[LP CYOA] Epic

[Esquilax]

Mere seems to lack great mental defenses. I think Ean, or perhaps some other psionically-inclined Empire immortals, could keep good tabs on her while she's with us. Therefore I don't want to unnecessarily aggravate her with B. Sorry Lambchop.

Great catch. treave, what do we know of Mere's skills and abilities as an immortal? Of the Empire Deities with us, who is the strongest psychic? This could be a moot point if she's around us the majority of the time.

 

[treave]

As far as you know she's average, with an average power set. She's pretty much the equivalent to a Spirit in the Empire. Hasn't demonstrated the ability to rape minds from fifty paces or Shulgi's Bullshit Shapeshifting, that sort of thing. Jheberg is one of the more powerful psychics amongst the Imperial Deities. Asking him to personally watch her would be silly though. Seconding a couple of psychically-inclined Spirits to watch her is likely sufficient.

edit: Of course, should she actually turn out to be Shulgi, who mind-wiped the real Mere and took her place when the League special ops she led had 'captured' him, all bets are off as to how strong 'Mere' actually is. Because Shulgi is a dick like that.

 

[a cut of domestic sheep prime]

Reminds me:

http://etcsl.orinst.ox.ac.uk/section2/tr24201.htm

I, the king, was a hero already in the womb; I, Culgi, was born to be a mighty man. I am a fierce-looking lion, begotten by a dragon. I am the king of the four regions; I am the herdsman and shepherd of the black-headed people. I am a respected one, the god of all the lands.

What a modest guy, our bro Shulgi was...

 

[treave]

Well... we all know doing things the complicated way and setting up a gambit to incite Volkin into revealing the weapon to you instead of just leaking the information is exactly how Shulgi rolls. Never satisfied with the straightforward method, that man. It's got to be layers within layers within layers. It's a compulsion with him. Compulsive plotting. Some people drink, others gamble. Shulgi plots. And plots and plots and plots.

 

[Kayerts]

Oh yeah, since we're discussing real world mythology, Ean's comment about how he should give the Adr.* twins a boat is a reference to the epic of Atrahasis, probably this part.

Adrasteia is also a real myth; in some accounts, she's the nymph who sheltered Zeus when he was hiding from being swallowed by Cronus.

 

[treave]

Also this. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adrestia

 

[Baltika9]

edit: Of course, should she actually turn out to be Shulgi, who mind-wiped the real Mere and took her place when the League special ops she led had 'captured' him, all bets are off as to how strong 'Mere' actually is. Because Shulgi is a dick like that.

“You could. I should make sure that you won’t.” With a smile, she suddenly grabs my neck and pulls me close, her lips pressing firmly against mine. I find it in me to respond; perhaps not as eagerly as she hoped for, as she redoubles her assault until she is satisfied.

“Consider that part of your repayment,” chuckles Mere as she pushes me away, licking her lips. “You will find that we can be of great use to each other, Hoshikawa. I hope we will have a pleasurable partnership."

Dude, that's gross.

 

[treave]

When you're a master manipulator thousands of years old, using sexuality as a ploy, whether male or female, comes rather easily.

Or did you expect Shulgi of all people to be prudish and scrupulous?

 

[Baltika9]

I didn't expect him to be a drag queen. Ah well, that just means the harem ending will be that much more Kodexian.


Anyway, there's a great way to check Tarliss: use our ability to see how many lines there are on her body. Shulgi, if I remember correctly, had none.

 

[treave]

Only because you didn't know how to kill immortals then.

 

[Baltika9]

I honestly hope, then, that this is Shulgi. Because it'll take his level of bullshit to calm our guys down.

 

[Azira]

It was rather un-Shulgi like to let himself be captured and fired into the sun.

On the other hand, he had been saying that he was getting tired. But I wouldn't put it past him to pull a ploy like this.

Nor would I put it past treave to troll us.

 

[treave]

Almost overwhelmingly A.

Well, that’s our last head-in-jar checkpoint. Short update.

***

Defector

“This is not right,” protests Jheverg. “She will turn on us at the most opportune moment.”

“That is why I need the best Spirit you have in your Legion to guard her, Jheverg. You too, Berith.” I say.

“I will follow orders, but my opinion stands with Bel-Jheverg. This is too risky.”

“We will need information, my comrades.” Fennell steps in on my side. “We all saw what happened. 'Too risky' is proceeding without a clearer picture of what we’re facing.”

“We could just extract the information from her by force,” argues Jheverg.

“I would really appreciate it if everyone remembers that I’m in the room,” mutters Mere, her face pale.

“The deal was made honourably, Jheverg,” I respond. “Information for protection. We will honour that deal. Should she turn out to be false…”

“Very well,” sighs the Legion commander. “I will do as you wish. Perhaps we can hear about that important information now?”

I gesture at Mere to begin talking.

“The attack was launched by Project V… the Vajra Shula. It’s real form is a space weapon that fires faster-than-light blasts. The last I saw it, it had been moved to Carneus Beta. It is probably attacking us from that system. We were supposed to find three artifacts to complete the weapon, but it seems that two of them have been lost for good with the Dragon Emperor. With some tinkering, we have managed to get it operational with one piece. It is not fully functional, lacking the shielding and teleportation abilities that the schematics suggested, and the main gun does not have the range or power that a complete Vajra Shula would. But it is still sufficient to destroy fleets, as you have seen. The specialized drone acts as a targeting module for the cannon and relays the FTL signal. The speed is instantaneous at these distances.”

“Is it possible to destroy the drone before the cannon fires?” asks Berith.

“Yes. That is probably the only way to reliably avoid the attack. However, the drones tend to be deployed together with swarms of other regular drones. Identifying and approaching the module in the midst of battle will be rather difficult.”

“How long does it take for the cannon to recharge between shots? Will all of the League’s ships be able to call in an attack from the Vajra Shula?”

Mere pauses for a while, before admitting that she doesn’t know. “I don’t have the full details. The last I heard, they needed twelve standard hours between shots. Could be less. I’m not sure how many drones have been manufactured and issued too, although I am quite positive that only the flagships of each armada stock the targeting modules.”

“We can’t win against this,” complains Hasting. “They’ll pick us off one by one before we even get to where we’re going.”

I can’t say that she’s wrong. This is probably their current strategy; to bombard us with Vajra Shula in each system, dwindling our forces as we progress. As long as we destroy their targeting modules quickly we would be safe, but there’s no guarantee that we can do it successfully every time. Making a wormhole jump right into Carneus Beta would allow us to bypass that arduous route, but it would take a week just for the Federation ships to recharge to a point where they could make the jump, and nearly two more months of sitting in the system if they wanted to bring any Legions along. Alternatively, I could make the jump myself right now and attempt to destroy the superweapon alone. We could also try to meet up with the other task force at Bainur, or head through one of the other jump points.

***

A. Assault the enemy superweapon.
1. Make the jump solo. Once I destroy the enemy superweapon we can progress while only worrying about the enemy's armadas.
2. Wait a week to make a jump with just the Federation cruisers.
3. Wait two months to make a jump with the Federation and Imperial ships.

B. Head towards one of these systems instead:
1. Bainur, to hopefully meet up with Ean. (7 days)
2. Dormungan, an inhabited system from where I can later get to Carneus Beta via a series of jumps through mostly unguarded systems. (14 days)
3. Kordelis, an uninhabited system where Delta had headed, but a mere two jumps to Carneus Beta. (5 days).

 

[Baltika9]

They took it better than I expected. One thing is for sure: a massed attack with both Battlefleets is potentially catastrophic, so that's off the table.

We do need to warn Ean, yes, but there are two paths we can take from here: use Kyrie as a relay, and hope the message gets through, meanwhile we're drawing Project V's attention by either assaulting Carneus Beta(going in solo means we don't have to worry about friendly fire) or harassing Delta.

The other one is, we go and relay the data to Ean personally and help him protect the bulk of our forces from getting Vajra'd.

I'm currently favoring the soloing option. Why?

ANN1HILATION CANNON, BITCH!

 

[treave]

Appearing to take it well doesn't automatically mean they're actually taking it well. It could just mean that they aren't going to argue until they've heard what Mere has to say. Measures will have to be taken, but that comes later.

 

[Baltika9]

Compulsive plotting. Some people drink, others gamble. Shulgi plots. And plots and plots and plots.

Wait, doesn't he do those other things as well? Don't seem to recall him being too far away from an open whisky bottle at any given moment.

Cheap bastard still owes us a drink, too.

Edit: I was expecting a much less accepting response from them, is all.

 

[treave]

If anything goes wrong, it's Senya's responsibility. They will send a guard, but don't expect them to agree to have Mere placed on any Imperial ships.

 

[Storyfag]

edit: Of course, should she actually turn out to be Shulgi, who mind-wiped the real Mere and took her place when the League special ops she led had 'captured' him, all bets are off as to how strong 'Mere' actually is. Because Shulgi is a dick like that.

 

[treave]

The weapon is in another system. You don't have the range.

 

[Esquilax]

treave, how much time has passed since the first update? Are we still on Day 1, with Beta and Gamma a week away?

A solo mission to take out the Star League's superweapon is not as crazy as it seems. Our intel told us that Alpha was departing from their home systems to lie in wait for us at the core. It's pretty likely that a force that powerful would be guarding their important superweapon on their most well-defended system. Our misleading info on the bomb also makes Alpha holding a strong defensive position at Carneus Beta to prevent us from unleashing our bomb a strong possibility.

However... they might not be there right now because of how early we arrived at Gelmark, which gives us a brief window of opportunity. They are on their way probably, but that doesn't mean that they are there yet. That doesn't mean the League isn't prepared, though - I think the reason that we didn't see any asteroids is because the majority of them were moved to Carneus Beta once we relayed our intentions to nuke our way past the drones.

Another downside is that even if a crazy solo mission works, it would end up with us blackholing the last piece of Vajra. Ean's immortal powers allowed him to command Vajra in the same manner that Zeus did, and he could relearn those abilities again. In a perfect world, I'd rather take the piece from them and use it against both the Council and the Masters, though I guess beggars can't be choosers.

I don't like A2 or A3. The situation will have changed too much for us to make any sort of plans about anything, and at that point, Ean's forces will probably have learned about Project V the hard way. So either we do it now, or don't do it at all.

Another alternative is meeting with Ean. Sure, our countermeasure to Project V is hardly 100%, but we know what we're up against and we can adjust tactics. For example, the 12 hour reload presents us with an opportunity if we can make our enemy miss somehow or strike at something unimportant to us. Alternatively, if we have Ean hijack an enemy flagship, we can use their own weaponry against them.

B2 is the safe play, but beyond that I don't see what sort of tactical opportunities it opens up. Going after Delta is okay, but we'd have to dodge another shot from Vajra. Being so close to Carneus Beta would make me nervous of encountering another fleet like Epsilon too. However, what makes me uninterested in it is really the opportunity cost - if we succeed, we'd take out Delta before Beta and Gamma arrive, but we'd also give up the chance to warn Ean's force or to take out the superweapon, both of which seem like much better uses of our time.

I think it's time to regroup a bit, gather our information and not rely on a longshot. We've taken some big risks lately, but perhaps it's time to dial it back a bit. I am still open to flopping to A1, but for the moment I gotta go with B1.

 

[treave]

The first chapter is two days before departure. You needed the time for the secondary briefings and everything. So Beta and Gamma are probably about five days away by now. You are not sure which system they will arrive in. Bear in mind that you will need transit time to get from one jump point to another within a system, and this can take at least a few days depending on how far apart they are.

 

[Jester]

vote B3 for now
Either delta got no more target drones or they have some and we could check if there is a way to trace them somehow. If they use certain frequency to report back mby we could use that as drone pointer? Still i wonder if leaving such commander in their chain of command would be more beneficial, will think about it.

 

[Baltika9]

Another downside is that even if a crazy solo mission works, it would end up with us blackholing the last piece of Vajra. Ean's immortal powers allowed him to command Vajra in the same manner that Zeus did, and he could relearn those abilities again. In a perfect world, I'd rather take the piece from them and use it against both the Council and the Masters, though I guess beggars can't be choosers.

Bad idea, Vajra is Master tech and they always have dominance over their tech. That's one item off the "cons" list.

As for why we should strike now: they don't expect it, Anhur-Shu didn't even take a beating; just got our paintjob scratched a bit, tops and, finally, should we take that thing out now, we needn't warn anyone about anything, there won't be a threat to warn them of anymore.

It seems that this is the ideal way to employ our big gun: to deny them their awesum buttan. We don't even need to take over the system. All we need to do is get in, squeeze off a well-placed shot and haul ass outta there.

 

[Storyfag]

A1

It's not like we can't send a squadron of cruisers to Bainur to warn Ean. Or maybe even automatic slipspace-capable courier drones? There's no need to have the entire fleet go there.

 

[Esquilax]

As for why we should strike now: they don't expect it, Anhur-Shu didn't even take a beating; just got our paintjob scratched a bit, tops and, finally, should we take that thing out now, we needn't warn anyone about anything, there won't be a threat to warn them of anymore.

It seems that this is the ideal way to employ our big gun: to deny them their awesum buttan. We don't even need to take over the system. All we need to do is get in, squeeze off a well-placed shot and haul ass outta there.

What makes you think that they don't expect it? They absolutely do expect us to arrive at Carneus Beta - the whole war is built around them thinking that we're going to go through there to use our bomb and clear our path past the automated defense systems leading to the Masters. They may not be expecting our black hole cannon, they may not have arrived there with Alpha yet (which is a compelling argument for the solo mission), but it's absolutely clear to me that they expect us to arrive there some time in the near future.

Also, take note of all the space-fortresses that departed from Gelmark - I'm pretty sure that more than a few of them went to Carneus Beta. Look dude, I just don't think that we can pull another solo miracle like we did against the Empire given the Star League's doctrine and the defensive ring around the superweapon.

As for Vajra, I always figured that Ean mastered it to the level Zeus did, no? He had all the same powers and abilities that it possessed. Still, possessing an artifact like this that's important to the Masters is useful on its own.