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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HMS Sophia said:
Wow that's a fucking despicable way of reframing this.
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And here we see that one has to be careful with sarcasm on the internet.

veteranMortal said:
Except we're choosing between two votes, both of which get us to safety, and only one of them leaves civilians dead.
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Eh. Only one of which leaves civilians dead directly. The argument about severe represailles for hurting an imperial princess makes some amount of sense.
 
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veteranMortal said:
And I think there's a difference between defending yourself from rioters and stabbing them with bayonets.
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Of course there is.

We told our guys to defend themselves. They are doing it.

It just so happen that if they had to actually use what we allowed them to use to defend themselves, the results aren't pretty. They are defending themselves with bayonets.

There is no kevlar armour and riot shields to stand behind. They got their uniform shirts and haircuts to protect them. If someone comes swinging a paving stone at your head, and all you have is your spear, you either stab them or you die.
 
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I'll throw an important note in here for this argument: we are not ordering our soldiers to kill rioters, here. We are making a choice between two possible outcomes of our orders. So, uh, don't drink the "already dead"-aid too much, I get the argument but the rioters are kinda the good guys here.

Also, eh, bayonets are definitely more deadly than rifle butts in a press, but I think the real concern here is if they restrain themselves and only use their rifles as clubs, it's actually surprisingly hard to do that while being pushed around in formation.

edit: wew that edit two posts above me, uh okay.

edit 2: not two posts above me, at the bottom of last page.
 
veteranMortal said:
Except we're choosing between two votes, both of which get us to safety, and only one of them leaves civilians dead.
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We're choosing between the lives of two groups of people. One of which is actively suicidal/homicidal.
Artificial Girl said:
No they aren't.
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They kind of are. If we pick the nonlethal option, someone else will come kill them later. And if they don't find the actual people from the protest, someone else who's innocent will die in their stead.
 
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TotallyNotEvil said:
Of course there is.

We told our guys to defend themselves. They are doing it.

It just so happen that if they had to actually use what we allowed them to use to defend themselves, the results aren't pretty. They are defending themselves with bayonets.

There is no kevlar armour and riot shields to stand behind. They got their uniform shirts and haircuts to protect them.
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Sorry, I must have missed the part where the rioters had body armour.
 
veteranMortal said:
Sorry, I must have missed the part where the rioters had body armour.
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You did miss my edit:
TotallyNotEvil said:
If someone comes swinging a paving stone at your head, and all you have is your spear, you either stab them or you die.
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If you only use rifle butts or clubs in this situation it's going to come down to a press of bodies and we will get swallowed up, and thus the "many soldiers died, you got the shit beaten out of you" outcome.

Note, the option I'm supporting isn't "massacre the crowd". It's "there were many casualties due the soldiers defending themselves".
 
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Estro said:
no they aren't jesus fuck were the Chester School protesters also sucidal how the holy hell do you even think that
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Attacking an imperial princess (even if we're not in the main line) of early 20th century not!Japan as an inhabitant of conquered not!Korea is suicide. Someone, a lot of someones will die for this no matter what.
 
I think characterizing it as suicide is a bit dismissive considering the situation Joseon is in but the fact remains that it is a very bad idea.
 
065tdsa said:
So technically this specific people aren't dead. Doesn't take away that if they run away successfully, someone else will die in their stead.
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So it's their fault that the imperial power is going to crack down and kill innocent people, because they...fought? And that means they should die?

I'm voting with you guys, man, but this is a bad argument.
 
natruska said:
So it's their fault that the imperial power is going to crack down and kill innocent people, because they...fought? And that means they should die?

I'm voting with you guys, man, but this is a bad argument.
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It's not their fault, and it doesn't mean they should die. Nobody should die, preferably ever and for any reason (I'm pro transhumanism/immortality, as an irrelevant side note).

But somebody (lots of somebodies) will die, and we're getting to choose who.
 
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This is a bad argument. The instigators have probably already fled. These kinds people are almost always despicable cowards. About who dies will have definitely been innocent, dying so somebody else doesn't have to.
 
veteranMortal said:
Except we're choosing between two votes, both of which get us to safety, and only one of them leaves civilians dead.
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And the other leaves the men we are responsible for dead.

Artificial Girl said:
No they aren't.
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They are using lethal force against a group of soldiers in a time and place where the idea of 'labor negotiations' is shooting the strikers until morale improves. They are not unjustified in doing so, but everyone with common sense (the reporters) GTFO the moment things started getting rough.

veteranMortal said:
Sorry, that's not true. We are leaving the scene, through the crowd. They would be coming at us if we had retreated to the palace, but we didn't.
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We have a man in serious need of medical attention, his last words indicated that we should leave. We wouldn't be using lethal force if the crowd cleared a path to our trucks, even if they kept tossing bricks at us. The only way we can go is forward, the crowd decides how difficult they want to make it for us.
 
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Mr Apollo said:
And the other leaves the men we are responsible for dead.



They are using lethal force against a group of soldiers in a time and place where the idea of 'labor negotiations' is shooting the strikers until morale improves. They are not unjustified in doing so, but everyone with common sense (the reporters) GTFO the moment things started getting rough.



We have a man in serious need of medical attention, his last words indicated that we should leave. We wouldn't be using lethal force if the crowd cleared a path to our trucks, even if they kept tossing bricks at us. The only way we can go is forward, the crowd decides how difficult they want to make it for us.
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Ah yes, it's all their fault.

It's their fault for being opressed under our regime

it's their fault for not being happy about this

it's their fault for protesting it

it's all their fault.
 
HMS Sophia said:
But then... killing civvies... is immoral.
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HMS Sophia said:
I recognise what you are saying. I respect the soldiery deserves the opportunity to defend itself against violence. This should be done through less than lethal methods.
This does not stop these people being civilians. They are not soldiers. There are no geneva conventions defining insurgency. They are angry rioters, not enemy combatants.
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Ehm, the Geneva Conventions do consider what to do when a rebellion/insurgency hits.

It's 'if the rebels are playing by the rules of law, you play by the rules of law. If they're not, fuck them.' I mean, civilians get protected by the Geneva Conventions, but that's a side effect of the purpose of the Geneva Conventions of protecting the soldiers. The rules the Conventions establish are all about not deliberately dicking over civilians, especially enemy civilians, so your own troops don't get murdered in alleyways in vengeance strikes. On the other hand? Civilians that are engaging troops, directly or not?

Those are not civilians. Those are enemy combatants, or enemy spies. Combatants get some protections under the Geneva Conventions, especially after surrender or otherwise rendered incapable of combat. Spies get none at all.


Alt!Imperial Japan here would be well within their right to say 'we're an occupying force, these guys are engaging our troops, shoot until the battle's over.' It'd be a bad idea because of the public relations backlash in Alt!Korea, but in this time and place only Alt!Korea will care. Alt!Imperial Japan won't and neither will any of the Alt!Western Powers who quite frankly consider everyone in Asia second class people at best.


Estro said:
it's their fault for protesting it
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No. It might not even be their fault somebody hurled a rock at an Imperial soldier during the protest.

It doesn't matter. In the moment, here and now, all we can do is acknowledge there's a protest, that it's turning ugly, and that the best tools available to us that aren't likely to get us or the people we are responsible for killed is to respond violently.

And we don't have non-lethal forms of violence available to the extent that we're likely to succeed in using it. I mean, even an unarmed response by Imperial troops is likely to kill people due to sheer blunt impact trauma, and that's not counting the risk of the escort getting overwhelmed and beaten to death, and Haruna getting beaten, raped or murdered herself(pick at least one).
 
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Okay.

The rioters are NOT 'suicidal' or 'insane.' They're doing something extremely dangerous, but you could say the same for a lot of these army boys now part of our guard detail, who a year from now in the Caspian-Akitsukuni War will be charging entrenched machine gunners across No Man's Land. In and of itself, the fact that their actions are dangerous is not a sign of insanity.

The rioters, not without good reason, view the Akitsukuni soldiers (that is, us) as an invading army, and are seizing weapons of hopes of repelling the invading army, or at least making it pay steeply for the benefits of conquest. Now, their weapons suck, in that they are down to literal Stone Age tactics, but that is a sign that they've got gonads of steel. Not they're somehow a bunch of demented orcs who can justly be killed because good riddance.

...

That said, if we had wound up besieged inside the palace it's entirely possible that the mob would be trying to burn it down around our ears. I wouldn't blame them for trying, not for a minute, even if with my Princess Hat on I don't want them to succeed.

As a practical reality, "Duty to retreat" isn't a viable way to handle self-defense when confronted by large groups of enraged people, especially when one is apt to wind up cornered. Our only way out of this situation is the trucks, and if the mob stops us from getting to the trucks, the reality is... we're cornered, and they're trying to stone us to death.
 
Estro said:
Ah yes, it's all their fault.

It's their fault for being opressed under our regime

it's their fault for not being happy about this

it's their fault for protesting it

it's all their fault.
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It's not all their fault. But they are more culpable than the unrelated people who are more likely to die in a later crackdown which will be more severe if our soldiers die here.

So you see, their fault in this is very small, but it's larger than that of other people who are put in danger because of their actions.
 
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