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

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

[zuhrovet]

"I don't know what the fuck harm reduction means in this context," Sasha observes, "or why we're comparing the moth, whose priority appears to be protecting babies, to a man who murders his own people. And no, Fyedlet, we cannot just talk to him. Not unless we want to risk him alerting the Kel, and attacking us."

[zuhrovet]

[Sasha's response to Mafyyil is here.]

Re: I guess it's personal, then

[yhlee]

Flute's grid protection for personal messages is pretty strong but, again, not insurmountable with patience. It looks like she has some kind of rule imposed on work accounts vs. personal accounts, and this individual has (predictably) not been great about keeping the two separate. The personal account is more easily broken into and involves a lot of "if you don't forward this message you will be cursed" chain-letter memes as well as some kind of passionate mailing list discussion of min-maxing characters in one of the shooter games that this individual likes.

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

[slybrarian]

"Yeah, it does seem like the sort of situation where you kidnap first and ask ideological questions second," Alaric agrees. "Or shoot him, whatever."

some possible courses of action - paging everyone, especially Iawa and Ione

[zuhrovet]

"I see four possible responses," Sasha summarizes. "Zero, we let the Lanterners make their assassination attempt without interference. One, we let them try, but attempt to secure Jedao if they fail. Ione, Iawa, do you have some sort of drug that might make him come with us willingly? It's going to be a lot easier to fuck the scans so the Kel don't know to follow us than it would be to drag a body through security. Two, we communicate more of our capabilities and assist in the assassination attempt seriously. We could probably smuggle printer components and construct weapons on-site, if we wanted. Or three, we sabotage the assassination attempt and go straight to kidnapping. Given our current lack of information about what Quill actually wants, I favor Option One. Tell me what I'm missing."

mind-altering/sedating drugs - paging Iawa and Ione

[yhlee]

[GM's note on drugs: delight, I am happy to defer to whatever you know from real life or want to invent from Ione's experience here given that I have zero medical or pharmaceutical knowledge. [1] vass, Iawa would have general familiarity with Vidona drugs that make people more complaisant, or sedated, or induce mind-altering states; and God knows, you probably know a lot more about the real life version of this too because I know NOTHING about the real life version of this.

[1] My dad is a surgeon but surgeon's kids either (a) become super-knowledgeable about biology (my sister) or (b) outsource everything to the medical person in the family and end up super ignorant (me).

]

[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: mind-altering/sedating drugs - paging Iawa and Ione

[bariolage]

[I tried to do research to figure out something more terrifying than the real drug available that does this, AND I COULDN'T THE REAL DRUG IS TERRIFYING ENOUGH TO FIT INTO THE H*ARCHATE SETTING AS IS.]

Re: some possible courses of action - paging everyone, especially Iawa and Ione

[bariolage]

Ione cannot put her finger on anything Sasha is missng, and she only squints and tries to look at her nose a little bit as regards that counting method. But she's getting used to the fact that this mission + numbers are going to be weird to her.

"Oh, sure," she says easily, trying not to look pleased or smile, because that would definitely be weird to everyone else. "In what format did you prefer? I have the powder, which can be powerful even when inhaled but if you put it through a ventilation system you'd have either a lot of problems or the most complacent group of people you've ever dealt with and they would be extremely annoying, but they would also probably all forget it happened -- er, anyway, I can also make it into a suspension and we can dart it. He might really hate us, though, there are a couple of side effects ..."

Because that is absolutely the only reason that Jedao would hate them as a result.

"If I have a couple of days and lab equipment and someone else to do calculations for me because that will be much faster, I can adjust the potency."

Re: I guess it's personal, then

[zuhrovet]

Everything old is new again. Whoever set up this message system restricted the types of associated files heavily, but they weren't nearly as cautious about individual characters, and the full old-fashioned character set includes all sorts of commands, some ordinarily used to construct new glyphs, some with broader applications. Sasha embeds an appropriate set of invisible commands in the subject line of one of the chain letters and forwards it from this personal account to a set of targets that include's Flute's accounts.

Re: some possible courses of action - paging everyone, especially Iawa and Ione

[hoardingpearls]

Reshad nods at Sasha's options, and cocks her head curiously at the mention of drugs.
"Harm reduction, in this case, is stopping Hellspin and its associated remembrance, and we have the bonus option of denying Quill what she seems to want by keeping him alive."

She gives Mafyyil a smile, for that suggestion. "We still don't know if we can trust him, and probably can't, but working with someone doesn't necessarily mean full trust. Only that you trust them to act in a known way." Even that is shaky with Jedao, masterful Shuos - but even foxes have patterns.

"Kidnapping asking questions later is probably our best choice. I favor option 3- it's identical to 1, save that we aren't leaving our outcome to chance or someone else's competence."

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?]

[kese_seyli]

[Iawa is welcome to have helped Seyli get the shooting range active and done some training with them, too.]

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: I guess it's personal, then

[yhlee]

Sasha hits pay dirt. Flute is very meticulous about keeping personal and business accounts separate. The personal accounts mostly seem to include photo albums and videos of her family (looks like some kind of group marriage) and the family kids, as well as a very large, enthusiastically annotated collection of foreign music space mp3's.

Flute has auditing notes on her current mission that indicate that, if she survives this, she's going to protest the poor state of preparedness in the rebellion and propose reorganization within Personnel, given their failures. Sasha is able to break past the crypto using the invisible commands as a lever. Flute's files are extremely well organized and cataloged; she probably would make an excellent librarian. What does Sasha want to prioritize reading and/or extracting?

Re: I guess it's personal, then

[zuhrovet]

Sasha's looking specifically for Flute's orders. She's interested in whom they came from and how they were phrased (both because she wants to understand the scope of Quill's organization, and because she may want to forge more orders, later). She also wants to know more about what the rest of Flute's team will be doing while the Lanterners are attempting to assassinate Jedao, and what contingency plans are in place if the attempt fails.

Re: I guess it's personal, then

[yhlee]

The dismaying thing about Flute's orders is that even Flute does not know who, exactly, they came from, although it does seem that she has worked with this entity before and considers them reliable. There is a certain amount of bureaucratese, but behind that, the intent is fairly simple:

Facilitate the assassination of General Shuos Jedao by supplementing the historical attempt on his life. There is inherent risk in the mission, but above all things, avoid being outed as out-of-timestream agents, even at the cost of the assassination's failure, which at least will leave us no worse than our starting position. The worst-case scenario is Jedao himself becoming aware that he's a target of interest to out-of-time powers. He is to be assumed mentally unstable.

The rest of Flute's team will primarily be offering realtime surveillance support to the Lanterner assassins--acting as handlers, if you will. There's a backup plan to vent atmosphere in the entire section of the conference where Jedao is present; this will necessitate sacrificing the Lanterners, and a great many bystanders, but can be made to look like sabotage by a third party.

how dare other people have contingency plans - paging everyone

[zuhrovet]

Sasha runs the orders through her textual analysis program, to see whether they match Quill's style. She makes local copies of the surveillance plans and that backup plan, and cautiously extricates herself from Flute's system. She doesn't attempt to break a mug, or punch a wall, or even shout, though eight spheres of hell, Flute was going to let Sasha send her people into that section. With no preparation and no warning.

Sasha goes to find some tea and a ration bar, because maybe it's better not to take stims on an empty stomach, and it's going to be a long night.

in the future, we will have more data

[zuhrovet]

[Maybe let's pick up the conversation in this thread, where Sasha has just stormed into the common room?]

Re: how dare other people have contingency plans - paging everyone

[bariolage]

Ione wasn't actually in the common room before, but she is now, about sixty seconds or so behind Sasha.

She had been in her own quarters researching, but Cantata isn't that big, and even if you have your senses dampened down as hard as you can sometimes it's impossible to not feel things. The kind of emotions that might inspire punching walls and breaking mugs often reverberate if they're not behind strong mental shields are difficult to set aside. And Ione hasn't entirely adapted to the people she's with, so her natural impulse when feeling things like that is to make sure no one is dead.

Instead: Sasha the boss-lady, sans anyone bleeding out. This may be a positive start, but when the mission commander is reverberating-angry ... not really.

Knowing that Sasha is likely aware of her capabilities and, if she's up to paying that close attention probably knows why she has turned up, Ione moves close enough to be in conversation range without crowding: "Are you all right?"

[Note that zuhrovet was consulted OOC before determining that Ione could feel that without physical contact!]

Re: how dare other people have contingency plans - paging everyone

[zuhrovet]

"Of course." Sasha slides the galley cupboard door shut, with perhaps more force than necessary.

Ione seems friendly, and sweet in her own odd way, and eminently breakable. Some of that has to be an illusion. Sasha knows that, of the two of them, Ione has spent much more time around people actively trying to kill her. But she wasn't Sasha's responsibility then, and the danger wasn't from her own side.

The closest thing to a remedy will be some version of Reshad's plan. They'll have to fuck up the Lanterner attack, and the attack on the station too, and somehow extricate Jedao without making themselves a target. So many threads to follow--and every strand a wire, and every knot a burning star.

Re: how dare other people have contingency plans - paging everyone

[yhlee]

The text analysis is indeed a match for Quill's style.

Sasha has no issues getting out of Flute's system.

Re: how dare other people have contingency plans - paging everyone

[hoardingpearls]

Reshad noticed when Ione hustled past the hallway she'd just happened to be traversing, and she noticed again when the distinct sound of a cupboard being closed with what one might politely term "authority" reverberates from the direction she went. Voices: Ione and Sasha? The latter, angry.

She goes, curious and concerned in equal measures, and stops in the doorway, hands visible, face open. "Is something the matter?"

Re: how dare other people have contingency plans - literally paging Seyli and Sulen

[zuhrovet]

Sasha takes her tea, now fortified with jam, and her ration bar, and walks out of the galley and into the common room proper. The common room has multiple exits, and the fact that Reshad is blocking one of them does not in any way constitute a threat. Though Sasha can move her anyway. Hypothetically. "Sit, please. Both of you. Grid, please ask Seyli and Sulen to join us, and display the text tagged white-eight-white on the main screen."

Sasha makes herself sit, unwraps her ration bar, and counts to sixteen. Quill's orders appear on the screen, in tidy, even columns. "I uncovered more information about Quill's instructions, and Flute's contingency planning."