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[Exalted, ?] Most High

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Orm Embar said:
I'm against assassinating the Infernals; whatever the risks of their continued existence, Ayala is a member of House Mnemon, so if we kill them... well. An investigation would be launched, and Syn would probably use that to discredit us or get us killed, as Mnemon has close ties to the Order. It's not a good situation, really. Pitting Polemgaus against Ayala is probably the best idea, hit two birds with one stone, but it's difficult.
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The problem is that all that effort is wasted if Ayala simply decides to stay after losing / wins. Nilul will still be panicking and the Infernals will still be here.

Emerald Oracle said:
As we're asking questions for Nilul: Given her knowledge of Ulyssian's general capacities as well as the theoretical ones of the Infernals better than Ulyssian: is assassinating them both relatively possible/easy?
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That completely depends, she doesn't know their Essence level or anything. They're here, though, which doesn't imply that they're weak.

Also is it within her capacity to handle the social and temporal repercussions of such an act? Given they may already know things she wouldn't want them to and may thus need killing in the immediate future.
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She can probably brainstorm a few ideas when she isn't panicking, but likely you'll need to contribute some ideas well.
Serous said:
Does Nilul need to be present as our second, or can she be elsewhere. If she does not need to be present, she can disguise as someone else, so even if the infernals spot here, they won't connect her to Nilul.

Also, do we have any method of swiftly contacting Zao. He could arrange for an emergency that requires us to go back.
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It would be strange if she weren't present, but strange may be better than showing her face.
 
Setting Polemgaus up against Ayala sounds like a good idea. After the fight win or lose she'll presumably be weakened and thus be easier to assassinate if she either wins or doesn't leave after losing the fight. Hell best case scenario might be she gets injured taking out Polemgaus and then we assassinate her thus taking out two of our most dangerous opponents in the tournament.
 
LordOfMurder said:
Setting Polemgaus up against Ayala sounds like a good idea. After the fight win or lose she'll presumably be weakened and thus be easier to assassinate if she either wins or doesn't leave after losing the fight. Hell best case scenario might be she gets injured taking out Polemgaus and then we assassinate her thus taking out two of our most dangerous opponents in the tournament.
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Though to have a chance of working, we might require having Nilul to stay to help us at least for that long. She might still go for it, even if she is panicking, because assassination raises the chances of no information about her getting out. Anyway, here is a rough layout for my plan:
  1. Send a message to Zao and Ivory about the situation.
  2. Fix the match results so that Poemgaus and Ayala fight first. It would be favorable if Uly doesn't have to fight soon after this, giving time to complete the assassination attempt and the time to recover from the exertion and/or any wounds. Doubly better if he isn't matched to fight Ayala soon, lowering the chance of suspicion against him being raised.
  3. Let them fight. Assassinate her companion during the match when they are seperated, if feasible and the best way to go about it. Or not, if we are betting on them leaving after the match, and want to let them leave, hopefully without knowledge about us.
  4. Assassinate Ayala (and her companion, if he is still alive).
Post-plan note: We might want to flash-buy some Charms that would help with this. It is quite perilous situation. Master-Plan Meditation, for example, could be quite useful for throwing off the trail of evidence from us when combined with Nilul's social shenanigans, and maybe help even to fix the matches beforehand. If we have the prequisite Charms for it, of course. Otherwise, it could get maybe too costly.
 
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[X] Stay Regardless

Possible plan, stay and win tournament/beat Polemgaos/get E4. Nilul comes down with something if necessary, and we beat up all the people anyway. We can even blow off social obligations by remaining at her bedside! In all seriousness, we've voted to make ourselves relatively killy at the moment, so as long as we get somewhat lucky we'll have a good chance of pulling this off. Right?

Stuff for Nilul: What are the chances I could beat the two Infernals in single combat(or at least the one in the tournament)? Could you arrange matches without giving yourself away(more than you already have)?
 
Not really in a good state for making coherent arguments rihgt now, but as far as I see it we should probably stay.

Just running away isn't really something I can support, trying to win while getting wounded enough to retire has us wounded enough to retire when the Infernals potentially make their move, sending Nilul away on her own might cut her off from support and leaves us on our own in this arena, sending Polemgaos against them isn't that likely to work and would only hinder them greatly if their purposes actually require them to win or get far in the Tournament in which case you have to wonder why they didn't send a warrior and assassinating two Infernals one of which is a master assassin herself doesn't sound too likely to work.

Outside of the standrad options offered getting a message to the Academy somehow would pretty great, if that allows us to move Ivory here, since she could provide sorcerous transportation to get Nilul out there, could help with the whole assassination business and otherwise fill in for Nilul.
If we can devise some other way to get Nilul out of here safely she should probably still send Ivory along as her replacement second.

And, finally, if we do go for any schemes of reavaling them as Anathema, we should probably target fei Ling since she's pretending to be mortal, though arguing that someone pretending to be mortal must be Anathema has obvious issues given our own cover story.
 
Hmm one thing comes to mind to finding a sidereal is to have Nilul and Ulyssian scan the crowd, the competitors and any servants for people who are different from Nilul's senses compared to Ulyssians' since Nilul being Outside fate should be able to have a bonus to seeing through resplendency disguises if she chooses so. Now she doesn't do so all the time since it seems she never pinged onto Sad Ivory or she was satisfied by being under Zao's protection there in the academy to never question it.

Seems to be fodder for a stunt there at least.
 
meianmaru said:
Though to have a chance of working, we might require having Nilul to stay to help us at least for that long. She might still go for it, even if she is panicking, because assassination raises the chances of no information about her getting out. Anyway, here is a rough layout for my plan:
  1. Send a message to Zao and Ivory about the situation.
  2. Fix the match results so that Poemgaus and Ayala fight first. It would be favorable if Uly doesn't have to fight soon after this, giving time to complete the assassination attempt and the time to recover from the exertion and/or any wounds. Doubly better if he isn't matched to fight Ayala soon, lowering the chance of suspicion against him being raised.
  3. Let them fight. Assassinate her companion during the match when they are seperated, if feasible and the best way to go about it. Or not, if we are betting on them leaving after the match, and want to let them leave, hopefully without knowledge about us.
  4. Assassinate Ayala (and her companion, if he is still alive).
Post-plan note: We might want to flash-buy some Charms that would help with this. It is quite perilous situation. Master-Plan Meditation, for example, could be quite useful for throwing off the trail of evidence from us when combined with Nilul's social shenanigans, and maybe help even to fix the matches beforehand. If we have the prequisite Charms for it, of course. Otherwise, it could get maybe too costly.
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Hm, combining the rigged match and Ayala Assassination plans, that is more coherent. It will be almost impossible to assassinate her second during the match though, as she'll be in open and plain view.

You can't flash buy any Charms since you are at the cap for your Essence, though you can still flash buy Evocations if you can afford it.
 
me.me.here said:
[X] Stay Regardless

Possible plan, stay and win tournament/beat Polemgaos/get E4. Nilul comes down with something if necessary, and we beat up all the people anyway. We can even blow off social obligations by remaining at her bedside! In all seriousness, we've voted to make ourselves relatively killy at the moment, so as long as we get somewhat lucky we'll have a good chance of pulling this off. Right?

Stuff for Nilul: What are the chances I could beat the two Infernals in single combat(or at least the one in the tournament)? Could you arrange matches without giving yourself away(more than you already have)?
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She doesn't think your chances are good in a 2v1, though who knows for sure? It's like asking whether you can beat two Solars, it depends on the Solars. But since they're HERE, they're probably pretty badass. And those are just the two Infernals you've seen; for all you know, there are more here. Your hearing can't pick them it unless they say something incriminating, so Nilul has to look at each one. They could have backup in the form of a peasant or something. That's part of the reason she wants to GO.

No one here is, as far as you know, good enough to consistently arrange matches. It is already a huge effort to arrange your own, and arranging two unrelated enemies is much harder than that.
 
Rihaku, if Ulyssian learned sorcery what would his most likely sources of learning ? An ifirit lord summoned by Pearl to help grant him the elemental fire to complete the disguise, or Ambition itself drawing upon the heavens?
 
Rihaku has straight up said that the 'fight Polemgaos, win but with injuries that necessitate forfeiting further matches' plan is 200-400% more difficult than just fighting Polemgaos, a daunting enough prospect as it is. And it introduces injuries that will slow our training, so that's just… completely unworkable.

Assassinating two Solaroids, one a master sorceress and one a master assassin, is likewise a fearsome proposition. Nilul isn't combat specced and can't reasonably be expected to hold her own, and any tricks to split their attention will presumably work as well as they would on Uly; i.e. not nearly enough. Which means 2v1.

Even the plan to fix Polemgaos and Ayala up and then assassinate the Infernals afterwards introduces too many risks. First we only get one Hypercompetence roll, and we have to fix two people's matches. Then we still need to successfully murder 2 Solaroids without anyone being the wiser, at least one of which will be fresh.

And their disguises are at least as good as ours so we can't call the Hunt on them.

While I'm loathe to cut our losses and flee, it's looking like a better plan than most of these. How long do we have before we're missed? We can fly, how far could we escort Nilul and still be back in time for the drawing? Or we could leave entirely, but that's going to have repercussions RE: our reputation and Zao's that would actually make Uly's situation WORSE after this event than before. We need that reputation to secure a posting, and a reputation as a coward will socially destroy us. We faced a Perfect Brotherhood of Immaculate Dragons rather than suffer a hit to Zao's reputation, I don't see us doing that now.

I suppose we could just… interact with them normally. Zao's plan for Uly in the navy was for him to talk outside Solaroids into helping secure the Realm…
 
CharlBaal said:
Rihaku, if Ulyssian learned sorcery what would his most likely sources of learning ? An ifirit lord summoned by Pearl to help grant him the elemental fire to complete the disguise, or Ambition itself drawing upon the heavens?
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Whatever you want, really. Ivory could probably teach you her math-based way, or if you want the Ifrit Lord you can do that. The main thing is that Odyssial doesn't like to rely on other entities for power, so he'd probably go some personal route focusing on spiritual perfection.
Pipeman said:
Not really in a good state for making coherent arguments rihgt now, but as far as I see it we should probably stay.

Just running away isn't really something I can support, trying to win while getting wounded enough to retire has us wounded enough to retire when the Infernals potentially make their move, sending Nilul away on her own might cut her off from support and leaves us on our own in this arena, sending Polemgaos against them isn't that likely to work and would only hinder them greatly if their purposes actually require them to win or get far in the Tournament in which case you have to wonder why they didn't send a warrior and assassinating two Infernals one of which is a master assassin herself doesn't sound too likely to work.

Outside of the standrad options offered getting a message to the Academy somehow would pretty great, if that allows us to move Ivory here, since she could provide sorcerous transportation to get Nilul out there, could help with the whole assassination business and otherwise fill in for Nilul.
If we can devise some other way to get Nilul out of here safely she should probably still send Ivory along as her replacement second.

And, finally, if we do go for any schemes of reavaling them as Anathema, we should probably target fei Ling since she's pretending to be mortal, though arguing that someone pretending to be mortal must be Anathema has obvious issues given our own cover story.
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Indeed, that would be pretty ironic. But hey, who would suspect that you'd do it, given Flame's accusations?

CharlBaal said:
Hmm one thing comes to mind to finding a sidereal is to have Nilul and Ulyssian scan the crowd, the competitors and any servants for people who are different from Nilul's senses compared to Ulyssians' since Nilul being Outside fate should be able to have a bonus to seeing through resplendency disguises if she chooses so. Now she doesn't do so all the time since it seems she never pinged onto Sad Ivory or she was satisfied by being under Zao's protection there in the academy to never question it.

Seems to be fodder for a stunt there at least.
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I'm not sure why you guys are convinced there's a Sidereal here?
Guile said:
Rihaku has straight up said that the 'fight Polemgaos, win but with injuries that necessitate forfeiting further matches' plan is 200-400% more difficult than just fighting Polemgaos, a daunting enough prospect as it is. And it introduces injuries that will slow our training, so that's just… completely unworkable.

Assassinating two Solaroids, one a master sorceress and one a master assassin, is likewise a fearsome proposition. Nilul isn't combat specced and can't reasonably be expected to hold her own, and any tricks to split their attention will presumably work as well as they would on Uly; i.e. not nearly enough. Which means 2v1.

Even the plan to fix Polemgaos and Ayala up and then assassinate the Infernals afterwards introduces too many risks. First we only get one Hypercompetence roll, and we have to fix two people's matches. Then we still need to successfully murder 2 Solaroids without anyone being the wiser, at least one of which will be fresh.

And their disguises are at least as good as ours so we can't call the Hunt on them.

While I'm loathe to cut our losses and flee, it's looking like a better plan than most of these. How long do we have before we're missed? We can fly, how far could we escort Nilul and still be back in time for the drawing? Or we could leave entirely, but that's going to have repercussions RE: our reputation and Zao's that would actually make Uly's situation WORSE after this event than before. We need that reputation to secure a posting, and a reputation as a coward will socially destroy us. We faced a Perfect Brotherhood of Immaculate Dragons rather than suffer a hit to Zao's reputation, I don't see us doing that now.

I suppose we could just… interact with them normally. Zao's plan for Uly in the navy was for him to talk outside Solaroids into helping secure the Realm…
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Nilul does seem to clearly believe that it's worth any reputation loss, because the scope and level of Hell's involvement in this tournament can't easily be ascertained. I mean, you would still prefer to live with a terrible reputation than be dead, right? In the worst case.
 
What's the chances that Nilul gets discovered as Infernal anyway?
I mean, hopefully she already perfected her disguise from her time with Zao, so unless the other two Infernals also have Magic Piercing Eyes I'm thinking that we could just fight. They're probably not actively searching for Nilul at the tournament, and just furthering whatever Infernal goal they have at the tournament. Our disguise as normal Exalted is probably spot on, so we'll just draw all the attention with the fight, and Nilul could just disguise herself further and hide or kinda fade into the background using some her skills. If we could take her into a safe place before the tournament and get back in time that'll be even better.

[X] Stay Regardless
 
sithmor said:
What's the chances that Nilul gets discovered as Infernal anyway?
I mean, hopefully she already perfected her disguise from her time with Zao, so unless the other two Infernals also have Magic Piercing Eyes I'm thinking that we could just fight. They're probably not actively searching for Nilul at the tournament, and just furthering whatever Infernal goal they have at the tournament. Our disguise as normal Exalted is probably spot on, so we'll just draw all the attention with the fight, and Nilul could just disguise herself further and hide or kinda fade into the background using some her skills. If we could take her into a safe place before the tournament and get back in time that'll be even better.

[X] Stay Regardless
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The problem is that Nilul isn't currently disguised, and wasn't when she entered and met everyone. People are going to wonder where exactly your second is when she should be attending your matches. It's highly irregular.
 
Rihaku said:
Hm, combining the rigged match and Ayala Assassination plans, that is more coherent. It will be almost impossible to assassinate her second during the match though, as she'll be in open and plain view.
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A pity. Hmm. The odds are not tipped enough in our favor in the case we have to fight two of them at the same time that I would feel comfortable about it. How long would it take to contact Ivory discreetly and her to get here? Also, we need to manufacture a reason if she comes under her current role. Swapping Nilul for Ivory could work, if we go with the story of something urgent having come up for Nilul. Could be still too attention drawing, so Pearl hiding under a different Resplent Destiny than her current might work the best.
You can't flash buy any Charms since you are at the cap for your Essence, though you can still flash buy Evocations if you can afford it.
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Dangit. Forgot about that.
 
Rihaku said:
She doesn't think your chances are good in a 2v1, though who knows for sure?
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Whoops. Sorry for not making that clear, I was trying to ask if there was any reason we couldn't take one or both of them in separate 1v1 fights. I figure that if all of our opponents are tough but beatable 1v1, so as long as Nilul is hidden and we stick to the tournament structure we should be okay.
 
CharlBaal said:
How did they not see her last night at the banquet then? Surely they were interested in the rest of the competitors as we were?
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It was in the update, you never even physically saw them. You just heard Ayala humming.

meianmaru said:
A pity. Hmm. The odds are not tipped enough in our favor in the case we have to fight two of them at the same time that I would feel comfortable about it. How long would it take to contact Ivory discreetly and her to get here? Also, we need to manufacture a reason if she comes under her current role. Swapping Nilul for Ivory could work, if we go with the story of something urgent having come up for Nilul. Could be still too attention drawing, so Pearl hiding under a different Resplent Destiny than her current might work the best.

Dangit. Forgot about that.
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How do you intend to try and contact her? You don't really have any secure messengers and none of you know Infallible Messenger. If you want to hire a sorcerer you probably can find one, but you'd need to phrase the message pretty carefully.
 
Rihaku said:
How do you intend to try and contact her? You don't really have any secure messengers and none of you know Infallible Messenger. If you want to hire a sorcerer you probably can find one, but you'd need to phrase the message pretty carefully.
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"Hello Professor. Nilul and I are enjoying our time at the tournament, though I have to admit to being concerned about some of the competition. Besides the rest of the competition, I'd guess at two of the newcomers in particular being just as strong as me! They're the same caste I am, so I've been trying to wrack my brain to think of a strategy.

Meanwhile, how are you? Your faithful students are missing you desperately; we hope to see you again as soon as possible."

Decent phrasing?
 
me.me.here said:
Whoops. Sorry for not making that clear, I was trying to ask if there was any reason we couldn't take one or both of them in separate 1v1 fights. I figure that if all of our opponents are tough but beatable 1v1, so as long as Nilul is hidden and we stick to the tournament structure we should be okay.
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You don't really know for sure how good your opponents are. Is Polemgaos tough but beatable? He's theoretically beatable, sure, but depending on stunting your chances could be below forty percent. Which is already really high given that this guy fought off Ma Ha Suchi with Sidereal support.

Also, you guys would need to persuade Nilul that she is remotely safe here, because she certainly doesn't think so. The last thing you want to do is seem like you're blowing off her concerns; and for all you know, these Infernals could be two of ten at this event, so what justification do you really have to be unconcerned? Isn't it wiser to take the counsel of the person who actually knows the capabilities and resources available to this hidden faction?
 
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