GROUP 3: SO I OPEN MY DOOR TO MY ENEMIES—

[dipolar]

WHO? group three, see below links.
WHAT? hrhr: retreat missions.
WHEN? february 9th, you're here forever.
ANYTHING ELSE? planning and submissions.

CHARACTERS WILL ENCOUNTER THESE OBSTACLES:

—Locating the base and arriving without interference by the Turks or the Regency.
—Getting at least one person past the soldiers and into the base.
—Scouting the base and locating Atatürk without causing an incident.
—Handling soldiers who might interfere with attempts to reach Atatürk.
—Combating any Regency soldiers assigned undercover to the Turkish side.
—If anyone is captured by Turkish or Regency soldiers, you'll have to stage a rescue.
—Successfully gaining an audience with Atatürk and acquiring amnesty.
—Returning to Lone Pine in one piece.

RAISING THE DEAD AND SCOUTING, 18/30
yoshitsugu otani, dorian pavus, jon snow, jeyne westerling, sebastian michaelis, ashitaka, hei, noctis lucis caelum, chiron

"Raising the dead and scouting goes well, if not smoothly. You have to dodge enemy combatants the whole way, and it's a little hard to get the intel and supplies you need when you're also trying not to get shot. Somehow, you manage it! Probably through the power of positive thinking. And murder."

—chiron and hei do an initial scout to map out the turkish base and find entry points
—hei stresses that everyone stays with at least one other person so as to not get separated/held hostage
—yoshitsugu uses his spell to raise the dead for an hour to gather information about the turkish base/plans
—yoshitsugu experiences convulsions as a result of using the spell and dorian will use his revival spell on him to help him recover
—entire group stops to plan out specific teams and what they’ll been doing, team a and b are born
—sebastian recounts the letters he found in the tunnels verbatim to the group, mostly sharing the atatürk part
—entire group decides that non-lethal action is to be taken, so they can easily discuss terms with atatürk without killing his men
—noctis and jeyne act as contacts between their separate teams to keep information fresh and to relay important updates
—jon provides the bottom halves of turkish uniforms so their disguises can be put together; they steal the top halves from the dead soldiers yoshitsugu has raised because we're here to demean literally everybody

COMBAT WITH THE REGENCY, 13/30
hei, noctis lucis caelum, chiron, sebastian michaelis, ashitaka

"Combat is where things get difficult. While nobody dies, a few characters are seriously injured. You can decide who and how. Likewise, if you have anybody due for a kidnapping, now would be a good time. But, essentially, this is a close call. You lose ground to the enemy, some ANZAC soldiers might get caught in the crossfire, some precious resources may be lost! Your choice, but something goes to shit."

—chiron using magical detection to weed out the regency agents and the entirety of team b engages the three regency soldiers in combat
—hei uses his ability to shock memory out of the people who may have spotted them using their powers, with the exception of regency soldiers
—noctis will be using warp-strike takedowns to reduce their chances of detection, as they're near-silent and an instantaneous skill
—ashitaka gets kidnapped by the first of the undercover regency agents somewhere in the middle of this because he's literally and figuratively cursed, leaving them down a group member
—sebastian leaves team b and joins team a to fill ashitaka’s empty diplomat position, because he can do anything and likes to show off
—yoshitsugu avoids his kidnapping somewhere in the middle of this, with chiron on rescue duty to facedown the second undercover regency agent
—dorian will use blood magic in a desperate attempt to save himself from capture from the third undercover regency agent

ACTUAL DIPLOMACY, 16/30
yoshitsugu otani, dorian pavus, jon snow, jeyne westerling, sebastian michaelis

"Actual diplomacy is terse, if only because it feels difficult to get a foothold. Atatürk gives little away, and is very quiet and cautious in his delegations. He doesn't fill you with confidence. But in the end, he does come around, admitting to seeing your point. He'll do what he can to call a cease fire."

—team b attempts to come to an agreement and work things out with atatürk
—yoshitsugu attempts to talk atatürk down from a strategical point of view, "there's no sense in attacking when your enemy is already retreating"
—jeyne uses the locket to take the stance of women missing their husbands and lovers, as well as their children having no fathers; she's especially good at calming people when tempers run hot, as well as appealing on more personal levels
—jon speaks with atatürk on a personal level: "no more men have to die - i know you've watched your countrymen fall, i know everyone values bravery, we do too, but these deaths mean less and less when no one is fighting anymore”
—dorian has a gift for politics and has sat in on war counsels and engaged in political debates, making him approach this from a political angle
—if things start going badly, yoshitsugu will use his guilt spell to sway atatürk to their side of the discussion

Comments

[hakanai]

"A split throat won't matter... if the spell works as it says," Yoshitsugu says, closing his eyes for a moment. "It will be their spirit alone that is summoned, but the spirit of the nearest and most recently killed living being, specifically. For an hour at most."

Hopefully it should take nowhere near that amount of time; considering the circumstances it would be risky to spend more than ten minutes or so doing this. There's no way to be certain that what they'll learn will be hugely useful, after all.

But quietly, Yoshitsugu feels that it probably will be. The flow has pulled him towards this.

"No specified time on how long it will leave me unable to fight. All it notes is 'liable to send caster into convulsive fits' and nothing else. Nothing I haven't gone through before."

i thought other people were tagging this, SO THIS IS SO LATE FORGIVE ME

[dipolar]

A nod at Jon's inquiries, in agreement.

"You'll have to be able to converse with Ataturk after you're through. Seizures like that can leave people incapacitated and we don't have any good healers here, but we need all of the diplomats we can spare." It seems the man's a stubborn one, but humans always are when it comes to pride and war.

"If you think you can risk this, then do it. Jon and I can take care of the questioning, if the others will take care of you."

[northerndragon]

He wishes, not for the first time, that COST had a maester. Aemon Targaryen would never have been fit for this task, his frailty and blindness would have made it impossible for him in spite of the great help his healing abilities would have offered, but Wolkan... is gentle, and might have been fit for it, or might have been hurt already.

It doesn't do to dwell on it.

"An hour should be more than enough. -- The spirit can't attack us, can it?" He frowns, presses his lips together, and continues, "I suppose we'll find out."

What kind of dead man are they raising? It sounds like a ghost... not like a wight, and not like Jon himself, whose resurrection was more like recovery from a brief, severe illness.

[hakanai]

"As I said, convulsions are familiar for me and I know my body... and the BCE will quicken my healing. There's no guarantee it won't be worse than that, of course, but the payoff is worth that risk."

He shrugs lightly, though it's not a reckless or uncaring gesture. Yoshitsugu considers this a strategically sound plan and is quite prepared to deal with whatever its flow brings along. That's that. Staying safe for diplomacy is all well and good but if they can't get there in first place there is no chance of success. Merely lacking Yoshitsugu's presence at the meeting only lowers it.

"As for the spirit, I've had experience with ghosts recently in a seperate assigned mission... they could only harm myself and my partner when we thought they could. Without that belief? Nothing. It may not be so here, but the book suggests the risk is only to myself."

Crossing his arms, the samurai goes over the words of the spell in his head carefully in silence before bowing his head and looking away.

Not once in his life has he been bothered about risking himself. The acceptance of an early death and ability to peek at the flow, at fate, ensured that.

"Pick a body and I'll begin."

[dipolar]

"If it attacks us, I'll take care of it." He's torn at spirits before, but even he's lacking understanding of his own abilities... but they'll enable him to defend his team against any angry ghosts, that's for sure. "I can touch them."

A nod to Jon.

"Jon and I can haul one over. Then we'll be ready for the spell." Starting his way forward to a body half-buried and bogged down by muck, needing a hand with the the half-rotted thing that weighs far more than it did alive. "You have that kind of thing memorized? I'd start as soon as we've got this thing out of here."

Kneeling, Hei digs fingers into the earth surrounding the body's shoulder and bicep, careful not to damage it more than he has to.