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[Exalted, ?] Most High

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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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What we do after the first one would be a separate decision point. Luseng does gives us both a better standing in the eyes of the Realm's people, and sweet XP.

Also, protecting the Creation from its enemies is supposed to play a serious role in Ulyssian's actions. So we let that sector get overrun to not play Anys' game?
 
Rihaku said:
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.
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"I'm being as corrupt and unhelpful as I possibly can! Why are things running BETTER now?"
 
Alectai said:
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.

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 in open politics? I don't think so. The longer we force her to split her attention, the more likely it is someone smells a rat.
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But as I said before, she's smart enough to recognize that once we succeed the first time. Then she'd just take off the kid gloves and straight up murder us before it's too late.
 
[X] Pretend to accept the posting to Serentidopolos, fake your death, meet up with your friends and seek out Lealope.
-[X] Give Fei Ling and Ayala a Great Favor to secure their aid faking Ulyssian's death.
--[X] Attack should obviously point to the Yozis. The Infernals will know ahead of time and shelter or remove their assets.
-[X] Pearl, Nilul, and Moon will exfiltrate from the Academy and meet Ulyssian in the River Province.
-[X] Head out east to find Lealope.
--[X] Buff factions in the River Province standing for Creation and against the Realm with PoSC (Lookshy, Nexus, Great Forks, Marukani Confederation, Sijan, etc) along the way for Resources, influences, support, favors, Artifacts, and etc.
--[X] Also debuff Thorns and the Realm if feasible.

Alright, revised plan. I'm also considerably worried about what Anys Syn will do with Moon and Pearl while we're out in the Threshold and we need to keep Nilul close to us for safety. So evacuating to where Anys Syn's long arm can't reach is a good choice. If she sends her "second best" assassin after us (Ragara Myrrun? Crimson Banner Executioner?) we will in all likelihood be able to kill them and thus deprive her of that asset. Dropping a Wyld Hunt on Ulyssian far out in the River Province is also apt to be a no-go due to the hostile political environment for the Realm there.
 
Thinking about Serentidopolis, it's probably the better place to go. Less external enemies, and since the place is know for its assassinations, our minders having unfortunate accidents would be more believable and easier to explain.
 
So I got a question: If Ulyssian successfully manages to turn either of the options from 'Suicide Mission' to ' it made him hero of the realm' will Anys' power still be unquestioned? If Ulyssian successfully beats off all comers, revolutionizes his Satrapy, and just generally proves himself worth a horrenodus amount, will that not have an effect on the Realm? Especially if Zao remains alive and capable of working for the betterment of Creation.

Quite aside from all other considerations the Satrapy in question will be bound to him in a number of useful ways!
 
Deadly Snark said:
But as I said before, she's smart enough to recognize that once we succeed the first time. Then she'd just take off the kid gloves and straight up murder us before it's too late.
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To get to that point, she has to actually come at us herself. And by that point, we'll be Essence 5, and since the voting seems to be to keeping Ambition for ourselves, we'll be punching well out of even our significantly buffed weight class.

We took a nerfed Anys Syn with an "Immediately post-Exaltation Infernal Ulyssian + one Immaculate Martial Art" in The Odyssey, I wouldn't be surprised if we could take "Wracked Anys Syn" by the time we clear Luseng, especially as we would almost certainly be able to prepare the ground (Because the alternative is that she has to take on a mighty Solar in the sight of others who aren't in the know, and she Knows that Eye of the Unconquered Sun is a thing.)

She would have to take a risk of the whole house of cards falling down if she brought us to the center of her power to fight us as "Hesiesh", and if she comes to us, she'd have to take us on territory we've prepared in advance.
 
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[X] Pretend to accept the posting to Serentidopolos, fake your death, meet up with your friends and seek out Lealope.
-[X] Give Fei Ling and Ayala a Great Favor to secure their aid faking Ulyssian's death.
--[X] Attack should obviously point to the Yozis. The Infernals will know ahead of time and shelter or remove their assets.
-[X] Pearl, Nilul, and Moon will exfiltrate from the Academy and meet Ulyssian in the River Province.
-[X] Head out east to find Lealope.
--[X] Buff factions in the River Province standing for Creation and against the Realm with PoSC (Lookshy, Nexus, Great Forks, Marukani Confederation, Sijan, etc) along the way for Resources, influences, support, favors, Artifacts, and etc.
--[X] Also debuff Thorns and the Realm if feasible.

[X] Keep Ambition
 
dragon said:
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.
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The main problem with getting anything to Lea is the radius of utter destruction around her battle site with the Handsome Monkey King.

dragon said:
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.
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Hm, Uly is more comfortable with war, though. He doesn't dislike administration, but he is a Dawn, not a Twilight.

Gerrou said:
Luseng also gives Ulyssian's actions more significance, as by the end of it he will have won the Realm an impossible victory.
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Well, maybe Polemgaos could have pulled out a win, here...

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 will be growing stronger at a rapid rate with all that experience and all those loyal soldiers, heroes forged in the crucible of battle. And she has no Realm Defense Grid to wipe your armies from the map.

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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That's why Nilul should seize the throne as her mom! Or Moon!
 
[X] Pretend to accept the posting to Serentidopolos, fake your death, meet up with your friends and seek out Lealope.
-[X] Give Fei Ling and Ayala a Great Favor to secure their aid faking Ulyssian's death.
--[X] Attack should obviously point to the Yozis. The Infernals will know ahead of time and shelter or remove their assets.
-[X] Pearl, Nilul, and Moon will exfiltrate from the Academy and meet Ulyssian in the River Province.
-[X] Head out east to find Lealope.
--[X] Buff factions in the River Province standing for Creation and against the Realm with PoSC (Lookshy, Nexus, Great Forks, Marukani Confederation, Sijan, etc) along the way for Resources, influences, support, favors, Artifacts, and etc.
--[X] Also debuff Thorns and the Realm if feasible.

[X] Loan Ambition to Zao
 
Also, while we are doing our own thing. We should totally spread it far and wide that a Sidereal is totally running the Realm openly under the guise of a Immaculate Dragon. Let every Lunar, Deathlord and infernal in on this juicy detail, and then watch the fireworks.

The Sids made a lot of enemies, and quite a lot of them Remembers.

Count this as a write-in for Cavalier's option of de-buffing the Realm.

 
VanusDraco said:
Also, while we are doing our own thing. We should totally spread it far and wide that a Sidereal is totally running the Realm openly under the guise of a Immaculate Dragon. Let every Lunar, Deathlord and infernal in on this juicy detail, and then watch the fireworks.

The Sids made a lot of enemies, and quite a lot of them Remembers.

Count this as a write-in for Cavalier's option of de-buffing the Realm.
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... How would that help? The Deathlords, Lunars and Infernals try to destroy the Realm harder?
 
[X] Pretend to accept the posting to Serentidopolos, fake your death, meet up with your friends and seek out Lealope.
-[X] Give Fei Ling and Ayala a Great Favor to secure their aid faking Ulyssian's death.
--[X] Attack should obviously point to the Yozis. The Infernals will know ahead of time and shelter or remove their assets.
-[X] Pearl, Nilul, and Moon will exfiltrate from the Academy and meet Ulyssian in the River Province.
-[X] Head out east to find Lealope.
--[X] Buff factions in the River Province standing for Creation and against the Realm with PoSC (Lookshy, Nexus, Great Forks, Marukani Confederation, Sijan, etc) along the way for Resources, influences, support, favors, Artifacts, and etc.
--[X] Also debuff Thorns and the Realm if feasible.

[X] Keep Ambition

This was the quest I wanted all along. I would have wanted to stay in the realm a bit longer but only to play Game of Thrones. Too bad no one wanted it. My second choice has always been to find Lealope.
 
Gerrou said:
Because she is omniscient and omnipotent.:rolleyes:

She goes after Uly after a couple such clusterfucks - it's her funeral.
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She doesn't have to be omniscient and omnipotent to know that if you give someone suicide Missions and they keep not dying and succeeding beyond the wildest of dreams, well that person is going to gain a lot of popularity and influence very fucking fast and she knows her capabilities better than we do, so she could tell how dangerous the situation would be for her. And given that her prefer method of dealing with problems is brute force, well Killing time.

She is still an Elder Sidereal, who also has completely control over the Immaculates and the Houses. She could set up a deathsquad of herself, a few powerful Sids, powerful Immaculates and even Ulyssian would die. Hell, she might not even need to, since at her current strength she is good enough to have better than good chances against Zao, Ivory, Ulyssian, Ayala and Fei Ling by herself. Ulyssian with the added EXP of a clusterfuck would only have decent to bad chances against her, especially if she does not give him the time needed to train.
 
Alternatively I suppose we could try to brave the Realm Defense Grid and seize control of the Sword of Creation, but I think it might be a tad early for that. Even if the adventure book posited an E4 Circle could do it.
 
Gerrou said:
What we do after the first one would be a separate decision point. Luseng does gives us both a better standing in the eyes of the Realm's people, and sweet XP.

Also, protecting the Creation from its enemies is supposed to play a serious role in Ulyssian's actions. So we let that sector get overrun to not play Anys' game?
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A good point!

Deadly Snark said:
But as I said before, she's smart enough to recognize that once we succeed the first time. Then she'd just take off the kid gloves and straight up murder us before it's too late.
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Well, by that point, if you're E5 with full combat and 2+ WtS activations on Ambition, even Anys Syn would reconsider before fighting you 1v1. Especially Wracked. You'd be essentially a Zao-level threat in personal combat, with higher skill but less damage / soak. And everyone saw how that turned out against Polemgaos.

Cavalier said:
[X] Pretend to accept the posting to Serentidopolos, fake your death, meet up with your friends and seek out Lealope.
-[X] Give Fei Ling and Ayala a Great Favor to secure their aid faking Ulyssian's death.
--[X] Attack should obviously point to the Yozis. The Infernals will know ahead of time and shelter or remove their assets.
-[X] Pearl, Nilul, and Moon will exfiltrate from the Academy and meet Ulyssian in the River Province.
-[X] Head out east to find Lealope.
--[X] Buff factions in the River Province standing for Creation and against the Realm with PoSC (Lookshy, Nexus, Great Forks, Marukani Confederation, Sijan, etc) along the way for Resources, influences, support, favors, Artifacts, and etc.
--[X] Also debuff Thorns and the Realm if feasible.

Alright, revised plan. I'm also considerably worried about what Anys Syn will do with Moon and Pearl while we're out in the Threshold and we need to keep Nilul close to us for safety. So evacuating to where Anys Syn's long arm can't reach is a good choice. If she sends her "second best" assassin after us (Ragara Myrrun? Crimson Banner Executioner?) we will in all likelihood be able to kill them and thus deprive her of that asset. Dropping a Wyld Hunt on Ulyssian far out in the River Province is also apt to be a no-go due to the hostile political environment for the Realm there.
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Hm, Moon and Pearl will still be next to Zao; Zao won't let anyone hurt Moon unless it's over his dead body, and how many people can really hurt him? He's risk-averse, but Anys doesn't want him using his nuclear option either. That would end up in the destruction of the Western portion of the Blessed Isle, in the worst case. Of course, maybe she thinks he'd never do something that reckless.

Emerald Oracle said:
So I got a question: If Ulyssian successfully manages to turn either of the options from 'Suicide Mission' to ' it made him hero of the realm' will Anys' power still be unquestioned? If Ulyssian successfully beats off all comers, revolutionizes his Satrapy, and just generally proves himself worth a horrenodus amount, will that not have an effect on the Realm? Especially if Zao remains alive and capable of working for the betterment of Creation.
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It's not so much that it would decrease Anys' power, as it would increase Uly's.

Reckless_Sun said:
What about going at it from the other direction. We're so bad at the Setrappy job that it goes into open rebellion.
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I don't know if Uly's anal-retentiveness would let him do that! Maybe for the good of victory...

VanusDraco said:
Also, while we are doing our own thing. We should totally spread it far and wide that a Sidereal is totally running the Realm openly under the guise of a Immaculate Dragon. Let every Lunar, Deathlord and infernal in on this juicy detail, and then watch the fireworks.

The Sids made a lot of enemies, and quite a lot of them Remembers.

Count this as a write-in for Cavalier's option of de-buffing the Realm.
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They already know that the Sids run the Realm, though!
 
Actually....she's not in possession of the facts right?

Current elements unknown to her:
-Ambition's enhancement of anyone she's not paying active attention to. Or its broken hax
-Nilul's friendship
-Two Infernals of questionable loyalty.
-Being once upon a time, the Most High, and growing to meet challenges

If we use the unknown elements to monkeywrench enough to throw off her plans...
 
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Anys' move is a high-risk play in all fronts; if you succeed at the impossible task, that does make you much stronger, both personally and in the hearts and minds of the people. Consider the wording of the scroll that was sent to Zao! You are "Ulyssian, blessed especially by the Dragons," and you have their protection. How else could you do the impossible, again and again? First the Immaculates, then Polemgaos, and now the three-front war of Lusang or the technocratic labyrinth of Serentidopolis? She can't very well declare you Anathema after also naming you protected by the Dragons - or if she did, it sure would be egg on her face.
 
Guile said:
"I'm being as corrupt and unhelpful as I possibly can! Why are things running BETTER now?"
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Gods can go actively malicious, not just corrupt, in this fallen Creation - though usually not in ways that harm their domains.

Cavalier said:
Alternatively I suppose we could try to brave the Realm Defense Grid and seize control of the Sword of Creation, but I think it might be a tad early for that. Even if the adventure book posited an E4 Circle could do it.
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You could try! Bring everyone, bring the whole gang, and see what happens. It certainly would be a decisive blow.
 
Man, I just realized we never got any of that Ivory event. Even when we pick her options, Pearl doesn't get face-time!
 
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