hexarchate_rpg | Move 2 (Chapter 1.2)

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moves: chapter 1

Move 2 (Chapter 1.2)

Time: 702 (high calendar)
Place: a rebellion outpost near a stable rift

[GM's note: Elesa's player had to drop, so we'll just say that Crow tells you she's been called away to another last-minute mission better suited to her talents and move on.]

[Also, for your ease of reference, Mission information, mostly from Move 1 so far.]

The interior of the Wasp is more spacious than it looks. Crow, when asked, informs you that this is a precursor to variable layout technology. For the curious (and those from earlier eras), she explains that variable layout is a hexarchate-era technology that allows affected areas to be bigger inside than out, and for the "rooms" to be rearranged almost at will, or connected with internal teleporters. The Wasp's version isn't advanced enough for room-shuffling, but it does mean that the moth will easily accommodate all of you.

The Wasp contains, at minimum:
- a cockpit for a pilot and copilot
- a gunnery room (weapons/defenses can also be automated)
- an office for the commander [that's you,

smokedetective]
- a small medical bay--the Wasp can suggest first aid treatments with an expert system, and there's room in "freezers" to put up to two people in a primitive form of stasis so they can be taken to a real hospital elsewhere if someone gets badly injured [this will only happen to your character with your permission, but could make for fun drama if you are so inclined]
- a combination galley and dining room
- a large common room suitable for entertaining (which begs the question of just what kind of entertaining pirates do), although its decor is rather lacking unless someone wants to play with the matter printer
- sufficient quarters for everyone to have a cabin of their own
- a capacious storage hold filled with strange liquors and other miscellaneous trade goods, as well as occasional miscellaneous supplies

You can address the Wasp's mothgrid from anywhere within it, or access it through slates that communicate with the computers.

Once you reach the rift, travel through it is as simple as pointing the Wasp at it and going through. Inside the rift, you won't be able to see anything but a shimmering blue haze, and it is highly, highly disrecommended that anything alive go extravehicular while in rift transit; there are robots (non-sentient) to take care of any repairs that might become necessary.

[Note to Alaric: if he's paying attention to this, he may notice that, interestingly, Mothra itself appears to be unharmed by the rift energies, thanks to some sort of innate resistance. Mothra may or may not have anything to say about this if he can figure out a way to communicate with it.]

[General notes and formatting: Since I'm going to have probably limited internet access over the next odd-week per this announcement, this is what I suggest:

Players should familiarize themselves with the Wasp and feel free to set out toward the rift in order to commence their mission with travel through the rift. I don't think one day = one move makes sense, especially during boring travel bits. Feel free to use different threads for different conversations that may take place during different times in the journey (one thread for day one, another for day two, etc.)--whether that means making further plans, or devising clever weapons using the matter printer, or getting to know each other, or looking up the briefing materials on heptarchate culture/tech in the target year 361, etc. Just to make thread navigation easier, I suggest that henceforth threads about major topics be titled to help people navigate. If there's a major topic change, or you need to flag an OOC query/discussion, change the comment title, e.g.

immolationfox: Weapons Inventory
Shuos Jedao happily goes through ALL the crates in the hold to check for any weapons, including knitting needles.

overlyloyalhawk: re: Weapons Inventory
Gized sighs and goes to ~~keep an eye on Jedao~~ help him count, since Jedao sucks at numbers.

immolationfox: [paging GM]
[Are there any small arms in here? Grenades? Also, whiskey?]

We don't need to be strict about this, but if we do this for major topics it'll probably help navigating threads.

Once I get back the week after Readercon, we'll see about moving the action forward on the other side of the rift!]

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Since Kaliyan seems to have begun to assess the space-based options for the inevitable full frontal assault, Ankat begins to examine the resources he will have access to when off-moth.

He's specifically trying to determine the following:

- If anyone besides him possesses a personal sidearm of any sort
- If there are any small arms in the Kel surplus we have, especially concealable ones
- Which members of the crew have received sufficient training that they're more likely to hit the enemy than the friendlies, if trusted with a sidearm
- If the cargo-hold has sufficient space to set up a temporary firing range

From what Ankat has determined of the crew, he has little confidence in anyone other than Kaliyan when things go sideways (and he's known moth Kel to get behind on maintaining their certifications for small arms). Nonetheless, he'll go around the ship, asking persons to describe any combat training/experience they possess. [If the answer is no, no particular need to reply, unless you think the RP will be fun]

Lastly, he'll request introductory marksmanship training materials from the grid to familiarize himself with how one brings up to speed a bunch of ~~nerds who decided for SOME reason to join a dangerous and volatile rebellion~~ valued members of the crew .

[There are enough invariant handguns on the Wasp for everyone to have one, and a limited supply of ammo. In theory the matter printer can produce more, but given the printer's known issues, he probably wants to save that for a last resort. If the Nirai station's security is lax, you may not have too much difficulty getting weapons past whatever scanners they have.]

[EDIT: You can have a small firing range, but it won't do anything fancy with moving/pop-up targets &c.]

Edited 2017-07-09 23:36 (UTC)

Ankat ensures the weapons and ammunition are locked up safely (preferably with a mechanical lock, assuming there are appropriate lockers in the hold or gunnery stations); it'll at least stop that cadet (can't be into his second decade) from getting his hands on one and shooting himself in the foot.

With the permission of Kaliyan, he partitions off a corner of the cargo-bay and converts it into a makeshift firing range

[While his impromptu felting needle lockpicks are working fine, Mikodez won’t be bothering with the lock or make any attempts at secreting a gun away for himself. He dropped one of his precious mobile bugs into the gunnery room to monitor what goes in and out, and that’s enough for him - his even more slapdash felting needle slingshot has already murdered a pillow.

He’ll be meekly attentive in front of Ankat, if any basic training lessons take place, but avoid demonstrating the proficiency that netted him his score in Weapons class at Shuos Academy.]

[Makes sense :)]

Re: Ankat's Academy

pengwern - 2017-07-11 02:57 (UTC) - Expand

[Sasha is the kind of person who would routinely carry a personal weapon (knife, at a guess) if she didn't think that would get her arrested. She's also the kind of person who would have gotten REALLY INTO marksmanship at some point in her teens, though she fell out of the habit when she moved offplanet. And she's in pretty good shape. But she's tiny, twitchy, and has serious issues with authority figures.]

Ankat nods through this explanation; he suggests that she should, at the least, refamiliarize herself with handgun maintenance and usage, and tells her that sparring groups will meet in the gym.

Sasha works through the pistol safety checks methodically. As she expected from reading the manual, this isn't quite the model she's used to-- a few hundred years will do that-- but invariant tech varies slowly, and the differences are largely cosmetic.

Sasha used to be pretty good at this. She used, if she's being perfectly honest with herself, to be inconsistently good at this. She wonders if she can measure that effect.

Sasha plans out a series of five-round groups, focuses, then deliberately lets herself freak out: Ankat's watching, Kel talk to other Kel, if she tests like an idiot braggart her life will potentially literally be over. Focus back through the stories-- the doe came from the north, the wolf came from the south, east and west and earth and sky make six points to roll the die¹-- and fire.

When all is said and done, the spread on that first group is 0.623 of what Sasha manages on the next-best group. Not a statistically reliable measurement, but lucky Sasha is almost twice as good as her everyday self, it seems. She's not sure that was worth subjecting herself to that pitch of self-generated embarrassment, but then again, this isn't life and death, yet.

[¹ Sasha's imagined lucky die is an octahedron (d8), not a cube. I know we were all worried about that.]

Edited 2017-07-11 13:41 (UTC)

"Well shot," he says, an inscrutable expression on his face. "But your stance is too rigid, and you're pulling the trigger much too quickly. Work on moving the barrel less when you pull the trigger, and practice dry-firing to eliminate your flinch reflex."

Internally, he's surprised to see how well she did (from his assessment of her technique), but worries about her ability to maintain accuracy under pressure.

Re: Ankat's Academy: Sasha at the range

zuhrovet - 2017-07-13 11:24 (UTC) - Expand

"Combat training?" Alaric says when asked. "Well, I know a very great deal about combat. It would be exceptionally silly to go out into the great wide universe to examine exotic technologies if I didn't know anything about how they might be applied for defensive purposes. So of course military history and theory were on the required courses. I could tell you any number of things about the many and often terrible ways that exist to kill people."

"With that said, however, I will admit that the practical training was not as thorough as that received by those who majored in such things over at the College of War and Nightmare. There was a self-defense and P.E. component to my education, which I definitely paid attention to and only skipped on occasion. I'd like to think I got pretty handy with a sword, especially by the standards of my department."

[*DIES*]

"Before you go any further; when you say sword, you mean the exotic?"
The screaming inside Ankat's head has not stopped since Alaric began to talk.
Please, please, please do not tell me this civvie joined an active rebellion knowing how to wave a fucking sharpened metal stick at someone who tries to murder him.

"Yes, I supposed you would call it that," Alaric said. He flourishes his coat back to reveal a scabbard, one much smaller than the blade that he pulls from it. It looks like a fairly standard single-handed, two-edged fencing sword, somewhere between a rapier and saber, with a plain and simple hilt. The blade is rather less standard, in that while it has the general outlined shape of one, it is not so much black as void-colored. There is a faint whisper of air as he moves it about.

"You would not believe the amount of trouble I went to in forging this," Alaric commented. "You have to be very careful about making sure it won't conflict with foreign calendars, otherwise the whole thing could implode."

Re: Ankat's Academy

talifabian - 2017-07-11 01:37 (UTC) - Expand

Re: Ankat's Academy

slybrarian - 2017-07-11 02:05 (UTC) - Expand

Re: Ankat's Academy

talifabian - 2017-07-11 04:02 (UTC) - Expand

"Hang on," says Sasha. "What are you actually GOOD at? Because you sound like me talking about Junior Mining Engineers, and they didn't shove me on this moth to blow dinky holes in hillsides."

"I'm good at many things!" Alaric protested. "Engineering support, especially for problems stemming from moving between calendrical time periods. Heresy. Sabotage. Especially explosive or heretical sabotage - ah, the look on that Vidona's face when he tried to fold me in half. I wish I could have stayed and taken a picture, but I had to run to catch a ship off-world."

Sulen's taken regular self-defense classes over the last decade ever since getting a concussion and a broken arm from a particularly desperate suspect, but they've never learned how to use any weapons, and would deeply appreciate any lessons Ankat might have time for.

"It's not really something they teach at Rahal Academy. We let- they let the Vidona do the shooting."

Iawa takes a step back. "I hope nobody's going to leave the shooting to me. I did study with the Vidona, but while I understand the ethical inconsistency of refusing to lift a weapon in one's own defense and instead permitting others to incur the danger both of physical and moral injury on one's own behalf, nevertheless..."

They keep rambling until someone interrupts them. Their point seems to be that they never learned to shoot, feel as though they probably should but are not very motivated to do so, and know how to handle a knife but not in a combat or self-defense context.

[i.e. another character could persuade Iawa to learn self-defense by talking sternly to them about duty, but honestly their best weapon is verbal tangent.]

Ankat raises an eyebrow. A pacifist? "Your beliefs, firmly held as they may be, won't stop anyone from trying to kill you if things go fox-shaped. Fighting an armed guard with your bare hands won't get you far, but it's better than nothing. I will not .... force you to learn to shoot, but report to the gym for sparring practice tomorrow."

Might have to assign a minder to that one when we get off-moth

Re: Ankat's Academy

vass - 2017-07-11 03:58 (UTC) - Expand

Ankat nods. "I'll set up firearms training tomorrow from the common room; I can't promise you'll be any good in a week, but I should trust you not to shoot yourself in the foot by the time we arrive at the Nirai station. If you'd like to brush up on your close quarters, report to the gym Kaliyan's set up for sparring."

[Istradez can handle a handgun and has basic self-defense training. I imagine him fighting somewhat like Peggy Carter: ie, grab the nearest stapler and hit the opponent until they're distracted or unconscious enough that he can get away. He has a chance of getting himself out of a lot of scrapes, but probably not anyone else.]

"Report to the common room tomorrow; I'll check to make sure you're capable of treating a gun properly, then head to the range to see if you can hit something. Sparring practice in the gym."

Ashari somehow manages to lounge standing up. Their hair is pinned up in an elaborate style with six long hair pins. "Hm. Guns... Truth be told prefer sharp objects. You know... Things like knives. Or needles. And other things, I guess.." They trail off, and lightly adjust their already perfect hair, and the light glints off the pins.. "Anyways, my aim's pretty good with those, but it's a hobby, you know.. Guns aren't my forte, I must admit. It's been years since I've handled one. I am pretty decent with a bow, if that's what you're asking."

[They say "years" but it's been at least a decade since Ashari's had to shoot anyone or handle a gun. The knives and sharp things are very much not a hobby and is definitely their forte, along with poisons. Their hand to hand combat experience is mostly stuff on how to get out of holds, dodge, deflect, and block, and also things that come with close knife combat.. They're messing with Ankat here to gauge his reactions and are just having a little fun.]

Edited 2017-07-10 19:31 (UTC)

Ankat's had enough experience with the Andan that he shifts uncomfortably when Ashari's hand begins messing with her hair pins, but the expression on his face is a good bit relieved.

"Frankly, my job is much easier if you have any self-defense training, sir. As for the bow, I'll be sure to retrieve one from the matter printer for you," he manages to say with a straight face. "If you've more experience with close-quarters fighting though, I'll make sure to set up a few sparring groups."

"Sparring groups would be lovely, but getting a decent bow out of the printer's going to be a lot harder." They give an exaggerated sigh. "Just put me in the same group as Sulen and, uh, Avrayen. Please. Or if you don't, do keep an eye on Avrayen. We can't have children getting hurt on our watch, can we?"

[Avrayen is Mikodez's fake name, I think.]

"I went through Shuos Academy. But not, uh, the assassin track." Yehan reveals a small personal sidearm--standard Shuos issue, which she'd stolen on her way out, though she decides to leave that implied rather than stated. "I'm a decent shot." Understatement--she's fairly skilled at precision shooting and sniping, or at least she had been in her early twenties when she'd been in practice, before starting her desk job. The problems come when you put her into a chaotic situation with people doing things rapidly and usually shouting at each other. She supposes her team should probably know that sooner rather than later. "I'm just a little...skittish sometimes."

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