PLEROMA - a few days after the raid

[leicesters]

[Despite Claude's best efforts to shut his emotions out of this communion, it's impossible to fully avoid muted feelings of anger and bitterness leaking across the connection. Still, he addresses his thoughts in a calm, measured way, even if he's noticeably more downbeat than usual.]

Hiya. This is Claude, one of the new guys. I know most of us are still licking our wounds after what happened in Achamoth, but I wanted to discuss a few things.

What was the point of invading Achamoth, really? We attacked an enemy's stronghold, took back two of our own like we planned, sure-- but we lost two more in the process, and at least one smaller dragon lost its life trying to save us. And what else did we get out of it? A single prisoner? Some superficial damage to the city, which mostly would've just hurt civilians?

I don't want to act like war is just a game of numbers, when so many of you cared about the prisoners to go to these lengths for them, but strategically, the whole idea was insane. Personally, I was reassured a plan was being worked on, and that I just had to trust it was in hand. Sure, the big dragon that helped us was great, but it had to give its life for us. Both lives, even. And our escape route only came in the nick of time! If the forest dragons hadn't sympathised with our cause, we would have all been screwed.

If we mount any coordinated attacks in future, can we actually think about it at length? You know, plot it out from start to finish, try and account for as many variables as we can, not just talk about what enemies we might face and how they fight. And if we're going to walk into obvious traps, can we actually think about what the trap might be and how to mitigate it?

[He pauses. He's angry, if only because for a sect so supposedly dedicated to defending life, so many of them are too reckless about throwing lives away just to save a handful of others. Some casualties are inevitable in war, but these losses didn't have to be. That's what bothers him about all this more than anything.]

Anyway... I don't want to just gripe, so I also wanted to consider our long-term goals. I spoke to the dragon -- Estinien and the other thing? -- before the fighting started, and they made it sound like a direct assault on the Regent is nigh impossible. The Regent's corruption in that part of Horos is too powerful, the Citadel especially.

So, I think if we want to make them vulnerable at all, we have to figure out a way to purify the land. I don't know how yet, and the dragon wasn't sure either, but I want to believe it's possible. If you have any thoughts, I'd love to hear them.

Comments

[goldendeceiver]

[ A presence can be felt through the shards before Ernesto actually says anything in reply to what Claude is saying here, turning this over in his head how best to address this, because at the end of the day...

Claude isn't wrong. ]

You're asking a lot from a group that by and large doesn't have much military training, Chamo. The plan was always held together with duct tape and spit, and I'm sorry you were dragged into the whole mess when you didn't have any personal stakes. Most of us were willing to deal with the consequences of what might happen though, rather than risk those two dying.

[ His laugh is strained, but still out of place for the topic at hand. ]

Which might give you a better idea of the group you've found yourself in the middle of, but we've got the odds stacked against us in a pretty awful way too, and if we want to get anything done we have to take some equally awful gambles.

Not that I'm disagreeing with your game plan here, but it's a good idea to go into this planning session with a realistic idea of what you're working with.

[ And to get to the crux of what Claude really wants to talk about... ]

Not sure what you mean by purifying either. Most of the people of this land outside of Achamoth don't have much love for the Regent. Them having an oppressive grip on people's actions isn't the same as them having the heart and minds of the citizens of Horos.

[leicesters]

I'm not expecting military training from anyone, nor am I expecting more from numbers we don't have. I'm just asking for everyone to think things through. If anything, it's because we don't have the numbers the Regent does that I'm concerned we need to be more careful.

And when you say everyone involved considered the consequences -- did they really? If the entire group was wiped out, did they consider what that would mean for the Pleroma as a whole, or the fate of the worlds? I only came along myself because I wanted to avoid that outcome.

[As for the purifying talk...]

The dragon said the Regent marked Horos, long before they came along. It seems like it grants the Regent some literal, tangible power that meant the dragon couldn't just bulldoze into the Citadel through brute force. You know?

I don't know what kind of power we'd need to remove those stains on the land, which is why I'm asking for suggestions. I'm sure bolstering the resistance is one part of it, but there has to be more we can learn.

[goldendeceiver]

[ The "haaah" that comes out of his mouth is more of a sigh than it is a laugh. His tone still sounds friendly at least, but there's an edge of exhaustion to it. ]

Yeah, they did. If most of us were the type to leave people to be brutally tortured and killed, then we probably would have succumb to the Kenoma the first time the Regent's people fed it to us.

[ The first rounders at any rate. This time his "hah" sounds more like an actual laugh though. ]

I wasn't kidding about the awful gambles, and I don't think it's going to be the last one we have to take.

[ He's also not convinced they'll win this either, but he doesn't say it out loud. His best hope is to keep stalling, the way that Pleromas of the past have seemed to manage to stall the Regent. ]

Especially since I think that solution you've got there is going to take a lot of work and time. I'm not exactly an expert in magic though, so I can't really offer much in the way of tangible suggestions. The bolstering the resistance part is the only thing I'm any good for.

[leicesters]

Yikes, you're so negative it's a wonder you didn't succumb to the Kenoma. "The only thing I'm any good for"? Come on, that could be a huge help!

How about you stop telling me what we can't do and share your ideas. What do you think the resistance needs right now, and what can you or any of the rest of us do to support them? You've been here longer than me, so I'm counting on all of your knowledge on this.

[He's not criticising the Pleroma just for you to get down on yourself, Ernesto...!]

[goldendeceiver]

Haha, you're getting me wrong here. I'm plenty good at helping with the bolstering front. I've been earning money and gathering supplies for the resistance for a long time. A good chunk of the materials we did have going into that raid were things I snagged.

[ It's not really a brag though. He's being objective and honest. ]

But I don't know much about magic. I wasn't a caster before coming here, so I never bothered to study up on magic when I did most of my fighting with a gun or a sword. I don't have much to offer, because I don't really know much about it.

I'm happy to direct you if you want to help with some of what I'm doing already, but for this purifying mission all I can do is offer my own help after people figure out what that would even be.

[leicesters]

Sorry for misunderstanding, in that case. It sounds like you're doing good work. [He can come back to his other idea later, but for now...]

How much does the resistance have in terms of reliable supply chains or trade networks between cities? Getting supplies for them is good, but making sure things are going to where they need to be at the right times would be even better, especially for the cities that are struggling the most under the Regent.

[goldendeceiver]

It's a patchwork system right now. There are other Aions besides me who have taken up to living in Godsblood and snagging things as needed, and we have places to store the supplies between the actual transfer from Godsblood to Greentruth. Our biggest problem is that we can't move large numbers of things at once without it becoming suspicious, so things have to trickle in a little at a time.

Beyond the trade between those two cities though, we haven't set up anything else. We have had some recent interest in standing up against the Regent in Venera, but I'm not sure we have any Pleroma reliably stationed there to know who those people are, and how to get them what they need. Though I don't think anyone in Venera is hurting too much for supplies by and large, though I'm not sure their weapons situation, and Godsblood in particular is pretty industrious and brimming with goods. By and large the Regent isn't actually trying to starve out their own people or anything like that, as long as they're not actively rebelling, and none of them have gotten to that point on a large scale yet.

So it really is the rebels in Greentruth that need the biggest pipeline of supplies to them.

[pyojeol]

[these are all salient points but first of all]

-- Look, I tried. It's hard to go further than superficial damage when you're just one woman.

[she COULD have burned that church down if KAEYA hadn't gotten in the way, tch]

[leicesters]

How much damage did you do, exactly?

[Sooyoung please???]

Wait, but that's not the point. If we were all better coordinated, we could have split into groups for sabotage and that kind of thing, so you wouldn't have to be on your own.

[pyojeol]

[NOT ENOUGH CLAUDE... NOT ENOUGH...]

Yeah, would have been nice to have some backup when those sorcerers started shooting at us.

[There's a grumble-y tone to her voice, but her own feelings are less bitter than they should probably be, considering she got dissipated for an incredibly embarrassing reason. Still,]

It sucks that we basically blew our best chance of striking back at that city and the Regent. That Innocent thing or whatever did most of our work for us, and we lost it.

[leicesters]

The frustrating part is that I talked to the Innocent, and it said it couldn't put so much as a dent in the Citadel with things as they are now, so we shouldn't have even brought it there. We threw away a potential trump card and tossed it right into the Regent's hands.

[And now they're worse off for it... Where do they even go from here?]

[pyojeol]

[there's a pulse of frustration, then]

So what are the chances that the Regent was counting on that? Like, if the aim was just to use the prisoners to lure us there and kill us all in one fell swoop, then it's a stupid plan, because some of us didn't even go.

[Who are, in Sooyoung's opinion, the smarter of the Pleroma.]

The Regent and the Kenoma already knew about the Innocent, right? They were working with information that most of us didn't even have. I didn't even know about Estinien and the Innocent until the night before we left.

[locumstudentesquire]

I don't think killing the lot of us was the point.

[Ryunosuke's voice cuts in, alarmingly soft and even, considering how bombastic he usually is. It's either the first soft rumble of thunder before a storm, or the final one as it fades into the distance.]

And 'we' didn't take the Innocence anywhere. We don't control her. She's... I don't know what she is, but she's an entity with a will of her own.

[superbshot]

[Caitlyn had been assuming there would have been more of a plan as well. Estinien and Akua both had spoken to her about planning something, but the execution had forced their hand as she'd understood it.]

What would you have done differently, Claude?

[She's not happy either, but something about this doesn't sit well with her. She's not angry or anything, but there's a muted sense to her emotions in the communion. Contemplative, thoughtful.]

Estinien would have gone by himself, and he wouldn't have been able to get to our comrades alone. The Regent announcing the execution forced us to attack when we did, however I believe it was a trap to deal with the Innocence Entity. Based upon the behavior of the enemy destroying it was the real goal, but it was still a tactical error on our part. There's no denying that, but what would you have done? It's clear from the way that you speak you're more familiar with battlefield strategy than most of us.

[She'll address the other thing later, because she's curious, but this feels more important. If he's good at this then he should be able to voice himself.]

[leicesters]

If it were up to me, I would have talked Estinien into sharing his intentions with everyone. I don't know him personally, so I don't know how realistic that is, but if we could have all talked about it I'm sure we would have come up with a better proposal even he could have agreed with... Not just him using himself as a shield to buy the rest of us time. [For all his criticisms, he is genuinely sorrowful about that.] We could have divided our forces to save him and the prisoners, especially when it became clear the Kenoma were focusing most of their firepower on him.

[Really, if it were up to him, he'd have preferred not to have gone at all, but he can tell how much this meant to the other Pleroma, so he's trying to compromise here.]

Those spears, too... Did you see the way they flew up? They looked like they were stationed around the city, but we didn't pick up on them at all. Of course we couldn't have guessed their purpose at the time, but sending scouts away from the main body of the fighting to try and determine any traps could have gone a long way.

Sorry, it's been a hell of a couple of days.

[superbshot]

I don't disagree with you. That could have been handled better. We...should have defended him and worked together to do something more than what we did. The Innocence Entity does have goals of its own, but we should have predicted that it would show and planned around it.

[The big dragon...well...that was something, wasn't it?]

I confess, I didn't really see much of the spears or the battle. I was occupied by one of the Kenoma, and got a little banged up. [Having it out with Ciel at first, and then the factory fubar.] But I'll take your word for their presence.

[A sigh.]

Reconnaissance is definitely something that we should have done better. I don't know, Claude. I agree with you, I just...[She huffs.]...this is very far outside of my wheelhouse. The situation was dire, and it wasn't a winning one. Yet, I can't help but feel like we at least accomplished something, bringing Himeka and Abel out.

I feel that, don't worry

[leicesters]

Maybe we accomplished something, but we also lost something. There's no way any of us can congratulate ourselves just because of one success.

Look... I'm not asking for military perfection from anyone. I just don't want the same kind of mistakes to happen again. If we keep rushing from crisis to crisis, freaking out every time one of our friends is taken away, then all the Regent has to do is keep hitting us where it hurts in the same ways, over and over. This is a war.

[People die in wars, and prisoners are taken. You have to have a certain level of emotional disconnect to make the kind of rational decisions needed to cope with that, or at least learn to think that way fast, even if you don't come from that kind of background.]

All of us have to seize this conflict with our own hands, if we want to make it through this and win.

[superbshot]

Agreed. On, again, all counts.

[She doesn't expect even Police discipline from the Pleroma.]

We need to focus. And we need to really unify. We lack leadership and organization. I was trying to work on the latter before Godsblood, which you weren't here for. Things have been in disarray since the Regent's mass address. Hopefully that will be something I can continue, now that Abel is back.

[There's a pause.]

You're obviously of a military mind, and you've mentioned goals. So, perhaps that should be something we create a list of. Things that we absolutely need, in order to progress and build some semblance of organization. We can perhaps bring this list to the collective group and see who has experience where, and build from that.

[leicesters]

Good idea. Instead of focusing on what we can't do, we need to figure out what everyone can do. The resistance can plug some of the gaps, and if we still lack things after that, we can build towards them.

[Whether that be in terms of skills, knowledge, or resources. It would give the group a sense of purpose and direction if they worked towards improvements, too, even gradual ones.]

Can you tell me more about the Regent's mass address? What happened to rattle people this badly?

[undertheweight]

We need to talk. But preferably in person.

[Yes, Wrathion is secretive by nature, but there are a few things he would prefer not to share amongst an audience. There's also a sense of...agitation, to judge by what emotions he allows through communion.]

If it helps, I think I understand your frustration.

[leicesters]

Yeah, sure. Where can I find you?

[Maybe Claude will burn off some of his own frustration by stretching his legs and getting away from Greentruth for a while, assuming Wrathion is in Godsblood.]

[undertheweight]

Godsblood. [Predictable, perhaps, but that was the portal he'd returned through with Anduin. They have plans to move to Greentruth, but they haven't happened yet.]

I'll head for the portal. No need for you to take an unnecessary dip.

[leicesters]

Gotcha. See you there.

[He arrives first, passing through the portal to Godsblood and waiting for Wrathion as agreed. He's foregone his bow and quiver today, but just as a precaution, he has a sword at his hip should anything go awry.]

[undertheweight]

[Wrathion is only slightly out of breath as he jogs up, and he's barely limping by now. He has no visible weapons--but Claude knows that he doesn't really need them, either. Regardless, he does smile, offering Claude a hand.]

It's good to see you. I'm glad you made it. Walk with me?

[leicesters]

[Claude stares at the man for a second, not recognising him at first. Helpfully, the burning red eyes and the familiar voice are enough for him to put two and two together, but he still looks perplexed as he reaches to return the handshake.]

Er... Good to see you too? You're looking a bit smaller than usual. [Among other things!]