Talk:Exalted: Silence

Military Strategy

• First things first: Our objective is to eject the Shogunate from the Hundred Kingdoms.

• Sub-objective: Destroy the enemy's force until ours is superior.
• Sub-objective: Expand our own until the enemy's is inferior.

• The enemy has:

• 10,000 troops
• 1,000 suits of power armour
• 20 warstriders
• 15 artillery pieces
• 15 skiffs
• 12 cruisers
• 3 battleships
• Flying Fortress
• Full Solar Circle (2 chicks, avg appearance 3.5)

• The enemy's actions so far:

• Sent a ship to the city, which was destroyed by the Tower's defences.
• Sent a ship under white flag to the city, and delivered an ultimatum with a deadline of one month.
• Began conquering the Hundred Kingdoms one-by-one.
• Conclusion: They are not confident that they can attack the city with their present force while it is defended by the Tower. They are conquering the Hundred Kingdoms to mass greater force to overwhelm us. As only the city is defended by the Tower, it is more important to turn the HKs against the Shogunate (weakening their ability to operate) than towards us, as kingdoms openly declaring for us could be flattened. However, it is probably possible to do both at once.

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• The City is a large city but is not yet militarised. It is additionally defended by the Tower and its gargoyles.

• Calacthchan is the most capable 'hard' social character and is most effective in rallying and maintaining support. He is a mediocre combatant for a Solar, though he has a perfect defence. He has basic competence at military command.

• Calamity is the only combat monster. She is also an effective leader, but more importantly is the only superhuman general.

• Daimyo is the primary 'soft' social and a talented bureaucrat who can accelerate our preparations. Perhaps more usefully, he is a master of disguise and can stymie the organisation of others. He is a mediocre combatant.

• Hope is a capable ambush fighter and a good scout. She can cloak small groups, maintain a high land speed indefinitely, and doesn't need to rest. She is the group's only ranged combatant outside of Lao and his sorcery.

• When loaded up with appearance augmentations and stealth enhancement, she can cloak an additional 9 people besides for her. As long as nobody can pierce Optical Shroud there that should be enough stealth if nobody actively tries to sabotage it.
• Optical Shroud protects against sight (but not essence sight/other weird sight modes) and hearing, but can be pierced by superhuman smell. Try to avoid dogs, please.
• It also only makes you invisible if you move less than 4 yards a second. Probably not too important, but it's there.
• Demons can dematerialize and thus don't have to be cloaked, since anything that can detect a dematerialized demon (Essence Sight) can also detect a cloaked one.

• Lao needs to know exactly what kinds of demons people want. He can summon one demon a day, provided he dedicated dusk to midnight of each night to the summoning. That means seven more demons before we leave, and possibly a few more if we pause each night.

• Currently summoned: luminata (tentacle deer, good specops)
• Possible demons: Blood Apes (general soldiers), Baidak (bodyguards and soldiers, need input from others), Teakettle Courtiers (poison), Tomescu (lots of arms, heavy military, but kinda risky in the long-term), Bisclavarets (assassins and shapeshifters), gethin (steal identities and spy), radeken (absorb and weaponize weather, good for battle), tinsiana (scorpion-men, good warriors), anhules (spiders, good assassins), metody (acid-elementals, good for damaging stuff). Peronelle might be good for armour, but not necessary. - BM
• Aside from demons, Lao's shapeshifting means that he can get aboard ships and run some interference, particularly if he can hunt and eat a Shogunate-native soldier (or if one of his current human forms is sufficient for that). He has some Manipulation charms for that purpose, as well as spirit-sight to see dematerialized spies (though no actual Essence Sight yet). Last but not least, sorcery gives him some firepower.

• Varil is a secondary combatant and a skilled general, however his main skill is in controlling our magitech and that of others.

Defending the City

• The city is well-fortified against mortal soldiers, so a direct attack will involve mass and momentum, along with skyships and warstriders An attempt on the city is going to be based on overwhelming the defenses with raw force.
• The alternative is a commando raid of their own. Only some PCs have surprise awareness charms.
• Note that the city's food stores are anaemic.

Commando Raiding the Fort

• The Objective: To damage and disrupt the Shogunate's fighting power in the region

• Highest priority is their magitech force multipliers - artillery, airships, power armour
• We take over one of the big airships and turn its guns on the fort if we want to destroy it, that's the quickest way to do so. Preferable the flagship.
• I disagree. The greatest threats are the enemy Solars. I suggest infiltrating the camp in disguise and making sure they get sent off on a wild goose chase - either somewhere they won't get in the way, or, preferably, into an ambush where we can jump them. --Rask 14:23, 11 April 2010 (UTC)
• If we do take over the flagship, we should fly away with it while shooting at pursuers. This plan has a pre-packaged exit strategy. Peel 14:30, 11 April 2010 (UTC)

• Alternate Objective: take over the army for ourselves. Tentative plan as follows.

• Remove enemy Solars from premises through deception or distraction.
• Spread rumours conductive to our plan in the camp, while working under disguise.
• Make it taboo to point out that god-king Cal is actually the enemy.
• Use emotion-affecting Charms to make army susceptible to the next part of plan.
• Cal shows up and explains to the troops why they should respect and worship him. Liberal use of brainwashing Charms is advised.--Rask 14:23, 11 April 2010 (UTC)

• Alternate Approach: Get a man (Daimyo) inside to spread some disinformation beforehand.

• Create institutional belief: 'The tower has been temporarily disabled. It must be immediately attacked by the fleet to capitalise on this.'

• Yet Another Alternate Approach: Sneak inside and apply poison to food and water supplies.

• Crazy plan of the Hour: Sorcery-capturing cords + anti-army spells.

*A sorcery-capturing cord capable of holding Terrestrial Circle Sorcery is artifact 3 (only requires a minimum 3 in Craft/Lore/Occult) and should be reasonably easy to build via our craftsmen. It's "only" resources 4 to construct one as well.

*Anyone can use a Sorcery-capturing cord if they're willing to pay the willpower.

*It should not be impossible for everyone to carry one and unleash it on the enemy army, or for someone to carry several. This should greatly clear out what numerical superiority exists at the fort.

*Then we swordfight/face-punch/arrow anyone important. --MJ12 Commando 10:45, 12 April 2010 (UTC)

Plan Calamity:
1: recon the fort and spread chaos
2: eliminate (however) the enemy solars
3: using Lao shape changing, Daimyo and Cal Social, Varil contacts, Hope Ninja and if necessary Calamity kill everything we take control of a skyship
4: we fly to the fortress ship, board it and take it over, then turn it's weapons on the fort
5: we fly it away, leaving demons and or socially disrupted crew to man the guns and escape on presummoned demons or the smaller faster skiff we used to approach.

Logistical Thoughts

• Get any alchemists to make Draughts of Blessed Respite-not only are they simple to make, reducing the need for sleep by 4 hours each day will give us some additional time to produce goods and demons and whatever. Although during the 4 hour half-sleep someone has all their pools halved, that's still enough for building low-quality crud.

Eliminating the Solars

• We have to operate under the assumption that they are superior in combat to us, with better equipment and training.
• Ergo, surprise attack. Hope can help, demons can assist by mobbing the weaker members.
• The Zenith and the Night are the most important kills.

Establishing Regional Support

• Cal and Daimyo travel to nearby kingdoms to engender regional pride (Cal) and the belief that the shogunate imperialists must be ejected (Daimyo). Peel 14:30, 11 April 2010 (UTC)

• Minors can be destroyed by the Shogunate's armies. They should be persuaded to send troops and supplies to the city so that we can liberate them later.
• Nations already subverted can be recovered with social firepower, or Calacthchanibans set up.
• Notable individuals (like unaligned DBs) should be entreated to support our cause.

• Lao's beastmen hordes and magical stockpiles, which he can go get when we have some time. He might need some PC help, as he's been gone for centuries. Still, viable beastmen and Genesis stuff will help.
• More fringe options, like gathering the Silver Pact or opening the Seal of Eight Divinities. Requires long-term planning and is for after the initial raid.

The Plan

• Initial Actions:

• Calacthchan rouses the city to patriotic and pious zeal, raising production and tax revenues. The upper classes specifically receive a dose of HSDD.
• Daimyo uses Speed The Wheels to get army-raising and city-fortifying on the go. While he's on-site, he is in charge of managing the projects with his Bureaucracy excellency.
• Calamity assists in both.
• Varil builds Hope some vats (1 week).