Okay kids, here's my thoughts:
1) Leadership is good. Either Justice or Archon would be fine. Kaereth would have no problem with either choice. I think we should also remember that, if I'm interpreting this correctly, a leader will not mean the rest of us simply follow their dictates, rather, when we're lost, confused or otherwise fighting about what course of action, they will provide direction and, dare I say it,
leadership so that we can get on with the meat of the game, killing bad guys. I mean enjoying the story!
Whatever decision the group comes to I am fine with.
2)Planning. If I recall correctly, the current plan is to raise an army, take back Oceanus and head off after swords and Jain. I'm going to concentrate on the taking of Oceanus part, because it's military and that makes me happy. Looking back over previous posts of mine regarding Oceanus etc, I think parts of that plan can and should still be used. Namely, the forces arrayed against us are too much for us to take in a stand up, conventional fight, no matter the size of the army we have. At least to start with. Therefore, it seems to me, especially as we're taking this 5 week hiatus or so, where many of us are working on training interested parties, that we begin our campaign with a guerrilla effort. We train several squads of quick, stealthy troops (I'm thinking teams of 10-12) to go in, do a quick strike, and come out again. We'll need several, independently operating groups that will also need to be very careful about coming back to Hyrwl, as leading the bad guys to us before we're ready would be bad (although hopefully we'll have some defenses up by then so that we have a shot if the worst happens). One of the first goals might be to rescue those squatters in the barracks as they are on the edge of the town. This also gives us some flexibility in that, if we lead the first few skirmishes and train up teams that can operate without us, it means we could possibly run off to the Isle of Mourning, find the blade there and come back in victor, boosting morale, hopefully recruiting and with the work of the guerrilla teams, maybe leading to a better shot at a conventional campaign. Our own party would be brilliant at such a task, but that may not be in the cards. Hopefully this all makes sense and perhaps allows us to narrow down/tighten up the plan.
3)Let's look at our own resources or what we all bring to the table in the military aspects (in alphabetical order)...this is also capabilities, not expertise:
Archon: Stealth, archery, close-combat
Arfin: Close-combat, tank. Some ranged.
Fareathir (apologies if I butchered that): Archery, Cavalry, close-combat
Justice: Close combat, aerial cavalry, some ranged
Kaereth: Close-combat
Laurel: Stealth, archery, Yoshi
Xath: Deception, misdirection, some archery, some close-combat
If I missed anything feel free to add, hopefully having this in black and white is useful to thinking about planning and the battle for Oceanus.
So, in a nutshell:
Leader=good
Plan=good
Known Resources=good
Go Team!
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