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[Exalted, ?] Most High

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Gerrou said:
...heeey. Does it mean the main options are brutal war against Abyssals and Fae and becoming a murderhobo? Boo yah!
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I'm surprised Serentidopolis isn't more popular, actually. You have Prophet of 17 Cycles for the actual government work and Uly is well-equipped to deal with assassins. He has Unsurpassed Awareness, for Sun's Sake!

Serous said:
Whatever we choose to do, can we use Prophet on Anys to weaken her in the Realm.
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It targets institutions, so which institution do you want to weaken? And do you want to accept the consequences to Creation of doing so -

Alectai said:
Anys Syn is not an idiot, and the only means of "Disappearing" that we might conceivably have is the one where we owe our two Infernal Contacts a "Huge Favour"
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To be fair, a huge favor, while a big deal, isn't necessarily gamebreaking.

Emerald Oracle said:
I thought you said Zao would be "Apoplectic with Rage" at one of the options? Did that one not end up winning?
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Starting the Realm Civil War?
 
[X] Luseng
[X] Keep Ambition

This does still leave the option for us to hit E5 in the coming year, buying Wake the Sleeper and then going Full Winter Empress/Shogun Feng if necessary, right?

More importantly, this is just cool. A Deathlord and her Abyssal champions, an Elder Lunar and his maddened hoards, and Fae behemoths all chomping at the bit to carve up a Realm satrapy like a choice cut of meat. And then Odyssial, the Lord Strategos, Lealope the Invincible's boytoy, the Ender of Stories, shows up. It sounds like a great joke.

I can't wait to see what the punchline is.

VanusDraco said:
So I am thinking, if we accept a satrap posting, then our party heading out to the posting is gonna be choked full of Anys Syn's lackeys.
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This is almost certainly going to be true. But frankly?

Following the Lord Strategos into hell, I don't think it will take too terribly long to turn them through our sheer excellence.
 
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VanusDraco said:
Running away is the expected response perhaps. Getting killed by a Infernals is exactly what Anys WANT to happen to us. She's just going to be sad that we didn't bring down one of them.

Staying within her systems is playing to her strength, she was the secretary to the guy who build the Realm. I have no problem playing Total War, playing within the system against the developer who have admin rights and cheat console enabled is a pretty dumb move.
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She's also nowhere near as good a schemer as Chejop Kejak--her response to stress is "Grab a hammer and beat it until it works".

She can fake it due to her connections, but she's not nearly as twisty as a proper Sidereal should be--a proper Sidereal wouldn't have basically tipped us off by being so blatant in the "We're definitely sending you to be killed" department. They'd arrange something more reasonable, and then suddenly surprise everything going wrong in your face to completely neutralize the ability for you to prepare.

Generally speaking, if a reasonably well informed mortal would find it blatant, chances are that the Sidereal is being hamfisted about their agenda.
 
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Rihaku, if we're voting for a satrapal posting, should we start brainstorming strategies?
 
If we are going to fake our deaths, why not [ ] Serentidopolis. After all, that's the place where all the Satraps are dying of assassination.
 
You could have Nilul seize the throne while pretending to be her mother! And claim you as her son!

The son of Lung Feng Zao and The Scarlet Empress! You'd be the purported brother of TWO love interests!
 
Cavalier said:
[X] Pretend to accept the posting to Luseng, fake your death, meet up with your friends and seek out Lealope.
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I'm not convinced about Luseng. It is not a known Infernal Target, so faking our death by Infernals there would be pretty suspicious. Serentidopolis on the other hand seems to be a textbook case of Infernals, or at least Assassin Lunars, making something like an assassination while on the road much more believable, even expected.
 
Deadly Snark said:
The problem I have is not that we wouldn't be able to do it. We clearly would, but that after we succeed she'll just throw us into a even bigger shithole, because she aint stupid, she wouldn't let us consolidate our gains and then we are back at square 1 while she's making progress on her side.
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Well, honestly, the more dangerous locations she throws Uly into, the stronger he becomes. While she has already got the most power she can in the Realm. After one of those, we can just go after her head.
 
Rihaku said:
I'm surprised Serentidopolis isn't more popular, actually. You have Prophet of 17 Cycles for the actual government work and Uly is well-equipped to deal with assassins. He has Unsurpassed Awareness, for Sun's Sake!
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I didn't realize Prophet of Seventeen Cycles worked to clear out bureacratic corruption, though I probably should have. That does make Serentidopolis interesting and exciting, as well as less immediately murderous than the other posting. More money to play with, too, and as an added bonus we have the disfavor of Heaven to work through.

I kind of assume that Uly can just walk up to the bureaucratic spirits gumming up the works, open up the taps and let the Terror of Odyssial flow through.
 
[X] Serentidopolis - The ancient city-state of Serentidopolis holds an L-shaped territory that borders the Inland Sea to the north and the Dreaming Sea to the south. For this reason it has become a cosmopolitan hub of trade and cultural development. Enormously corrupt, the ineffectual nature of Realm governance in the territory is the stuff of legend. Much of its territory is barren desert, so it relies heavily on imports to feed its discontent citizenry. Recently, the city has suffered the disfavor of Heaven, for unknown reasons, causing already stymied mechanisms of governance to grind to a screeching halt. Nomad swarms and rival city-states eye its opulence greedily; the shape of its territory is hardly defensible. Backers of prodigious strength want the city erased, but their ultimate motivations are unknown. The last seven satraps and their immediate families all died of assassination: gruesome, terrible deaths.
-[X]keep ambition
-[X] bring pearl and nilul with us.

It occurs to me that whatever 'misfortune of heaven' the place is suffering is probally something we can fix by intimidating the local gods into doing their jobs right. They might also be useful for passing messages onto lealope.

Our strategizing is likely to be much more effective at fixing up bad management practices than it is at having our personal prowess bridge the gap in force between a battered satrapy and it's three powerful enemies.

We need to keep ambition since it's one of the things that can prove our identity to lea.

Nilul and pearl can help us not just with the social aspect of governing and asassination defense but in making sure we don't get cornered by anys lackeys.
 
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Deadly Snark said:
I'm not convinced about Luseng. It is not a known Infernal Target, so faking our death by Infernals there would be pretty suspicious. Serentidopolis on the other hand seems to be a textbook case of Infernals, or at least Assassin Lunars, making something like an assassination while on the road much more believable, even expected.
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Well, whatever, which posting we fake our death on the way to is kind of immaterial. It's just making a convincing case so we can go off and do something else. Though I was thinking the River Province would be easier to reach from Luseng.
 
Gerrou said:
Well, honestly, the more dangerous locations she throws Uly into, the stronger he becomes. While she has already got the most power she can in the Realm. After one of those, we can just go after her head.
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We are not going to be nearly strong enough to go after her head after just one of those. Besides, we'd be chest deep in her spies and once they tell her that the plan is backfiring she'd just go fuck it and murder us herself before we can consolidate enough to murder her.
 
Look, Serenditopolis is the kind of thing where Ambition wouldn't really be a huge deal for us, so we could afford to hand it to Moon to get familiarized with it--it's added combat power, but it's not nearly as much of an obvious clusterfuck as Four Way Pileup Gambit: The Satrapy.

Another problem, is that Anys Syn attacking us personally would be bad--now that she's basically taken control, she can't afford to get herself killed. While she's probably confident that she could win, unless her arrogance has reached truly ludicrous bounds, it's unlikely that she could do so without expending her dwindling power, which means it's far better for her to let us be killed in impossible deeds then it is to risk losing control and breaking the Immaculate Order's power. That's the danger she's taken up by mantling up Hesiesh once more--she risks destroying the Order's power, and if that goes, the Wyld Hunt goes, which means that CREATION IS DOOOOOOMED.
 
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Luseng also gives Ulyssian's actions more significance, as by the end of it he will have won the Realm an impossible victory.
 
Dark Lord Bob said:
Ahhh, it's rare to get straight up "I told you so," levels of smugness, and while we're a smidgen off from that I can still enjoy basking in it.
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You do realize that the Civil War would have been even more of a clusterfuck, as Rihaku himself has said, right? In terms of how to deal with the situation this is much easier and much more straightforward the the War would have been and it won't be nearly as damaging to Creation and the Realm.
 
Deadly Snark said:
You do realize that the Civil War would have been even more of a clusterfuck, as Rihaku himself has said, right? In terms of how to deal with the situation this is much easier and much more straightforward the the War would have been and it won't be nearly as damaging to Creation and the Realm.
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A less confusing, uncertain situation in favor of our enemies being massively more powerful and united. And we're just kicking the can down the road. If we are to win then Anys Syn's dictatorship of the Realm will have to eventually implode, and that'll just kick off the Civil War we deferred, potentially with even worse consequences to Creation and the Realm.
 
Guile said:
[X] Luseng
[X] Keep Ambition

This does still leave the option for us to hit E5 in the coming year, buying Wake the Sleeper and then going Full Winter Empress/Shogun Feng if necessary, right?
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Sure, though while Wake the Sleeper gives a huge number of Evocations, it doesn't give a staggering amount - 7-8, usually, if you roll well on an Artifact N/A.

Alectai said:
She's also nowhere near as good a schemer as Chejop Kejak--her response to stress is "Grab a hammer and beat it until it works".

She can fake it due to her connections, but she's not nearly as twisty as a proper Sidereal should be--a proper Sidereal wouldn't have basically tipped us off by being so blatant in the "We're definitely sending you to be killed" department. They'd arrange something more reasonable, and then suddenly surprise everything going wrong in your face to completely neutralize the ability for you to prepare.
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To be fair, her way does have a higher chance of actually killing you. No ineffectual elegance here! Sheer, ugly brute force works - that's the lesson of Anys Syn's life in Creation.

Guile said:
Rihaku, if we're voting for a satrapal posting, should we start brainstorming strategies?
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Absolutely.

Guile said:
I didn't realize Prophet of Seventeen Cycles worked to clear out bureacratic corruption, though I probably should have. That does make Serentidopolis interesting and exciting, as well as less immediately murderous than the other posting. More money to play with, too, and as an added bonus we have the disfavor of Heaven to work through.

I kind of assume that Uly can just walk up to the bureaucratic spirits gumming up the works, open up the taps and let the Terror of Odyssial flow through.
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Well, not so much clear it out as "make the city work effectively regardless of whatever the bureaucrats are doing," combined with, yeah, just killing anyone whose corruption presents a Gordian Knot to him. Now that a Solar is here, it's not like they're irreplaceable.

Cavalier said:
Well, whatever, which posting we fake our death on the way to is kind of immaterial. It's just making a convincing case so we can go off and do something else. Though I was thinking the River Province would be easier to reach from Luseng.
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Luseng is in the North-West, actually; it's unusually temperate for the region, and extremely wealthy, hence the conquering factions.
 
Cavalier said:
A less confusing, uncertain situation in favor of our enemies being massively more powerful and united. And we're just kicking the can down the road. If we are to win then Anys Syn's dictatorship of the Realm will have to eventually implode, and that'll just kick off the Civil War we deferred, potentially with even worse consequences to Creation and the Realm.
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Potentially, but the potential also exist to make use of Anys's play to give our ally an United Realm with far less bloodshed.
 
Cavalier said:
And then he'll be thrown into another death ground, and yet another.

Playing Anys' game gives her the initiative and her the advantages. Kicking over the table is necessary instead.
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You're assuming she's omniscient, and can afford to keep escalating our threats indefinitely. And that everyone we pass through will completely forget our interventions.

At a given point, competence Does win out. Being the Man Who Brings Forth Miracles means that she loses the ability to just say "Yeah, totally Anathema" without using her Hesiesh Identity, and that risks us exposing her. Which would break the Immaculate Order for all time, them finding out that one of the "Immaculate Dragons" was a so-called Anathema themselves

The question is, is she a good enough schemer to be able to endlessly escalate our threats, suppress our growing legend, while wrangling the Great Houses as Hesiesh? I don't think so. The longer we force her to split her attention, the more likely it is someone smells a rat and starts plotting against her, or another faction exposes her.

Withdrawing allows her to write us off as "Totally an Anathema", and allows her to refocus her assets and attention solely on Zao and holding the Realm together. She already knows she can take Zao in a pinch, especially with his reputation damaged by the "Revelation" that his "Protege" actually was an Anathema all along, and he knew it.
 
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