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fistandantilus4.0
So I'm working on a new campaign that is either going to be done as Tir military or Mercs working for the Tir in a war against the Salish. For background, I wasn't a fan of the Tir democracy, so I'm ignoring it. Instead, the Tir wants to expand, and they can't go south because of hestaby, so they're going to go north into Salish territory and grab the Sinsereach lands. They're going under the pretext of "restoring their lost lands", but really it's just another land grab.

So what I'm looking for is ideas for runs, and ramifications. FOr one, I know that the Salish nation out numbers the Tir 2:1 according to SoNA. It would be larger w/ Tsimshian. Especially if the other NAN nations come to help. So what I was figuring is that they would start by destabilixing areas. Such as working to start an insurgency in Tsimshian to "fight for their homes", and maybe try something similar in SoCAl against the Peublo. Not connected directly to the Tir. but have "freedom Fighters" trying to "kick out the invaders". That should help. Also the Information Secretariat could do some work do mess up relations (which are usually tense already) between the NAN nations to keep the Sioux from coming to help.

The Tir shares a border w/ the Salish and the Peublo, but they'll only go after Salish land. The Sinsereach don't have a lot to defend with, although the Salish tribe does, especially the Rangers. Cascade Ork probably wouldn't give a frag, but they'd still have to give money to the war effort to keep a vote on the tribal council.

I figure they'd have to go up to Seattle's border and west, captruing the coast, to make sure they don't get hit from both sides, and basiaclly watch the Peublo border in case they decide to come up from there. I was figuring on having the Tir hire out to MET 2000 or Tsunami to cover extra man power. Plus they could buc kup recruitment among the meta gettos. Not sure if they could actually manage a draft thoguh, although that would be awesome for the game.

They could also use Horizon again to keep working on their image during their campaign. For this game ,I figure the Tir would be quietly building forces for a while, so an increase in air power for one. Also, they'd probably need their own power, since they currently get a lot from Gaeatronics. So they build their own plants, then sabotage Gaeatronics windfarms since they'd probably cut their power flow anyways.

So yeah, any thoughts on tactics, units, or missions for PCs, as well as politcal stuff would be helpful if anyone's up to sharing. If you think it's a bad idea, tell me why so I know what to factor in.
Draug
Sounds like this is one of those "And then the people shall rise up and help us fight their oppressors!" things. There's a lot of real world examples of that not working as planned. Pig's Bay (USA-Cuba), and Iraq-Iran spring to mind.

So, my newbie question: Are there a lot of elves in Sinsereach? And why would they want away from the Salish? Are they being oppressed? If anything, that could be a campaign: Shoot and terrorize the Sinsereachers under the guise of being Salish death-squads or something. Of course, that will also need a pretext, so how about a few runs against Salish targets (preferably civilian ones) while posing as a Sinsereach "liberation army".
fistandantilus4.0
Yeah, the sinserearch (I never spell it the same way twice) are mostly elves, the ones that chose to stay with the tribes when the Tir broke off. They've been fine there since. Of course, that's not how the Tir will pitch it.

Beofre when they went to California, they never even bothered with a pretext. They just went. Now they're at least giving that, so they have something to add to the confusion a bit.

I'm just fine with it blowing up in the Tir's face. Just trying to get a better idea of how to work it.
Faelan
Well lets see a couple of things.

I understand why you don't like the Tir democracy however it is the logical conclusion to the particular troubles, and progression of metaplot. It also makes sense. Simply put the feudal/monarchical model, even one modified somewhat to deal with modern inventions, and pre-existing social conditions, has no hope of lasting. It is an outdated economic and social caste system doomed to stagnate, and fail. In a world dominated by megacorps, which are essentially sharks, why would you want to be chum. Because you are used to having unopposed, total power, and it worked for you in the last age. Well guess what easy access to information, education, transportation, interdependent economies, etc. means it should not work, and guess what that is where FanPro took it. Anyway if you like the monarchy keep it.

On to strategy. The Tir has no friends, why would they want to expand. There is no population pressure. They are surrounded by hostiles or less than friendly neighbors, do they really want to get everyone on their ass? I don't think so. A war with any of their neighbors is tantamount to suicide. Anyone they fight will inevitably grind into a war of attrition they cannot win. This leaves them being chum for the rest of their friendly neighborhood. If you want them to wage war they need a strong economy. Oh wait they don't have one because a certain council of princes was busy being petty, self centered, and willfully ignorant of the way things are done in the 2060's.

You want to get to where they are expanding unscrew their economy forst then you can start thinking about it.
SL James
QUOTE (Faelan @ Dec 21 2006, 10:11 PM)
Well lets see a couple of things.

I understand why you don't like the Tir democracy however it is the logical conclusion to the particular troubles, and progression of metaplot.

Hardly.

An even stronger single-figure dictatorship is more likely given the fact that many of the Rinelle cells would be killing each other without the Council and its proxies to target. Plus there's the whole new insurgency financed by the well-heeled Tir nobles.

Yeah. Democracy is the logical outcome. Like it was in Iraq.

QUOTE (Faelan)
On to strategy.  The Tir has no friends, why would they want to expand.

Yeah, it's not like Larry Zincan was the Special Envoy to the UCAS...

Oh, wait. He was.

It's not that the Tir has no friends. It just has no friends who will support it's military expansion overtly.
Konsaki
Easiest way to destablise the surrounding tribal nations, at least how I see it, would be to hire mercs to dress up as one nation's soldiers and perform a high profile hit, say a dam or something, and get caught on tape in the uniforms. Perform this a couple of times, back and forth amongst the NAN and they will start fighting themselves as a best case scenario.

Then once war starts out, the Tir starts sending out mercs or special forces to start up rabble rousers in the NAN to continue the fighting and start backing the side that would put the Tir in favor if they won. Most likely the Tir just wont take over the land since that would be trully overt in nature, but they could set up governments in the area near them that were neutral to friendly with the Tir.
Faelan
I guess I should explain myself in greater detail and at greater length.

A dictatorship is what the Tir has always had or rather and oligarchy, and they already did the screw tightening, and it landed them in the poor house. So they started loosening things back up, except by this point the minorities were pissed off enough, your small businesses were devastated, your middle class was gone, and enough of the upper class is unhappy with their piece of the pie, because this cabal of immortal elves, who chose to have a face man the High Prince (dictator) do the visible dirty work. So are you suggesting one of them was going to rocket to preeminence? Doubt it they barely managed to get enough of a concensus to get the Tir off the ground in the first place, back in the good old days. Wait, what is this one of our wayward immortal elves decides to stir the pot, by fomenting further discontent, and rebellious acts.

It is easy to maintain power when you have all the money, and a majority of the people in your pocket. When enough are discontented, and the money you used to have was spent getting them to that point, well needless to say your time in power is bound to be short. I think the council decided to play it smart and realize that the time for the kind of power structures they were used to was over. Let the sheep have there little toy. Who is going to get elected? The guys with the funding. Who will have the funding? The people the immortal elves own. Simple. Now you have some elected official as the target and you get to pull the strings from the shadows. How do I make sure I can continue collecting money? Oh that’s right make sure there is a type of government in place that encourages enlightened self interest, I mean greed. Yes greed makes it all work. A dictatorship does not allow the grease to spread around enough. A democracy at least strives to maintain that illusion. The masses greedily slave away at the megacorps factories, striving to get OT pay so they can afford all the nice little comforts of modern living.

Additionally dictatorships and closed power structures are dependent on ignorance. It’s kind of hard to remain ignorant when everyone is running around with access to information from the entire globe. Especially in 2070 where everyone has a commlink. Good luck having a dictatorship, that won’t be bankrupted very quickly.

The Tir imports raw materials, and exports finished goods, and intellectual property. This is hard to do when you have violent social upheaval. It is even harder to do when you have tanks, parked at every street corner. For further entertainment lets throw in regular executions and firefights. No sorry, the Princes (we know which ones we are really talking about) decided to give the sheep, what they wanted, and now are undoubtedly working on what they have been working on. Except now they don’t have the burden of running a country. They can accumulate power, and influence without the hindrance that the Tir had become.

In my opinion they have jumped to the most efficient vehicle for their goals. This vehicle is the Corporate model, and the big happy prize of Megacorporate Extraterritoriality. Money is power, and extraterritoriality makes you answer to essentially your board of directors, and the corporate court. You are a country without the bullshit.

As far as a war goes, it is bad for business. They certainly don’t want one. Additionally they did a pretty good job of pissing off or alienating everyone around. I think they are far more likely to let business and the joy of profitable trading be the face of their diplomacy for the near future. If you are near financial ruin and it seems the Tir was or is, you don’t start a war unless you can win quick. No war they fight is going to be quick.

As far as covert assistance, in this situation unless you are covert enough to guard my other potentially hostile borders, it is not going to make a damn of difference.

Also the UCAS is not going to touch this, because it has too much to lose. It might rattle it’s sword a bit, tie down some forces because of the troops at Fort Lewis, but they are not going to risk a major war, to help Larry.

As far as Fistidantilus scenario goes we are not even dealing with Zincan. No the Princes are the ones starting this war. I have no idea how different, your scenario is from cannon, but if everything is the same, but the council did not get kicked out of power, then everything I said still applies. The last thing they need while they are still rebuilding their economy and society is a war they really can’t win.
Wakshaani
Random nugget for no reason other than it ties in to some stuff I'm writing up for my home stuff.

After the Tir revolution, I have short hair being in. A sort of "Turning your back on the past" thing, where the revolutionaries symbolicly cut their hair off, which started a popular wave.

Short bobs for all loyal Tir citizens!

That'll go away in time, natch, but it's just enough to make people go "Huh."
fistandantilus4.0
Falean, james, those are exactly the things that I'm looking for. Thanks to both of you. I fully understand that it can just get completely screwed. The details in jsut how screwed, or how they might succeed are what I'm looking for, so by all means, keep going.

I figured that their only real hope would be to make a quick and decisive gragb and dig in well. After taht they'd have to see if they acn hold the land they grabbed, and keep everything else destabilized so that the Salish can't counter effectively.
lorechaser
1. You guys think entirely too much about elves.

2. When I read this title, I thought it was "Ideas for Tir vs slash" and was expecting a really really odd discussion of elven fan-fic porn.

3. I always like to pitch the Tir against the Salish conceptually. They fulfill a very similar role in SR lore - the native/mystical group that recovers their history and becomes magically powerful and influential. So anything I do with them will play up the differences between the two groups. So the Tir become more stereotypical, more byzantine, more embroiled in hugely confusing power struggles and relationships, and more autocratic. The Salish become more council based, more uncompromising, and more heavyhanded.
SL James
QUOTE (Faelan @ Dec 22 2006, 12:29 AM)
Also the UCAS is not going to touch this, because it has too much to lose.  It might rattle it’s sword a bit, tie down some forces because of the troops at Fort Lewis, but they are not going to risk a major war, to help Larry.

It's more like two high-level conspirators furthering their own goals of destabilizing and destroying the NAN.

And for Zincan, he's got maybe five-ten years max to leave a positive legacy or let the Tir slide into either anarchy or a dictatorship.
Butterblume
Let those elf bastards burn!

When there were reports on atrocities in the NAN states commited by their own forces, the Salish Shidhe council was appaled, and there was dissent between the tribes.

But cooler heads prevailed, and ensuing investigations revealed that the likelyhood of NAN troops involvment were very low. Further information gathering missions by Shadow assets comfirmed a military buildup inside the Tir borders. Meanwhile, several missions to destabilize the Salish Shidhe Council occured, which only tipped the Council off to who was the Tir's target.

In a secret emergency meeting, the tribes of the SSC decided to put their difficulties aside and stand together. Minutes after the meeting, the salish military went on full alert, and a stern diplomatic note was issued to Tir, which basically said 'back off' in diplo speak.

The Tir disregarded the warning, like one of the highest Tir offials said: 'when whe kick in the door, the whole rotting mess will come crashing down.' 38 hours later, at 3 am, the first military units crossed to border to the Sinsearach, augmented by large units of mercenaries.
Numerous Commando Units tried to hit SSC bases, command centers or infrastructural bottlenecks, but were mostly unsuccessfull because those unitswhere already on the move, or to well guarded by reinforced units on high alert.

On the advance, Tir forces encountered sparse but fierce resistance of a few elite commando units, which delayed the advance somewhat, but not in a significant matter. Meanwhile, Makah and Salish military deployed south of seattle, mainly at the Salish-Sinsearach Border a few miles back on Salish territory, while the forces of the other SSC tribes established a Skirmish line 20 miles behind the Sinsearach-Cascade Ork border.
Against no further resistance, the Tir forces advanced on the whole front except in the west (where they were worried that the Makah/Salish Forces counterattacked) until the were within a few miles of the Sinsearach-Cascade Ork border. Here they stopped out of political considerations, since the SSC seemed to be ceding the Sinsearach territory, but where determined to defend the rest of the territory.

At this point, Tir forces held the western flank and Tir and their auxiliary units had occupied most of the the Sinsearach territory. SSC forces where spread along the cascade ork border, with a signifikant gap to Seattle, and on Salish territory.

As soon as the SSC generals thought the enemy was sufficiently overextended, they started a counterattack from the Cascade Ork western border. It most likely wouldn't have happened to the merc units, but the Tir units fell for the ruse and started pouring into the gap in an attempt to roll the SSC forces up from their right wing.
At this time, two things happened:
-The SSC elite units that evaded the Tir Forces on their advance north, about three forth, effectively closed the supply lines at the Tir-Sinsearach border
-Most of the combined Makah/Salish forces advanced to the Tir border, where they left sufficient force to seal off Portland, then advanced along the border to threaten the Tir's forces from behind.

Soon to be surrounded, and without chance of supplies, the mercenaries surrendered, closely followed by the Tir forces.


It might help to look at a map: Map
Kyoto Kid
...[in character]

Them long eared varmints get near the Metroplex border, they'll be askin' for a good ol fashion horse whuppin!. Ah had to deal livin with their likes once, and that is once more than enough for this cowgirl.

--KK4.3



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