Paramo Riconquista: Plot Role Info

[powersthatbe]

If you are not a plot infiltrator or someone with IC reasons to share knowledge available to plot infiltrators, please do not read the comments of this post.

If you ARE a plot infiltrator, please comment under your toplevel to let us know you've read it; please also pop over here to announce your plotroleishness to the game at large. We prefer that you do any confidential plotting with other plot-important folks in the comments here, rather than on plurk, and please comment no later than July 27th, August 5th, August 15th, & August 24th with a brief (as brief as 1 sentence; as long as you like) summary of your activity during the week & plans for next week. These comments will help the mods shape mingles and plot events to keep the story dynamic and player actions important to the outcome. Likewise, comment at any time with any questions you may have, and a mod will get back to you within 36 hours at the outside.

Comments

Xunhuo Illusionist/Thalassian Spy - Yakumo

[powersthatbe]

DO NOT ANNOUNCE ON THE INFO POST THAT YOU ARE THE SPY.

Trained by the Akuryu in illusions, but never swearing to their ways, you are a strange, withdrawn ascetic whose practice of illusion magic blurs the line between the real and imaginary for both you and those around you. Vital to the secrecy of this mission, you have many secrets…

...Such as the fact that you’re a mermaid in disguise, who answers to the tyrannical Empress of the Deeps. Make no mistake, this secretive mermaid is a heartless, treacherous villain, bent on confusion and mayhem - like delivering the wrong shipments to the wrong crews.

Thread Expectation: three threads / fifteen comments per mingle

Check-In Expectation: Threads causing chaos between factions; threads where your altered perceptions get you in trouble; threads where you knowingly interact with another mermaid.

Privileged Information: That you’re a mermaid, obviously. You are along on this mission because your illusions can keep your disguises convincing, hide your accents, and silence explosions - but you were placed in En Zhenming a decade ago at the command of your Dread Empress in Thalassia. You hide how vulnerable your illusions make you, but the fact that you tend to take everything literally sometimes trips up your ability to convincingly mimic speech - you make people say some very odd things at times.

Outlook: Your mixture of mermaid shapeshifting magic and Akuryu illusions truly has clouded your mind. While you can appear as you like, you also tend to accept things you see and hear at face value, extremely literally. This makes you appear mad to most humans and most mermaids.

Goals: Your mission is to prevent any human nation from achieving naval supremacy. Paramo’s navy is superior to En Zhenming’s, so you do want the Xunhuo mission to succeed - but you want it to be as messy as possible and prevent a clean victory. If you learn of the presence or activity of the Rebel mermaids, thwarting and exposing them will become your top priority.

Skill: Shifting Echoes. You have perfect auditory illusions. Whether or not you can see your target, if you’re within earshot, you can enact both auditory and visual illusions. You can silence noises, up to noises of cannon, gunfire, or explosions; can perfectly mimic speech; or alter the words people seem to say in real time. However, while you are doing this, you can neither see nor hear anything save the illusions your produce. You may use visual illusions and Siren Song simultaneously, but while using Siren Song, the only sound you may alter with auditory illusions is the Song itself. (You start this Jaunt with Mermaid Icon Transformation, Illusionary Magic, and Siren Song II, but to keep them post-Jaunt, you must acquire proofs for them normally; they do not count as Plot Role Skills for you.)

[cloudpotter]

i love that this is Yakumo's second disguised role with an undying loyalty to a queen

With the goal of preventing any fleet from gaining supremacy, is that because of deeper reasons like stronger fleets = potential trouble for the Empress?

pretend this is the mod account

[fridgeninja]

A fleet strong enough to control both sides of the ocean can exert control over the (surface) of the deep sea, which is Thalassia's "ceiling", and that's what she wants to avoid. No one nation should rule the waves, and they should be looking to each other for trouble, not to her.

[cloudpotter]

Sweet.

I've got a few more questions too! Just wanna make sure I get this all down right.

1 - So, he's a mermaid in disguise as a human? With the mermaid information given in Shoals, the mermaids are only able to have legs for a few minutes at a time - so how is he going about that? Is he constantly a space cadet because he's always trying to project an illusion of being Very Human Thank You, or is he just able to keep up a human form for longer than other mermaids? Does he need to return to the water at any point?

2 - How well-known is his training with the Akuryu, and how much about his magical capabilities are the Captain and other crew aware of? Is it a situation of they know full well what the details of his illusion magic are (eg the full extent of the Shifting Echoes skill) and so the crew is already wary of him, or is it more "the Captain got saddled with him for his disguises and ability to silence loud noises, and his crew just have to deal with that" (eg they only expect the limits of the Illusionary Magic skill)?

3 - Since he was already placed in En Zhenming a decade ago, how much about the rebels' activity from four years ago will he know? Will he know details and descriptions about any of them, or more of a "any groups of mermaids and pirates is probably a rebel group" general thing?

4 - If/when he does find Rebel mermaids, how does exposure work? does he just stick his head in the water and yell for a while (Mostly just to get an idea of how he's working. I assume any actual cases of exposure OOC-wise are a "ping a mod" situation?)

[fridgeninja]

1- So with practice they can get up to a couple hours at a time and only need a break of a couple minutes to 'catch their breath' between transformations. It's tiring to constantly go in and out, but doable. He does need to be in very high humidity locations and preferably immersed in water to do things like sleep; that's where illusions mostly come in.

2- His training with the Akuryu is known, and it's known that he is in ways better than the Akuryu, but not necessarily all the details. They only know for sure about the disguises and silencing. How much he chooses to share past that is your call.

3- So, he'lkl know about the BANDO Rebels from four years ago, but not about the Crownbreaker school. Any mixed group of mermaids & humans is either a group of the Dread Empress's special agents, who should know the same passwords and countersigns he does, or they're rebels.

4- he would have to swim out to the Deep Blue to sing a warning down to Thalassia, but if he can't sneak away for a day to do that, he should try to get them in trouble locally. definitely ping a mod with any further questions!

[cloudpotter]

Awesome, thank you!

[cloudpotter]

With the water/humidity for sleeping - is any water fine, or does it have to be salt-based? (Or to put it in other words, did this guy definitely demand a few barrels of water be allocated to him for his personal and private use during this mission?)

Also, is there one naming convention over another that I should be going with for him?

[fridgeninja]

Depends on his fish type! Some eels, salmon, and sturgeon can get along in freshwater just fine; most need saltwater.

His human alias is probably either Chinese or Japanese (or Okinawan or Korean).

[cloudpotter]

Thank you! One more question - is this guy responsible for the cargo swap that happened? Or was that done by a Rebel group? Or another group altogether?

there are a lot of groups and cargo shenanigans ahaha

[fridgeninja]

That was you, yep.

[cloudpotter]

EXCELLENT

[helborn]

So this will go well and not be awkward afterwards.

[cloudpotter]

so well. I can't wait!

[rebellioninbloom]

So what's he trying to enable Chun into this time? XD

[cloudpotter]

please go find out if kinji is also assigned to this mission and if not then potentially just stab him and get him out of lian's freakin way

[cloudpotter]

in other words:

Kinji's been popping up and trying to get friendly with Lian, and pulled a ninja smoke bomb move in front of him. Lian can't figure out if this means Kinji has been sent in some relation to their mission, or if he's just a nuisance who keeps following Lian around. (If he is a nuisance following Lian around, then surely he's definitely a threat to exposing their intentions prematurely because Lian can't go casting illusions on people's crew and stock when there's a ninja stalking him, right Chun? Please go remove his problem for him.)

[rebellioninbloom]

Haha, she can take a stab at seeing what's up...

for reference

[cloudpotter]

because i saw matt's done it for casper and it's a convenient idea

Alias name Wu Lian. Placed in En Zhenming ten years ago, he's already had his awkward "this fork is a brush" stage and now knows pretty much how most human things work... except for social interactions, which even in merform he's not very good at. He never got the hang of colloquialisms or slang, and despite being a master of deception himself he often forgets to look for it in others. He's aiding in the mission, but wants it to go messily enough that Xunhuo doesn't get off easily. Ideally, the navy needs to gtfo of Thalassian waters.

Real name Ju-Long, blue dragon icon. He can't swim very fast on his own owing to his icon being a sea slug, but is capable of blending in when near the water surface due to his natural countershading. And for everything else, there's illusion magic or Song. Failing either of those - if he's had access to siphonophores such as the Portuguese man o' war and chowed down, he can utilize the venom from their nematocysts and use it as his own. Yakumo's spirit companion Drago takes the form of a stingray during the Jaunt, and if need be Ju-Long can grab hold and let the stingray swim him out.

If anything seems out of place, it can be adjusted!

Week 1 Check-In

[cloudpotter]

This week, Lian has mostly been inconveniencing people and making sure that nothing goes the way the Captain wants it to. He was not so helpful with info gathering and urged Chun to disregard the Captain's wishes. He also was seen by and subsequently hypnotized Kinji at the docks.

He's had some interaction with Casper, and with a lot of Travelers with icons, but no knowing interactions with mermaids yet. In general, he's just been unnerving people.

Next mingle, Lian will be deliberately trying to find where their cargo's gone because they do actually need it back, and he'd like to know who the weapons belong to (if they can be incited to join in the mess he's hoping the Captain's mission will become). I'm thinking potentially disguising as a crew member of each ship, to go in and check manually? It'd probably take the full week to peek in at all of them.

Re: Week 1 Check-In

[cloudpotter]

--or! Rather, disguise someone else from the Xunhuo side and let them go into the ships and poke around.

Re: Week 1 Check-In

[powersthatare]

Poking about next week!

Week 2

[cloudpotter]

ahahahahaha yes I did not forget to do this at all

Lian and the Captain are putting into action a plan to have Xunhuo crew, disguised as other crews, sneak into other ships to check their cargo manually. I've never tried to round people up for plotting like that before, so I am struggling a bit in trying to get it off the ground!

Essentially, Lian is happy to have even the worst actor in their crew sneak onboard another ship in disguise. His goal in this exercise is to locate the cargo; the Captain can be the one to deal with whatever messy fallout happens if his sailors get caught.

As noticed, Lian is suspicious of Kinji and is now intent on having him be killed one way or another. If Chun He doesn't manage it, then he'll probably drown Kinji himself or, if he catches wind that there's a Stricken in the water, Lian will potentially let that take care of Kinji for him. Either which way, Kinji's in trouble in Week 3.

I'm also trying to give Teisuu enough to work with in this thread so that he can report back to Catia about the illusionist on this ship.

Lian and Cassandra are also having their first thread together here, which so far is benign! We're not planning on having them get into anything until week 3.

I did get a late start on week 2 because I was working so much, but I should be around for much more of the upcoming week! At the moment, I just don't quite know if we've done enough plotting for the shipfiltrations or if there's a way that it needs to be stirred up a bit more.

Re: Week 2

[helborn]

Week 3 Check-In

[cloudpotter]

Thought I'd get it done early, before I disappear to work for the day! Lian's check-in for this week mostly consists of the threads in the group PP.

This week, Lian and Kaimana went for a lovely firework-lit swim under the cover of illusions. Both of them are known to the other as Sirens, and Lian is 100% taking advantage of Kaimana's kind and naive nature to wriggle his way into learning more about the rebels.

Lian and Cassandra identified each-other as spies for the Empress, and Lian let her know that he wouldn't have been looking for mermaids if she hadn't spoken to him in Week 2. So, you know; thanks for the tip. Lian believes that he has an ally sent by the Empress, and will collaborate with her to deal with the rebels present.

Whatever Lian and Cassandra plan goes a little off-script when Kinji shows up to the Xunhuo ship. Maintaining visibility to anyone on the docks, Kinji took Lian on a walk to the end of the docks; then, as far as anyone saw, Lian was violently grappled and the two of them fell into the water. Lian broke the surface not too long after, gasping for breath - and is torn between warning the sailors that there's a monster lurking beneath their ships, half-man and half-fish, who snatched Kinji and tore him to pieces; or choosing to keep it mum, and if anyone asks, tell them that he didn't see what took Kinji because he was too busy getting away from it himself.

(Altering people to the Stricken would, Lian thinks, start a hunt for Kaimana and other merfolk. It'd be messy, and it might not actually deal with them them so much as it would scare them off. Keeping quiet about it, Lian's chances of being exposed to the rebel group remain intact; giving him a better chance of being able to actually dismantle them.)

Week 4 Check-In

[cloudpotter]

he ded