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[Exalted, ?] Most High

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Rihaku said:
Nilul stage whispered some particularly egregious suggestions in his ear, which shocked the eavesdropping Moon.
...........

Moon hugged him and told him she'd be joining him soon.

"Only if it's safe," he said seriously, to which she defiantly shook her head, bottom lip quivering.

"Uly-" She managed, and hugged him again, tightly, but not so tight that it would have constricted him, even if he'd been a mortal.

Nilul laid a hand to her forehead as she walked up and playfully joined the hug. "Oh," she exclaimed, "our Incompetents Society is all grown up."

"I'm not part of the Incompetents Society," Moon pointed out.

"You're an honorary member!" Nilul declared. "Besides, we need someone to cover for Uly while he's gone, and who better than his better half~?"

"B-b-better," Moon squeaked, face turning red. Ulyssian put a hand on her forehead to check for a temperature.

Nilul shook her head resignedly. "Hey," she said, "hopeless dunce. Grow strong so that you can protect me, okay? I'll be seeing ya." She sidled off, flaring her hips mockingly as she walked.
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*Squee* OT3! OT3!
 
If the situation in Luseng stabilizes before Ulyssian ever arrives, thanks to the three warlords falling out among themselves, then he doesn't get to take credit for a brilliant victory against impossible odds. He wasn't even there when the threat receded! Of course we know how he did it, and Anys Syn knows how he did it, but no one else can because that's not a thing Dragonblooded can do. Since the whole point of this ill-considered diversion is to win an impossible victory and become a hero the Realm, the threat-level has to be kept appropriately high.

Meanwhile Zao and the navy are literally Ulyssian's only allies inside the Realm. Allowing Zao's position to be endangered or the Navy to erode away makes the prospect of an internal solution to the problem of Anys Syn's dictatorship much less likely.

Mind I still don't know what you people have planned at the end here, when the Realm gives Ulyssian accolades for his victory and orders him off to another death trap, making him leave his "resources" and "powerbase" behind. If you think a single satrapy is a useful base for fighting the entire Realm you should really give that another thought and also consider what turning traitor will do to that carefully cultivated image in the Realm. And also consider whether or not Zao would be in any position to help without being crushed himself, in such a circumstances. And of course walking away into another death trap is kind of counterproductive in and of itself...
 
Rihaku said:
Mmm. But it's better than dying, right?
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Which seems hilariously likely, trying to fight a Deathlord, a semi elder and a bunch of Fair Folk behemoth simultaneously with two dozen Dragon Blooded.

Beating three anathema armies one after theother is sufficient street cred.
 
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Guile said:
You guys are voting for the Prophecy that involves us fighting three simultaneous wars.

Where'd my cautious peeps go?

EDIT: Heck, why is Zao in danger of losing control of the navy at all? We had literally one update where we had completely solidifed our control and marginalized all of Anys's agents, and then the next update we're on the ropes?

I thought the navy was relatively apolitical, not like the Legions.
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Anys Syn rules the Realm. She is everyone's boss now, for however long she can maintain it. She can erode anyone's influence. It's not as if the navy exists in a vacuum, after all. It interfaces with all the other organizations of the Realm.

Orm Embar said:
Hmm... so, strategies to pursue. All of the Titles open up doors. If we go for Waking the Sleeper, I'd advocate assassinations and false flag operations. Killing off Ragmar, hopefully turning his horde against the Gardener's Abyssals with a judicious use of Perfect Mirror. Perhaps we could task our Shikari minders with coordinating an offensive against the Fair Folk while we embark on our own mission; would they being amenable to that, or are they incapable of leaving our side for more than a moment? Ragmar's death does run the risk of his army simply being slaughtered in the absence of Exalted support, so hopefully he's got some younger Lunars around to put up a fight, but even without them it should buy us some more time to deal with the Fair Folk; speaking of them, if we get Absolutely, perhaps a stronger offensive against the Fair Folk could be in organized. With Shaping defenses in place, meeting them in open battle is less of a risk.
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Shaping actually isn't a thing in 3E. There are just effects now.

Alectai said:
Not much we can do, again, we lack a lot of data on what we'll even have when we hit the ground.

We have five Shikari who may or may not follow our orders (Though are unlikely to actively sabotage us), we have a scrub tier aide (Who may or may not be a junior Sidereal playing charades, either way, we'd need cultivation to get use out of them), and out of date intelligence on our enemy. If we still hold the Mountain in Three Kingdoms ,it's a solid choice, but all we know is our assets are "Half a Realm Legion" (Approximately 5,000 infantrymen) with a gutted officer corps (No more then 10 surviving Dragon Blooded at best), plus whatever is already on hand.

That's certainly a start, but we know too little about the terrain to effectively come up with detailed strategies. Where is the Mountain with regards to the rest of the region? Can we set anything up to deny it to our enemies while we fort up? Is it in our effective area of projected power when we turtle up? What other assets are on hand in the Satrapy that we can draw upon? Where is all the money going that they can't even afford basic public works? (Even with the tax burden to the Realm).

Who is the local ruler? Or have they been eliminated and we can take open control? What kind of history does the Gardener have with this region and what changed to suddenly shift them to a total war footing? How long has the Lunar been in this region, and where is he pulling his Beastmen from? Will we be able to load iron-shot and do a strafing run with our ships on the approaching behemoths to help break the initial rush? Will the capital even still exist by the time we get into place?

The general plan is sound--divide and conquer, three targets--two of which definitely want The Mountain and are in this for the long haul (Which is likely an enormous strategic resource to justify why they've gone All In here). The Fair Folk just seem to want to dick with the locals, given how they're the only ones that are apparently actually marching on the Capital in earnest--can they be turned on the others?

What happened to the Grand Master? Was he assassinated, or did he sally outwards and get crushed? If he sallied out, what happened? What killed him? Few with that title are easy prey. Where are his surviving Shikari? It says "Scattered to the Winds", not obliterated--so what happened that completely shattered their ability to operate?

I have so many questions, but our profile doesn't seem to have much more than a very, very vague strategic overview of the situation. Furthermore, the City-state is incredibly rich, but they have exploited only a small fraction of their potential evidently given how much corruption is in place--so where is all their wealth coming from? As a trade port, the Northwest isn't one of the better Directions to make a living off of trade alone, and Nexus only gets away with it because the greatest river system in the world all meets up on the place where it's built. You can't run an economy solely on trade unless you have hundreds of countries by the balls with your positioning.

Now, a few responses I Can think of...

A) If the locals know a talented new Satrap is coming, then our enemies do too. Expect an assassination attempt shortly after arrival, quite likely from an Abyssal to guarantee the kill, such would likely shatter morale. Can we capture them and interrogate them for data? Could we have one of our Minders "Take an arrow" for us to get them out of play? Or would subversion be more appropriate?

B) Three Kingdoms Prophecy still requires set-up time, if we are denied this, we may very well waste our initial Prophecy. How do we ensure this happens without intervention?

C) What military and economic assets do we have on hand at this very moment? Is it just a very fast courier carrying our immediate staff and the Shikari "Minders"?"

D) Do we know any of the attributes of the approaching Behemoths at this time? Or are our reports sketchy on that point?

EDIT:

Also, changing my vote again.

[X] The Scarlet Flag Prophecy
[X] Unbreakable Will
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? The source of their economic strength is clear in Esertia's overview. Even though their resources are under exploited, what they already use is enough to make them an economic powerhouse via export of fish, cash crops, and pure Jade.

Serous said:
Reading through the summary of Luseng, the thing that caught my eye was that the populace considered the Satrap to be more of a King than anything else. probably due to how recently they were conquered. Thus, they should not have a very high level of loyalty to the Realm, which means that if we pull this off, we should have a relatively strong powerbase here.

Of the three choices, Grand Heretical appeals to me the least. While its long term benefits are possibly the greatest, while also ensuring that Anys is caught up trying to put up fires instead of sitting around making trouble for us, our current situation needs something to happen ASAP to help Luseng. Furthermore, it will require our direct support and intervention, which we currently do not really have time for, needing to win this war. All these long term plans also seem relatively useless, with how greatly a situation can change from update to update.

Of the other two, I would be fine with either.

The biggest benefit of the Three Kingdoms is that it allows us to start empire building. It slows down the advance by the Coalition and splits them up into more manageable chunks, while buying time for Uly to prepare. Furthermore, by withdrawing the vast majority of the population into the capital, it makes their lives easier while also helping to reduce the amount of casualties that would be inflicted, thus helping garner goodwill towards us. The addition time can be used for us to put into place our various plans, reorganize as well as use our charms, while also allowing to request resources from the Realm to fortify our position. It makes large scale troop movements disadvantageous for all sides, which is only beneficial to us, considering that our forces are currently heavily depleted. And while the forces are nominally allied, if they decided to bull through the prediction, damn the bodies, they would be severely weakening their own faction, leaving them prey to the other two.

However, that time would also allow our enemies time to prepare, and unlike us, they have three different sources to draw reinforcements from. In addition, I seriously doubt Anys would allow us to happily sit here building up our powerbase if we are not weakening the other three factions. Conversely, she also cannot do anything too overt. She is unlikely to sabotage our military situation and make it less costly for the Coalition to claim Luseng, but will probably work on the civil and social aspect, to try and ensure that even if we are successful in saving Luseng, the inhabitants would not be as grateful as they could be.

In addition, allowing the Deathlords and the Lunars access to the mountain does not sound like the safest proposition. The best case scenerio for what is hidden inside the mountain is that it is merely a solid core of jade, whose strategic implications are already devastating enough. Its entirely possible that it is some extremely valuable first age creation. However, neither the Deathlords nor the Lunars are going to be really willing to split the mountain up, as its the main prize of this campaign. This also means that they probably would be less willing to be aggressive, as they already got part of what they really want Furthermore, there seem to be some outer defense in the mountain, which would make it harder for them to unravel whatever it is the mountain is hiding.

However, our forces are currently outnumbered, so even thought we are surrendering the mountain, we might have not been able to hold it anyway even if we chose the other options due to lack of manpower, so consolidating to save resources and manpower might be the wiser choice. Maintaining the security of our territory with less than a Legion seems nonviable, especially considering how outnumbered we are, so we could simply be smartly giving away territory to save the remains of the Satrapy.

Another factor would be small scale combat would still be a viable method with Three Kingdoms, which benefits our faction the most. While we might have the smallest army of the factions, we are the faction with access to the greatest number of Exalts, which means something. Uly's skill set is also quite suited to this, having perfect disguise charms to help him move through enemy territory while also possessing high level combat power that allows him to fight the opposing Exalts.

As for Scarlet Flag, its main advantage is that it helps to shore up Zao. He is our main and strongest supporter in the Realm, so increasing his power and influence would help to mitigate how much impact Anys has on the navy. Furthermore, since Anys is now moving openly, if her actions are less than successful, it would help weaken her power and influence, which would be useful. Dealing with Zao would also tie up her resources and time, thus meaning that she would have less ability to assert her influence in our part of the world. Furthermore, Luseng is a coastal satrapy, so having the navy behind us would give us more options for our plans. With the benefits of Prophet, there would be fewer losses, so more manpower from the Navy can be directed by Zao to help reinforce us here in Luseng. The navy could also be used to help ferry our men for when we go on the offensive.

On the other hand, strengthen Zao too much might cause backlash from Anys. While Zao is too powerful, and she is juggling too many balls, if Zao is becoming too powerful for her to deal with, she might try something stupid to deal with him. While her priorities are kinda screwed, the execution of her plans are still good, no matter how retarded the aim of the plan is. Furthermore, since we are not using Prophet on the Satrapy, it means that if the position in the Satrapy is truly horrible, we still would have to deal with it. Basically, go big or go home. As soon as we arrive, we would need to do something big to unbalance the Coalition and buy ourselves some breathing room. This also means that we would have lesser time to familiarize ourselves with the troops and the terrain, which means a higher chance of screwing up. Due to the lack of information, we would not really be able to decide until we reach there, thought.

However, there are certain thing I believe can be done regardless of which choice wins. Firstly, I think we might want to approach the people on our ship to learn about them. Without a good idea of their abilities, we can't really make plans which will make full use of their abilities, after all. For example, we know that our aide flunked out of the Heptagram, but can he cast sorcery, how good is he at occult? We don't know those things even thought they could be helpful to us, allowing us to know who to delegate to what task, if nothing else.

Also, I don't really think that we might want to approach the city while staying on the ship. While the ship itself is being nice and visible, it might be better for us to sneak into the habour and observe who and what individuals are there. I don't believe that there are no spies from the other factions inside the city, so getting there before the ship gives us a chance to try and see if there are any suspicious individuals loitering around. It would also protect us just in case one of the three factions decide to alpha strike us when we are still on the ship.

Speaking of which, the Brotherhood who are following us can make themselves useful by helping to keep law and order in the city. They should have plenty of experience in investigating Anathema and calming civilians, so they can use those abilities while we try to get the house in order to restore order. The Immaculate Mission here is known for neglecting the civilians, so if we change that it should help with morale problems. In addition, the number of indisposed people means that we have a lot of idle hands which could be put to better use, and I doubt the war has helped the situation any

One thing we should take note of is that we currently still have a lot of resources in Luseng. Thus, we should make full use of it. Hire the pirates to help with our manpower. Contact Ayala and see if she is willing to trade us a Working for anything we have here. Bribe the gods into helping. Carry out investigations and find out more information about the situation and the mountain. If nothing else, the local legends and rumours about it can probably help us narrow it down.

1491 words
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Uly isn't very nice, so if you approach these people and let your words make the first impression instead of your actions in the field, it could well hurt you despite giving you info.

meianmaru said:
Our rolls are starting to get somewhat ridiculuos for these kind of things, it seems. But yeah, I concede the point on the number of Evocations. I would still weight carefully if getting Eye of the Storm might be worth it anyway, and the Evocations along the way to it are by no means weak.

And as SA is, well, armor, its increased defensive benefits with its true power unlocked are not to be dismissed. It also seem some of the tricks it gives could work quite well when in conjuction with Ambition and our own native Charms, like making Clashing and overwhelming first-striking (which we have been kind of doing till now in our fights) more effective.
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The Storm Armor's Evocations are really great. I don't think it will win over using WtS on Ambition though.

Pipeman said:
I'm not sure I really like The Scarlet Flag Prophecy.

Rihaku already noted that with Luseng's resources the support the navy can actually offer us could very well turn out to be not that necessary or at least less useful than advertised and, while The Grand Heretical Prophecy doesn't have much immediate benefit, its effects can ultimately mess with Anys Syn's powerbase to a ridiculous degree, which can easily end up outweighing the benefit of reducing her erosion of Zao's powerbase.

It's worth to keep in mind that The Grand Heretical Prophecy or something along those lines will ultimately take a long time to cultivate and with us being incredibly busy in the immediate future and it being very unclear when enough shit will hit the fan that the conflict over the Realm comes to a climax, choosing something else now is probably going to lock us out of that approach forever.
Even if The Three Kingdoms Prophecy poses the risk of the Deathlord or Lunar getting access to the mountain and may deprive us of the opportunity for the immediate and impressive heroics we can use to start up our reputation as a Hero of the Realm and solidify the loyalty of this Satrapy (though Three Kingdoms is still very much worth it in my opinion), I'm not sure I can accept that as a reasoning to default to the Scarlet Flag.
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Good point in the Grand Heretical - this may well be your only chance to realistixally initiate it. Also, while Scarlet strengthens Zao, Heretical weakens Anys - potentially a far more relevant course.
 
Hm. If you roll well on Waking, you could potentially get more Evocations than I've written for Ambition. It's likely, if I allow Heave-Turning Calculations to apply to it.

Not sure whether or not I'm going to, though I suppose you guys could always come up with a stunt to apply it. That would be a potentially 80,000 XP stunt!

veekie said:
Ah what the hell.

Go BIG

[X] The Grand Heretical Prophecy
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That's the spirit! Don't you want to weaken Anys, guys?
 
[X] The Grand Heretical Prophecy

We can't allow Anys to just do whatever she wants, this is a perfect opportunity to weaken her. I wonder if there's any gold faction sids around to take advantage of this.
 
Guile said:
In general? Yes.

When we're in the middle of throwing down with an E5 Lunar, a Deathlord and her deathknights, and a horde of fae? No, not really.

We picked the most dangerous possible option, we should really act like it.
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That's what your combat-oriented titles are for! With the appropriate stunt, you could unlock 9-10 Evocations from Ambition, which is equivalent to 8-12 combat relevant Solar charms! Just need to wrangle it under the purview of Heaven-Turning Calculations somehow...
 
Elero said:
[X] The Grand Heretical Prophecy

We can't allow Anys to just do whatever she wants, this is a perfect opportunity to weaken her. I wonder if there's any gold faction sids around to take advantage of this.
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I wonder whether Ascendent Rosary survived the Usurpation and Wracking...

Don't take that to mean he survived for sure, mind.
 
[X] The Grand Heretical Prophecy

Great quest man, took me several weeks to catch up. Seeing how awesome the quest had played out till now, this is the only option that feels right to me.
 
[x] The Scarlet Flag Prophecy

Grand Heretical, in addition to not helping with this campaign whatsoever, would also require us to consistently spend time and attention to really have any effect. Those are things that are probably going to be in hard supply.
 
Guile said:
In general? Yes.

When we're in the middle of throwing down with an E5 Lunar, a Deathlord and her deathknights, and a horde of fae? No, not really.

We picked the most dangerous possible option, we should really act like it.
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This, basically. I'm not opposed to any of the options; I think they're all really useful and interesting, but we walked into a deathtrap and now we want to give up the chance for breathing room? Not stabilizing the situation will lead to severe complications down the road. The other options don't help us in the here and now, and all the pies in the sky won't be worth a damn if we don't survive to eat them. It's just not the time to be focusing on the other stuff.

Also, it'll save tens of thousands of peasant lives, ensuring the happiness and prosperity of the people we are ostensibly responsible for. Y'know, if you care about that kind of thing.
 
[X] The Grand Heretical Prophecy
[X] Wake the Sleeper

The setting-wide scale of redeeming Solars appeals to me, as does the breaking of the giant lie.

We need combat power for the multiple Powerful Exalts we will face: Wake the sleeper gives that.
 
gigantisrex said:
[X] The Grand Heretical Prophecy

Great quest man, took me several weeks to catch up. Seeing how awesome the quest had played out till now, this is the only option that feels right to me.
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Thanks, I'm glad you enjoyed it! Did you read the full thread or all the threadmarks?

Dark Lord Bob said:
Well, I'd probably start by seeing how the undoubtedly perfect geometry of the blade interfaces with reality. How could we do that, though? My initial idea would be using our (iirc immense) talent in predictionism.
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I'm inclined to accept any stunt that is sufficiently well-written, a particularly ingenious one might qualify for a level three stunt and thus give you even more successes and free Evocations to use.

Serous said:
[x] The Scarlet Flag Prophecy

Grand Heretical, in addition to not helping with this campaign whatsoever, would also require us to consistently spend time and attention to really have any effect. Those are things that are probably going to be in hard supply.
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But the effect is weakening Anys Syn!! Isn't that a worthy cause?

Orm Embar said:
This, basically. I'm not opposed to any of the options; I think they're all really useful and interesting, but we walked into a deathtrap and now we want to give up the chance for breathing room? Not stabilizing the situation will lead to severe complications down the road. The other options don't help us in the here and now, and all the pies in the sky won't be worth a damn if we don't survive to eat them. It's just not the time to be focusing on the other stuff.

Also, it'll save tens of thousands of peasant lives, ensuring the happiness and prosperity of the people we are ostensibly responsible for. Y'know, if you care about that kind of thing.
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But you could do that anyway, if only you had enough combat power!
 
Regarding the fact-introduction powers of Lore: I have been hesitant to do this, because it seems like a lot of extra work for facts that could compromise the setting later on, but if there's significant interest in making it work, I'll consider it. Otherwise Uly is just going to use it in a non-meta way to enable stuff like the Grand Heretical Prophecy. Are you guys interested in Lore's ability to introduce facts, or would you prefer to play with the world as is?
 
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