We came here to kill pirates. Let's kill the pirates already.
Well maybe the situation just got a bit more complicated than simply grinding trash mobs for XP and rep. Clearly there's a bigger picture here involving factions of the Imperial Court:
“Oh, did they?” It must have been taught to you in your studies. In fact, you recall hearing something like this, now that Yu has jogged your memory, but the details do not come to you. “If that is the case, the prefect should be dealing with it, or should have submitted a report to the Court for action. Why is he not here, with a Tang fleet to subjugate a single band of pirates? We do have a navy and it has not seen any action in… what, a century?”
“I wouldn’t know about that. It could be that he is in league with the pirates somehow,” conjectures Xiahou Yu. “It’s a wild guess, but the other alternatives don’t make him look much better.”
You nod. “Incompetence. Why he isn’t helping isn’t that important right now anyway, since the sects are taking matters into their own hands.”
“Now,” says Zhou more loudly, apparently distracted by your whispers with Yu. “The government will not aid us in this venture. The prefect has sent a letter detailing his approval of our actions and his gratitude, but there will be no money or ships forthcoming.”
...
“This problem must be solved, and solved decisively. When the grass is cut the roots must be plucked. The Imperial Court has expressed their desire to clean up the coast and free the people from the plague of piracy. Though they are not able or willing to do it directly, as loyal subjects the orthodox sects are more than willing to do it on the Emperor’s behalf. I am afraid this can only end in one way.”
Whatever is behind this assault, it's dirty. I knew that there was something slimy going on the moment that Zhou Dingqui wasn't even content with Yorimitsu giving himself up for execution and offering his people a chance to surrender. Turning around and siding with the pugilists at this point strikes me as wishy-washy bullshit. Yes, we will have completed the terms of our challenge with D, but that's a separate matter altogether that's unrelated to the mission at hand. Given our actions thus far, the Zhou Clan and the pugilists allied with them with them will never truly respect or trust us; however, we have a great opportunity to build bridges with the Minamoto given that (a) we were willing to hear them out and we've tried helping them, and (b) they are desperate for friends. Even better, Yoriwaka seems to be a master of stealth and they are probably far more skilled as martial artists than the pugilists assembled here. We would be better off sticking with the Minamoto given our own less-than-stellar reputation, no question about it.
Sigh. So all that about A2 getting us a Grand Bargain, right? Tits up.
We're in deep shit, because the negotiation's about to go down in a fire and we haven't managed to build any significant leverage with any party, and we don't have any aces up the sleeve. It's hard for me to see how B could work. First we take the girl hostage, which makes everybody on the pugilist side even more furious with us and basically confirm their theories that we're in cahoots with the Wo, then we challenge all of them to combat. You think if we beat them all they'll graciously accept we were right? Basically what B does - B means we effectively become the official negotiator for the Wo who concludes negotiations by beating all of them up. All for a bunch of people we still don't know are 'the good guys' and no tangible benefit to our reputation or mission. By the same token I'm not happy with C. I simply don't see why so many peoplke are so sympathetic to the Wo. Either we think they're the bee's knees and fight on their side with everything to lose, or, ironically, we love the pugilists so much we're willing to make ourselves the Worst Ever to save themselves from death. Neither I feel is relevant to Jing and even remotely sensible.
There are only two real options here. Either we cut our losses with A, because we've fucked up - sometimes because we had no way of knowing, sometimes because we made bad choices - and there are no remotely decent outcomes to getting involved. Or, if we still want to see it through, we go with D, and join the pugilists again - because then one way or the other the affair will be concluded, and the pugilist deaths during the fighting hopefully won't be blamed on us because we worked hard on their side. The only way to make sure that the story gets out as "Jing tried his best to help" is D; with B or C, what happens is "Jing is treacherous, regularly consorts with non-Han weirdos, kidnaps people, etc, etc."
We all knew going in that the chances of solving this crisis without putting our body on the line at all was very slim. Everyone here going "Told ya so!" isn't really providing any insight that wasn't there prior to this. A2 voters were simply saying "well, this isn't very good, but it's still better than trying to fight the ninja and Yorimitsu's guards/letting the fight happen without at least giving diplomacy a chance."
As for no tangible benefit to our reputation - are you kidding me? Repelling an assault single-handedly will stake our rep as a dangerous motherfucker. Good rep, bad rep, that doesn't matter; for the purposes of our challenge, what matters most is big rep. Zhang Jue and Wang Zhengchong might have very different types of reputation, but there is no doubt that both men are massively feared and revered, respectively. They both have "big rep" for very different reasons. Now, I'm not denying that this move won't make us a hated pariah among the respectable elements of society, but Zhang Jue's apprentice was never really respectable to begin with.
As for who the "good guys" are here, that is very much up in the air. The Minamoto Clan have caused trouble before, but my sympathies for the pugilist side have diminished:
“Your oaths have no value to us, Wo,” says Zhou Dingqiu. “This problem must be solved, and solved decisively. When the grass is cut the roots must be plucked. The Imperial Court has expressed their desire to clean up the coast and free the people from the plague of piracy. Though they are not able or willing to do it directly, as loyal subjects the orthodox sects are more than willing to do it on the Emperor’s behalf. I am afraid this can only end in one way.”
Their leader has just offered to surrender, yet still they are not content with this. If we go with D, it isn't a "we tried our best" story, because nevertheless we're still the guy that killed their leader, whatever our motivations happened to be. We still set in motion the events that led to the destruction of their clan, regardless of intent - these people aren't mind-readers, they aren't going to think that it's okay that we killed Yorimitsu in some sort of bizarre ploy to save the rest of the clan, they are just going to think that we are a ruthless opportunist who decided to jump ship. And it's really debatable if we're going to be able to stop an assault on the Minamoto womenfolk and children; the pugilists here have taken an aggressive stance and I don't think they'll be satisfied unless they've managed to kill most of the people here. That isn't "we tried our best" scenario, that's a massacre.
Now, I am arguing for B, but how would we pull such a thing off? Keep in mind that most of these pugilists are inexperienced and unaccustomed to the psychological stresses of deadly combat, which is our specialty. Our best bet here is to use this advantage to force them to break psychologically and retreat. We don't have the END to withstand a prolonged fight (all-on-one is better then taking them on one-at-a-time) so our best bet is to use our lethal techniques to terrorize them and break their morale. It won't be easy, and we will get hurt in the process (in a best-case scenario), but I think that this bears repeating:
The more close shaves you get into and survive, the faster you learn. That's how your unorthodox life is going to be.
Zhang put this challenge up in large part so we could figure shit out ourselves. A is acceptable (I understand why we'd want to bow out now), but C gives us a traitorous reputation with none of the infamy that comes with holding off a force of pugilists single-handed, and D just means acquiescing to a faction that won't respect or reward our efforts given that we've been undermining them thus far. We should be working towards utilizing our bad reputation to our advantage instead of trying to be something we're not.
B, but I might flop to A if I hear some decent arguments.
