Regime Quest

[Nevill]

Do we have a more precise picture of what is going on around us?

A knot of enemies where Builder should've been? Are they engaging our guards, or have they been overwhelmed?

Did we see evidence of ghosts? Any evidence that Merlin's gifts remain active even after her death, which I have to assume, not seeing (hah!) any of her direct inluence on the battle? Do we need to hold the trucks, or can they be abandoned?

We should have experimented more with Smasher's gift, healing would be very welcome right now.

I wonder how committed the Union guys are. If they start to lose without completing any of their objectives, will they fall back and retreat?

Tentatively want to go help Smasher. That her fight is still going indicates two things: first, they have no appropriate counter to her Strength except stalling, which would make their situation worse if we remove the only person who can keep her at bat.; and second, she is not a good fit for the fight she is in, which makes our intervention there very desireable.

Plus, she can self-heal if she gets a break, and we can be back to square one, except the defenders won't have any of the advantages they started with.

 

[Walter]

Yeah, Blender has a little more precise idea of what's up than was in the update.

Losses have been heavy on your side, very heavy on theirs, she quick estimates about a third of you down, to about 3/4 of them, so currently you outnumber their remaining effectives roughly 2 to 1.

The battle is still broadly centered on the knot of crashed trucks, though it expanded slightly into the buildings on either side of the street. If you want a mental image for it imagine what it looks like when 2 sports teams clear the benches and brawl with one another, that kind of numbers (started at roughly a hundred combatants, about half that now), but add in a lot of dust, those fucking smoke machines, and the odd laser or Ultra gift explosion.

The enemy's troops are about 1/2 in a knot at the back of the formation (that is, the remnants of their troops that ambushed from behind), which contains their Union and Ultra personnel. The other half are spread throughout your Ultras, and are quickly diminishing. Not sure that was clear enough, the main enemy strongpoint is on the opposite side of your troops from where the target area is, centered on the back Trucks.

The center of the enemy rear formation is the Truck where Builder and Owner were supposed to be, Blender expects they are probably dead.

When King Arthur's Knights die they give off sort of whispy tassel things that head into the target area, towards one of the intact buildings. Blender is pretty sure that means King Arthur is there.

Smasher and Lancelot are both wounded, and are fighting off to the side, not near the back group of enemy effectives. Blender can't imagine how the fuck that's still going on, given that Lancelot is surrounded by Regime troops and fighting Smasher. Her best guess is that Smasher waved everyone off so she could do a duel or some such shit.

No sign thus far of Merlin, and Blender pretty much believes that means she's been taken out. Presumably they'd have used her gifts as part of the 'everyone attack them from all sides' move the enemy pulled off earlier, battle would probably be over.

The Ultra who shot Blender is the leader of the enemy's back pocket of effectives, seems like some kind of Union big shot. Blender hasn't had time to examine the wound, but it went through her whole body (not on center line, but not super far from it), so she expects it is pretty bad. Wouldn't be hugely surprised to fall over and die, or just kind of action hero keep on fighting without caring, she doesn't have a huge amount of experience getting impaled.

 

[Nevill]

The center of the enemy rear formation is the Truck where Builder and Owner were supposed to be, Blender expects they are probably dead.

Click to shrink...

Well. That's unfortunate.

Smasher and Lancelot are both wounded, and are fighting off to the side, not near the back group of enemy effectives. Blender can't imagine how the fuck that's still going on, given that Lancelot is surrounded by Regime troops and fighting Smasher. Her best guess is that Smasher waved everyone off so she could do a duel or some such shit.

Click to shrink...

Alright, I suppose we may want to put a stop to it. There is a numerical advantage that can be leveraged there, directly or not.

[x] Go intervene in the Lancelot/Smasher fight, if that's still raging (HOW is that still raging??). Will probably result in a 2 on 2 as the Union leader follows.

@TalonofAnathrax?

 

[Walter]

Rolls post!

Walter threw 1 6-faced dice. Reason: Even CCC, Odd Neville Total: 2

Walter threw 10 6-faced dice. Reason: First Squad Total: 40

Walter threw 6 10-faced dice. Reason: First Squad (real) Total: 30

Walter threw 5 9-faced dice. Reason: 2nd Squad Total: 22

Walter threw 4 10-faced dice. Reason: 3rd Squad Total: 27

Walter threw 4 8-faced dice. Reason: 4rth Squad Total: 17

Walter threw 8 6-faced dice. Reason: Arthur Knights Total: 19

Walter threw 2 10-faced dice. Reason: Arthur Ultras Total: 7

Walter threw 2 10-faced dice. Reason: Union Ultras Total: 8

Walter threw 1 20-faced dice. Reason: Smasher v Lance Total: 1

Walter threw 2 10-faced dice. Reason: Lance Accepts (pick highest) Total: 5

Walter threw 3 12-faced dice. Reason: Blender v Sarge (pick highest) Total: 9

Walter threw 2 10-faced dice. Reason: Sarge Accepts (pick highest) Total: 9

 

[Walter]

Before I could take down anyone else, I'd have to deal with this Union bitch. If I tried to make my way over to where Lancelot and Smasher were, she'd shoot me again. If I tried to go after King Arthur, ditto.

We were in this now. I couldn't live unless she died.

I suited action to these bitter thoughts, deliberately throwing myself back down to the ground where I'd spent so much of this fucking fight.

I stifled a scream as my bleeding side protested. Something felt like it had become unseated within me, a curious wrenching sensation that promised agonies to come.

As soon as I got down I started to scuttle, one arm pressed to the bleeding wound, focusing my healing gift with everything I had. I scurried around a pair of my soldiers who were rushing towards the rear, then drifted back into their wake, using them as cover against the Union bastard's perch.

Out of sight, out of danger, I was hoping.

Ahead of me I could see the forest of legs and knees pressing in on the ruined trucks, one form after another vanishing as they climbed up. Everyone seemed to be pushing in the same direction, so they'd been pressed back entirely off the ground, or I was missing something.

I paused as a wave of pain shot through me, unable to keep a keening shriek from escaping my lips. Holy SHIT being impaled hurt! I'd never suffered this badly in my entire life, my world was a scintillating curtain of pain.

I abandoned any further attempts to get closer to her, focused every ounce of energy on keeping my head up off the ground and turning slightly from side to side, keeping the illusion that I was still combat effective intact.

She might tolerate a point of view that took a second to recuperate, but if I passed out, if I box blocked Her before the end of the fight could take place, then I was done for. I had to seem badass, however I could pull that off.
If I thought I'd used all my energy before, it was nothing compared to what it took to stand up. I dragged my leg in, put it underneath me and pushed, forcing myself as much by fiat as by any actual sensation to get back up, desperation pushing me on.

I knew, intellectually, that my healing gift was at work. If I hadn't died in the initial hit, then it had to be getting better now, didn't it? I'd been standing up just a second ago, surely I should be able to stand up now!

My body refuted these cogent arguments with pain and nothing more, which didn't seem super fair, but was actually really convincing. I made it about half way up, back to a stoop, and then I had to reach out and grab someone, one of my gals who was passing by.

She recoiled instinctively, raising a fist, then lowering it as she recognized me.

I didn't react or acknowledge the moment, I couldn't. It took all my effort to drag myself up her arm, look out over the crowds once again.

In the back of the battle, or at least where the back had started out, I saw the Union making their last stand atop the crashed trucks. The bitch who'd shot me struggled with a pair of my Ultras, and so did all of the other enemies that I could see back there. None of them seemed like they would be winning.

I looked over to my right, over to where Smasher should have been finishing off Lancelot and her Knights. She was showboating, as I expected.

That was the reason this had all gone to shit, or at least one of them. Fucking Smasher. Fucking drunk. If she'd just done like her name suggested I wouldn't have gotten fucking shot.

As I watched she thrust out an arm, sending Lancelot dancing away. Or, not dancing, moving with Ultra speed. I dunno, it always seemed like dancing to me, legs hitting the ground far faster than they would for anyone moving naturally.

Both of the two were wounded, and they fought alone, surrounded by a clear space at least ten feet around.

"How the fuck had she managed that?" I said, half under my breath. I couldn't get a goddamn second to myself but she managed to arrange an out of bounds space on her private duel, and everyone was apparently buying it? It wasn't fucking fair.

Lancelot feinted towards her, jumped aside as Smasher's fist whipped through the air before her.

Close. A bit closer and she'd have had her, and the least little contact would be enough. Nothing Smasher hit full on would stay on the planet, much less in one piece.

"Fucking finish her!" I snarled, pressing my hands violently into the Ultra I was clinging to. I was pretty sure I could stand on my own at this point, but pretty sure was nothing to bet on.

Smasher's fruitless pursuit continued, she hurled out a windmill of punches and kicks, every one of them narrowly missing as Lancelot continued to dodge back, orbiting and chasing around the cleared out space.

The last of the Knights had fallen over there. Lancelot was alone in a knot of my people, but none of them moved to help Smasher. She apparently wanted to do this alone.

Fuck that.

"Kill her!" I screamed, or tried to scream. It turned out that some part of my injury had something to do with my lungs, because taking that deep breath had not been the greatest idea. I clung to my supporter and shuddered for a moment, focusing on not passing out.

Meanwhile the stupidity continued.

Smasher tried to get tricky, instead of going for another punch or kick she threw her whole body at Lancelot, trying to maximize the sheer volume of space she could threaten. Lance leaped right over her, kicking down as she passed, a bruising Ultra shot to the ribs.

It was a savvy move. Any attack from a direction Smasher was going would see you obliterated, but her gift didn't protect her from attacks that she wasn't moving into. That must have been how she scored the initial hit.
I looked back the other way. The Union were all down now, my Ultras were tearing bodies apart, breaking the Trucks and in other ways celebrating their victory. A number of them were heading over to where Smasher fought, since it was the last battle that was going on.

"Kill her!" I shouted again, successfully this time. The Ultra I was leaning against, at least, heard it and picked up the cry.

Those who heard me echoed me. They'd taken it as encouragement for Smasher. It started to become a chant.

"No YOU-" I was shouted down, the 'Kill Her chant drowning out what little other talking was being done.

I clawed at my Ultra, then shoved her aside and started staggering towards the fight.

Or, walking, rather. I was well enough to walk, albeit a sort of stilted walk that didn't bend my torso in any way.

Ahead of me Smasher finally did the obvious, stepping back from her pursuit and striking at herself, moving to 'smash' her own wounds away.

My eyes widened and my hands raised as I saw what was about to happen, but no one could hear my warning, and I wasn't nearly close enough to do anything about it.

Lancelot dived in the instant the move began, punched furiously. She moved a little faster than she had previously, she'd been lulling her victim, hiding her true capabilities.

Her punch landed, but not on Smasher's torso or head, she hit the back of Smasher's arm, added her own force to the self directed strike, before it landed.

Smasher slapped her arm right through her own torso, cut herself nearly in half.

I felt like my rage was going to dig a hole in the world, like sheer frustration and anger should rip out and stop this stupidity from happening, but it didn't. Nothing did. Smasher coughed up blood and toppled over, torn nearly in fucking half by her own fucking gift!

Cold comfort that the Ultras around Lancelot promptly mobbed her, tore her apart. Cold comfort that there wasn't a living enemy left to be seen.

Warm comfort, actually, that I could walk and talk again. I resolutely didn't look down at the wound. I couldn't take the chance of Her seeing any more goddamn setbacks or wins for the other side. I wouldn't be doing any more fighting, but I could at least lead.

Fucking killed herself! By PUNCHING!!

I pushed it aside, with immense effort, as I plotted out my next move. Looked like I had 18 Ultras left in my warband, and no one from my Posse that I could see, though I still held out hope that Builder or Owner were alive somehow, hiding.

I had to act.

Actions, choose one or write in:

• Push army immediately into the restored zone, find Arthur before she has a chance to generate a new force or get away.
• Consolidate, check over those downed, look to see if Builder or Owner are alive, grab any supplies we didn't time for. This will also give me time to heal, hopefully enough to fight in any future conflicts.
• Declare victory, start speechifying, act like King Arthur isn't even a thing. Hopefully She will show up, at which point the battles are over and the target zone is secured.
• Other? (write in?)

 

[T_of_A]

[X] Consolidate, check over those downed, look to see if Builder or Owner are alive, grab any supplies we didn't time for. This will also give me time to heal, hopefully enough to fight in any future conflicts.
-[X] Make it clear that next time, there will be no duels. Outnumbered enemies are to be mobbed.

 

[Briefvoice]

[X] Push army immediately into the restored zone, find Arthur before she has a chance to generate a new force or get away.

 

[Briefvoice]

Shame abut Smasher I guess, but she was on The List to die sooner or later anyway. They all are. Kill Every Monster, am I right?

Of course, by the same logic, so is Blender. So really, this whole thing is kind of a can't-lose situation, isn't it? No matter how it goes, some Monsters going to die. Maybe Blender will be one of them; maybe her turn will come later. Maybe it'll be at the hands of an ultra here; maybe P/M will kill her for not putting on a good enough show. It's all the same.

 

[Nevill]

Hrrm.

I have mixed feelings about Smasher. I don't excatly have sympathy for her, and initially I thought her to be a "use and lose" deal anyway; a candidate we accepted into Posse only to offset the focus on intelligent non-combatant types.

However, she has constantly exceeded expectations, and a lot of our current success is due to her... unique interactions with the Ultras. She has shown us time and time again that she can surpass us in certain areas, and her gift was just starting to show promise when applied creatively.

The entire pointlessness of her death leaves a foul taste in my mouth. On the other hand, who wants a new position on our roster? Only taking sober ones this time!

(In tangentially related news, did you know that a chance to roll less than 5 on each of the three d12 dice is only marginally lower than to roll a nat 1 on d20. The dice didn't like our named characters, it seems)

[x] Consolidate, check over those downed, look to see if Builder or Owner are alive, grab any supplies we didn't time for. This will also give me time to heal, hopefully enough to fight in any future conflicts.
-[x] Make it clear that next time, there will be no duels. Outnumbered enemies are to be mobbed.

Builder and/or Owner I'd like to keep. If the enemy uses this time to regroup or retreat... well, all the power to them. We only have to take the city, and most of their officers are dead now.

 

[Walter]

Rolls Post

Walter threw 6 10-faced dice. Reason: First Squad Total: 32

Walter threw 5 9-faced dice. Reason: 2nd Squad Total: 20

Walter threw 4 10-faced dice. Reason: 3rd Squad Total: 16

Walter threw 3 8-faced dice. Reason: 4th Squad Total: 14

Walter threw 12 4-faced dice. Reason: Arthur Squires Total: 26

Walter threw 12 4-faced dice. Reason: Arthur Squires 2 Total: 23

Walter threw 12 4-faced dice. Reason: Arthur Squires 3 Total: 27

 

[Walter]

"Fucking Stop!" I shouted, and this time I was heard.

The survivors looked over at me, battle scarred and furious. Their blood was well and truly up now, the beasts of the Regime in the full flush of their fury. I could give them any order and be obeyed, as long as that order was some variation on 'Kill'.

"Check everyone who is down!" I shouted. "If they are an enemy, make sure that they stay that way. If they are one of ours, see if you can get em up! We aren't done yet, maybe more incoming. Take advantage of this opportunity!"

It was a staccato series of instructions, more about getting them calm and human again, back into a state where they could understand my words, understand any words. They'd just fought for their lives and won, they wouldn't be anywhere within a stone's throw of calm, but if I wanted to live through this I needed them to do my fighting, and thinking soldiers were far better than brutes.

I suited action to words, climbing up onto the mound of machinery that had once been the back two trucks. They'd both been wrecked by Ultra powers, the one in the back by the same string attack that had gutted me, and the one in the front by some kind of explosive gift, probably one of ours.

A nearby Ultra moved to assist me as I let out an involuntary groan. I'd tried to hold my torso perfectly level as I'd climbed, but obviously that hadn't gone to plan. I set myself against the truck and waved them off.

Bad enough to bore Her with a moment of stillness, but getting assistance while She was riding my senses would be actively dangerous.

I shouted again, as much to buy time to feel a bit better as for any useful reason.

"Check on Smasher!" I directed, as though I hadn't watched her all but bisect herself. "Check on those Union fucks! See if they left us any useful toys!"
I doubted any Union gear would work, but it sounded smart and it bought me a few more moments. Moments that my ribs would hopefully use to stop being on fire.
I took a step over to what had once been the backdoors of the back truck, looked within.

"Builder?" I called. "Owner?"

No movements. What little I could see of the inside, with the coming night stealing away most of our ambient lighting and the fucking smoke machines actively interfering even more, just looked like debris. I didn't see any blood or bodies.

"I don't have time for this!" I insisted, not in a shout, but in an urgent mutter. "I need my Posse. Get your asses out here."

I heard movement inside, someone shifting position, something that sounded dangerously like a stifled sob.

Shit. If a member of my Posse was crying and She saw it I'd lose points, or at least I would unless I got a lot meaner than I was comfortable getting with them. Had She heard that? It had been slight.

"Whichever of you two that is!" I said, talking in a rush to cover any more incriminating sobs, "I want you out here and coming after us as soon as you get your wounds bound up! We're pushing on the core of the enemy's strength, you catch them in a pincer!"

This was nonsense, of course. They were both borderline noncombat, and wouldn't be pincering anyone, and I had no idea if they were wounded, but the point was it gave me an excuse to turn confidently away from the door and head back to my Ultras.

The natural move here would have been to drop down off of the truck, but the way I was feeling I probably would crumple to the ground and spend a few more minutes healing. Instead I sort of walked along its edge, stepping around the top of the cab and down off the hood onto a mound made out of a piece of the back of the next Truck, then onto the ground.

Looking back, it had been a borderline graceful series of steps. No one else was watching, but I gave myself some imaginary full marks. It would have been easy to flub that and fall off.
The Ultras had regrouped by now, dividing back into their original squads. I gave them a 'move out' gesture, and we all started stomping into the repaired zone.

I'd originally been planning on a bit of a speech there, mostly to buy time for my torso to sort out whatever fresh hell it was planning, but I'd axed it in favor of getting us moving. I didn't know exactly how fast King Arthur's gift worked, but with enemy soldiers literally increasing in number the longer we waited it didn't feel like a good idea to do too much talking.

I had to turn us a bit as we started into the enemy's repaired area. The mob had originally been just kind of mindlessly going forward, but I pointed us towards the building that the wisps I'd seen from the enemy had been headed towards.

I didn't like the idea of my Ultras storming a defended building, of course. There'd be nothing left of the structure, but I liked the idea of us missing the enemy and wandering around for an hour or so a whole lot less.

I wasn't incredibly worried about it. King Arthur could certainly hide herself away easily enough. Thirty people were nothing like enough to search a ruined city, especially as we didn't intend on splitting up, but the thing of her gift was that she didn't get to just be alone.

If she was making fighters, then she needed to be near a bunch of civilians who hadn't been turned yet, and all the fighters that she hadn't sent out yet. That was a much more reasonable sized group to expect to find.

As it turned out, they found us.

This time there was no surprise. A surly mob of people slipped out of the building as soon as we drew near. They were hard bitten settler types, brandishing guns and clubs.

There were, thankfully, only about twenty of them, but even so, as I saw them, I felt a coldness in my chest that hadn't actually been there before.

King Arthur, in my models, was trying to protect people. Like, she had chosen the other half of the collaborate/resist fork from me, but I'd still felt a basic kinship there. But looking at the people she sent out to fight I found within myself a growing hatred.

Maybe it was Smasher's death. KEM could have all the slogans that it wanted, but we simply weren't wired to secretly hate people that we hung out with. It was hard to think of them as monsters, not when we worked and fought together.

But I chose to believe it wasn't that. I chose to believe it was rage at the fact that she was shoveling her citizens, dozens of them, the people who'd believed in her promises, into the furnace of my Ultras, just to buy a few more seconds of life.

Because it was immediately obvious that they didn't have a chance.

The first crew had started out encircling us, they'd had surprise on their side, or at least we'd been startled. They'd been the enemy's best trained troops, and she'd had time to buff them as much as her gift was able.

They'd been supported by Guinevere, bolstered by real Ultras among their crew. These guys had none of that, and instead of like sixty of them there were about half that many.

The Ultras waded into them like men into kids, dashing them to the ground and slaughtering them, hardly breaking stride. In the first seconds of the fight I saw a half dozen of the enemy fall, for maybe one on my side. In the next few seconds it got worse.

By the time I limped my way up to the line of battle it had moved forward, pushing the enemy back and trampling upon their wounded. Half of them were already dead, streamers of mist exiting their forms and heading up into the building.

Fuck, this could get really messy. I needed a plan.

Situation was as follows.

Minimal losses since the first battle, I have a little more than 15 Ultras with about that many of the 'Squires', as I'm calling the second batch of King Arthur's people, fighting them. We should win through momentarily.

King Arthur is very likely inside this building right ahead of us (an old shopping center on the edge of an old mall), judging by the streamers. It is one of the buildings I am to preserve intact for Her use.

She may or may not have more gifted soldiers in there. Either 'Knights' or 'Squires', to use earlier designations. She almost certainly has a lot of unpowered citizens in there waiting for their turn to be powered up.

Lancelot and Guinevere are dead, Merlin has not been seen or heard from since the start of this battle, neither has the Union tank. The enemy seems to have lost all of their Ultras and Union allies as well.

Some of my Ultras have ranged gifts, others have close combat gifts. They are brutal combatants, but I have very little confidence in their restraint. I believe if I send them inside they will kill everyone in there, and likely wreck the place.

We have a few smoke cannisters, and someone is lugging a laser, but I don't think it has its power source. A few of us also have guns.

Either Builder, Owner, or one of their guards survived and is presumably coming up behind us, but I'm trying not to see them while they might be in a state of weakness.

I myself am basically not combat fit. I still need a lot more time to heal, but I do have Ultra toughness one, and the Squires didn't seem capable of damaging that. I might be able to engage certain enemies with my death touch without exposing to Her how damaged I am.

She is likely growing impatient. I should wrap this up quick, or at least make sure the action continues, if I want to live.


Notes from QM:
This is a write in plan, Blender doesn't have any particular suggestion to form the core of it. She needs your help!

 

[Briefvoice]

[X] Plan Play it Up for Prevailer
Time to play it up for Prevailer. Tell the troops that Arthur's stupid jumped up daggers are all cowards who can't stand up to real Ultras. To prove it, they should all yell, "On the ground, on the ground if you want to live, daggers!" as they pour in and watch them get in the pose of submission. Any dagger dumb enough not to they should kill. Then send your troops inside, following along close behind so you can give Prevailer a good view of the action. Yell for King Arthur to come out and face you in some good old-fashioned Ultra-combat, screaming about how Arthur is a coward, and try to follow any streams of mist from killed Knights or Squires back to Arthur.

 

[T_of_A]

[X] Plan Play it Up for Prevailer
Time to play it up for Prevailer. Tell the troops that Arthur's stupid jumped up daggers are all cowards who can't stand up to real Ultras. To prove it, they should all yell, "On the ground, on the ground if you want to live, daggers!" as they pour in and watch them get in the pose of submission. Any dagger dumb enough not to they should kill. Then follow send your troops inside, following along close behind so you can give Prevailer a good view of the action. Yell for King Arthur to come out and face you in some good old-fashioned Ultra-combat, screaming about how Arthur is a coward, and try to follow any streams of mist from killed Knights or Squires back to Arthur.

Click to shrink...

Risky as hell though.

What if they don't drop to the ground? That'd be humiliating for us, which is the exact opposite of the impression that we want to make here.

Worse, what if Prevailer sees through it? Not only is this a really weird thing for a modern Ultra to do (most would just slaughter the normies until they ran), but we've a reputation as someone who kills a lot. Furthermore, Prevailer is just like us : an Ultra who can avoid ageing and who remembers the Old World. She remembers the way police operate (she was a petty criminal, remember?), and so imitating police methods (on the ground, hands on your head, etc) would be quite familiar to her.

Challenging Arthur to a fight is a nice idea though.

Any suggestions to deal with invisible enemies? Blender being out of commission doesn't help.

 

[Briefvoice]

Risky as hell though.

What if they don't drop to the ground? That'd be humiliating for us, which is the exact opposite of the impression that we want to make here.

Worse, what if Prevailer sees through it? Not only is this a really weird thing for a modern Ultra to do (most would just slaughter the normies until they ran), but we've a reputation as someone who kills a lot. Furthermore, Prevailer is just like us : an Ultra who can avoid ageing and who remembers the Old World. She remembers the way police operate (she was a petty criminal, remember?), and so imitating police methods (on the ground, hands on your head, etc) would be quite familiar to her.

Click to shrink...

In fact she still demands people do that; "the pose of submission" is a thing. Seeing as how she is looking through Blender's eyes, I thought she might appreciate being the one in the role of the old police, arrogant and powerful and demanding the civilians either grovel or die. It's kind of a bet on her psychology that it'll give her a thrill and she won't question the "why".

Any suggestions to deal with invisible enemies? Blender being out of commission doesn't help.

Click to shrink...

I'm kind of just betting on chaos and numbers for the intimidation factor; that any invisible enemies will be too scared to actually do anything before we track down and kill Arthur. All the 'regular' troops have likely been killed; any invisible enemies may not have had their power for more than two minutes.

 

[T_of_A]

@Briefvoice, here is the plan on the other site:

Multi-step plan. Part one, pick up a blend with [Living] from the closest enemy trooper. Uses Death Touch for an insta-kill, plus it puts me – if not back on my feet, at least in a good position for immediate survival.

By the time I've done that, we've probably destroyed this whole batch of Squires.

Step two, a word with the troops. I'll want to intersperse a bit of profanity into the following core of meaning, shouted at the top of my voice:

"Alright, troops! This is Regime territory now! And that means, none of you so much as scratch the paint! We're going in after Arthur, none of the rest of these [insert appropriately belittling insult here] are worth the time it takes to catch 'em! Follow the streamers of light, ladies!"

In other words; with my extra Living sustaining me, I accompany my remaining troops into the building. I warn them against property damage, tell them not to bother to chase any civilians who run, and make it clear that my only target in this building is Arthur – in person.

I *keep* yelling similar commands as we go in – I want the *enemy* to understand "if you run, you might live" (and I want Prevailer to hear me telling them "if you don't fight, I don't care what you do with the rest of your worthless, puny life" because she'll accept that). I want my allies to really understand about *not* smashing up the building, and I want to track down Arthur *quickly*.

But going back to double-Living should be the best way to deal with my wound.

Click to shrink...

Thoughts? Is it worth losing the death-touch to increase our health?
On another note, his idea with the commands seems better worded than your plan. Should we make a compromise plan of some sort?

 

[Briefvoice]

On another note, his idea with the commands seems better worded than your plan. Should we make a compromise plan of some sort?

Click to shrink...

I don't agree his commands are better worded. He's trying to have the troops do too many things at once. I think it's a bad idea to be too worried about smashing up the building; Blender keeps way over-estimating how much Prevailer cares about that in comparison to seeing a good fight. I don't care about 'scratching the paint'. As long as the whole structure doesn't collapse it's fine. Draining a "Living" blend is a good idea, though. See my revised plan below

[X] Plan Play it Up for Prevailer
-Time to play it up for Prevailer. Tell the troops that Arthur's stupid jumped up daggers are all cowards who can't stand up to real Ultras. To prove it, they should all yell, "On the ground, on the ground if you want to live, daggers!" as they pour in and watch them get in the pose of submission. Any dagger dumb enough not to they should kill.
-Then send your troops inside, following along close behind so you can give Prevailer a good view of the action. Yell for King Arthur to come out and face you in some good old-fashioned Ultra-combat, screaming about how Arthur is a coward, and try to follow any streams of mist from killed Knights or Squires back to Arthur.
-First chance you see an active, still-living enemy trooper, pick up a blend with [Living] from them using Death Touch for an insta-kill.

 

[Nevill]

Blender keeps way over-estimating how much Prevailer cares about that in comparison to seeing a good fight.

Click to shrink...

Perhaps, but the fear of Her could probably prevent the wanton slaughter.

And getting the city mostly intact in the mission parameters. I can't say whether Prevailer would care more about seeing a good fight or about a warlord not paying due attention to her requests.

Without knowing whether Builder is still alive we can't be reckless here.

Any suggestions to deal with invisible enemies? Blender being out of commission doesn't help.

Click to shrink...

Are there any invisible enemies, though? Merlin is MIA, and we've not seen any ghosts so far.

Arthur can't grant invisibility by himself from what I recall.

 

[TwistedJester]

[X] Plan Play it Up for Prevailer

 

[Walter]

"Finish them!" I roared, and my crew suited action to words.

It wasn't very difficult. These people were less numerous and less powerful than those we'd faced before, and while our own survivors had dwindled there was a weird characteristic of Ultra forces that made that less of a concern than it might have been.

Imagine that you faced a hundred enemies, and you had a bunch of friends with guns. Say that half of them were bulletproof. You start shooting, and you kill five, then ten in the next salvo, then you do some amazing shooting and you get 25 in the next volley! You are feeling incredible, top of the world, but we all know that you can't get more than ten more, just because that's the total limits of those it is possible for you to kill.

This happens with Ultras. For a given attack, you can affect a certain variety of our kind. Once those susceptible to it are dead, you are just making us mad, you need to switch things up if you want to do any more damage.

What King Arthur was doing here flew in the face of modern military doctrine. He'd started with his heavies, then followed it up with less augmented troops. Anyone that was vulnerable to them would have already died in the first wave.

I pushed forward, thrusting my way gingerly into the back of the melee, trying to find an opponent who wasn't quite dead. I couldn't be gimping my way along here any further, couldn't risk angering Her with my passivity.

I found someone bleeding out on the ground, put a hand to their head, but they didn't have 'Living', as one of their tags, so I pushed on.

Or, at least, I lurched on. Bending over to touch a person laying on the ground had been easy. Straightening up was apparently something my body and I were going to fucking negotiate about, so I sort of zombie staggered forward, grabbing one of my Ultras from behind.

She did a spinning backfist kind of move, but fortune was with me, and she didn't have any Ultra strength, so it just sort of glanced off of my head. I hadn't stopped my forward momentum, so we both started to topple, ramming into the minion she'd been fighting and sliding down to the ground in yet another undignified heap.

Even as my hands scrambled around, looking for exposed skin on the Ar Harbour gal, I was ruminating on how many times I'd fallen over today. It had to be some kind of tragic record.
I got my hand on her wrist as she planted it on the ground, trying to scramble back up, and I killed her with my gift.

Immediately I felt both better and worse. Better in that I was 'living' for two once again. Everything was clearer, crisper, and, critically, the pain in my chest felt half as bad. I stood without difficulty.

Worse in that I wasn't able to push my thoughts down random tangents any more, and I was looking at a giant red mess that had once been a few dozen people.
"Listen up!" I shouted, and then I repeated myself as people started going quiet.

There weren't that many of us anymore, and no one on the other team was saying anything, so I could finally do some commanding.
"Force rules the world!" shouted one particularly enthusiastic warband member, so we did a round of the call and response, but I cut it off after one.
I looked around at the group, acutely sensitive to how badly this could all go.

My life had ended, in most of the ways that mattered, when Subtracter and some goons had showed up at our village and done basically what I was doing here. They killed everyone who resisted and then terrorized and bullied the rest of us. My brother had been a 'sky burial' which is what Ultras call it when we throw a dagger into space. Another Ultra who'd seen it had started an argument about whether or not Subtracter hit the moon, and another dozen people were dead by the end of it, none of them Ultras.

I'd always told myself that I would rather die than become Subtracter. We had killed, yes. In the Regime's service, yes. But thus far the only ones who had died were those who had attacked us. They'd chosen their fates, no different than if they had walked off a bridge.

But it wouldn't stay that way. Not unless I was very careful. My crew's blood was up now, they'd all lost friends. I had to do this very carefully.
"Everyone!" I shouted again. "We are going in after the enemy leader now."

Another cheer interrupted me, but I gave them a throat cut gesture and they fell silent.

"We are going after the enemy leader," I repeated, this time in a non shouting tone. "This King Arthur. She is probably up on the second floor, if any of you have been noticing those trails that come out of the enemy when they fall."

No one spoke up, but I couldn't believe that I was the only one who'd seen them.

"When we go in there," I continued, "We are going to be facing whatever daggers she's gifted, plus a lot of other daggers waiting their turns to be buffed, ok?"
Lots of nods, they followed.

Regime people, people of the new world in general, they weren't actually any dumber. It was just easy to make myself think that, because everyone was so fucking ignorant. But it wasn't stupidity. There wasn't something in the water. They could reason just fine.

"We don't have to kill the daggers," I said. "No glory there. We are taking out King Arthur and anyone her gift has augmented, ok?"

People nodded and there were a few muttered answers, but I could sense the lack of enthusiasm. It wasn't enough.

"Look," I said. "You all saw how Smasher died, right?"

Now I had their attention. They had revered their captain.

"She stopped THINKING!" I emphasized. "She went with her gut, and they capitalized. We can't do the same thing. Reason is what brings victory, reason is what we need!"
I was half dreading another round of the Regime's mantra, but they didn't interrupt, faces tight and intent on my next words.

"Time spent swatting daggers is time wasted! It lets Arthur make another Knight, or two more! We won't give her that chance!"
Jumper spoke up.

"But if the humans are in the way…"

"They won't be!" I insisted. "We will yell for them to take up the Posture. They'll do it. They don't want to die. The helpless ones don't have anything to gain from annoying us. They will take the Posture, and let us focus on the ones who think they can win."

I could see that there were still some doubts, but it wasn't like I could talk forever after pointing out that waiting made the enemy stronger.

"Inside!" I directed, "And yell as you go, tell them all to take the Posture, or die!"

I wasn't the first through the door, but I wasn't the last either. I passed into the interior of the building in the same rush as everyone else, and stopped alongside them to boggle at what awaited us.

The building had started its life as some sort of chain store, and it was still somewhat recognizable as such, even with all the furnishings gone.

I'd never really thought about just how large one of those stores would be, if you took all the shelve and merch and stuff out of it, but the answer turned out to be huge. Just vast. The entire block was this one store, and the entire store was this one room.

This one room and all the people inside it.

We had come through, the little knot of us, shouting for everyone to 'get down', 'get in the Posture', and similar.
Everyone was already in the Posture. And I did mean Everyone.

There had to be two or three hundred people in this room. Women and men, a few kids. Old people. Young people. No fucking infants or toddlers, thank God for small mercies. Everyone sitting silently in the Posture.

They were randomly spread around the room, seemingly, clumped up in what looked like family situations. They were thickest around the spire.

The spire, or really, the staircase, was the only feature of this enormous room. It was a huge spiral staircase that rose up around an elevator. It would take us to the second floor, where Arthur would be waiting.

An Ultra pointed a hand, and I slapped it down. That wouldn't actually stop her from manifesting a gift, of course, but the gesture seemed to break whatever impulse she'd been operating on.
I had to be very careful here.

The second wave of Knights had been half the size of the first, and much weaker. Earlier, I'd thought that there had been no point to that attack, but maybe it had been about buying time to set this up.

I took a step forward, moved up to the edge of my little knot of guys.

It wasn't just the doubled senses. The tension in this room was real and genuine. I locked eyes with one of the kneelers, saw an intensity that was either frenzied panic, utter hatred, or most likely some potent combination of both.

My first impulse was to order everyone up and out. But what the fuck would I do if they just sat there? She would expect me to start a slaughter.

My next was for us to just start walking through them, just disregard them. But I'd already been ambushed from all sides once today, and I wasn't looking for a repeat performance.

Arthur was playing for time, before and still. I had the sickening feeling that she was concentrating her gift on one person, trying to rig up a champion that we couldn't affect, or something equally horrible. She needed to be stopped, and fast.

Once Arthur was gone none of this would be a problem. My Ultras wouldn't necessarily snap on the civilians if they didn't have the lurking fear that any of them might be able to kill us. I could take control with the usual light bullying, without worrying overmuch over it turning into an atrocity.

Someone shifted on the other side, and I snapped my gaze over. They were just repositioning slightly, adjusting their Posture. But it made me realize how tense I was, that we'd been just standing here gaping for like a half a minute.

"Imbuer!" I yelled. "King Arthur, whatever you call yourself, you need to-"

I was interrupted by a wild yell from up on the second floor, a man's voice, so presumably not my adversary herself.

"Nazi says what?"

I clenched a fist. Just standing here and getting taunted would piss Her off. I had to do something, but a lot of roads here led to these people getting slaughtered, my death, or, somehow, both.


Note from QM: Another write in plan. I'm out of the country for the next week, so I'll start work on the response to this on the 15th. I'm sorry for the delays, things are crazy around here!

 

[Nevill]

Well, if there indeed is a champion, perhaps we could form ranks, make a protective Ultra cage around us, and just go in. If we get backstabbed, it's not as if we get backstabbed. One of our guys would serve as a tripwire.

I am not sure what kind of gift it would need to be to turn this around.

 

[T_of_A]

That "space burial" thing was great. Horrible, but great worldbuilding.

I wish we still has Builder and Owner... Ah well.

How about we just set the building on fire and have everyone leave while we wait near the entrance? @Walter, surely one of our Ultras has to have some fire-related power, right?

Otherwise, how about we do the building-toppling thing again ? We can loudly tell all our Ultras "everybody out, this building is going down" (this may cause the daggers to stampede, but whatever) and then we could just shove the building over.
We can dump living into one of our wounded Ultras or something.

My only other plan is to trash-talk Arthur and win the ensuing rap battle, but that's a whole other kind of risk.

 

[Nevill]

Doing anything to the building itself is perhaps the easiest, yes, but risks massive civilian casualties, which we went through some trouble to avoid.

 

[Walter]

Some quick answers before I crash.

Blender can set the building on fire. She doesn't have someone with a perfect arson gift, but she has enough destructive stuff around that she can get a fire going.

Nevill's worry would be persuasive to her, though. Like, Prevailer's model of Blender can accommodate being too cool to bother with killing the daggers (Mia hopes), but a deliberate evacuation of enemy civilians might be a bridge too far.

 

[T_of_A]

[X] Plan CCC

It's insane, but it's ballsy and it fits the behavior expected of us. The Ultras we have left are the tough ones : we can probably take a little gunfire or whatever it is they have.

 

[Walter]

"This is REGIME territory now!" I shouted.

No one moved, no one looked me in the eye, no one flinched.

Blessedly, the big mouth up the stairs didn't answer either, he just let the shout echo.

"You belong to Her!" I continued. "You always did. Your children will. Everyone will. The world does."

I took a step forward as I said this, walking between the first pair of kneeling humans, my doubled senses alert for the slightest hint of movement.

Nothing. They knelt and stared straight ahead.

"The Ultras who lead you belong to Her as well!" I told them, as I continued. "They exist to entertain Her, their defiance is permitted only so long as it amuses Her. The story that they told you, that they were somehow an independent power? It was all a lie!"

I made my voice deliberately harsh, sneering and condemning. I was really speaking over their heads, making my case to my boss back in Shington, trying to get Her to let me keep this going.
Flattery rarely hurt with insecure tyrants, in my opinion. She should eat this kind of thing up.

I was approaching the bottom of the stairs now, presumably surrounded by a number of enhanced foes, hiding among their kin. My Ultras were following at a discrete distance, maybe twenty feet behind me.

A few, visible in my peripherals, were shoving humans that they passed, roughly pushing them onto the ground. None of them seemed to be killing yet, though, which was probably all I could ask for.

"A lie propped up by the Union, by a bunch of losers!" I shouted. "A lie built on the backs of the Company that She controls! Every one of these rebels, every last one of them, they all got the Process from Her. Do you think She gave them a gift that could win against Her?"

The idea that the Company stacked the deck was a popular rumor, but I had no idea whether it had any validity to it at all. All that mattered now was that it was plausible. If it kept even one of her augmented warriors from jumping up and getting killed when all the rest made their move then it was worth the breath I was spending.

I took my first step on the stairs, bracing myself, ready for anything.

"King Arthur!" I yelled. "Are you going to come down here and face your execution with pride? Or are you going to hide up there, like the sniveling coward you are, throwing waves of daggers to their deaths because you are too much of a coward to come out and face me yourself?"

Up I went, step by step. My crew were hanging back a bit, just now getting to the bottom of the stairs. I was really hoping they remembered the whole 'no more fucking dueling' hint I'd dropped earlier.

I got to where I could see the second floor.

A similarly cavernous space. Some old shelving, some old display stands, presumably replaced when they fixed this place up. Some lights in the middle distance, and a small crowd of figures clustered around the top of the stairs.

In the Posture.

I couldn't just stop and count, but there were about a dozen or so, perhaps a bit more nicely dressed than the folks downstairs. More ladies then dudes. I didn't have time to really take them in because of the one guy who was standing up.

He was at the back of the group, maybe ten feet off the stairs, standing in front of one woman who was just kneeling, not actually in the full Posture.

He was a mean looking guy, not really built, but with the kind of look where you knew that if his beat ever produced brutality complaints they wouldn't be about him, but they would be about him.

"Hey bitch," he said.

He didn't shout, wasn't going for volume here. Just a conversational tone, like we were buds. But it was enough for me to verify that he was definitely the owner of the voice that had been taunting me before.

My mind went into overdrive, thoughts racing through at an impossible pace, faster than they'd ever gone in my life.

First, this guy was almost certainly the other half of her second set, all the power crammed into one champion.

Second, holy shit that makes him Subtracter, minus the flight.

Third, no, if she could do that she wouldn't have fucked around with the army in the first place. He is probably more like another Lancelot.

Fourth, my death touch 'should' work on him, but it might well take a more sustained contact, which will be very hard with the Ultra Speed deficit I'm staring down.

Fifth, my gals are coming up behind me, they will be here in an incredibly long ten to fifteen seconds. They can definitely handle this guy.

Sixth, if She will let them. This is a trap baited with the knowledge of what She likes. Backing down will make me look like a bitch, which is extremely dangerous.

Seventh, the implication of the setup up here is that King Arthur is the woman behind the champ, but I don't necessarily believe that. There is another woman on his left and a dude on his right who would have both been in touch range before I got into view.

Eighth, time to act.