Okay so I've been examining the news cycles the last loop or two (this is still so strange to me, but I'm doing my best to keep going) and there are a few items I want to focus on personally.
The biggest one is stopping the Bahamut cult from massacring the people of Nakagawa. I think I can probably infiltrate the cult; a LOT of them show up after the MogNet post goes out and I'm pretty sure I can lose myself in the crowd of new arrivals, and if called upon, give a fairly good performance as a cultist if need be to better fit in. I've done that sort of thing before, after all.
Stopping the cult I think means getting to the leader. Or leaders, I think there might be more than one. Obviously they try to keep their identities as obfuscated as possible, which is why I'll need to infiltrate them. If I can figure out who they are, I'll report back with their identities. But I want...I want to try talking to them first. I know what they do is horrible, but...they're scared and desperate and hoping for any possible way to save themselves. Most of the cultists I fought the first time trying to escape the city didn't appear to actually want to be hurting other people, but...fear and desperation can make people do awful things if they're pushed far enough.
Which is why I want to talk to the cult leaders personally before I-or we-go in swords drawn. I think I need to be able to offer them hope; hope that this isn't the end, that Bahamut will be stopped and Vaikuntha saved. Maybe if I can address the cult at large during a meeting-maybe even the one where they decide on the massacre-I might be able to stop it from happening.
That said, if the cult leaders themselves are truly set on this goal, I'll do what I have to. But it would still pay to have a contingency plan in place in case I can't convince them to stand down. If we have an evacuation plan ready to go, when the cult attacks we'll be able to get more people out of the city. Or maybe we can try to organize some kind of defense so that when the assault happens they won't find it so easy. Most of the cultists didn't appear to be that well trained, but they had numbers and the element of surprise on their side. The loops take away the latter advantage, and from there, depriving them of the former should be relatively easy to accomplish.
That said, if anyone with an airship could be standing by at the port in case we need to get a lot of people onboard and evacuate the city in a hurry, I'd feel a lot better about this.
Also, this is admittedly not as big a priority to me as stopping the cult but one item of news keeps popping up that I find...curious. A foreign woman in Arito tending flowers near the Summoners Guildhall even as the rest of the city falls into chaos. I don't know why, but something about that...I don't know if it's important or not but I want to investigate. Something about it stands out to me.
So there's where I'm going to be focusing, at least for the time being. Any help people are willing to give me with either of those two events are welcome! The cult alone is going to require help and careful planning.
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The biggest one is stopping the Bahamut cult from massacring the people of Nakagawa. I think I can probably infiltrate the cult; a LOT of them show up after the MogNet post goes out and I'm pretty sure I can lose myself in the crowd of new arrivals, and if called upon, give a fairly good performance as a cultist if need be to better fit in. I've done that sort of thing before, after all.
Stopping the cult I think means getting to the leader. Or leaders, I think there might be more than one. Obviously they try to keep their identities as obfuscated as possible, which is why I'll need to infiltrate them. If I can figure out who they are, I'll report back with their identities. But I want...I want to try talking to them first. I know what they do is horrible, but...they're scared and desperate and hoping for any possible way to save themselves. Most of the cultists I fought the first time trying to escape the city didn't appear to actually want to be hurting other people, but...fear and desperation can make people do awful things if they're pushed far enough.
Which is why I want to talk to the cult leaders personally before I-or we-go in swords drawn. I think I need to be able to offer them hope; hope that this isn't the end, that Bahamut will be stopped and Vaikuntha saved. Maybe if I can address the cult at large during a meeting-maybe even the one where they decide on the massacre-I might be able to stop it from happening.
That said, if the cult leaders themselves are truly set on this goal, I'll do what I have to. But it would still pay to have a contingency plan in place in case I can't convince them to stand down. If we have an evacuation plan ready to go, when the cult attacks we'll be able to get more people out of the city. Or maybe we can try to organize some kind of defense so that when the assault happens they won't find it so easy. Most of the cultists didn't appear to be that well trained, but they had numbers and the element of surprise on their side. The loops take away the latter advantage, and from there, depriving them of the former should be relatively easy to accomplish.
That said, if anyone with an airship could be standing by at the port in case we need to get a lot of people onboard and evacuate the city in a hurry, I'd feel a lot better about this.
Also, this is admittedly not as big a priority to me as stopping the cult but one item of news keeps popping up that I find...curious. A foreign woman in Arito tending flowers near the Summoners Guildhall even as the rest of the city falls into chaos. I don't know why, but something about that...I don't know if it's important or not but I want to investigate. Something about it stands out to me.
So there's where I'm going to be focusing, at least for the time being. Any help people are willing to give me with either of those two events are welcome! The cult alone is going to require help and careful planning.