleet. :3the
"Why do you need so much coal?"

extremely haruna voice
"It's, uhh, ballast. For the ship. Because we didn't have any. And, uhh, bonus, I can sell it off when we get back to Akitsuni. Yes."
 
As for the shipwrecked...

Oh, it's so difficult to choose between Albians and Dyske. Albians would be an excellent excuse to have Haruna end up in command of a crew of Akitsukuni sailors and a mixed sex group of Albian volunteers, who'll cause friction with their women under arms and racism, when war is declared...

...but Dyske sailors would be a perfect source of narrative tension as war is declared and Haruna suddenly has to keep track of Dyske POWs doubling as agent provocateurs and saboteurs, on a ship that probably doesn't have a proper brig or manpower to spare as prison guards.
 
...but Dyske sailors would be a perfect source of narrative tension as war is declared and Haruna suddenly has to keep track of Dyske POWs doubling as agent provocateurs and saboteurs, on a ship that probably doesn't have a proper brig or manpower to spare as prison guards.
Do we even have guns, I wonder. I mean I doubt they installed arms lockers on the ship yet.
 
[X] Caspia

For the drama, and really, they're the ones who most likely have a Pacific presence
 
[X] Caspia
Interesting to see how they'd deal with people they just fought a war against.
 
[X] Caspia

For the drama, and really, they're the ones who most likely have a Pacific presence
Everyone has a presence, the Dyskelanders have large numbers of smallish colonies on islands and an enclaves or two in Lydia, while between all of their colonial claims the Albians probably have a larger coastline on this ocean than we do. Besides that, anyone with a port could be trading goods around here.
 
[X] Dyskeland
Because I want them to tell the crown-lovers how they sank.
"Uhhhhhhhhhhh TWELVE THOUSAND CASPIAN TORPEDO BOATS!"
 
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