Whispers from the Deep - Biplanes & Bisexuality

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Character Sheets
  • Informational


    • Character Sheet
    Isabelle Morgenthau
    A Fisher

    Isa (right) and her boyfriend Arren (left)

    Hard Keen Calm Daring Wild
    +4 -2 +4 +1 -1
    Moves
    Creepy: When a comrade sees you perform a ritual, overhears your prayers, or sees signs of your alienness, they lose Trust in you. Once they learn one of your Moves, they are no longer affected, but they gain Creepy as well.
    Deep Ones: You can call on your patrons to Help you on a roll. On a 1, you Break after this mission.
    Blessing: When you dab fresh blood on a piece of working equipment, roll +Calm. On a 16+, take both. On an 11-15, choose 1.
    • Take +1 Ongoing with this item this Routine. (+1 Handling for a plane)
    • The item cannot break or be lost this Routine. (+1 Armour on 1 Section of the Plane.)
    On a miss, you need a bigger sacrifice. Don't disappoint.
    Ideomotor Response: Your plane effectively has a programmable autopilot. It does not have to be switched on and off; it "knows" when you are behind the controls.
    Soul-Bound: When you paint a rune in blood on an aircraft, you are linked. While in flight, you can take incoming Structure damage as Stress, 1-1. You can take a hit that would strike a Component as Injury, or give incoming Injury to your Engine.
    Bond: (Witch move learned from Wulf) When you hold an object of significance and make an emotional connection to it, take 1 Stress. The object becomes a magical Focus, and you learn it's Nature (Earth, Air, Water, Fire, Iron, or Blood).
    Contemplation: When you draw a ritual circle and stay within it, roll +Calm. On a 16+, you come out of it about an hour later refreshed; strike 3 Stress or 2 Injury. On an 11-15, it takes the whole night, and you're unreachable in that time.

    Mastery
    The Bushwack
    Ambush Predator: When you strike an enemy who is unaware of your presence, roll with Advantage.
    Forced Evade: When you fire to scare an opponent off, spend 1 ammo and roll +Hard. On a hit, instead of dealing damage, choose one: Target dives 1, target climbs 1, target loses speed in a forced turn. On a 16+, roll attack dice on them anyway.
    Momentum: When you dive onto a target, add +1 AP.
    Scissors Snip: When you disengage, give an ally +3 towards dealing with your target.

    Familiar Vices
    - Drinking
    - Prayer
    - Dancing

    Vice Progress
    - Breaking Stuff: ☑☐☐
    - Cannabis: ☑☐☐

    Intimacy Move
    When you are intimate with another, choose one of you to get a hold. They can spend that hold to give the other a command: if followed, then forward to their next +Stat move, they will always score at least a partial hit, regardless of what the dice say.

    If you use this move in the air, there are two holds, and they can be distributed however you agree.

    The Company
    People
    • Isabelle (Fisher): The PC. She's out to find her way in the world. 1 thaler per Routine.
    • Arren (NPC- Confidant/Observer): Your cute fish boyfriend. Artist and recently trained observer. 1 thaler per Routine.
    • Wulf (Witch): Former bandit leader. Actually half wolf. Hot as hell. Ex-Goth. 1 thaler per Routine.
      • Hard +3, Keen +3, Calm -2, Daring +0, Wild +3 (Avenger)
    • Minna Hammerl (Soldier): Inexperienced but highly trained soldier and passionate duelist. Speaks all formal-like. The most beautiful woman in the world. 1 thaler per Routine.
      • Hard +4, Keen +1, Calm +2, Daring -2 (Professional)
    • Heinrich Engel (Student): Political science student working on his thesis-slash-manifesto.
    • Anny Meldgaard (NPC - Mechanic): A young half-Fischer, half-Himmilvolk woman from Piav, trained by the mechanics there. Looking for adventure and her origins. Blushes red?
    Aircraft
    • Isa & Arren's Plane: A Teicher Möwen seaplane. Steel frame, liquid-cooled engine. Deeply possessed. 1 thaler per Routine.
    • Fang Howl: Wulf's helicopter. An experimental pre-war model. Liquid-cooled radial. Three wolf moon. 1 thaler per Routine.
    • Pup: Wulf's Kreuzer Skorpion prototype retrieved from a sealed hanger. Gets a lot out of an underpowered engine.
    • Minna's Kobra: An inline-engine powered, wood framed fighter. All around an excellent machine. 1 thaler per Routine.
    • Heinrich's Reconstruction: A canard plane with a 30mm cannon in the nose. Awkward and unstable but hits like a train. 1 thaller per Routine.
    ​
    Stress XP
    3 7
    ​
    Cash Expenses
    41 10.5
     
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  • Informational
    • Simon_Jester said:
    [X] Plan I Wonder If This House Is Glassy
    -[X] Tell Gail that you'll follow up on this. Shooting up defenseless villages because they can't pay is an atrocity.
    -[X] Get Heinrich. Ask him what he knows about Minna's home town. He's a fairly neutral party, so he may be able to corroborate Gail's description of how it operates.
    -[X] Get Arren and Minna
    --[X] Ask Minna to tell you more about her hometown, gradually shifting the conversation towards the treatment of the outlying villages. Ask about the Rishonim.
    --[X] Once information has been gathered, mention Abigail's story
    --[X] Make clear that you're not seeking to accuse her of anything, but merely the truth and her opinion on the situation.
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    I see what you did there. That's some excellent and potentially productive trolling.

    Unfortunately, Heinrich is in Piav, and I'm not sure we can wait on playing telegraph tag for information that he very likely doesn't even have. Just because he is a social sciences nerd does not mean he is familiar with every single inhabited place.
     
    Actually Heinrich literally has a skill that gives him decent odds of being passingly familiar with basically every single inhabited place...

    You could also just ask him to fly over. He's less than an hour away.
     
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    [X] Plan I Wonder If This House Is Glassy

    We can wait for an hour to actually have better information.
     
    It's like.

    There's a spectrum of good and evil. And the Red Talons have gone really far towards the evil end of that spectrum. To the point where there is no possible defense of their conduct except "yeah well you're not exactly an angel yourself!" Which is a really weak defense against the observation "wow, those Red Talons are actually quite evil."

    That doesn't automatically make it okay to kill them or anything. It doesn't mean no one who's ever joined the Red Talons has a right to be aggrieved, or a right to put their past behind them, or anything along those lines.

    But what it does mean is that no one who's flown with the Red Talons actually struggles to understand the pressures and psychologies that can make someone do evil things, for the gain of their group or community. Not if they think about it, not if they have any sense of introspection at all.

    ...

    It's like, we had our moment of 'ohmidarkpatrons' when Isabelle realized that yes, the Red Talons probably had relationships and friendships and love affairs within their unit and would be willing to do arguably reckless and stupid things to avenge their comrades, because that's exactly what the Minnows might do if, say, Arren or Wulf got killed. Because in that respect, the Minnows have that in common with the Red Talons. Isa may be unhappy that the Red Talons are taking hostages in an attempt to get back at the Minnows, but she cannot pretend not to understand it.

    In the same spirit, in that respect, in the respect of "coerces resources from innocents who cannot defend themselves to sustain its own war effort," the Red Talons have that in common with Minna's hometown. And Gail, under those circumstances, shouldn't be able to pretend not to understand what they were doing, even if it was wrong and everyone involved knew it.

    And it's that specific realization, that moment when you see the monster in the mirror and the friend across the field, that lets you get past the idea of otherizing someone as a monster. At least, assuming they're willing to set aside their career of monstrosity and make peace.

    open_sketchbook said:
    Actually Heinrich literally has a skill that gives him decent odds of being passingly familiar with basically every single inhabited place...

    You could also just ask him to fly over. He's less than an hour away.
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    Booyah! KNEW it!

    brmj said:
    I see what you did there. That's some excellent and potentially productive trolling.
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    Well no I was actually serious- oh no you mean the thing I'd have us say to Gail. Riiight. I guess?

    Unfortunately, Heinrich is in Piav, and I'm not sure we can wait on playing telegraph tag for information that he very likely doesn't even have. Just because he is a social sciences nerd does not mean he is familiar with every single inhabited place.
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    We're not looking for massive details here; we could probably sum up our questions in a few sentences and get an answer in a few paragraphs.
     
    Good enough for me.

    If we're asking him to come here, we maybe ought to have everyone come. Seems like a waste of money to do that just to fly back, though, and we need to get back to Piav in any case and this town isn't a wonderful place for downtime.

    [X] Plan I Wonder If This House Is Glassy
     
    I think Anny is going to hang out and work on the Pioneer, and Wulf might stick around.

    Also while you guys are sorting this out I really want to write a scene that is just Wulf and Heinrich doing a dumb adventure together so expect that lol.
     
    Even asking Minna might make her uncomfortable, like we're accusing her, and we'd definitely be accusing her society as a whole.

    I guess a few things I want to know:
    1: How many other people have reacted with disdain/dislike towards her due to her choice in uniform? I'm wondering because if not many people did, that may imply that Abigail's experiences are very non-standard.
    2: Is there any chance that the 'asshole' contingent of Minna's society is like, a splinter group? Or something? The way Minna was taught feels inconsistent with how her society is described by others.

    I need to reread the prior chapters before I feel comfortable making a vote.
     
    bobbananaville said:
    Even asking Minna might make her uncomfortable, like we're accusing her, and we'd definitely be accusing her society as a whole.
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    Since we have Heinrich, we could use him as an excuse.

    Though I'm pretty sure Minna will be more upset about that deception than about the question. We're just gathering info, that's all.

    bobbananaville said:
    1: How many other people have reacted with disdain/dislike towards her due to her choice in uniform? I'm wondering because if not many people did, that may imply that Abigail's experiences are very non-standard.
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    Abigail is part of a persecuted religious/cultural minority. I suspect that if you told her story in a random bar in a forcibly neutral "both sides" fashion, that you'd find a lot of people agreeing with Greifenburg.

    In addition, I doubt stories of the treatment of a tiny village spread far. Certainly not those of a village with Rishonim.
     
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    [X] Plan I Wonder If This House Is Glassy

    Yeah, okay, I'm reasonably on board with this (and also always in favor of more Heinrich).
     
    Okay, I'm seeing this new plan, and to be honest? I kinda hate it. All I can use to gauge Minna's reaction is my own experiences, and I would definitely feel like I'm being ganged up on if this was done to me.

    A conversation like this needs to be done one-on-one, Isa needs to firmly establish what Minna actually knows about her home, and the surrounding villages, and work to find out what her old superiors thought of Gail's home in particular.

    It is an uncomfortable thing to talk about, and delicate too, but given time to process, I suspect that Minna, who is much smarter than some of you seem to give her credit for, will put two and two together, and realise just how much was kept from her, and how that coloured her perception of the world.
     
    @Jeboboid , thoughts?

    [X] Plan Once More With Thoughtfulness
    -[X] Tell Gail that you'll follow up on this. Shooting up defenseless villages because they can't pay is an atrocity.
    -[X] Send a telegram to Heinrich. Ask him what he knows about Minna's home town. He's a fairly neutral party, so he may be able to corroborate Gail's description of how it operates.
    -[X] Once we've gotten a response back and hopefully have an outside perspective, get Minna and find somewhere with an appropriate degree of privacy and comfort to talk.
    --[X] We've heard some disturbing information about her home, and we'd like to get her perspective. Ask about her home's relations with the surrounding villages, especially Gails, attitudes towards the Rishonim, etc. Try and help her draw the right conclusions without railroading her towards it.
    --[X] Give her space to process if she draws the connection and seems to need it, but don't hold back from sharing Gail's account it if she wants or needs to hear it. Telling her she doesn't get to hear it yet isn't any more acceptable than pushing things too fast.
    -[X] Reassess depending on how it goes.
     
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    @brmj this sounds like needless complication; how is this significantly different from Plan I Wonder If This House Is Glassy, in a way that justifies splitting a vote?
     
    [X] Plan Once More With Thoughtfulness

    Glad we've got this sort of iterative plan improvement process going - seems like something worth trying to emulate for future votes. Takes some of the pressure off proposing an initial plan if it doesn't have to be perfect to get some ideas into the final version.
     
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