*SPOILER WARNING*

^ Because of all the options.

How did your story go? I saved the general but the lion didnt take the city, and I didnt get the messages. When the general said a messenger was taking the scrolls away I was like "oh f***k, I should have intercepted him".

1 hour ago, RafaelNN said:

*SPOILER WARNING*

^ Because of all the options.

How did your story go? I saved the general but the lion didnt take the city, and I didnt get the messages. When the general said a messenger was taking the scrolls away I was like "oh f***k, I should have intercepted him".

I managed to get the scrolls, and help the Lion take the town.

There seems to be a binary you will either get the scrolls or rescue the general but you can't do both.

My RPG PC nature was in full effect and I saw the messenger and just assumed that's bad better stop it.

I actually went into this with the intention of killing the general to keep him from talking if I got the chance.

I did manage to prevent the Lion from retaking the village. I'm a bit disappointed that I got armor piercing arrows from the blacksmith but never got to use my bow.

I haven't finalized my results yet. I can't decide if I want to read the scrolls and end up as a Lion hostage or not.

I decided my character was a Dragon pilgrim so reacted in that way. I set some stuff on fire, killed a messenger and recovered and read the scrolls. The Lion failed to retake the village.

Recovered the scrolls, but couldn't save the general - he ordered me after the scrolls, and - as people have noted - he's dead by the time you get back.

4 hours ago, DarkHorse said:

I decided my character was a Dragon pilgrim so reacted in that way

Did you ask Tsanuri about the general? Because he was apparently trained at Shiro Mirumoto and key to the Lion getting a bunch of Dragon allies on board, so saving him might have been a bigger deal to a Dragon.

Really nice story. I grew up with Fighting Fantasy and Lone wolf, so I'm always up for Choose Your Own adventure stuff.....

This one was NICE! I enjoyed it a lot! Went into the village, set a house on fire to distract the guards, left the commander to die, caught the messenger and killed him, delivered the scrolls without reading them, all a day's work.

13 hours ago, shineyorkboy said:

I actually went into this with the intention of killing the general to keep him from talking if I got the chance.

I did manage to prevent the Lion from retaking the village. I'm a bit disappointed that I got armor piercing arrows from the blacksmith but never got to use my bow.

I haven't finalized my results yet. I can't decide if I want to read the scrolls and end up as a Lion hostage or not.

There is an option to participate in the fight for the village and if you have them you use your arrows there.

To get it you need to deal with the Messenger before you go to find the General and then after you recover the messages enter the village to find the general. After you find him dead you should be given the choice to return to the camp or help at the battle.

In my little corner of the multiverse, these poor Lion accidentally hired a secret Shinjo looking to sabotage their efforts from the start. Talk about unlucky.

I'm wicked impressed with this story. My experience with Choose Your Own Adventure-style games is that a lot of them suffer one of two problems:

1. Outcomes don't feel connected to the choices that you make, which makes the decision-making less fun (IMHO), or
2. The story is railroaded, and your choices ultimately don't matter that much in the end.

Clearly the story isn't railroaded, since there are different outcomes. The decision-making feels sufficiently informed while still keeping a fun level of mystery. And in fact, it's not just that your decisions affect the outcome, they even affect which decisions you get to make later. I just think this was really well put together. I would love to see them do more of this. Major kudos to Lisa Farrell.

On my first play-through, I couldn't save the commander, but I did intercept (and read) the message. I wish I could let both sides read it, but since I can only pick one, I'm staying loyal to the Unicorn and letting the messenger get through, especially since that also lets me save the commander (no need for unnecessary deaths).

1 hour ago, MonCalamariAgainstDrunkDriving said:

Clearly the story isn't railroaded, since there are different outcomes. The decision-making feels sufficiently informed while still keeping a fun level of mystery. And in fact, it's not just that your decisions affect the outcome, they even affect which decisions you get to make later. I just think this was really well put together. I would love to see them do more of this. Major kudos to Lisa Farrell

Completely agree. I'd love to see more gamebook-type stuff! I don't know how hard this is to assemble but I definitely think it feels worth it.

The outcomes will be interesting - the scrolls don't contain anything we (as a semi-omniscient audience) couldn't have guessed, but it will be news to the Unicorn. The idea that a ronin is wandering around with the information feels like a big deal too, if that's the final outcome.

More importantly, the reason they're short being spending most of their harvests funding/supporting the occupation of Kyuden Kakita is..... awkward.... because both the rice and the soldiers are by now extra crispy, courtesy of Daidoji Uji.

So after playing around with the options a bit I found out that if you waste enough time before going to find the general he's already dead when you get there so you don't find out about needing to recover the scrolls. So in my canon run through Kyosuke died, the scrolls weren't recovered, and the Lion failed to retake the village.

13 minutes ago, shineyorkboy said:

So after playing around with the options a bit I found out that if you waste enough time before going to find the general he's already dead when you get there so you don't find out about needing to recover the scrolls. So in my canon run through Kyosuke died, the scrolls weren't recovered, and the Lion failed to retake the village.

That’s what I did as well. Not that anyone can say I am biased against the Lions (spoiler: I totally am) so I tried my best to give the worst results possible for the Lion.

As none of the options felt terribly Phoenix, I approached this as a Bayushi- or Shosuro- might.

Heh. Heh. Heh. The plot sickens.

18 hours ago, Magnus Grendel said:

Did you ask Tsanuri about the general? Because he was apparently trained at Shiro Mirumoto and key to the Lion getting a bunch of Dragon allies on board, so saving him might have been a bigger deal to a Dragon.

Not my pig, not my farm. Tsanuri obviously got a ronin to do her dirty work because she wanted plausible deniability so the less I knew, the better. Just do as instructed, no more and no less. I did read the scrolls though (mainly because I didn't know there was a seal and there would be evidence of reading it) but Dragon gotta Dragon.

5 hours ago, DarkHorse said:

Tsanuri obviously got a ronin to do her dirty work because she wanted plausible deniability

Sounds likely. Before I got to the village, I was genuinely expecting one decision to be whether to kill him before he could be made to talk.

5 hours ago, Magnus Grendel said:

Sounds likely. Before I got to the village, I was genuinely expecting one decision to be whether to kill him before he could be made to talk.

Yeah but you are spared that by virtue of he's already given up the information before you get there.

So....my highly unsupported theorizing about the impact of the various outcomes:

• If the Lion take the town
• Then they take the town....
• I don't recall there being anything especially critical or strategic about the town (correct me if I'm wrong), but it gives Tsanuri and her forces, if not the rest of the Lion on the border, somewhere to winter.
• If Kyosuke survives
• obviously this character may appear again!
• More importantly, since he will supposedly bring Dragon Clan allies in by his personal influence, expect to see Mirumoto samurai in Tsanuri's company in future.
• This won't add much to her fighting power - the Dragon don't have that many soldiers and many of those they do are in the Army of the Rising Wave in the Capital. Added to this, these are basically private individuals or at best the support of a single family, not the whole clan. But they are expert duellists (Which may matter if Tsanuri finds herself facing the Crane, or if she ends up in an honour duel within the Lion clan), and are samurai who see honesty, sincerity and personal freedom of choice as as important as their nominal duty - something that may become important if Tsanuri ends up trying to take Ujiaki (who its increasingly clear is actually running things) to task.
• Ironically this choice is likely to impact the Dragon more than the Lion. A bunch of Mirumoto allies are nice to have but are ultimately a drop in the ocean compared to the battlefield of the Clan War which features three full great clans and more ronin than you can shake a pointy stick at. They are, however, a big dent in the garrison forces remaining in Dragon Clan homelands- where, it seems, the faecal matter is about to hit the rotary air impeller with regards to the Perfect Land Sect. Given that the Clan champion's heir and the current legal Emperor are smack in the middle of that, that could, as they say, be bad.
• If the messenger gets away with the scrolls
• The Unicorn know that the Lion are on catastrophically short rations.
• This would be crippling for the entire north-east front, because absolutely no-one does hit and run raids in open terrain like the children of Lady Shinjo. A scorched earth policy near the border and a deliberate strategy of destroying Lion storehouse and supply convoys could break the armies on that border, especially with no obvious place for the Lion armies to winter.
• If you read the scrolls
• Obvious you (the ronin) know the contents. This doesn't lead to it becoming general knowledge for all factions, or it'd make the previous choice redundant.
• However, aside from the supply situation, the scrolls contain specific statements that the Lion have gambled a lot of their resources on the seizure of Kyuden Kakita, and that Matsu Tsuko is there in person.
• At least one influential individual has recently become ronin, is likely to meet a ronin working for the Lion in good standing and has a strong personal interest in the location and recent actions of the Matsu daimyo....

54 minutes ago, Magnus Grendel said:

• If the Lion take the town
• Then they take the town....
• I don't recall there being anything especially critical or strategic about the town (correct me if I'm wrong), but it gives Tsanuri and her forces, if not the rest of the Lion on the border, somewhere to winter.

If you ask Tsanuri mentions that if the Unicorn hold the village they could use it as a forward base to launch an attack against the Castle of the Swift Sword.

Plus there's the supplies in the village that you could potentially prevent the Unicorn from burning as they retreat.

59 minutes ago, Magnus Grendel said:

If Kyosuke survives

Don't forget the moral boost his rescue would provide and his abilities as a commander.

7 minutes ago, shineyorkboy said:

If you ask Tsanuri mentions that if the Unicorn hold the village they could use it as a forward base to launch an attack against the Castle of the Swift Sword.

Ah. Missed that - then it's not strategic for the Lion so much as it is for the Unicorn - and hence denying it is key for the Lion. So...yeah. The Castle of the Swift Sword is - most importantly- the Akodo War College. Given the Akodo have lost two family Daimyo (one dead, one ronin) in quick succession, and now lost the championate to the Matsu, losing their ancestral dojo could really put the Akodo into a death spiral as a family.

15 minutes ago, Magnus Grendel said:

Ah. Missed that - then it's not strategic for the Lion so much as it is for the Unicorn - and hence denying it is key for the Lion. So...yeah. The Castle of the Swift Sword is - most importantly- the Akodo War College. Given the Akodo have lost two family Daimyo (one dead, one ronin) in quick succession, and now lost the championate to the Matsu, losing their ancestral dojo could really put the Akodo into a death spiral as a family.

The Hiruma managed, so I'm sure the Akodo could.

It is a strange pilgrimage that brings a ronin from the Crane into the service of the Lion, but even so, couldn’t help give it my all:

1) Left Tsanuri immediately

2) Visited blacksmith, stables, and shrine

3) Sabotaged the archers, removed the talisman, scattered the horses, saved the storehouse

4) Followed the messenger, stole the scrolls, read them

5) Went back to search for the commander, used smoke arrows to get past the guards, commander’s already dead

6) Joined the battle saving Tsanuri with the armor-piercing arrows

7) Commander’s dead, scrolls are delivered, village is retaken and I’m Tsanuri’s new best friend.

Harrier infiltration complete.

After extensive testing:

You can save either the commander or the scroll

You can retake the village regardless of that choice

If you read the scroll, you’ll become a hostage unless you fought in the battle to retake the village.

3 hours ago, Doji Hyōkin said:

couldn’t help give it my all

The curse of perfection I suppose.

1 hour ago, shineyorkboy said:

The curse of perfection I suppose.

😜

As best I can determine, the Tsanuri convo options describe the Kyosuke-Dragon linkage for if he’s saved, and the Unicorn able to threaten the Akodo if the village is lost.

The medical tent lets you pinpoint Kyosuke, so you can do 2 things in the village before rescuing him, which is necessary if you want the Lion to win the battle.

The blacksmith procs your bow, which will let you unlock smoke arrows, and changes how you participate in the battle.

The stables tells you what you need to spook Unicorn horses, which lets you scatter the horses in the village (1 count towards the Lion winning) and gives you an option for distracting the guards.

The shrine will improve your chances at dealing with the messenger and the guards.

If you visit 3 or fewer places in the camp, you see the Unicorn archers when you reach the village. Sabotaging them is 1 count towards the Lion winning, and gives you smoke arrows if you have your bow.

Removing the meishodo talisman or preventing the storehouse from burning add 1 count each to the Lion winning.

If you take the full amount of time in the camp, you have to go direct to Kyosuke to save him. If you left the camp early, you can do 1 thing in the village. If you visited the medical tent, in both cases you can do 1 extra thing.

If you follow the messenger, Kyosuke always dies. If you found him first and he sent you after the messenger, or if you got the scroll and went straight back to the camp, Tsanuri will know if you decide to read the scroll.

If you follow the messenger first, then find Kyosuke dead, you can join the battle and the Lion win. If you read the scroll, Tsanuri doesn’t know.

Reading the scroll reveals the Lion food shortages, and Ujiaki being shady.

Well the one thing this definitely confirmed for me and I don't recall if it had been confirmed previously in a fiction is that the Lions are genuinely short on rations. I guess I still held the belief that Ujiaki was just manipulating the conflict in the first Tsanuri fiction rather than being truthful with her. Once you see someone as a manipulator it's hard not to distrust every communication from that person I guess.

This is why you never go full Matsu. It’s unsustainable, so it only works if you can steamroll over the opposition.

A political detente denied them Toshi Ranbo’s resources.

A breathtakingly unthinkable act of sabotage cripples the Crane offensive which because of the tsunami was already a food poor region.

With so many bodies on the move, supplies are running thin on the Unicorn front and the troops are pushed to steal taxes to feed themselves.

The entire Lion Clan is becoming complicit in an escalating cycle of violence justifying defying the Throne.

On 11/6/2020 at 3:49 PM, phillos said:

I guess I still held the belief that Ujiaki was just manipulating the conflict in the first Tsanuri fiction rather than being truthful with her. Once you see someone as a manipulator it's hard not to distrust every communication from that person I guess.

That much is still true - they are short of food, but rather than making any attempt to supply them, Ujiaki ordered Tsanuri to turn raider as a first resort. He can still be using a genuine supply shortage to manipulate people.