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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Estro said:
The deaths clearly are an issue because we just murdered thirty fucking people. Like, what fucking switch is flipped in your head to make that not a problem.
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It's not that it isn't a problem; it's that we are debating culpability. Is Haruna responsible for the invasion of not korea? Imagine, for a moment, that GWBush got attacked by an Iraqi mob during a visit to baghdad; who bears culpability for that visit, and it's escalation?


[x] Captain Ienaga: His acquiescence to a foolish request for political gain caused the riot.

I am not comfortable blaming the press or the mob.
 
brmj said:
Occupation is itself an act of violence. If the soldiers were under threat of violence, the protesters were already experiencing it.
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No.

Occupation is an act of war. One that's entirely legitimate. Part of the rules of war involve how to perform an occupation, and one of those rules is basically 'don't inflict violence upon the civilians except in the pursuit of the war as necessary and legitimate.' Shooting at a peaceful protest because it's a protest is not legitimate. Dispersing a violent riot that started by civilians engaging your troops and/or government officials however is. And as they're engaging your troops and/or government officials an argument can be made the entire crowd is a combatant formation or there are illegally (and potentially illegal) combatants hiding among the civilians and engaging from their ranks. Which means the civilians are about to get caught in the crossfire. Because there are assholes breaking the laws of war and thus increasing the risks suffered by civilians in a warzone substantially.
 
[X] Captain Ienaga: His acquiescence to a foolish request for political gain caused the riot.

The riot had already started by the time Haruna was the ranking officer present. Captain Ienage was the one in command who failed to prevent the riot. Haruna did as well as could be expected with the hand she was dealt.
 
Hazard said:
No.

Occupation is an act of war. One that's entirely legitimate. Part of the rules of war involve how to perform an occupation, and one of those rules is basically 'don't inflict violence upon the civilians except in the pursuit of the war as necessary and legitimate.' Shooting at a peaceful protest because it's a protest is not legitimate. Dispersing a violent riot that started by civilians engaging your troops and/or government officials however is. And as they're engaging your troops and/or government officials an argument can be made the entire crowd is a combatant formation or there are illegally (and potentially illegal) combatants hiding among the civilians and engaging from their ranks. Which means the civilians are about to get caught in the crossfire. Because there are assholes breaking the laws of war and thus increasing the risks suffered by civilians in a warzone substantially.
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Fucking yikes dude. Tell me ur thoughts on the German occupation of France and Belgium in WWI?
 
Whether or not we in our digital towers living in a mostly-peaceful world think so, might makes right (EDIT: In the sense of who probably ends up ""winning"", not who is morally correct.) It sucks, all around.

I don't think these random civilians have any concept of or respect for the "laws of war". I don't think they're an organized violent resistance movement (I.E. a legitimate target). I think they're just... An angry crowd. That attacked some soldiers, and got bayoneted in return. Which sucks.
 
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Hazard said:
No.

Occupation is an act of war. One that's entirely legitimate. Part of the rules of war involve how to perform an occupation, and one of those rules is basically 'don't inflict violence upon the civilians except in the pursuit of the war as necessary and legitimate.' Shooting at a peaceful protest because it's a protest is not legitimate. Dispersing a violent riot that started by civilians engaging your troops and/or government officials however is. And as they're engaging your troops and/or government officials an argument can be made the entire crowd is a combatant formation or there are illegally (and potentially illegal) combatants hiding among the civilians and engaging from their ranks. Which means the civilians are about to get caught in the crossfire. Because there are assholes breaking the laws of war and thus increasing the risks suffered by civilians in a warzone substantially.
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Conquest by force of arms doesn't get to be legitimate. Resistance to it, however, is, whether it's with words, bricks or guns.
 
So, the big thing here is that we are not writing a summary of how the princess feels, we are writing an internal report. There can be a difference between how she frames things to get the results she wants and how she actually feels. I'm on board with the idea that she would blame herself. I am not on board with her putting that in writing to her superiors.

This is a political document we are writing, not a confession.
 
mcclay said:
Fucking yikes dude. Tell me ur thoughts on the German occupation of France and Belgium in WWI?
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There's a difference between 'putting down riots with military means', which by modern understanding is considered for very good reasons a terrible idea. And illegal if you are using tear gas, it's a war crime.

Reprisals on the other hand are always illegal. They aren't attempts to enforce the law and maintain order. They're attempts to cow any resistance movement into submission, often with excessive and gratuitous violence.

brmj said:
Conquest by force of arms doesn't get to be legitimate. Resistance to it, however, is, whether it's with words, bricks or guns.
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Tell that to the victor of any war and who then claimed territory.

Rockeye said:
Whether or not we in our digital towers living in a mostly-peaceful world think so, might makes right (EDIT: In the sense of who probably ends up ""winning"", not who is morally correct.) It sucks, all around.

I don't think these random civilians have any concept of or respect for the "laws of war". I don't think they're an organized violent resistance movement (I.E. a legitimate target). I think they're just... An angry crowd. That attacked some soldiers, and got bayoneted in return. Which sucks.
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This is pretty much the case.
 
mcclay said:
Fucking yikes dude. Tell me ur thoughts on the German occupation of France and Belgium in WWI?
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Not especially extreme or exceptional by the standards of the day, notwithstanding Entente propaganda to the contrary. The Russians behaved far worse in Galicia and East Prussia (proportionately speaking East Prussia suffered comparable casualties, and unlike the Germans- who clamped down on the violence relatively quickly- the Czar's army explicitly endorsed ethnically focused violence against Germans, Jews, and Ruthenians as part of an explicit desire to Russianize/Slavicize those provinces), France ended up deporting or imprisoning thousands of Germans in Alsace during and after the war, and the less said of the Balkans or Armenia the better. Ultimately Germany's actions in World War One are not, despite popular narratives, a stringent precondition of Generalplan Ost, but utterly par for the course for just about every nation in that most imperialist of conflicts, up to and including the United States.
This is the same era of the Boer Concentration Camps and the height of Sneering Imperialism. A few years before this point the US violently invaded and occupied the Phillipines, a brutal occupation which saw thousands of Filipino "rebels" and civilians massacred (the US had also done things like this before, just read up the history of US-Native conflicts), and it's also contemporary with the "Banana Republic" period of US "intervention" in Latin America.

Fundamentally if you accept states as legitimate, then you accept on some level the legitimacy of an armed military, and its ability- within the laws of war, such as they are- to exercise violence to achieve its ends. The question is not whether "is imperialism bad" but "are the actions by Haruna justified in the context of contemporary laws and customs of war, and the duties required of her as a military officer?"
 
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brmj said:
Still illegitimate. Having the ability to inflict enough violence to make it stick doesn't change that.
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As would the Germans who lived in Alsace after WW1 or in Prussia during WW1 and WW2.

I mean, what were the Germans going to do in the peace negotiations? Complain?

They just got their asses kicked, and in WW1 they quite wisely decided to fold before their defenses collapsed utterly.
 
[X] Yourself: For who else is there? You could have made your objection more stringent or insisted that the schedule be kept or found a way to avoid this becoming the bloodbath that it had.

I find compelling many of the arguments both for and against assigning blame to ourselves. However, in the end, I believe that this is not only what our character would do, but what should be done.
We want command. With command comes responsibility. To ourselves, to those under our command, and to those unfortunate enough to be caught in the crossfire.
We will make any and all difficult decisions that we must, and not look back from them, but neither will we displace responsibility for what happens.
 
Dermon said:
I find compelling many of the arguments both for and against assigning blame to ourselves. However, in the end, I believe that this is not only what our character would do, but what should be done.
We want command. With command comes responsibility. To ourselves, to those under our command, and to those unfortunate enough to be caught in the crossfire.
We will make any and all difficult decisions that we must, and not look back from them, but neither will we displace responsibility for what happens.
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You are displacing the responsibility for what happened.

The question is not 'who is responsible for the bloodbath.' The question is 'who is responsible for the riot that resulted in the bloodbath.'
 
So, we are drifting into morality of war and conquest debates. Given that most of what created our modern world would be regarded as illegitimate by modern standards, I'm not sure how productive it'll be.

Especially since legitimacy is a very fuzzy concept. I'm a lowercase-d democrat; I regard pretty much any king or queen as illegitimate, and while that may hold in America, it's more a subject of long discussions in the UK.
 
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Hazard said:
The question is not 'who is responsible for the bloodbath.' The question is 'who is responsible for the riot that resulted in the bloodbath.'
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Technically, the question is "who is to blame for this incident?". What the incident is never defined, and we kinda get to choose it. Defining the incident as the riot make sense, but so does defining it as the massacre that followed. Not because the authorities care about the people that died, but because they care about the unrest and embarassment that will follow.
 
[x] Captain Ienaga: His acquiescence to a foolish request for political gain caused the riot.

Ultimately, folks, the Buck Stops With Him.

In real life, if something goes wrong, like, say, I dunno, hitting a tanker... the Captain gets shit-canned, even if she was asleep. The XO gets shitcanned, even if she wasn't anywhere near the bridge!

Placing the blame on the Captain is the correct thing to do, because, ultimately, it is his fault this mess happened.
 
[] Recommend a solution. Tch, no option for blaming the lack of formalised procedures for this type of thing. Working with the people, split the crowd so that protestors are to one side, rooftop observers, having press submit specific photo possibilities beforehand for approval or rejection. Once bayonets were drawn the people who could actually see the soldiers were obviously trying to move back and withdraw, the majority of injuries occurred due to objects thrown from within the crowd. Advise the development of an irritating non-lethal smoke and possibly a way to enhance a voice beyond merely shouting. Given the protestors fled rather quickly once shots were fired there could be merit in looking into the creation of some kind of 'military police' whose job would be riot control, VIP security and investigating crimes where members of the military are a suspect (for example a soldier gets drunk while off-base and murders someone). As a benefit during war-time these units, as they are already trained to deal with riots, crime and protection can serve as rear-echelon troops investigating and suppressing partisan actions potentially freeing up ostentially front-line divisions. Include the anecdote of the woman in blue-and-white, mention that a brief period or organisation beforehand could have prevented some casualties by separating the crowd thus allowing friendly civilians to retreat and a specially trained and equipped section would have been able to reduce casualties further without overly enflaming tensions. Those opposed to the annexation will use this event to try and start a rebellion which could raise tensions in the region for decades. Better to head that off by showing restraint, being civilised, reducing deaths and using non-lethal methods to arrest violent protestors than have every encounter end in deaths and resentment.

Edit: No writeins but I'm still leaving that up.
 
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[X] Yourself: For who else is there? You could have made your objection more stringent or insisted that the schedule be kept or found a way to avoid this becoming the bloodbath that it had.

This too is part of the duty of the Imperial Family.

Also, it's the most likely to force the Akitsukuni government and military to actually think about the circumstances leading to this riot rather than just tying it off neatly and calling it a day, since we're simultaneously too important socially to officially blame, too junior in rank to reasonably blame, and our open acceptance of blame means they can't very well just reject it and blame someone else either.
 
[X] Yourself: For who else is there? You could have made your objection more stringent or insisted that the schedule be kept or found a way to avoid this becoming the bloodbath that it had.
 
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