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Fire Emblem: Last of the Manakete

What would readers prefer?

  • Pure narrative quest: no dice will be used, the author will have free reign to decide what happens.

    Votes: 25 59.5%

  • New dice system: the author will design a new, better dice system to add some randomness and risk.

    Votes: 17 40.5%
  • Total voters
    42
  • Poll closed .
Reader mode
[X] "…Okay. Stay here, I'll be fast. I'll go get your father, then we'll be back to save you."

Let's not slaughter everyone that way leads to madness and I like our cinnamon bun.
 
[X] Go grab your bag: Something's wrong, and you don't want to leave anything behind if you have to do something drastic.

We have some casting ability even without Thunder's Cry, and I'm more worried about what will happen if they find our scrolls than I am about not having our weapon.

[X] "No! There's got to be another way I'm not going to leave you here! I'll think of something…"

Something of a placeholder vote, I'll change this if someone comes up with a good write-in. Regardless, I am not leaving Artemis behind.

EDIT: Also, going dragon strikes me as a bad idea right now.
 
[X] Go grab your bag: Something's wrong, and you don't want to leave anything behind if you have to do something drastic.

[X] Stay calm, go Dragon form, and get Artemis out of there as stealthily as you can manage before flying away together. You hate the thought of abandoning Axton, Lancel, and Kelton, but you need to take one step at a time.
 
Mhm.. what do people think about this? Rather than going berserk as a dragon, be more ice cold about it?

[ ] You... you hate what history has done to your people, but if they fear dragons... You will meet Mantrae immediately, prove yourself a dragon, and make her work with you to betray the bandits once they come for Artemis. If she can betray Artemis she can betray them too.

edit: yeah I'll go with this, edited my original vote.
 
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[X] Go grab your bag: Something's wrong, and you don't want to leave anything behind if you have to do something drastic.
[X] "No! There's got to be another way I'm not going to leave you here! I'll think of something…"
 
[X] "No! There's got to be another way I'm not going to leave you here! I'll think of something…"

To me it feels more ic to at least try something before leaving
 
[] Plan Turnabout
-[X] Go grab Thunder's Cry: Something's wrong, and you want to have a weapon if things get worse.
-[X] Write-In Turnabout Is Fair Play - The guards are going to let all of you walk out with your things, supplies, and mounts, because you're going to take the Countess hostage. If necessary, you'll zap anyone who gets in your way.

Write in, extended:

Your teeth clench, and anger fills you with determination. You might not want to fight all the guards, but if the Countess was willing to capture all of you to get what she wants, then it's entirely fair to do the same thing to her.

"Artemis," you say, your voice tight. "Can you tell me where the Countess' room is?"

"What?" she asks.

"Her guards will be outside her room, right? I can get in from the window and take her hostage before they can do anything. If I have to use lightning to hurt her or her guards I will, but we should be able to leave with everyone, our things, and mounts and supplies, along with the Countess to make sure her guards can't stop us, without any fighting. I feel bad for the Countess, but what she's doing is wrong. She'll just have to order her guards to rescue her daughter and hope for the best." A ball of lightning crackles momentarily in your hand. "So where is she?"
 
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I will like all the escalation ideas here I think. Going dragon though sounds the easiest option to pursue.

It would be very cool for a little girl to take the countess hostage out of nowhere and get everything we want. However, I have doubts on how to implement it. Hostage situations are extremely difficult to do well, worse with improvisation, and even worse with our toolkit. We are either a glass cannon little girl protected by ignorance of our strength or an impulsive deadly dragon, and that plan would imply threatening an unsuspecting countess in her castle. Either the little girl threaten the countess and it will be hard to be taken seriously or avoid guards playing heroes at the first occasion, or we turn dragon, paralyze everyone with terror from an almost out of context problem and we will have to clearly negotiate while keeping an eye on everything in an unfamiliar castle with no room to maneuver in an unfamiliar body.

Going dragon, saving the princess and flying away with all our stuff sounds the least bothersome. Our guards are not important enough to be assassinated so they will likely be alive in a few days when we come back with Artemis's father.

Or we could find our companions, riot, and fight our way out of a castle. Or going full JRPG heroes by offering to save the countess's daughter after foiling her plot.
 
[X] Go grab your bag: Something's wrong, and you don't want to leave anything behind if you have to do something drastic.
[X] "You underestimate my power." Rage flows through you.

I'm not going to support leaving Artemis, and any realistic plan to break her (and the rest of the party) out will either be exceedingly complicated and thus very likely to go wrong (like, say, attempting to take a hostage and just hoping that they'll capitulate to a little girl instead of calling the bluff), or involve going loud and blitzing through their defenses. We will especially need to blitz the defenses if we want to get all of the rest of the party out, because attempting a nonlethal stealth extraction of like three or four people would all but require dedicated stealth magic (I'll remind you that even in dragon form Ryza's only roughly the size of a regular wyvern, while carrying two people is probably possible attempting to carry three is very iffy and four is probably impossible just from sheer weight alone), which we pointedly do not have.

Thus, the option with the highest likelihood of success is to go full (literal) shock and awe, blast through the guards, and pull out our people before they have time to coordinate a full response.
 
Hrm, this is a situation where stealth would be far more useful than firepower.

Escaping alone is the last resort, that would give our enemies everything they wanted except for the king knowing exactly what happened and how.

Do we have no clever method of getting her out of this room without going Dragon? If we do, do we have any method of escaping a significantly better-armed force without going Dragon? It was hard enough while having three armed fighters and running from mostly bandits.

How much of this castle supports or even knows about this plan? Castor not being at our door probably isn't a coincidence, and indicates that he may not be considered trusted to participate.

If Ryza does manage to escape with Artemis quietly into the night, how well will Mantrae be able to spin that as Ryza kidnapping her?

Honestly, if it is even possible, I wish we had a magical equivalent of a megaphone to announce to everyone here that Countess Mantrae has betrayed her nation and imprisoned her princess as a bargaining chip to bandits. That could kneecap any response, and alert our core allies and any loyalists to help. If Mantrae doesn't have absolute command over everyone here, kicking her ass in the information war is like the strongest possible move.

If we can do that, that's the ideal. The next step of escalation is going Dragon either to assist the possible loyalists or to make our escape possible in the first place.

Trying to talk to Mantrae while simultaneously revealing our status to someone obviously untrustworthy seems like a bad idea.
 
[X] Go grab your bag: Something's wrong, and you don't want to leave anything behind if you have to do something drastic.
[X] Write-In "She just wants her daughter back, right? So after they give her back they won't be able to take you, because they'll be surprised by a dragon!"

Why threaten the poor mother and attack the guards when we can solve the problem by blitzing the bad guys? It'll get them off our backs and the Countess will owe us not to spread the word about a dragon who helped her.
 
[X] Go grab your bag: Something's wrong, and you don't want to leave anything behind if you have to do something drastic.
[X] "You underestimate my power." Rage flows through you.
 
Ando Owen said:
I will like all the escalation ideas here I think. Going dragon though sounds the easiest option to pursue.

It would be very cool for a little girl to take the countess hostage out of nowhere and get everything we want. However, I have doubts on how to implement it. Hostage situations are extremely difficult to do well, worse with improvisation, and even worse with our toolkit. We are either a glass cannon little girl protected by ignorance of our strength or an impulsive deadly dragon, and that plan would imply threatening an unsuspecting countess in her castle. Either the little girl threaten the countess and it will be hard to be taken seriously or avoid guards playing heroes at the first occasion, or we turn dragon, paralyze everyone with terror from an almost out of context problem and we will have to clearly negotiate while keeping an eye on everything in an unfamiliar castle with no room to maneuver in an unfamiliar body.

Going dragon, saving the princess and flying away with all our stuff sounds the least bothersome. Our guards are not important enough to be assassinated so they will likely be alive in a few days when we come back with Artemis's father.

Or we could find our companions, riot, and fight our way out of a castle. Or going full JRPG heroes by offering to save the countess's daughter after foiling her plot.
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In the Turnabout plan, someone may need to get electrocuted to demonstrate that Ryza is serious. I don't think going dragon is necessary, or a good idea for secrecy's sake save as a last resort.

Taking Artemis by dragonback isn't an ideal escape plan because Ryza can only hold the form for a short time. They wouldn't be able to outpace horses as they traveled, so there'd be a risk of getting caught if they were unlucky. It's also obviously suboptimal because it doesn't rescue the others or their stuff. But it could work, and it's possible the others could be okay long enough for Artemis' father to come back with an army.

Emanyzal said:
Why threaten the poor mother and attack the guards when we can solve the problem by blitzing the bad guys? It'll get them off our backs and the Countess will owe us not to spread the word about a dragon who helped her.
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And if they kill the hostage? The Countess wouldn't have any reason to keep Artemis alive. Rescuing hostages is very difficult, it'd be a huge gamble. And we don't know where they are, either. And we can't wait until the swap because they'll almost certainly demand Artemis first, then leave with her without handing over the daughter until later (if they hand her over at all; they'd be fools to keep their word) to ensure they aren't attacked as they leave.
 
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TaliesinSkye said:
And if they kill the hostage? The Countess wouldn't have any reason to keep Artemis alive. Rescuing hostages is very difficult, it'd be a huge gamble. And we don't know where they are, either. And we can't wait until the swap because they'll almost certainly demand Artemis first, then leave with her without handing over the daughter until later (if they hand her over at all; they'd be fools to keep their word) to ensure they aren't attacked as they leave.
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If they kill the hostage both we and the Countess have no reason to keep THEM alive. Hostages are a gamble for both sides.
 
[X] Go grab your bag: Something's wrong, and you don't want to leave anything behind if you have to do something drastic.
[X] "You underestimate my power." Rage flows through you.
 
Emanyzal said:
If they kill the hostage both we and the Countess have no reason to keep THEM alive. Hostages are a gamble for both sides.
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In a feudal society, the Countess' life is forfeit if what she's done gets out. Her only hope of survival is covering this up with Artemis' death, one way or another. Depending on the ruthlessness of this particular feudal society, it might be her daughter's only hope of survival even if she's rescued, too.

Rescuing the daughter will not solve the problem at this point. In committing treason of this degree the Countess has crossed the Rubicon. The law will demand her execution, and probably the most heinous one that can be devised.
 
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TaliesinSkye said:
In the Turnabout plan, someone may need to get electrocuted to demonstrate that Ryza is serious. I don't think going dragon is necessary, or a good idea for secrecy's sake save as a last resort.
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Electrocuting someone to show we mean business is exactly the issue.

We are squishy, alone and not particularly scary or experienced. If we have to end up doing hostage scenario, we will have to keep an eye on the hostage, keep an eye on the negotiator trying to meet our demands while doing our best to estimate how much is he trying to screw us over by taking time or readying an ambush, and then be able to flee the scene without them putting us in a counter hostage scenario since we are trying to save several people.

That's the kind of job where you would need a badass war hero who can survive a few arrows and one shotting guards in melee and who already prepared several escape routes. The Black Knight could do that, not a surprised glass cannon who won't survive an arrow or even the hostage stabbing us out of nowhere.
 
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The Southern Kingdoms
  • Informational
    • One thing that I realize I haven't made clear, but Ryza would know from her brief discussion of nobility with Axton, is that the Southern Kingdoms are not a truly unified nation: they're a loose alliance of nobles that have all broken away from the Empire. They're closer to the Lycia Alliance than say Crimea.

    Agrithe is the most powerful of the Southern Kingdoms, and Artemis's father is thus often looked to as a leader and organizer, but legally he has no direct power over Countess Mantrae. He has plenty of practical power in that his army could beat hers easily, but legally they are two independent states.

    Loving the discussion, all :).
     
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  • Informational
    • SoaringHawk218 said:
    One thing that I realize I haven't made clear, but Ryza would know from her brief discussion of nobility with Axton, is that the Southern Kingdoms are not a truly unified nation: they're a loose alliance of nobles that have all broken away from the Empire. They're closer to the Lycia Alliance than say Crimea or

    Agrithe is the most powerful of the Southern Kingdoms, and Artemis's father is thus often looked to as a leader and organizer, but legally he has no direct power over Countess Mantrae. He has plenty of practical power in that his army could beat hers easily, but legally they are two independent states.

    Loving the discussion, all :).
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    Ahh, this isn't a feudal relationship. So what the Countess has done is an act of war, not high treason.

    Given that Artemis' father can crush her militarily, that's nearly as bad. She's handed the Duke all the excuse he needs to kill her, her family, and her loyalists, then take her lands. Nobody would blame him. But there might be some room for negotiation, maybe, whereas there'd be no forgiveness for treason of the degree of trying to kill someone's heir. Not likely, but her father might agree to abide by whatever agreement Artemis makes.

    Ando Owen said:
    Electrocuting someone to show we mean business is exactly the issue.

    We are squishy, alone and not particularly scary or experienced. If we have to end up doing hostage scenario, we will have to keep an eye on the hostage, keep an eye on the negotiator trying to meet our demands while doing our best to estimate how much is he trying to screw us over by taking time or readying an ambush, and then be able to flee the scene without them putting us in a counter hostage scenario since we are trying to save several people.

    That's the kind of job where you would need a badass war hero who can survive a few arrows and one shotting guards in melee and who already prepared several escape routes. The Black Knight could do that, not a surprised glass cannon who won't survive an arrow or even the hostage stabbing us out of nowhere.
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    No plan is perfect, but moving quickly and being willing to electrocute anyone who doesn't immediately throw down their weapons and stay out of sight when ordered to do so should give excellent odds.
     
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    [ ] Go grab your bag: Something's wrong, and you don't want to leave anything behind if you have to do something drastic.

    [ ] "No! There's got to be another way I'm not going to leave you here! I'll think of something…"

    I don't want Ryza to abandon her first friend she met in this new and hostile world, even at Artemis' behest. And while I'm tempted to go full rage dragon, the odds of there being collateral damage to innocents is too high. It's the nuclear option. It should be far more workable to get the others and then free Artemis - in fact, I can think of several ways that could go, though some are more risky than others.
     
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