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Old 11-25-2019, 07:16 PM   #11
tshiggins
 
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Default Re: [adventure brainstorm] Jailbreak on Fureidis

This reminds me, a little, of the situation in Neal Stephenson's Cryptonomicon, where the Allies had to figure out how to use the Intel they got from breaking Enigma encryption, without tipping off Wehrmacht that they'd done that.

So, they created a team to create red herrings (including planting bodies) that made the Germans think the leaks were human in origin, and that Enigma remained secure.

In Britain, MI5 created an entire intelligence network of fictional agents in the German government and military, supposedly run by an agent code-named "Boniface," who didn't actually exist.

Stephenson apparently modeled the unit in his book on some of the capers pulled off to try to convince the Germans that "Boniface's" network was a real thing.
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Old 01-29-2020, 05:26 AM   #12
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Default Re: [adventure brainstorm] Jailbreak on Fureidis

Well, the PC produced a marvellous paroxysm of confusion and violence in the person of Dirk Cutlass, ransom adjustment agent. People are going to be struggling for years to work out what the devil went on. But none of the attention will be focussed on the fact that one particular journalist was among the victims rescued when the coast guard went in to clear up the mess.

His next mission was to assess the Purity Movement on Fureidis, an authoritarian populist organisation led by Jeysunu Naboo and eight ambitious lieutenants. He infiltrated through the PR department under shallow cover as Yahya Haddad, aristocratic vlogger from Hijra, allowed himself to be recruited as a courier for Jeysunu's secluded wife and concubines, and assessed that the greatest real threat to the peace, order, and good government of Fureidis was Apunumu, the Purity Movement's link to disaffected field-grade officers in the security and counterterrorism apparatus. He contrived a lethal falling-out between Apunumu and Yehanu (the chief of the Purity Movement's street-fighting arm). But that ran into complications when Jeysunu's wife and concubines tried to blackmail and bribe him into smuggling into the seraglio a person who turned out to be an operative of the Alliance for Independent Development surgically altered to replace Jeysunu.

Things became very confusing and violent. Jeysunu, Apunumu, Yehanu, several secret policemen, quite a lot of Yehanu's thugs, and the AID's fake Jehanu all ended up dead, the palace of the Purity Movement in flames, Jeysunu's harem fled, and the political prospects of the survivors ruined. The PC ended up a bit dinged and battered around the edges, but still breathing, on his feet, and in a position to make Yahya Haddad disappear back into into the obscurity from which he had arisen. He will however need a new face and gait before he can operate clandestinely on Fureidis again.

The player I hope has learned (a) that watching out for effectives of rival organisations who are trying to counter him is not enough; that effectives of rival organisations who are independently focussed on the same target as he are more common and equally important, (b) that in his line of work prominent glamorous mature women do not often take up with modestly attractive young men or no apparent importance to serve their lust and vanity, but are usually playing the young man for a sucker. That's two bricks in the wall of showing him that the fact that his character is the protagonist is not apparent to the NPCs.
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Old 01-29-2020, 05:52 AM   #13
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Default Re: [adventure brainstorm] Jailbreak on Fureidis

My plan now is to send the PC and his tech support gal to Paraíso for a straightforward mission and an opportunity to become familiar with conditions there, and then to Persatuan for something a bit more apt to build character. Then they will come back to Paraíso with instructions to discover or fake a rightful heir to the dynasty that fell 250 standard years ago, build him or her up as a once and future king, and effect the suppression of warlord government on Paraíso by a restored, if slightly fictitious, monarchy.

Paraíso orbits ζ Tucanae as its IVth planet. Its diameter is 0.94 D♁, gravity 0.72 g♁, with a very thin breathable atmosphere, 84% ocean coverage, surface temperature 16 C, a day of 28.3 hours, and a population of 4.06 billion living at a degree of economic development equivalent to GURPS TL4 (early) under an array of warlords with often strong, rapacious navies.

I feel some sort of Treasure Island ripoff coming on.
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Old 01-29-2020, 11:48 AM   #14
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Default Re: [adventure brainstorm] Jailbreak on Fureidis

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Originally Posted by Agemegos View Post
Paraíso orbits ζ Tucanae as its IVth planet. Its diameter is 0.94 D♁, gravity 0.72 g♁, with a very thin breathable atmosphere, 84% ocean coverage, surface temperature 16 C, a day of 28.3 hours, and a population of 4.06 billion living at a degree of economic development equivalent to GURPS TL4 (early) under an array of warlords with often strong, rapacious navies.

I feel some sort of Treasure Island ripoff coming on.
Whoa!

Those are some productive High Medieval people.

More than half of Earth's current population (at late TL8) are fed with early TL4 fishing and agriculture; i.e. about the level of that which we had on Earth during the War of the Roses?

Does this reflect the massive scale of Colonial Office aid?
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Old 01-29-2020, 02:06 PM   #15
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Default Re: [adventure brainstorm] Jailbreak on Fureidis

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Whoa!

Those are some productive High Medieval people.
Yes. Well, very late mediaeval and Renaissance. TL 4 goes from Italy in 1450 to England in 1720. The High Middle Ages were c. 1000–1300.

Quote:
More than half of Earth's current population (at late TL8) are fed with early TL4 fishing and agriculture; i.e. about the level of that which we had on Earth during the War of the Roses?

Does this reflect the massive scale of Colonial Office aid?
No. It reflects the possession of a legacy of highly productive ontogenically-designed crops from Old Earth. All the crops are deep-rooted perennials that fix their own nitrogen from the air. After reaching maturity they do not grow more stems and leaves, they put all their production into food, fibre, fuel, drugs, dyes and whatever. There's no ploughing or planting to be done, and little weeding; no food or very little needs to be fed to traction animals. The farms produce extra food etc. in place of the stubble and excessive straw that mediaeval agriculture produced. The result makes even the intense wet rice agriculture of mediaeval Java look thin and wasteful.

It also reflects cheap, short-distance interstellar trade with Fureidis (TL 9 manufactures with a biomedical emphasis) and Iter (TL 10 (advanced)), exporting high-spec agricultural products for a thin stream of critical manufactures.

It also reflects a world that has no deserts, and that is uniformly developed and cultivated, rather than havinf several continents at a significantly lower level of development than you first thought of.

Finally, it reflects a world that is significantly overpopulated, with a population too poor for mass self-deportation, that urgently needs help that the Treaty of Luna will not allow the Empire to deliver, i.e. the replacement of its rapaciously kleptocratic and ineffectual warlord government.
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Old 01-30-2020, 09:44 PM   #16
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Default Re: [adventure brainstorm] Jailbreak on Fureidis

So anyway.

ζ Tucanae IV (Paraíso) is one of the planets longest occupied by humans, having been settled in AD 2145 as a national prestige project of the Confederación of Mercosur, a great power on Earth in the early 22nd Century. The original colony was well-planned and amply supplied, the planet was long the most delightfully salubrious planet known, and in those days there were few other colonies to emigrate to: the Agencia Espacial del Mercosur was able to select a well-qualified elite of pioneers for the first fifteen years. Unfortunately Mercosur collapsed into its constituent states while the first settlers were still en route at lightspeed, and the interstellar colony fell into the cracks of its break-up. The rights to Paraíso ended up with a Panamanian law firm that threw the colony open to refugees, and from AD 2200 to 2353 it was a common destination for general migration. Paraíso received a total of 3.155 million immigrants over 235 years; the pioneers were from the South America of the 2120s, the later bulk of immigrants were from all over the globalised Earth.

Paraíso was never a political success. Numerous groups of immigrants set up separate colonies on different island and island groups rather than consolidating a single polity and pooling resources in a common interest. Economic development lagged, and a multitude of isolated and rather autarkic independencies developed. When the flow of migrants from Earth suddenly ended in 2381 Paraíso was unable to develop and support industries to replace the components from Earth they they had brought with them. It declined gracefully into an early-industrial economy through the Age of Isolation.

During the Age of Piracy Paraíso's main problem was with exploitative commerce from Iter. Between Iteran import driving Paraísan manufacturers out of business and Iteran firms establishing extraterritorial entrepôts for their trade, hiring mercenaries to "protect" them and their markets, Paraíso's industrial base and few institutions were devastated.

When the Eichberger Foundation cut off Paraíso from Iter the Paraísan mercenaries rebelled against their employers in a global wave of mutinies. The Eichberger Foundation cobbled together a "Republic of Paradise", which supported it at the Lunar Conference but has since been increasingly ineffectual. There has not been a popular election for seventy-five standard years; not even the regional warlords have taken part in a free election for forty years. The post of "President of Paradise" is now held by the favourite child (usually) and designated successor of the Protector of Paradise, who obliges the regional electors to vote for his or her candidate while he or she retains power in a nominal retirement. The senator for Paraíso is a reliable 4.06 billion votes for the League of Repressive Autocracies, except when the Empire can bribe Paraíso to voter Leveller.


So. In this situation Squire Trelawney, Dr Livesey, and Jim are going to charter a schooner and hire a crew to take a long voyage into regions that they don't know to recover something that Jim learned to location of. The nature of this macguffin is such that the People on the Stair are sending the PC and his technical sidekick to control the outcome of the adventure.

What's the macguffin? Why do Trelawney and Livesey think it's going to make them rich, and why does da Silva scheme mutiny? Why does the most secretive of all clandestine organisations care? Why isn't the Empire exercising its prerogatives?
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Old 01-30-2020, 10:07 PM   #17
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Default Re: [adventure brainstorm] Jailbreak on Fureidis

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Originally Posted by Agemegos View Post
You are a field manager for an extremely secretive clandestine operations outfit. Doctrine for your organisation is that ideally, after one of your operations, no-one ought to realise that anything has happened. Or if they do realise that something has happened, they ought to believe that it was ordinary happenstance, not the result of a clandestine operation. Or if they do realise that spooks have be sneaking around doing stuff, they ought to conclude that it was some other clandestine agency. Not even other clandestine-ops organisations ought to discover that your outfit exists.
Yesterday, upon the stair
I met a man who wasn't there.
He wasn't there again today
O how I wish he'd go away!
The organisation is extremely secretive. Its nature is secret. Its purpose is secret. Its sources of information and funding are secret. Who is at the top of its chain of command is secret. Its very existence is utterly secret.

The PC was recruited out of the Imperial Marines Academy while he was on his home-world on a training exercise. His motivation had been going mushy in the fourth year of his officer training because he had figured out that being an Imperial Marines officer was often going to mean preventing Imperial marines commandoes from dealing with things that cried out to be dealt with, because the Treaty of Luna said the Empire couldn't do what needed to be done. He was approached by his high-school athletics coach, who he knows to be a retired Imperial Marines warrant officer. Coach introduced him to a recruiter for the org, who had an Imperial (mink) accent and whom coach addressed as "Sir". The recruiter offered the PC "useful work, lacking the legitimacy of Imperial service, but free from many of its frustrations". The PC believes that the org is a very secret part of the Empire, tasked with doing the things that need doing and that the Senate won't let the Empire do. On the other hand, he recruited his tech gal by convincing her that he is an effective of the Planned Progress League….
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