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 .
...fuck. If we're not careful, this will turn into an escort mission before we've even managed to rescue Sypha. If anyone's got any ideas on how to talk these kids out of this, I'm all ears.

I don't want to have to try and protect three (presumably) untrained kids, either. There's already one kid at stake, that's more than enough tension for me, thanks.

If these kids get hurt because we dragged them into our kingdom-spanning espionage, I'm gonna be upset. I say we do our absolute best to un-involve them.

[X] Suggest that the boys don't do anything risky. You know how violent these Talons can get when crossed: you don't want them to get hurt.
 
[X] Go along with the plan. While you suspect Sypha's in that tent, being able to confirm that will be good. These boys might even be able to help you save Sypha. No idea how, but it's possible.
- [X] Just go. You're a big girl, you can take care of yourself.

I understand that telling Robin is, in theory, the smart thing to do but I also think it's likely to lose us this opportunity. Thinking about this from the perspective of a small child I don't think they'd buy the idea that we're not ratting them out to a killjoy adult no matter how hard we try to insist otherwise.
 
[X] Go along with the plan. While you suspect Sypha's in that tent, being able to confirm that will be good. These boys might even be able to help you save Sypha. No idea how, but it's possible.
- [X] Tell Robin where you're going. He's still talking to the stall owner, so you'll have to figure out how to pass the information along surreptitiously.
-- [X] Tell the boys you need to tell your "father" before running off somewhere. Assure them that you're not going to rat out their plan or anything, you just don't want him to think you were kidnapped or something.

They say there's no smart way to follow through on a terrible idea, but there might be a least-dumb way.

Besides, they're teenage boys; not only are they ripe to become Fire Emblem Protagonists, they think they're immortal and trying to convince them to not do something's only going to make them more likely to do it.

Source: I was once a teenage boy and thought myself immortal to the point of doing some really foolish things.
 
[X] Go along with the plan. While you suspect Sypha's in that tent, being able to confirm that will be good. These boys might even be able to help you save Sypha. No idea how, but it's possible.
- [X] Tell Robin where you're going. He's still talking to the stall owner, so you'll have to figure out how to pass the information along surreptitiously.
-- [X] Tell the boys you need to tell your "father" before running off somewhere. Assure them that you're not going to rat out their plan or anything, you just don't want him to think you were kidnapped or something.

The thing I like about this is that it's probably not as risky as it seems at first glance. If something goes wrong, the guards are apparently surprisingly cool with kids pulling stupid crap, they don't seem likely to pull out swords and try to execute us on the spot. Their Commander evidently keeps her troops in line and is concerned about not causing large-scale damage, so she's not going to order the village burned or something. Odds are we could put on a "I'm sowwwry!" expression and bluff our way back out, coming back later to poison the wyvern or something.

Or, heck, see if Robin has some poison for his arrows we could borrow now in case we get a target of opportunity.
 
[X] Go along with the plan. While you suspect Sypha's in that tent, being able to confirm that will be good. These boys might even be able to help you save Sypha. No idea how, but it's possible.
- [X] Tell Robin where you're going. He's still talking to the stall owner, so you'll have to figure out how to pass the information along surreptitiously.
-- [X] Tell the boys you need to tell your "father" before running off somewhere. Assure them that you're not going to rat out their plan or anything, you just don't want him to think you were kidnapped or something.
 
[X] Go along with the plan. While you suspect Sypha's in that tent, being able to confirm that will be good. These boys might even be able to help you save Sypha. No idea how, but it's possible.
- [X] Tell Robin where you're going. He's still talking to the stall owner, so you'll have to figure out how to pass the information along surreptitiously.
-- [X] Tell the boys you need to tell your "father" before running off somewhere. Assure them that you're not going to rat out their plan or anything, you just don't want him to think you were kidnapped or something.
 
Or, heck, see if Robin has some poison for his arrows we could borrow now in case we get a target of opportunity.
Let's shelve that plan for now—it'll take more time than we have right now, if we want to accompany the other kids, and I'd rather not try anything like that until we've seen the lay of the land.
Think of this as a scouting trip. Once we know what the camp's like, we can make clever plans to exploit our cute and innocent appearance. (Ideally not one that ends with us being caught trying to poison the wyvern.)

...also worth pointing out that poison for arrows doesn't work unless you get it in the blood. If we try to stick it in the wyvern's water or something, the poison would probably just get digested. So we'd need to stab the wyvern to poison it, if Robin doesn't have an ingested poison for some reason.
 
To be fair, we don't even need to really investigate at this point. We have a good idea of where Sypha is from both the Talon's comments and the boys. And I sincerely doubt our ability to ferry her out with the help of some random curious kids under the eyes of the most high strung cards in the mercenary company.

The real surprise would be if she's not there.
 
To be fair, we don't even need to really investigate at this point. We have a good idea of where Sypha is from both the Talon's comments and the boys. And I sincerely doubt our ability to ferry her out with the help of some random curious kids under the eyes of the most high strung cards in the mercenary company.

The real surprise would be if she's not there.
I think the main reason to go along with their plan is to get an actual look at the camp, since right now we only have their crudely drawn map to go off of.
 
I just have a gut feeling that if we go with them under their plan it isn't going to go well so I'm inclined to talk them out of this. I agree that Ryza just saying "I think this is a bad idea" isn't likely to be very persuasive but thankfully we can work some of the other stuff we heard in. I'm thinking the kind of "leading them to the conclusion we want" style of, "I heard there's a really mean mage there when my Father stopped to talk to someone. What's the plan to avoid any traps he may have set?" Hope that dissuades them and then regroup with Robin and report back everything we know. If it doesn't dissuade them then I think we just have to hope they don't get in too much trouble. Though worst case scenario I'm thinking we just end up having to break them out with Sypha which... is a complication no doubt but I think rescuing Sypha in and of itself will largely take care of that. Could lead to a tough spot in making sure everyone can get out safely though but that's a bridge to cross if we come to it, I think.

[X] Suggest that the boys don't do anything risky. You know how violent these Talons can get when crossed: you don't want them to get hurt.
-[X] Mention you heard something about a mean mage.
 
[X] Suggest that the boys don't do anything risky. You know how violent these Talons can get when crossed: you don't want them to get hurt.
-[X] Mention you heard something about a mean mage.
 
To be fair, we don't even need to really investigate at this point. We have a good idea of where Sypha is from both the Talon's comments and the boys. And I sincerely doubt our ability to ferry her out with the help of some random curious kids under the eyes of the most high strung cards in the mercenary company.

The real surprise would be if she's not there.
Like Alcor said, the point isn't so much to confirm what's inside the tent as it is to determine what's outside the tent. Aside from the fact that we only have a crudely-drawn map (which the boys probably won't let us keep), maps don't include details about what the people in the camp do, or most of the things in the camp, or...

...well, the main reason I want to look around in broad daylight (aside from the fact that it'd be fun) is unknown unknowns. There's a lot we don't know that we don't know about the bandit camp. Most of it doesn't matter, but I'd be surprised if we learned nothing useful snooping around like this, either in terms of threats to avoid or opportunities to consider.
 
[X] Suggest that the boys don't do anything risky. You know how violent these Talons can get when crossed: you don't want them to get hurt.
-[X] Mention you heard something about a mean mage.
 
To be fair, we don't even need to really investigate at this point.

Robin is currently theorizing that the mercenaries had something in the camp they wanted to hide badly enough that they wiped out the bandits that were helping them.

"That being said… this is unusual behavior for the Talons. They have a reputation for being generous to their auxiliaries, this… they must have been trying to hide something."

"Maybe the fact that they took Sypha?" you ask.

"Possible…" Robin says. "But people are going to figure that out eventually. The Talons are powerful enough to have some protection from retribution, especially in the Empire. They have a close relationship with the Empire's nobility. No, they wanted to hide something else…"

He could be wrong and it might have just been regular liquidation, or maybe I'm reading too much into this. But I'm worried. I think it's worth going in ahead of time. I bet we'll find more than just Lady Sypha inside. If we can sneak out afterwards then we might actually have time to figure out how to deal with whatever else is occurring.

editing in vote:

[X] Go along with the plan. While you suspect Sypha's in that tent, being able to confirm that will be good. These boys might even be able to help you save Sypha. No idea how, but it's possible.
- [X] Tell Robin where you're going. He's still talking to the stall owner, so you'll have to figure out how to pass the information along surreptitiously.
-- [X] Tell the boys you need to tell your "father" before running off somewhere. Assure them that you're not going to rat out their plan or anything, you just don't want him to think you were kidnapped or something.
 
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It occurs to me that Ryza Gwyn claimed she didn't know anything about the Talons. ("Father and I just got here, and there's all these people around. He said he'd tell me what a Talon is when we were done, but I want to know now.") If she then claims that she'd heard about a mean mage...well, that seems like a pretty big contradiction. How does she know the Talons have a mean mage if she doesn't even know what a Talon is?
 
It occurs to me that Ryza Gwyn claimed she didn't know anything about the Talons. ("Father and I just got here, and there's all these people around. He said he'd tell me what a Talon is when we were done, but I want to know now.") If she then claims that she'd heard about a mean mage...well, that seems like a pretty big contradiction. How does she know the Talons have a mean mage if she doesn't even know what a Talon is?

I mean, you could probably argue that "Gwyn" has heard things about the Talons, but doesn't really have the context to know what it means, exactly. I think we could probably sell "I keep hearing things about the Talons but nobody will tell me who they are" given what we have and haven't said so far.
 
Wait, would anyone higher up in the Talons recognize us? Would Mantrae have given our description to them for some reason? Or would any of the traitors following Artemis at the beginning of the story have spoken to the Talons at some point with our description?

I'm forgetting how everyone is connected because I have a headache and I can't read too much right now. I'm actually generally down to go in because I think it's kind of fun, I just want to know how much of a risk it is. The knowledge reward is obvious.

Obviously the rank and file Talons have no reason to know us so there's no reason to expect our description was commonly bandied about (otherwise Robin wouldn't have been OK with us going into the town like this), so that's a point in this plan's favor. But maybe that won't be the case with someone higher up in the Talons...?
 
[X] Respectfully decline. You already know what you're going to find, and you've already gotten valuable intelligence about where Sypha is. No need to risk yourself.
 
[X] Go along with the plan. While you suspect Sypha's in that tent, being able to confirm that will be good. These boys might even be able to help you save Sypha. No idea how, but it's possible.
- [X] Tell Robin where you're going. He's still talking to the stall owner, so you'll have to figure out how to pass the information along surreptitiously.
-- [X] Tell the boys you need to tell your "father" before running off somewhere. Assure them that you're not going to rat out their plan or anything, you just don't want him to think you were kidnapped or something.
 
Wait, would anyone higher up in the Talons recognize us? Would Mantrae have given our description to them for some reason? Or would any of the traitors following Artemis at the beginning of the story have spoken to the Talons at some point with our description?
I can't rule out that some of that would have happened, but the odds seem slim. I don't believe many traitors got a good enough look at Ryza to recognize her without the lightning, let alone to give a detailed description to someone else.

And while Mantrae could have given the Shrieking Talons our description, A. why would she think we mattered and B. why would she want to help them? Mantrae was only working with the Talons insofar as she was giving into their ransom demand. That's not a "Here, have unasked-for but strategically relevant information!" sort of relationship.
 
[X] Suggest that the boys don't do anything risky. You know how violent these Talons can get when crossed: you don't want them to get hurt.
-[X] Mention you heard something about a mean mage.
 
Vote closed
Scheduled vote count started by SoaringHawk218 on Aug 16, 2022 at 11:02 PM, finished with 26 posts and 13 votes.

  • [X] Go along with the plan. While you suspect Sypha's in that tent, being able to confirm that will be good. These boys might even be able to help you save Sypha. No idea how, but it's possible.
    - [X] Tell Robin where you're going. He's still talking to the stall owner, so you'll have to figure out how to pass the information along surreptitiously.
    -- [X] Tell the boys you need to tell your "father" before running off somewhere. Assure them that you're not going to rat out their plan or anything, you just don't want him to think you were kidnapped or something.
    [X] Suggest that the boys don't do anything risky. You know how violent these Talons can get when crossed: you don't want them to get hurt.
    -[X] Mention you heard something about a mean mage.
    [X] Go along with the plan. While you suspect Sypha's in that tent, being able to confirm that will be good. These boys might even be able to help you save Sypha. No idea how, but it's possible.
    - [X] Just go. You're a big girl, you can take care of yourself.
    [X] Respectfully decline. You already know what you're going to find, and you've already gotten valuable intelligence about where Sypha is. No need to risk yourself.


Alright, scouting mission is go.

If I could get someone to roll me a d4 for... reasons, that would be great. >: )
 
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