An Evil Overlord Is You!: RP Thread 1

[X] Great him warmly.
[X] Outline the plan of action for the day to him.
[X] Ask his advice: Names and characters of everyone important. Especially the Almighty Janitor types. Basically, briefed enough to not look like an idiot.

A Heroic Safe Mode? Yeah, you could build a charmupgrade for that. Should be pretty easy, I'd put it Gen 1 or maybe Gen 2, depending on how it's outlined. Bring it to the Mechanics thread for processing.

So, what happened in the General/advisor meeting?

Indeed. We need info on the state of the realm so our planners can get to work on a path to endgame. We do not want to just take things as they come. That strikes me as a recipe for defeat.

[X] Great him warmly.
[ ] Great him professional.
[X] Just oOutline the plan of action for the day to him.
[X] Ask his advice: Names and characters of everyone important. Especially the Almighty Janitor types. Basically, briefed enough to not look like an idiot.

“Rusty,” you nod, offering a tired smile at your old friend and retainer, “Glad to see you too.”

The man eyes your response, “Going to be one of those days?”

“Think so,” you reply, “I’ve called a meeting for everyone. Used the Ethereal Messenger spell. Way I figure things, if I don’t try and get my foot down now…”

He nods, “A wise decision milord, however…” he trails off.

You raise an eyebrow, and motion him to go on.

“Well if you were looking for a message of force, perhaps you should have used living messengers. A demonstration of authority,” he outlines.

You grimace, “Didn’t even think of that… Well I wouldn’t want to push to far anyway. I only gave them three hours.”

At that he gives a sharp nod, “In that case, it might have been the better call, gives a stronger sense of urgency, momentum. I’d recommend pressing any point or issue you have fast to keep up the flow of that.”

You sigh, and some of the tension eases from your shoulders, “This, Rusty, is why I’d be lost without you. Ok, keep up the pace and try to give off the vibe that I’ve got a plan… any names I should be worried about? I’m not just talking the big names, I know them well enough, I need to know the more… subtle… factors in play.”

“Rozenritz,” he lists off immediately, “You remember her? The aid to Chief Justice Dread?”

“The redhead?” you list off, recalling the girl. One of the few ‘squishies’ high up within the pseudo military force that is your legal system.

“Yes her. I recently acquired a dozer on her. Apparently she’s picked up a trick or two of the mind arts recently… make sure your wards are blocking out anything passive you don’t want known around her.”

Good to know. While you of course have numerous defenses against active probes against such magics, it is considerably harder to shield yourself from the view of there more passive disciplines. In truth it’s actually inefficient for you to shield yourself to that level as it makes operating wards or utilizing communication magic difficult.

“Anyone else?” you ask.

“Other then Mr. Ying being able to kill a man at fifty paces with a butterknife?” he lists off “No nothing worth note.”

“He’s up to fifty?” Mr. Ying was the not so subtle bodyguard of Chief Ambassador Electra Cade. A nice enough fellow if a tad to serious about his work, the last time you got him drunk you learned he knew a surprising amount about Ms. Cade’s bodily ‘enhancements’… beyond what any competent bodyguard would know anyway.

“Anything else I should know?” you ask.

“Defense Minster Iron’s is likely to push for you to make a gesture of offense. The man’s a blowhard, but honestly it might be the right move in this case. The Theer’s have been seen brushing at our boarder, and you know what they will do if they launch a raid.”

The Cassadance Thermic Union, a ‘Nation’ of barely coherent bandits and warlords, banded together under mutual protection pack, have about all the honesty and integrity one could expect of a consolidation of outlaws, exiles, and criminals. They make an excellent source of exotic materials, and information, but at the same time are about as regulated as a herd of cats, and have a well deserved ‘reputation’ for atrocity in any offensive action they take.

They also happen to be a close neighbor of you. Divided only by an (admittedly deep) river, and large artificial wall, that is electrified, guarded, and stationed with autocannons and warform golems.

Seriously, you’d think they’d get the point by now.

Still the sheer expanse of that boarder makes maintaining absolute impregnability near impossible, and due to the ease any given warlord can acquire a fodder army, breaches have happened in the past. Each time to devastating effect, given that region also happens to contain the majority of your fertile farmlands.

At the same time, assault the ‘Theer’s’ directly, and they will rise up and unify against you, as the name implies.

The question is if it’s the cost is worth finally getting them off your side…

Well, you’ll have to see old Ironside’s argument on things.

You probably have time for one more important question before you run risk of being overheard. Better make it count.

"What's the absolute worst thing I could do right now?"

Planning ahead... Mizuki, do we outclass the Thermic Union, and if so, by how much? Ideally, we'd co-opt their union - get their enlightened self-interested moves to all involve joining us - then letting a bunch "escape" and be an espionage organization.

You out power them militarily; it's only a marginal difference in raw numbers, but you kick the crap out of them in general unit quality and discipline, so you could roll over them with relative assurance.

The issues is how much it would cost you to do so, and if you can afford it.

What about a tactical strike? Grab their strategic assets, hold them by the balls and then alternate carrot and stick to get them to surrender?

Obviously we don't know for certain, but top of the head estimate.

From what you currently know, it's not really doable, or at least, not advisable. Not only would it spark a massive retaliation, but they're basically decentralized enough that it's hard to even identify the big names from the chaff

...and there is a lot of chaff.

In short to do general big time damage without actually crashing through, your going to ether need a insanely high grade covert force, or just crushing them all like bugs anyway.

Before we do anything, anything at all, we need information. Names, force sizes, general territories, anything that we know about the Theer needs to be catalogued, especially any information on movement patterns.

Most importantly, which nations are the 'Theers' currently buffering us from? It does us no good to take the land if it's next door to a powerful luddite nation that will immediately move the destroy the 'golem threat' on their border.

I don't quite think that's a problem. War-bands and raiders are heavily decentralized, if we smash them up enough that they won't mess with us then they should flee to surrounding nations. That should hold off any attacks long enough (Who would go to war while being attacked from the inside of there own country?) for us to fortify, which should further delay attacks.

But yeah, getting to know our neighbors would be wise.

If it's as heavily patrolled as our border is and they're not organized in retreat that's not likely to work. Also, terrain like desert could easily leave a particular direction to flee to far less attractive, thus leaving an irate Sultanate on our border with no other real concerns but us. For that matter, just because they're war-bands and raiders to us, that doesn't mean they are hostile to everyone. Chances are good they have better relations with at least one neighbor.

Gah... maybe the update should wait until I can whip up a crude map of some kind...

Edit: Also I really need a name for this place. If I don't get one within a few hours time, I'm just making something up, and so help me it will be as corny a as Doctor Freaking Doom.

Well, it looks like our plan for upping military power is definitely the right thing to do.

Our last question should be asking if there are any people who have been particularly vocal about disliking us.

Too limited. "What shouldn't we do" lets us steer ourselves away from the worst choices. The vocal nonsupporters will be vocal at the meeting, they'll be obvious, and he just pointed out the subtle ones.

I have posted this in the other thread, but I propose the name:

IRINA

Russian feminine name from the original Greek of Irene meaning 'peace'.

We are called 'peace' because that is what we bring to our people and to the lands under our rule. To those who are our friends and allies, they need not fear from us for we have no desires to bring wasteful destruction upon them when there are other more pressing matters to deal with.

However, for those who would stir up trouble, they would soon learn that we shall bring 'peace' to their land by utterly crushing not just their homes and families, but their will and capacity to ever bring war to our doorstep.

And so, 'peace' is our gift and curse.

"The Metalis Clockwork Kingdom." As the first thing that comes to mind. As for Questions.. "What do you think the most important thing for me to get right on is?"

Hm...evil strategy for the Theers: Try to draw them into a long war of attrition, the goal is not to conquer them but to make them lose a huge amount of fighting-age men. This will lead to a sharp drop in population in the medium term, which will make them less of a threat.

And that's good for us how? I'd like to keep our troops, thanks.

Well, Mizuki wrote that we have numerical parity and an edge in quality, so they should be losing troops faster than us. But you're right, that's more something of a reactive strategy.

Btw: do we have a razorwire equivalent?

I would have thought that 'Cybertron' would have been obvious as the name of our kingdom, being robot people and all (Maybe there's an upgrade for transforming?)

As for questions, ask some basic ones to get a better grasp on our current political/economic/military situation
E.g. What our are current military capacities? What our are major defenses against the Theer beyond the fortified wall?
What is our current relationship with surrounding nations? Can we expand on these relationships?
What is our current national income? What our are levels of infrastructure? At what level is our industrial capability?

How about 'Hekurore' , it means clock metal.

You are the tiny squared section off at the bottom (to the left of the island chain), the boarder you're currently dealing with is the upper one. light Green zones show farmable areas, dark green show deeply forested areas, blue=water, brown=mountains.