Covered In Blood And Surrounded By Spirits (Hellsing CK2 Organization Quest)

[X] Hit and Run: Groups of fighters making their way through the city could reasonably do a lot of damage, and help save civilians and disrupt the enemy. A lot of your units, such as your swordsmen, are well suited to the work, and people like Akuma and Miyako leading the groups would surely lead to even greater success. Still, it leaves Hellsing Manor quite vulnerable.
 
[X] Turtle Up: Integra wants to make sure that her foothold in the city stays hers, and you can't blame her. A home base would be crucial to staying safe and reducing damage to your forces until you are in a good position to strike. Still, this maximizes possible civilian casualties.
 
[X] Hit and Run: Groups of fighters making their way through the city could reasonably do a lot of damage, and help save civilians and disrupt the enemy. A lot of your units, such as your swordsmen, are well suited to the work, and people like Akuma and Miyako leading the groups would surely lead to even greater success. Still, it leaves Hellsing Manor quite vulnerable.
 
[X] All Guns Pointed Forward: The best way to save lives is to end the conflict, preferably with huge amounts of violence. Miyako recommends a forward charge with all forces, leading up to a nearby airfield, from which an aerial strike could take down the zeppelins, and destroy their bombing capabilities. Easily the most risky, for obvious reasons, but with the most potential benefits if it works.

Turtling up does no good when the enemy can just ram down your walls and Integra already told us the real problem with Hit and Run. Besides, this option really appeals to me.
 
[X] Turtle Up: Integra wants to make sure that her foothold in the city stays hers, and you can't blame her. A home base would be crucial to staying safe and reducing damage to your forces until you are in a good position to strike. Still, this maximizes possible civilian casualties
 
The deal here is that while we have superior units and can therefore have a much higher concentration of force, the Nazis outnumber us significantly. Therefore it behooves us to make sure they can't leverage those numbers since while they can afford losses we can't.

Therefore turtling up is a losing proposition since we're basically inviting the enemy to bring those numbers to bear and drown us in bodies.

This leaves us with two options. Hit & run, which whittles away at enemy numbers and targets of opportunity using our superior concentration of force to crush local opposition, and All Guns which aims to decapitate the enemy leadership with a High Risk High Reward play that again uses our superior concentration of force to take out the Major.
 
Well, congratulations to LD for making a set of options that have people so divided.

Me, I figure fuck turtling. Koan 9-ko fears nothing but Renko Kochika and some of the more badass gods. We do not cower, we are the cause of cowering in others. On the other hand, I don't think things are quite desperate enough for going full Miyako to be our best bet, not with our tsundice. No glorious last stands until Aimi's old enough to take over the family business. Or, like, remember our face at least.

[X] Hit and Run: Groups of fighters making their way through the city could reasonably do a lot of damage, and help save civilians and disrupt the enemy. A lot of your units, such as your swordsmen, are well suited to the work, and people like Akuma and Miyako leading the groups would surely lead to even greater success. Still, it leaves Hellsing Manor quite vulnerable.
 
New
[X] Hit and Run: Groups of fighters making their way through the city could reasonably do a lot of damage, and help save civilians and disrupt the enemy. A lot of your units, such as your swordsmen, are well suited to the work, and people like Akuma and Miyako leading the groups would surely lead to even greater success. Still, it leaves Hellsing Manor quite vulnerable.
 
The deal here is that while we have superior units and can therefore have a much higher concentration of force, the Nazis outnumber us significantly. Therefore it behooves us to make sure they can't leverage those numbers since while they can afford losses we can't.

Therefore turtling up is a losing proposition since we're basically inviting the enemy to bring those numbers to bear and drown us in bodies.

This leaves us with two options. Hit & run, which whittles away at enemy numbers and targets of opportunity using our superior concentration of force to crush local opposition, and All Guns which aims to decapitate the enemy leadership with a High Risk High Reward play that again uses our superior concentration of force to take out the Major.
You know that turteling down is unlikely to be a guaranteed loss, because it worked in canon, when Hellsings side had far less soldiers?
 
You know that turteling down is unlikely to be a guaranteed loss, because it worked in canon, when Hellsings side had far less soldiers?
Technically, Hellsing also had fewer soldiers back then, but yes. Turtling is not an automatic loss.

Mainly because we are not Millenium's main target. They are just as willing to light the rest of London on fire as they are us.
 
[x] Nuclear Option: Attempt to persuade Integra to give the city over to Kagutsuchi. Let London Burn.
 
You know that turteling down is unlikely to be a guaranteed loss, because it worked in canon, when Hellsings side had far less soldiers?
If by "worked" you mean that London burned and Aludard had enough pressure put on him to get him to say, "fuck this, Ima gonna nom everything" causing him to swallow the poison catboy pill too as per Millenium's plan worked, then yes. I guess you could say it worked in canon.

Turtling means that we're giving up our offense - y'know, the thing that lets us fuck up the other guy and win. To put it another way, the mindset of turtling is to give up on winning by trying to make sure we don't lose. This is a defeatist mindset.
 
If by "worked" you mean that London burned and Aludard had enough pressure put on him to get him to say, "fuck this, Ima gonna nom everything" causing him to swallow the poison catboy pill too as per Millenium's plan worked, then yes. I guess you could say it worked in canon.

Turtling means that we're giving up our offense - y'know, the thing that lets us fuck up the other guy and win. To put it another way, the mindset of turtling is to give up on winning by trying to make sure we don't lose. This is a defeatist mindset.
I don't think we will "win" in any conventional sense. Only the really big monster will fight it out in the end. Surviving sounds good to me.
 
Of course, "surviving" in that case comes at the cost of the British people.
True, but if I have the choice between risking named characters or sacrificing foreign citizens I know what I chose.
If this was not Integras own idea, I might vote to save civilians to improve relations with Hellsing, but as it stands I see no reason to do so.
 
I don't think we will "win" in any conventional sense. Only the really big monster will fight it out in the end. Surviving sounds good to me.
But surviving isn't our job. It in particular isn't Hellsing's job as this is their turf. Our job is to beat back the darkness and keep our countries safe from supernatural threats.

What you're saying is that we should give up on doing our job and just try to ride out the storm.
 
I don't think we will "win" in any conventional sense. Only the really big monster will fight it out in the end. Surviving sounds good to me.
Honestly? The way to "win" here is to make sure the Major and his chief servants die in ways that weren't part of their plan.

The Captain - well, depending on what the shit is going on with him, things could get complicated. The original series seemed to imply that he was trapped in some sort of bushido Catch-22 where he was obligated to fight on Millennium's behalf, but really just wanted to die. If that's accurate, I'd say that the last half-century has been punishment enough. On the other hand, Millennium's been dabbling in non-vampire-based forms of supernatural bull pucky, so he might have been made into a Daemonhost for all we know, or they sewed him and our former spiritual advisor together as part of a metaphysical loopholing scheme to make the Captain's "serve the Nazis" oath apply to him. Regardless, he's not likely to require special kill conditions because he's not drinking the Major's Flavor-Aid.

Schrodinger's also not going to need much further attention; even if he hasn't been sufficiently traumatized by Amaterasu's attentions to count as "beaten", the Lords and Ladies are coming, so he's screwed beyond all imagining. Specifics are irrelevant - no matter what, he's not going to be able to sacrifice himself to Alucard, which means he'll be forever denied the chance to fulfill the purpose for which he was made. That's about as schadenfreude-tastic an end as we can arrange for him.

As for Rip van Winkle? Well, my preferred fanon* aside, she's not really going to be defeated psychologically unless Alucard shows up again, and she's just too big a threat to our own forces for us to wait for that. Akuma or Miyako will have to suffice.

Zorin Blitz? Between the predilection for psychological torture, the tendency to prioritize easy slaughter over challenging fights, the inevitable baggage of being a female soldier in the famously baby-crazed Third Reich, and her decision to use a weapon that's more about looking intimidating than actually being effective... I'd say we have your standard sadistic sociopath who's obsessed with being dominant in all her interactions. In other words, the way to hurt her is to take away that sense of superiority and control, leave her feeling like the prey instead of the predator. Crush her troops to screaming pulp. Shatter her scythe. Pierce her illusions and then mock her for making them so unoriginal. Hammer away at her self-confidence at every turn, and make sure she dies crippled, alone, and terrified.

The Doc is, well, a bit of a toughie. To be honest, it's kind of a pity to kill such a brilliant mind; I'd Paperclip him, but that's probably not going to be something you guys will go for. In that case, point out how goddamn amazing it is that he managed to reverse-engineer vampirism, design a quantum-based lifeform, and develop working mind-upload technology all on his own. Point out that he could have changed the world - not even necessarily in the sense he could've done good things, but that he's one of the few people who legitimately could have shaped the course of history, instead of having to live within the strictures of societal expectation and pre-existing factions. Instead, he let himself become a tool in someone else's hands, and he should be goddamned ashamed of himself for choosing to die here instead of continuing his work elsewhere.

Lastly, Herr Roboto himself. He's deceptively simple, because despite the fact that his war-fetish makes him resistant to standard methods of psychological injury, there's still a giant glowing weak spot we can hit: the fact that his whole anti-Alucard jamboree is getting wrecked by a bunch of strangers. All this work setting the stage for his delusional "I am the Man who shall defeat you, Monster!" melodrama went straight down the shitter as soon as we involved ourselves, and all he achieved by trying to salvage it was having his Alucard-slayer get wreckt by a foreign deity. The Major doesn't care what people say about him after this, doesn't fear death or indignity, but looking out through cracked, dying optics to see his "rival" hale and hearty in the distance, not even paying attention to his demise? If that doesn't break him, nothing will.


* Namely, that she's a diehard German patriot who was just unlucky enough to grow up during the most morally reprehensible portion of her nation's history, which means that her perception of right and wrong is fucked beyond all imagining. If she'd been British, Rip would have probably been like a more nationalistic Mad Jack Churchill, lustily shedding Axis blood for Queen and Country.

That's why the Major sent her out to die; even after all these years, Rip van Winkle's still a German National Socialist, and if she and the Millennium grunts loyal to her stuck around for the Second Blitz, she might end up trying to turn his Khornate offering into a serious attempt at waging guerrilla warfare against the UK.




PS: If Walter wants to go out like a Viking against Alucard, we could probably offer him something on par with Millennium's vamp-chip; just having us offer to pimp his floss or give him a Vest of Flight after this might get him to realize that our magic/gear could make him more effective at taking down Alucard than just becoming a vampire.
 
Major's plan isn't completely down the shitter quite yet. While Schrodinger may have been his preferred victory condition, I think he'd be quite happy if Anderson managed to win the day. Or Walter for that matter, but that was never likely. And now he's got Denebe, an Aztec war god, and a demonic werewolf thrown into the mix too, who are all powerful enough that they could plausibly win. I'll grant, the odds of Alucard surviving have gone up significantly, but it's not a done deal yet.

As to the vote, I'm torn between hit and run, and going for the zeppelins. On the one hand, denying the enemy air superiority will absolutely cripple their ability to effectively wage this war. It'll make communications difficult to impossible, and disrupt the major's ability to control events. As well as getting rid of whatever other surprises he has in those airships. OTOH, if it fails it fails hard, and everyone dies. Hit and run may be more conservative, but it'll also be less likely to fail catastrophically. Not sure which to pick.
 
I'm still not sure why people keep assuming Denbe is on Millennium's side here, when everything we've attributed to him in this encounter could just as easily be attributed to the corrupted Bodhisattva we know is here.
 
I'm still not sure why people keep assuming Denbe is on Millennium's side here, when everything we've attributed to him in this encounter could just as easily be attributed to the corrupted Bodhisattva we know is here.
The corrupted Bodhisattva didn't have anything like Denbe's mindwhammy aura when we ran into it IIR.
 
[X] All Guns Pointed Forward: The best way to save lives is to end the conflict, preferably with huge amounts of violence. Miyako recommends a forward charge with all forces, leading up to a nearby airfield, from which an aerial strike could take down the zeppelins, and destroy their bombing capabilities. Easily the most risky, for obvious reasons, but with the most potential benefits if it works.

With the zeppelins still in the air, the major will be able to coordinate his forces too well, and our groups will be surrounded before we manage to get much done. We need to take out his aerial vantage point before trying something like this, or we'll just get smashed. Though now that I think about it, Seras can probably take out one zepplin with her AA guns, so even if they try to bomb our concentrated forces, we can take out the bombing zepplin. Makes it significantly harder to kill us from the air.

Also, losing the zepplins seems like it would impede his forces a lot more than harassing them. Won't help too much against the Vatican, but one problem at a time.
 
The corrupted Bodhisattva didn't have anything like Denbe's mindwhammy aura when we ran into it IIR.
It didn't have a passive mindwhammy, as far as we know, which isn't saying much when we didn't actually try to get near it nor were we able to tell which type of Bodhisattva it was (there are many, if memory serves). A Bodhisattva is a being whose purpose is to spread enlightenment to others, so it wouldn't be farfetched to think that they could do what we've 'seen' done.
 
It didn't have a passive mindwhammy, as far as we know, which isn't saying much when we didn't actually try to get near it nor were we able to tell which type of Bodhisattva it was (there are many, if memory serves). A Bodhisattva is a being whose purpose is to spread enlightenment to others, so it wouldn't be farfetched to think that they could do what we've 'seen' done.
Yeah but we don't know that for certain. May be a Denbe-exclusive, may not be. So let's keep our options open.
 
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