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Sunday, May 31, 2015

General Eren Hoist (F.F.O. LARP)

General Eren Hoist-2125

There’s a difference between winning a war and not losing it. We got this close to winning. I’ll be damned if I’m going to lose.  

Fuck them.

Fuck them for beating you to the punch.

A few more weeks and you would have had your own ass-kicking mass destruction protocol in place–self-replicating, bot-munching nanobots deployed to the moon in an unstoppable, all-consuming cloud. If only you had more time. If only you’d started sooner. If only the political will to win this war had been there all along. Instead you’ve struggled every step of the way with convincing an increasingly moralizing public of the value of not leaving an enemy uncrippled, and giving them all the time in the world to retaliate.

Well, while they talked, that enemy broke off a fucking piece of their home world and sent it flying into Earth. I guess the repercussions of genocide didn’t bother them too overly. Now your war will become a guerrilla resistance, probably to an endless onslaught of drone fighters scouring the surface for any survivors the extinction level event. But you are determined that you can still make the cost so high that the androids will leave humans alone. You can rebuild.

This war is just starting.

You are a capable general–quite capable really (though your tactical skill has never matched General Valenz’s), and the overall command of all Earth forces has been given to you. Still, your ability to predict all the possible outcomes is predicated on having time to sit and think carefully. This has always made you a better strategist and political machine than a tactical field commander. Unfortunately your full authority was given too little, too late. Politicians and bureaucracy tied your hands when there was still time to do something that could have averted this.

A lot of people have been summoned to this meeting not knowing what they’re about to get into, but the intelligence officer reports to you, so you have already had time to gather your thoughts. Dr. El Amin is going to announce that there’s a way (and you don’t understand the science to save your life) to send a very brief message back to the last day of the peace conference before the cold war between humans and androids became a shooting war. You have a chance to warn yourself that they will win and start the process on your WMD first!

Then you can kill every last one of them before they wipe out billions.

You think your best hope is to cooperate as much as possible with the scientists and politicians who will no doubt be trying to send back a message to make the peace talks succeed, but to also make sure that the message is clear that androids will strike first. Your younger self will understand the implications as a warning...you hope. (You remember still feeling like the war was a tragic mistake back then.) With advanced knowledge of a loss if you don't move, it will give you the political will early enough to crush them. You have always been pragmatic, and five years ago, it was very clear to you that the androids were going to make it you or them.

Now it will be clear to everyone.

Right now, however (with no guarantee the message will succeed) there is only one possible choice for humanity's survival. You've thought the scenarios through, and come to the inevitable conclusion: Earth will not have the infrastructure to develop your nanobots further (and who knows if they will have the ability to deploy them even after a few hours of post impact chaos). You have to deal the bots as hard a blow as you possibly can if your guerrilla campaign is to have any chance. Without going through civilian oversight or even military protocol you have deployed the cloud towards Luna colony. Casualty projections are only 30-40% given the weapon's unready state, but if such devastation causes an infrastructure collapse like it would on Earth, you may have enough time before they come for you to mount a feasible defense.

If you're lucky you might even have a year or two to train up the bunker survivors.

Eren Skills and Contacts

Combat Savvy: In addition to normal combat training any soldier will have, you would also be capable in a fight with an android. This applies to everything from global scale combat maneuvers to small unit tactics to hand to hand combat. You have been trained in most android combat algorithms. [However understand that within the scope of the LARP that androids are NOTORIOUSLY hard to really damage without weapons.]

Sidearm: Despite the fact that you should not be armed in this room [OOC: both scenes] you have negotiated your side arm (a Beretta M9) as a "symbol of your authority" by relinquishing its clip. You have a spare clip (15 rounds) in your pant leg... just in case. The bullets are explosive tipped. While they would easily kill a human, it would take several shots (four or five) to incapacitate an android, and probably an entire clip to ensure that they are destroyed. Androids are tough! You hope you don’t need it, but….

Thought it through: You are a very calculating person. The reason you such are a capable commander is that you think through so many scenarios in your head. Once per scene if something surprising happens, you may explain to an ST what you had set in place to deal with this contingency. This may include having accessible knowledge about something, a subordinate who will enact simple instructions, or a piece of equipment. You may use this to have done anything to "brought an extra clip just in case" to "having figured that a synth infiltrator might be among us, I brought a synth detector."


Contacts
Harper Corday is your significant other. You love them and they you.  You and Harper both live busy lives that take you traveling a good deal of the time.  You wish that you would have gotten married and made your relationship “official”, but there never seemed to be the right time. They have always seemed strangely unwilling to "condemn all bots," even after the Lunar fissure.
Boipelo is a like minded ally.  They’ve been assisting you any way they can to make a war with the androids.  Your promotion was largely due to their political clout.
General Mishka Valenz is a complete pansy.  You took the ball and ran with it after Mishka dropped it. You don’t know how or why they were ever promoted to general. You have no respect for this waste of space. Their capability in battle is a tool that should be used, and they should be kept far from official policy.
Reverend Paris Atonia is very pro-war.  While you don’t know the reverend personally, maybe you could use you could hit it off well enough to have them marry you to Harper before you die.



Defining Characteristic

Strength: Pragmatic
Weakness: Callous



Eren Hoist-2120

The problem with this conflict is that it has turned it into some big existential debate about the morality of bot feelings or some shit, but what it really comes down to–what war always really comes down to–is pragmatics. People go to war for two reasons: to improve their way of life or to protect their way of life. With humans, neither is the case, and that’s why the political will for this war has been so flaccid. With the androids though, both are ever on the wane. They must attack you. You've thought it through, and their only other choice is to go quietly into the night. It will only be a matter of time before they strike. That’s why this conference has been such a joke.

The bigotry is...what it is.  Human nature since the dawn of time. Regrettable perhaps, but now it doesn’t matter. Maybe twenty, even ten years ago this all could have been averted. Back before Luna/Earth relations had degenerated into a cold war, maybe there was a chance. Fifteen years ago, before the exodus, certainly. And if humans weren’t so damned good at hating anything different than them, you all could have been exploring other solar systems with the Helium 3 fusion by now.

But none of that matters now. It's not practical to dwell in what could have been or let it influence what must be done.

Luna colony cannot provide itself with vital resources (trace minerals, gasses, and chemicals they cannot generate on Luna colony) and humans have made their complete hatred and unwillingness to compromise clear. The bots will be forced to strike as sure as Japan hit Pearl Harbor for rubber, granting you the political will of the attacked and bringing humanity one step closer to its next “regrettable dark chapter.”

Let's hope their first strike is as superficial and politically galvanizing.

1 comment:

  1. I really enjoyed playing this character. I am myself rather pragmatic so this was a lot like playing myself in this situation. It wasn't until near the end that I saw that peace was the better option and then pushed hard for it. Thanks for writing such a thought provoking LARP!

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