Who Needs Harmony?: An MLP Empire Quest
- Thread starter Questor
- Start date
Again, the abolitionists are not a political faction, they're something that could become an information network or insurgency if given several years but right now is worthless for anything more than smuggling the ocasional slave. Basically a moral criminal group. You can tell because our prominent contact in the group is a brothel madam instead of a lady.
The Queen on the other hand is weak and getting close to us politically will only undermine her further, even before she can consider abolition as a thing that can be discussed politically.
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Evaunit02mark1
S-s-smell the Prey, S-s-start the Hunt.
[X] Bear Any Burden
Greet our Yak neighbors and politely ask if we can borrow that giant mountain of "Fuck Magic" for a reasonable fee.
Equip our knights.
Burn that pirate island to the bedrock and let Maretopia hear their dying screams.
Then send a polite little missive to the Empress asking if her nobles are willing to free our people now that we've solved their pirate problem. When she answers no Invade with the wrath of an angered nation and show them the futility of their hubris.
Greet our Yak neighbors and politely ask if we can borrow that giant mountain of "Fuck Magic" for a reasonable fee.
Equip our knights.
Burn that pirate island to the bedrock and let Maretopia hear their dying screams.
Then send a polite little missive to the Empress asking if her nobles are willing to free our people now that we've solved their pirate problem. When she answers no Invade with the wrath of an angered nation and show them the futility of their hubris.
- Location
- Italy
[X] Bear Any Burden
I might have said something about there being slavery and "slavery" a few pages ago, and that them being slavers shouldn't automatically lead to us declaring war.
Theirs is definitely the "worse" kind of slavery.
Now, if they limited it to their own people I mightaccept tolerate it, at least for now. They're not our responsibility, and we already have our problems...
But they have our people. And if they want to get payed to give them back, we'll gladly pay.
In iron and blood.
Step 1) send the emissary back ( pulling a "this is Sparta!" Is tempting, but we need to maintain our honour, and he IS our guest right now. We'll make them pay for the offense later.)
Step 2) kill the pirates. Show we mean business, and remove their scapegoats.
Step 3) try to free our people with intrigue/kill their owners. Also try to help the abolitionists.
Step 4) military preparations in case war is necessary, probably including neighpon and maybe even the crystal ponies. This includes our anti-magic swords. Yaks's oricalchum has also become much more important to get.
Our people are sturdy, they'll survive the wait. It's important to make it clear messing with us is.. inadvisable
P.s. for all voting to pay: I think it's a bad choice. We'd be implicitly acknowledging their practice of slavery, incouraging them to do this again.
It might sound callous, but the lives of a few dozens of our people are not worth 5000 golds PLUS a very likely chance of them trying this gambit again. Especially if we're likely to go to war anyway.
Maybe if we were certain they'd never try this again... But we can't trust them.
If we're going to fight with them anyway we need the money to expand our army, build the crystal watchtowers, expand our army..
I might have said something about there being slavery and "slavery" a few pages ago, and that them being slavers shouldn't automatically lead to us declaring war.
Theirs is definitely the "worse" kind of slavery.
Now, if they limited it to their own people I might
But they have our people. And if they want to get payed to give them back, we'll gladly pay.
In iron and blood.
Step 1) send the emissary back ( pulling a "this is Sparta!" Is tempting, but we need to maintain our honour, and he IS our guest right now. We'll make them pay for the offense later.)
Step 2) kill the pirates. Show we mean business, and remove their scapegoats.
Step 3) try to free our people with intrigue/kill their owners. Also try to help the abolitionists.
Step 4) military preparations in case war is necessary, probably including neighpon and maybe even the crystal ponies. This includes our anti-magic swords. Yaks's oricalchum has also become much more important to get.
Our people are sturdy, they'll survive the wait. It's important to make it clear messing with us is.. inadvisable
P.s. for all voting to pay: I think it's a bad choice. We'd be implicitly acknowledging their practice of slavery, incouraging them to do this again.
It might sound callous, but the lives of a few dozens of our people are not worth 5000 golds PLUS a very likely chance of them trying this gambit again. Especially if we're likely to go to war anyway.
Maybe if we were certain they'd never try this again... But we can't trust them.
If we're going to fight with them anyway we need the money to expand our army, build the crystal watchtowers, expand our army..
The Queen being weak and the abolitionists being weak too doesn't mean we should start the war now. We should strengthen them and weaken our enemies. and THEN go to war on the queen's behalf when the civil war starts. That keeps us from having to fight their entire country, gets us allies and additional intelligence within their country, and makes their slaves like us more. The combination of the above seems to me far more beneficial than starting the war NOW.
[X] Bear Any Burden
I wonder if Maretonia has any answer to a Yak in Oricalcum full plate.
That mountain in Yak territory we need to get access to it or teach the Yaks how to forge it.
I wonder if Maretonia has any answer to a Yak in Oricalcum full plate.
That mountain in Yak territory we need to get access to it or teach the Yaks how to forge it.
The Pirates are the ones who took our people. They ALREADY GOT PAID. They will continue to get paid. That's a completely different issue.
They are not just weak, they're incapable of becoming stronger the way you want in any practical time frame. A civil war can only happen by either weakening the queen further or by polarizing the nobles a lot more, and she's not going to help us do either of those because she knows what would happen. The abolitionists are frankly inferior than just letting our ridiculously capable spies do it themselves. They're amateurs who arrange for individual runaways to have somewhere to hide, and many of them would have divided loyalties when dealing with a foreign power anyways.
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The queen? Incapable of getting stronger? That seems rather inaccurate, especially with our support. Doubly so if we can assassinate or otherwise ruin the slaveowners who have our people (and are in charge of their potential civil war movement). As for the abolitionists? With our spies support they will almost certainly get improved information collection from the slaves that make up a 6th of the population, potentially including arming and training them. Which would very significantly increase their power.
- Location
- Hell, or at least the closest place to it
So, in summary, this is an empire that practices Chattel/Non-Roman levels of slavery (Slavers Bay level, at least) whose population is vastly outnumbered by the amount of slaves they have, see their slaves as status symbols, from what I am assuming has not had a real, full, Total War in years, Has access to powerful magic but a smaller, weaker army and an economy that is pretty much floating on slavery ( even Rome wasn't that bad), their nobles are arrogant and used to playing the Grand Game, has holes the size of tectonic sinkholes in their security net work, and are actively trying to insult us because we are lesser than them, meanwhile we just came out of war with a magic wielding shadow slaver, have a professional military, anti magic capabilities, a strong and booming non slavery bent economy, just adopted a country full of former enslaved Ponies, and are allied/very friendly with shock Cavalry Yaks, and Not!Pony Japan, and with a navy.
.....
Time to salt the earth around the ruins of their estates. Cry Havoc and let loose the hell hounds of War.
[X] Bear Any Burden
.....
Time to salt the earth around the ruins of their estates. Cry Havoc and let loose the hell hounds of War.
[X] Bear Any Burden
We can't make the queen stronger. By definition, being associated to us weakens her native support base. Sure, she could hire us to occupy her country and oppress her people in theory, but that'd be no actual improvement for us since she'd be worth nothing as an ally. When a ruler becomes so dependent on foreigners they lose their native support.
The abolitionists cannot train or supply the slaves, because the slaves are slaves. They don't get unsupervised free time or places to hide personal belongings, not to mention the simple logistics of smuggling in a massive number of weapons from a state that doesn't trade with Maretonia. Any attempt at doing this will end up in such a small scale it won't improve the resulting uprising by much, while being highly likely to be discovered.
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Their population is only 1/6th slave. So they massively outnumber the number of slaves they have.
- Location
- A house
I actually think this is the chance for our spies to shine over our army.
Ravenburg is going to be busy... perhaps it's time to form the gryphonian CIA/MI6/S.H.I.E.L.D. and get 2 intrigue actions.
They already free slaves. Free slaves could be trained. Keep doing that, and increase funding behind it. Then there will be more freed slaves.
As for the queen, we don't know that. We don't have enough information for that.
- Location
- Hell, or at least the closest place to it
Ah thank you, my apologies. Still, my point stands. Unless we literally do nothing, if we can plan this carefully and fully, we could march in practically unapposed.
I wholeheartedly agree. Propaganda/ Abraham Lincoln shenanigans?
fictionfan
Please sir, may I have some Meows?
- Location
- Tempe, AZ
[X] Bear Any Burden
They price they gave is stupid a war might actually be cheaper.
Also we are far more unified then they are. I bet that we can find a whole load of internal agents willing to be bribed for help.
They price they gave is stupid a war might actually be cheaper.
Also we are far more unified then they are. I bet that we can find a whole load of internal agents willing to be bribed for help.
They don't have that many free slaves, logistical impossibilities are impossible. Remember there's nowhere to put them to hide, the only immediate neighbor this people had was Sombra. And about the queen it's really rather obvious. She needs to centralize her country herself and us doing it for her would be conquest in name only, quite blatantly at that.
A real thing we can do is get the Qilin to join in on this fight. That'll be easier if we don't cut a deal to save griffons that does not consider any of theirs who might be there.
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- Location
- The Void
[X] Bear Any Burden
" escaped slaves to the exceedingly rare noble worthy of the title, these equines aspire to see a world where no living being can be considered property of another. They are overjoyed to meet a people that despise the institution of slavery as much as they do, and hope to cooperate on freeing their enslaved brethren."
There ARE nobles that are abolitionists. We just haven't made contact with them yet. Nobles would have land that could be used to hold freed slaves.
There's nobles who might be secret abolitionists. What with escaped slaves being by definition highly illegal. They're also clearly a tiny fraction of the aristocracy, so they need to actually work on keeping this secret. Turning away the slave hunters looking for runaways is a no-no, so they actually need to hide any rescues. And that means sharp limits on how many they can put anywhere.
If the abolitionists could have a secret army, or political influence for that matter, they already would.
- Location
- Hell, or at least the closest place to it
Also, this is an Empire literally built on a house of ice. Melt the ice, and the house starts to fall apart.
- Location
- USA
[X] Pay Any Cost
We can't possibly be looking for another war right guys? Guys? We've gone from fighting Sombra to fighting the monsters that infest our nation in what, a year? And now we want to pick a fight with an equal sized polity?
The pirates are the ones who raided us. Deter them, buy back our citizens, and we can have a decade of peace.
We can't possibly be looking for another war right guys? Guys? We've gone from fighting Sombra to fighting the monsters that infest our nation in what, a year? And now we want to pick a fight with an equal sized polity?
The pirates are the ones who raided us. Deter them, buy back our citizens, and we can have a decade of peace.