Coup d'état

Phase 1: bed and breakfast

• Javan, this one is for you: we need to prepare for the arrival of Gretta's troops. Last time we fought them, there were around 2000 of them (or was it 3000?). Some of the refugees who fought for us may have joined up, which means that number might have gone up. In any case, they're going to get to Holtburg through the Veil and we want them rested for the battle, which means you must dedicate a section of the Veil towards that purpose. They will also be hungry, so we'll use our food reserves to feed them. When the troops get here, we'll guide them towards a resting area in an orderly fashion.
  
• For Rory: I need detailed info on the Royal District. You can pass yourself off as a curious human who wants to know about the district where the important people live. Get me a map of that place. If you can't find one, ask people about how the place looks then have one of our employees draw one with the info you get. Any detail we get could be crucial to our success. Once it's done, and if you have time, try to learn about the military's habits in this district. You're human and these soldiers are damn impressive in their armors; hell, you're even thinking of signing up as a soldier since the other humans are shy at the idea of killing.
  
• For Kolson: you recruit mages who are willing to fight (in serious battles) for money. They're sure to be a rarity in Holtburg right now, but there's got to be one or two lying around somewhere. Once you do, pick them up, dust them off and bring them here.
  
• Higaide: ...huh, stay alive and get back here. We love you.
  

One important note: we don't talk about our plan to overthrow the current leadership to anyone. Gretta's soldiers are getting here, sure, but that's because there are other Blocs we need to take care of. If our employees question you too much, tell them you're their superior and you don't need to explain yourself to them. Only to me.

Phase 2: war table

• We divide our responsibilities between ourselves and discuss with Gretta how to take the Royal District (see Phase 3 for the details).
  
• We brief the troops with the plan and distribute the armbands I prepared beforehand. They have the Exchange's emblem on them and it will allow us to identify who is on our side.
  
• We organize the troops into groups and give them the tasks they will have to carry out. They also have to be prepared to see a Tusker appear out of nowhere: he's with us, so no need to fear him. If the troops roll to disbelieve and start to chuckle, I'll give them a hard look and repeat what I just said. Then I'll remind them I managed to survive the destruction of Janwall and Marblebush, the many assassination attempts on my life that were carried out by vengeful Desolates and also may have avoided the death penalty in two different countries. So I hope they're chuckling because they feel relieved to hear that one of my closest allies will be there to protect their own lives.
  
• We're not going to take any chance: we strike to kill. We shout to the civilians to stay in the buildings until told otherwise and leave them alone, but the Aluvian soldiers are free targets.
  
• We march. Send scouts ahead.
  

Phase 3: swords and blood

• We have a high number of troops and little space to move them around before they even get to the streets. The entrances to the Veil are bound to be guarded so our first push must be swift and hard. The most experienced soldiers will be in the front to make this possible.
  
• We have two high priority objectives: the entry and exit points of the Royal District and the Lord of Holtburg's office. If there weren't any guards to stop us from entering the district, we'll have our troops use stealth as long as possible while the others are getting ready to strike. If we were already discovered, we move fast towards these objectives. Whatever happens, we'll raise an alarm, sooner or later, so let's be prepared for that.
  
• We have our most level-headed troops replace the Aluvian soldiers at the entry and exit points, take their uniforms and act like if nothing is wrong. If possible, the population of Holtburg must not even have a clue of what's truly happening.
  
• We must take the Lord's of Holtburg office to make sure our enemies don't use the Emergency Broadcast System against us.
  
• Once this is done, our third objective is to locate the usurpers (oh, sorry, I didn't say that Gretta, I said lords) and prevent them from escaping Holtburg aboard an Airship. We cut off any escape route.
  
• Our fourth objective is to take over strategic locations. At this point, Rory should have got us a map of the Royal District. We obviously discussed the best places to ambush the soldiers, so that's what we do. We use the terrain to our advantage and try to counter any attempt by the Aluvian soldiers to do the same.
  
• If some Aluvian soldiers surrender to us, we order them to take off their armors and lay down their swords. We can't afford to buy miles of rope to tie them up, so let's have them lie on the ground, hands on their head. We'll act under the terms of the Dericost Accords... as long as they keep acting like prisoners.
  
• We set up a command center at a location previously chosen and make sure our messengers squads relay the orders correctly. We must have continuously updated info on the status of the battle. Since Gretta can't fight, she'll be the one in command of that. I assume she's competent enough to manage this task to completion. If Sareth got back by this time, he will help her.
  
• Each party member will lead a battalion of troops. Rory and Javan, you get the heavy hitters (tank). Kolson, you have the troops who can attack from range (DPS). Higaide, if you get in Holtburg in time, you'll command the reserves (support). I will lead the melee boy scouts (DPS). The general tactic we'll use: our tanks put the Aluvian soldiers into a suitable position so our DPS can finish them off. Our support is there to help us in case things get dicey and also supervise the soldiers who surrendered. Gretta will help with this last task.
  
• Another objective we must keep in mind is to secure supplies. We don't want this to transform into a siege, but let's be prepared.
  

There. I think that's a decent outline of a plan. And that post is over one thousand words, so that's why it took me two hours to write. *falls over his chair*

*stares quietly*

Yup, it's doomed guys. Put your capes back in your closet, turn off the light and walk away. We had a good run.

*plays some more SWTOR*

Still going to do it though.

*click click click*

I'll agree with this plan for now, if only because my head atm can't process anything harder than simple arithmetic. That said, I understand we don't have support from anyone with a legitimate claim to power, so be prepared for that to bite us in the back even if we somehow survive this madness.

I'm prepared for the consequences of this action. Have been for some time now.

By the way, 2+3=fish

Heh, not that I don't want to be a team player but if you haven't been able to find or hire any mages on your own I don't see what chance I would have. I'm not trained in Gather Information, nor would I even know where to start looking for mages shady enough to fight their own government for money.

To think i'm gonna miss all the fun.

And my horse. I left my horse back at blackrust.

Firstly, plan revisions:

Phase 1
Zeiss: You will come with me and do the talking. You want this to have a chance, assign people to tasks they're good at. Use your fancy disguise ring and turn yourself into a human, and just use me as a base reference for your Disguise.

Higaide, Javan: While you guys prep or whatever(Higiade you will help as soon as you get here), you will first use a little of our funding to see if we can buy a health potion for each of us, including Gretta, and see if we can get some mana potions, one for each of our mages(and Kolson). We will definitely need to save some for the Yellow/White Mage to cast some protective spells on the troops(to save on mana for actual fight/heal magic). Better yet, first we'll see what we have in our inventory, there has to be some sort of emergency stash of things we can use in the Veil.

Phase 2: Javan, Higaide, and Kolson will meet the troops at the briefing to relay Zeiss' orders and motivate the troops. We'll distribute potions for our mages and each of us. Probably shouldn't let the troops in on those, or they'll be upset.

Zeiss, once you and I have a map, we will return to the Veil or the Lord's office. We'll use a timetable to know which to head to, and we'll meet up with Gretta, Javan, Higaide and Kolson with that map.

Second: I'm not going to die.

I wonder how much health potions cost under the new economy. They were ridiculously expensive before. *looks at Arch*

I looked at your character sheet Rory and I don't know what other task I could assign you until the troops get here, except supporting one of the other party member with their rolls. If you're okay with that, we'll do as you say and you'll come with me. By the way, the Exchange has no goods other than food. Bonebreaker and Oghren left with everything (the few things we had anyway). As for my own inventory, there's nothing useful in it.

I've also never tried to hire any mage on my own Kolson. But I get your point. I just hired a diplomat who used to work for the Aluvian kingdom and I was going to ask him if he knew any military commander or "spymaster" that were looking for a job. Maybe he knows some mages. I was also thinking you could use some of our employees to add to your rolls but if you don't think there's any reason to do this, I'll just send the employees. This is Holtburg, the biggest known city in the world; there has to be a mage or two who is willing to fight their own government around here. We only need one of them to roll a 20.

There's some Exchange stuff that needs to be done. Nothing related to the coup d'état, but if you want to work on this Kolson, there are a few tasks left to do. You could speed up the process of setting up the Exchange (we're a few days away from being ready), find a job for our informant (preferably in a big company we want to know about) and hiring some guys specialized in protecting caravans. We found some who would be willing to turncoat their current company for the right price. You have a pretty high diplomacy check last I remember.

Except that, I don't know any other task you could help with Phase 1 of the plan. Maybe lend a hand to Javan?

By the way K, I hope you'll be here in time. I'm pretty sure Gretta will take a while before her troops gets to Holtburg.

Do we even know that Gretta in onboard with this?

Gretta will have to be convinced that a military strike on the strongest military on the planet is a good idea, rather than what she suspected which involved something closer to infiltration and blackmail.

I did tell Gretta to bring as many soldiers as she could. But it looks like I'll have to come up with another plan, even though as far as blackmail goes, we only have that one letter.

As an aside Higaide will not wake up until the 20th, and he will be no where near Holtburg.

Okay, I got it. Here's our leverage: we can threaten the usurpers to use the Broadcast Emergency System to tell all of Holtburg they have deposed Lady Lightmane. To back this up, we have proof that the military ordered bandits to hit Aluvian caravans all over the state to justify their take over in the public's eye as well as the witness who made it happen. And if all this info comes from me, considering I am publicly known as an agent of Lady Lightmane, that should give us some credibility. At the very least, it will cause chaos all over the city and no matter who the usurpers replace Lady Lightmane's with, people will question the legitimacy of this grab of power. They don't want that.

However, to accomplish this crazy stunt by, we'll still need Gretta's soldiers to create a distraction big enough to move the military from one side of the Royal District to the other to allow the infiltration team to enter the Lord's of Holtburg office. Maybe have some of her must experimented troops come with us to hold the building after we captured it. Once we've shown the usurpers our leverage, they might order the Aluvian soldiers to stand down while we discuss "future alternatives".

The distraction:

Gretta's troops will need to go through the very first part of Phase 3 of our plan and attack the Aluvian soldiers in the streets long enough to convince the military to send reinforcements from all over the district. Once this is done, the infiltration team enters the game. I doubt very much we can pull this off with the infiltration team alone considering this district is most likely well guarded and we don't have the most stealthy party members.  Depending on who Gretta brings with her, everyone but me might have to be on this team. Advoc will certainly be since I can coordinate both teams with our mind link.

Infiltration unit:

I'll have to be there since I have the highest stealth, diplomacy and deception as well as Orator abilities. The job is easy enough: get to the Lord's of Holtburg office and take it. If that happens to be in the same building than where the Lords and Ladies of Aluvia congregate, we can take them hostage (or save them, depending on what the military did with them). One of these nobles could even do the talking on the Broadcast Emergency System; that certainly would be more convincing. We hope the usurpers order the military to stand down then we discuss the terms of our takeover. 

How's that sound?

Just because I'm curious, what's the end goal with this coup attempt?

I'd say re-instate Lady Lightmane to power or at least those that were on the same page as her and lost power and prestige because of the previous coup. At the same time, a victory for our side would mean we get allies in the seat of power of our favorite city.

Zeiss probably has other ideas of his own as well, but I think this is the basic idea.

Edit: Except for death/torture/etc , we don't really have a reason not to try it, as we basically lost a lot in Holtburg with the latest coup.

Well, I'm very selfish, so I want to protect the Exchange from being replaced by anyone, make sure my own caravans aren't hit by the refugees and use the political influence I can gain to transform my little organization into the dominant Bloc in Dereth.

I don't want to rule Aluvia: far too much trouble. I want to rule what was once the Undermarket. So we'll put a good guy in charge of Holtburg who will help the bad guy take over the criminal underbelly of this world. We'll also help the little people along the way because that's what we do.

Once that is done, I'll take revenge against my enemies. Arch and Kolson know who I'm talking about. But that's a looooong way off.

But Javan is right: this is the basic idea. From what we know, we have no reason at all to trust the usurpers.

After Arch dropped another hint ("How would you feel if your character died?"), I started cooking up a new plan:

We go see the owners of the caravans that have been hit and we convince them to side with us. From what Arch said, these owners seem to be from family nobles who live in Holtburg. So roll knowledge politics:

Which families should we approach with our proof?

EDIT: Arch just told me I can use the Hub even in war. That changes everything. We can get support from outside Holtburg. Guys, I gave all of your names to the Mites to get unlimited access to the Hub: you only need to pass their little interview. As long as you act under the directive that the Exchange's goal as an organization is to reform the Aluvian economy, we're good.

*wonders if any of the characters are sufficiently versed in economic theory to know what is required to fix Aluvia's economy*

Kolson might know how to fix the economy. He was a merchant who decided to turn adventurer for a few months.

That's a great idea Rory. We would need to find out who is behind all of this first, because we have no clue. Can't really kidnap the leader(s) if we don't know their identity.

The first two phases of my previous are still mostly valid, but we'll need a little more time to find some allies within the Aluvian nobility. Our enemy wants to replace the Exchange within the next month, so that gives us some leeway. We can refine the details of the new plan then do a quick timeskip until we're ready to enact our own coup d'état. Once this is done, we do the other, and longer, timeskip to catch up with the other party.

But before any of that happens, Zeiss is going to use the Hub to see his father back in Glenden Woods.

I will still do my knowledge politics roll about which noble family we should approach.

Archengeia wrote:*wonders if any of the characters are sufficiently versed in economic theory to know what is required to fix Aluvia's economy*

Lol, I'm 100% sure getting into advanced economics theory would not be worthwhile Arch. There is a reason this stuff is so abstracted in games. I know this isn't your usual style, but I'm going to request a clear quest chain that

1. Leads us to an economics adviser

and

2. That economics adviser in turn isn't afraid to hand us quests that will let us make progress on that front.

No offense to everyone else but I believe it's literally the only way any of your players are ever going to make progress on this.

I'm going to second that request for obvious reasons.

I was asking because I know how to fix Aluvia's economy and I was wondering what skill roll to require of the players to see if they can figure out their three options.

Here's the outline of our new plan:

• Use the Hub to learn about the political situation around Aluvia and find someone who could help us who could even maybe even take over the Lord's of Holtburg office if they're amenable enough to the Exchange. I was already planning to go to Glenden Woods, so I'll do this at the same time.
  
• Find allies within the nobles families of Holtburg. We have proof that the military is hitting some of their caravans, so let's bring them in. We'll have to be extra careful not inform any double agent of our plans though. Kolson could do that, if he wishes to do so.
  
• Use the Hub to expand the Exchange's activities. The Mites agreed to let the people I give unlimited access to the Hub to take the goods they can carry with them, which I imagine is realistically limited to a wagon unless I misunderstood something about the agreement. That's a good way to make some profits. I imagine we could also take over the Country Riders duties if they haven't made any deal with the Mites.
  

Pretty simple for now. Things are going to get complicated when we get the info, but we'll act accordingly. As for Javan, I don't know what task to give you until we're ready to start attacking. Unless you have an idea, or want to take some contracts to scout the other Blocs, I guess you're free to act as you see fit.

As for you Rory, you told me you wanted to roleplay a little. You could come with me to Glenden Woods. Your choice however since, like Javan, I don't know what task to give you. Javan, you can come too if you want.