should we help or hinder the assassination of Jedao?

[zuhrovet]

[In the current move, Flute has just informed the team that they are to accompany a group of Lanterner assassins to a conference where the Lanterners will attempt to assassinate Jedao. This post is for reactions and plans, both in and out of character.]

Sasha's quiet as the group heads from the Catastrophe Axe back to the Cantata. She wants to have a cup of tea and spend a few hours working her way further into the Axe's grid, but work comes before play, and figuring out how to handle Flute's instructions will be a fuck of a lot of work.

Once everyone's safely on the Cantata and the lock has closed behind them, she starts issuing orders. "Grid, please ask Sulen to meet me in my office in twenty minutes, and inform everyone there will be a team meeting in the common room in one hour. Reshad, I'll want you in the meeting with Sulen."

She pulls her memory stick out of her pocket and gives it to Alaric. "Find Aymad, stick this in the minigrid--not in the main one--and see what you can find out about the watchers in Flute's system in the next hour."

Then she turns to Seyli. "I know you want to yell. Go ahead and do it. You've got twenty minutes." [These are heptarchate minutes, so it's more like ten minutes in our calendar.]

Comments

welcome back

[venndaai]

Sulen meets the away team outside the lock. "I made tea in the common room," they say. "I tried to make coffee but it was more complicated than it looked. Is everyone uninjured?"

Re: welcome back

[hoardingpearls]

"Nobody's injured." Reshad, having dropped the airheaded act she'd assumed for Flute's benefit as soon as she was relatively certain of being away from bugs, seems quieter than normal, thoughtful.

"Thank you for the tea." She bows acceptance of the meeting, and heads for a cup to clear her whirling mind.

[So Reshad, being a big nerd about the Historical Figure Shuos Jedao, is absolutely going to argue for subverting the assassination mission and kidn- she means, attempting to ally with - the General. Who better to tear down the h*archate than the Immolation Fox?]

Re: welcome back - paging Seyli

[zuhrovet]

"Fuck, yes, I would love some tea. Thank you." Sasha's grateful to Sulen, and beginning to wonder how Ashari gets by without them. With much excitement, presumably.

"We learned a lot, and I will fill you in very soon, but first Seyli and I need to debrief. Seyli, where are we doing this? My office?"

Re: welcome back - paging Seyli

[kese_seyli]

Seyli had remained silent and brooding in the encounter with Flute and the entire way back. They never dropped their guard, but it was clear they were displeased.

"Excuse me?" Their eyebrow raises as they look at Sasha and they forget to tack Sir onto that comment. They've lost their cool a lot in the past, but they were never as stupid to take it out on their commanding officer (not that was an option for most of their career). Seyli doesn't think much of Sasha at this point, but she's certainly weird, as far as commanding officers go.

"I not going to yell and certainly not at you if I was. Sir." They're bristling now, shaken out of that shocked tension.

notifying Sulen - paging Sulen and Reshad

[zuhrovet]

Sasha summarizes the meeting with Flute for Sulen's benefit, noting that Flute seemed both highly competent and frustrated with Personnel's decisions.

She concludes, "I think we're going to have to thrash out how to handle Flute's assignment with the entire team. But I wanted your input first. And I wanted to ask you, Sulen, specifically--we have an emergency line to Ashari. Do we notify them of developments now, or do we wait? The message itself will be secure--we exchanged keys before we left--but it has to go through rebellion channels to reach the time they're in, so attempting communication is a security risk."

Re: notifying Sulen - paging Sulen and Reshad

[venndaai]

Sulen winces. "I'd advise against contacting them unless in a true emergency. They sometimes... overreact." Particularly to things happening at an insurmountable distance, and particularly, they have to admit, when Sulen themself is involved. They close their eyes briefly, remembering a certain dramatic incident, and then open them again. "Did Ashari discuss with you how much autonomy they meant us to have?"

Wherever Ashari is right now, it's undoubtedly dangerous, and Sulen doesn't want them distracted.

Re: notifying Sulen - paging Sulen and Reshad

[zuhrovet]

"Thank you. They intended us to have a great deal of autonomy." The person in charge has the furthest to fall. "I can set up a fail-safe so that this information is delivered to them, should we find ourselves unable to do so directly."

no, seriously, are we going to assassinate Jedao? - paging everyone

[zuhrovet]

Sasha calls the meeting to order and explains Flute's orders. "We suspect that the mission to assassinate Jedao is in Quill's interest, not in the interest of the rebellion as a whole. However, we must bear in mind that Flute's commitment to the rebellion may be genuine. What factors do we need to consider? And what do you think our actions should be?"

[I'm looking for both in-character and out-of-character feedback; for what it's worth, in character Sasha thinks the case for assassinating Jedao is pretty good, but out of character, I think kidnapping him seems like more fun, if we can pull it off. vass, slybrarian, mafyyil, and pengwern, I would very much like to hear your OOC thoughts on possible directions, as well as your characters' thoughts.

Flute wanted some of the team to travel with the Lanterners and provide training. That means potentially splitting the party. I'm interested in people's thoughts on this as well: do you want your character to be assigned to the Lanterner ship, or to the Cantata? Or would you rather elide the entire question and pick up with the next move at our next destination?]

Re: no, seriously, are we going to assassinate Jedao? - paging everyone

[venndaai]

"I've accessed all the information we have on this Shuos Jedao, and it certainly seems like his assassination is a worthy goal, although it wouldn't have been my priority."

[Sulen would rather assassinate key Vidona policymakers, but they've guessed the rebellion would rather destroy the heptarchate than reform it and aren't sure what to do about that. They're constitutionally incapable of arguing a position that they don't believe so can't pretend they don't think getting rid of Jedao is the moral decision.]

[OOC, I definitely want to kidnap him, although I'm not sure we're capable of it- but having him turn the tables on us also sounds fun! I'm okay with splitting the party although I'm not sure what we'd be doing on the Cantata while the trainers were interacting with the Lanterners.]

Re: no, seriously, are we going to assassinate Jedao? - paging everyone

[slybrarian]

"He does seem an strange choice," Alaric agrees. "I can see how in the short term his death would benefit the Laterners and hurt the heptarchate, but in the long run doesn't his big murder-suicide do a lot of damage to heptarchates forces anyways? Not even that long-run, really. Medium-term at best. Was the war really close to tipping the other way at this point?"

[Trying to capture Jedao seems fun and tricky, and trying to kill him also seems tricky. We did accidentally kidnap-slash-subvert one official, though!]

Re: no, seriously, are we going to assassinate Jedao? - paging everyone

[kese_seyli]

[[In character I think we are working on how Seyli feels about this all. They'd vote kill over kidnapping, though. Out of character, kidnapping sounds hilarious. As for splitting the party, Seyli almost has to go to the Lanterners to provide training, as they are the only hitter on the team?]]

on splitting the party

[yhlee]

[If splitting the party sounds dreary/unfun to RP, we can totes fast-forward the journey and take up again on the other end, at the conference. So that's definitely an option.]

[mafyyil]

Mafyyil has finally figured out how to look something up, and read a short summary of Shuos Jedao's biography. She's rather confused about Quill's intentions, but also about the fact that no one has told her about any suspicions concerning Quill before the meeting.

"Can't we, like, talk to the guy?", Mafyyil suggests. "We want to damage the heptarchate. Apparently, so does he, and he's good at it, too." (This in a rather admiring tone of voice: reading about Hellspin Fortress has impressed her.)

[yhlee]

[Psst, maybe repost to this thread? I'm not sure people saw Mafyyil's contribution to the debate...]

[zuhrovet]

[Sasha's response to Mafyyil is here.]

what is on the memory stick? - paging Aymad

[zuhrovet]

[What sort of information about Flute's grid and the watchers on it has ended up on Sasha's memory stick? What can she glean from the logs on her (much better protected) tablet?]

Re: what is on the memory stick? - paging Aymad

[yhlee]

[First, after some digging, Sasha and/or Aymad determine that a spy program has set up residence on Sasha's memory stick. It appears to be mostly passive data-gathering, but it also smells like it could do weird polymorphic shit in response to some trigger. They'll be able to "defuse" it as long as they haven't done anything like just plugging it directly into the main mothgrid, which I doubt either Sasha or Aymad would have ventured!

Flute's grid appears to be extraordinarily well-protected and set up by a professional. In retrospect perhaps this is not so surprising, given the sensitivity of this time period and the ambition of this particular mission. It's certainly not perfect security, but it's going to be a tough nut to crack.

It also appears, just from the "personality" quirks visible in the active code and network activity, that there are at least two dedicated security specialists on Flute's crew.

There were definitely attempts to prod at the defenses of Sasha's better-protected tablet, some from Flute's network, others from what looks like the Lanterner's station network. Most of it looks like bored trolling but some of it appears more serious and may come from a concerted effort to gather intel on visitors.]

Re: what is on the memory stick? - paging Aymad

[zuhrovet]

[Indeed, we have a separate system for testing for just this reason.

Does the code on the memory stick feel like the work of either of the security specialists on Flute's crew?]

[OOC: help please?]

[vass]

[Hi. Sorry for going silent for a long time. Real life got on top of me. And now I have no idea what Iawa's been doing or thinking or where they've been for the past um weeks. The best I can think of is a new plot point that they've unfortunately started periodically periodically getting sucked into extremely local and inconvenient rifts themself and then popping out again, occasionally without even noticing that any time has elapsed, and don't know if this is an enemy attack/friendly fire, a new exotic ability, or just really bad luck.

Could I please have some help brainstorming what to do with my character next? Thank you, and sorry again.]

Re: [OOC: help please?]

[zuhrovet]

[I don't think it has been that long in game time. I guess I've been falling down on my Nirai-ly duty to maintain a calendar, but I believe it's been less than a week since Iawa's conversation with Ione and Mafyyil in Move 2.1, most of which we spent in transit. I would guess that Iawa spent most of the journey through the rift to 852 avoiding the other team members, though I think we can assume that Sasha followed up on the promised practice-with-restraints at some point, because Sasha adheres to her to-do list in a somewhat spooky fashion.

So, from Iawa's point of view, the Cantata just arrived at a new station, some people left to do something or other, and then Sasha called a meeting on the topic of whether the team should help assassinate Jedao. I am personally hoping that Iawa will share Philosophical Thoughts about this question, though Sasha did just make a more practical request.]

Re: [OOC: help please?]

[hoardingpearls]

[Welcome back!

Perhaps Iawa was simply very busy? Creating something that needs it, solving a problem, down with a space cold and didn't want to share?]

Re: [OOC: help please?]

[yhlee]

[Hello, Vass! No worries. There have already been a couple suggestions as to what Iawa could have been doing in the past weeks; feel free to pick one or to say that Iawa took some personal time and let it be a ~mystery~. :)

Re: the current discussion of what to do with Jedao and zuhrovet's notes, I would add that there are some interesting angles that someone with Iawa's background would be ideal for bringing up, if you liked. One question that I would find interesting in this context is whether someone can genuinely be considered guilty of a crime that he hasn't committed yet, given that this is all about changing the timeline, and the ethics around that. Iawa might also coordinate with delight on proposing a plan to kidnap Jedao just before Candle Arc (and, down the line, the Hellspin massacre), which people seem to favor OOC even though IC people favor killing him. The hard thing right now seems to be getting characters to a place IC where they would be okay with a kidnapping rather than aiding the assassination. delight's character has medical expertise and it would make sense for Iawa to assist on that end. If you have other ideas, of course, you're welcome to explore those--don't feel obliged to follow through with one of these suggestions! Conversely, if you need more help brainstorming, please let us know. I apologize for being out of touch for a bit.--the GM ]

Re: [OOC: help please?]

[zuhrovet]

[If you have OOC thoughts about how to kidnap Jedao, or how Iawa might fit into such a mission, those would be helpful, too!]

Continuing planning

[kese_seyli]

"If you think clean up is going to involve combat of any kind, then yeah, I should stay behind to clean up. It sounds like it depends on Ione's drug?" Seyli wasn't entirely sure how that would work "Someone with more training on sneaking should be in charge of getting him away from the scene." They tap their fingers against their thighs for a moment before continuing. "The last time I needed to look entirely different, I just wore a waist cincher and a tight dress, makeup, left my hair down. It's not the best disguise, but it's an easy one."

Re: Continuing planning

[zuhrovet]

Sasha blinks. Joining this crew has effectively doubled her acquaintance with people who wear dresses for any reason: it's not a Naxorian style, and security consultants tend to optimize for more pockets. (The fashion for courtesans at security parties, before Sasha joined the rebellion, had been for very tight pants and flowing shirts.) This might explain why Sasha is suddenly envisioning Seyli in a Naxorian wedding coat, only in black brocade with a leather belt, and without trousers. They would seem... taller.

"Yes, if Ione's drug can affect short-term memory, our options increase," she says, seriously. "Or I think Alaric mentioned an exotic?"