hexarchate_rpg | Chapter 3.3: a belated meeting

yhlee posting in

At 0800 local time, Ashari sends out a notice that everyone [= all the PCs and associated NPCs] should assemble for a planning meeting at 0830 in Conference Room A (the ballroom from last night).

At the same time, Ashari specifically messages Dar and asks her to set out a quick breakfast for the meeting, "nothing elaborate necessary, sorry about the short notice." [Dar is free to argue with this over the messaging system.]

Ashari will be in Conference Room A at 08,00 themself, pacing around and muttering and looking agitated, for anyone who shows up early. Among the early birds are Gerae, who keeps checking a nanny-cam app on his slate that keeps an eye on Fluffy and the baby Vraselian pseudo-dragons, and Istradez, who is looking around wistfully for non-sweet food.

ETA:
When most of the group has assembled, Ashari, still clearly ill at ease, says abruptly, "Some of you may be aware of the staggering emptiness of this timeline. I have decided that we need to evacuate, and soon, even though it means abandoning the base. Discuss."

[Please feel free to continue/wrap up threads from the previous move, Ch. 3.2. I will be responding to some threads there shortly.]

[Jedao's report to Sasha and Reshad will be forthcoming in a comment to this post shortly, once I remove a certain catten from my desk.]

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

From:

yhlee

Jedao's report arrives some time before Ashari sends out the notice for the meeting, in the early hours of the morning.

To: Sasha Zuhrovet & Shuos Reshad
Subject: Heptarch Nirai Kujen

Known abilities:
- Immortality by jumping into and possessing other people, range unknown; ability usually drives the host mad in short order unless they are specially chosen to fit an unknown psych profile
- Notably, can survive the death of the initial host body. Unknown whether he can persist in ghost form without a host.

Known skills:
- administration (R&D divisions)
- psych surgery, including drastic personality modification
- calendrical mathematics
- stardrive R&D, specifically as relates to mothdrives
- gate-space mathematics and mechanics
- warmoth weapons R&D, including threshold winnowers (experimental)

Notes:
- I have seen tests and demonstrations of his weapons research and can attest his effectiveness. I am unfortunately unable to assess the extent of his knowledge in mathematics and physics as I lack expertise in those subjects.
- I have strong reason to believe that Heptarch Kujen is responsible for the prevalance of torture in the high calendar ca. 850 (my timeline).
- Kujen is highly risk-averse, and terrible at small-unit tactics even in simulation.

--GJS

From:

zuhrovet

Sasha forwards the report to Sulen and Xiulan. She also forwards it to Alaric, with the added note:

can u figure out mechanism? need defense vs. undying ghost. lmk if u want to task Remi/Shess/Cantata to help w/ details.

From:

yhlee

[Note to Alaric: Feel free to get inventive here in terms of worldbuilding for the game, since this isn't much discussed in canon.]

From:

slybrarian

Undying ghosts? Fascinating. Obviously inferior to ripping out your heart and placing it in the care of a reputable institution, but fascinating.

Will get on it right away.

He consideres the matter for another moment, then adds,

when you say defense do you mean 'prevent hijacking slash infiltration' of individuals or 'best defense is a good offense' where you want to kill the ghost. more than the ghost is already killed.

Edited Date: 2020-02-24 02:18 am (UTC)

Re: Jedao's report on Nirai Kujen (paging Alaric, Sulen, and Xiulan)

From:

zuhrovet - Date: 2020-02-24 02:45 am (UTC) - Expand

From:

stormglass

Sasha’s message receives a response from Xiulan a couple of hours before meeting time [assuming she got it that early! If not, the response comes in very soon after receipt.]

Thanks. Good thing we’re a small unit.

You brokering questions or want to meet with involved individuals later?

Re: Jedao's report on Nirai Kujen (paging Alaric, Sulen, and Xiulan)

From:

zuhrovet - Date: 2020-02-26 12:38 am (UTC) - Expand

suspect electronics - attn. new team members, esp. Deyna, Eddox, Hana

From:

zuhrovet - Date: 2020-02-26 12:39 pm (UTC) - Expand

Re: suspect electronics - attn. new team members, esp. Deyna, Eddox, Hana

From:

chomiji - Date: 2020-02-26 12:54 pm (UTC) - Expand

Re: suspect electronics - attn. new team members, esp. Deyna, Eddox, Hana

From:

zuhrovet - Date: 2020-02-26 01:07 pm (UTC) - Expand

From:

venndaai

Sulen responds,

In my time the Nirai seemed baffled by the rifts. Perhaps worth considering if this secret heptarch had more information than the Rahal were led to believe.

Re: Jedao's report on Nirai Kujen (paging Alaric, Sulen, and Xiulan)

From:

zuhrovet - Date: 2020-02-28 02:15 am (UTC) - Expand

From:

hoardingpearls

Reshad sends a quick thanks through the grid, at an earlier hour than one might expect. The rest, she intends to handle in person.

From:

kese_seyli

Seyli’s never met Ashari. They're also anxious as hell with how the party went down and chomping at the bit for answers. That combined with the fact that they’ve spent years not even daring to consider being late means they show up about 20 minutes early. They want to see the kind of person who hosts a party before a briefing. The sequins are gone and they’re back in their pseudo-military, not-a-uniform, clothing in a faction neutral blue with cream trim, hair pulled back in a high pony tail. They know Gerae by sight, but not Istradez or Ashari, but the agitation draws their attention immediately. “Is everything alright?” they ask, and then stop, because they're not sure they have any right to ask that question. Especially not before the meeting even starts.

From:

yhlee

Ashari is dressed sharply, and gives the impression of someone who would wither up and die if they weren't on the cutting edge of fashion. Their suit is a shimmering blue-green with details in iridescent embroidery of the same color, but their hair is pulled back severely from their face, and their cosmetics are minimal--just enough warm eyeshadow and lip gloss to give their face color.

"I'm as all right as any of us are," Ashari says, a bit dryly. "I don't know who started rumormongering about the emptiness of this timeline, but I suppose it's hard to get people not to talk." They look Seyli over, then nod sharply. "You're military, right? It's good to have some more practical people in the mix." A sudden, ferocious grin: "I would never be accused of being practical, of course. Not in public."

From:

From:

zuhrovet

[Are Ankat and Kaliyan invited to this meeting, or is Ashari briefing each team separately?]

From:

yhlee

[For simplicitly's sake, Ashari is briefing each team separately, mainly because if I have to invent 20 new NPCs for a one-time use I am going to cry. It's a good question, though!]

From:

chomiji

Dar was up early, as usual: the habit of a person who is used to getting up to let the bread rise before breakfast. Ashari sounded like they were in no mood for back-talk. As a matter of fact, given that this was a business affair, not a party, Dar wasn't inclined to argue.

Besides, there was more than one way to let your boss know your opinion on things.

So she gave herself a time limit: one standard hour. Plus a goal of making use of some of the party leftovers.

She lays out the breakfast spread as unobtrusively as possible. There's a variety, because she's still learning what these people eat, but the quantities are more modest than the night before: The buns make a re-appearance, some actual leftovers and filled with duck, other steamed freshly from the refrigerated leftover dough and presented with a choice of fillings for the diners to add: grilled tofu in a vegetarian sauce, nut butter, and berry jam. There's a warming pot full of rice gruel, with toppings ranging from savory to sweet available. There are two dishes of baked eggs, one with vegetables and the other with ham and aged cheese. Urns of green and scented black tea are set out, along with a carafe of coffee, plus all the various trimmings for such. Some of the leftover sweets and fruit are set out by the hot drinks, and there are also pitchers of water and fruit juice.

Edited Date: 2020-02-24 02:10 am (UTC)

From:

zuhrovet

Sasha appears at about a quarter past the hour, still slightly flushed from a very hot shower. She fills a mug with black tea and stirs in a couple of spoonfuls of the berry jam. Her first sip chases a stim.

Ashari seems sober this morning. Thank the Prophet for small favors.

From:

stormglass

[After the party the prior night, Sasha receives a draft of the evacuation plan - draft because there’s some items flagged where more information is needed.

There was an OOC request for particular info about timing, so:

IRL, I know we’re consistently able to evacuate hundreds of people from a building with several floors, in a few minutes. I’m not sure how big the base is, but Xiulan would know, so she’d have come up with a target time to meet based on that.

Key in the RL scenario is that people are focused on getting out (along with certain folks designated to help make sure everyone IS getting out and no one’s left behind), not doing other stuff, and that’s key here too. Given the circumstances, it seems best to assume the moths would be a big target: destroy or incapacitate them and people are stuck on base with nowhere to go and no help nearby.

So she’d advise that ensuring the moths have sufficient critical supplies aboard, such as food, is a top priority ASAP - not waiting or an actual evacuation. In event of an evacuation, you have people capable of handling the moth weapons systems head for the moths at top speed (or ideally onboard in shifts if possible) to defend them/the base while everyone else gets aboard. (Also, don’t assume all moths will make it through - have supplies for more people than anticipated on each and a plan for people to make it to their assigned moth, but to divert to another if they must.)

These are some of the items flagged for more info: do they have sufficient people to handle weapons (and if not, start getting more trained right away) and the matter of other ‘critical’ stuff on the station besides food that she may not know about. It acknowledges there may be some things that can’t be moved until last minute and accounts for that.

If more info is needed, just let me know.

EDIT: Forgot to clarify that there’s two bits to the timing info: ETA for a non-emergency evacuation and then also a plan for, an alert is sounded, go now, sort of situation. Since both seemed to be on the table depending on what happened.]

Edited (Forgot a note) Date: 2020-02-25 01:50 pm (UTC)

From:

venndaai

[If Sasha forwarded the plan to Sulen, they would have been happy to occupy themself checking supplies and compiling spreadsheets on team members' different skills. They enjoy that kind of thing.]

Re: Someone else was also up late (Paging Sasha)

From:

zuhrovet - Date: 2020-02-26 12:29 pm (UTC) - Expand

From:

zuhrovet

Sasha has chosen a seat at the other end of the long table from Ashari. When they call the meeting to order, she asks, "What timeframe do you envision, for complete evacuation?"

[Is Ashari eating breakfast? If they have food, Sasha will take one of the buns with duck; otherwise she's sticking to tea for now.]

From:

hoardingpearls

This is the first Reshad has heard about evacuation, but the lack of panic on various faces places this as a prudent, rather than an urgent, move - at least for now. It's better to avoid overstressing the artificial ecosystems of moths; one cannot step out the back door for a breath of air.

Which leads to another question, on the heels of Sasha's. "Evacuation to where?"

Chapter 3.3: a belated meeting

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